Faces of O.C.’s Punk Scene : Youths Looked at Their Suburbia; They Didn’t Like What They Saw, and They Told the World

Blocking out the real world that you seldom ever see, Pace the cage you live in with your friends and families. 714 embedded in your brain, Designer jeans and malls are all you’ll ever have to gain. ... ‘Cause O.C. life is not the life for me Stupid little girls and egotistic boys O.C. life is not the life so free Pressure on the back and artificial joys For all you girls and boys. --from “O.C. Life,� by Rikk Agnew (1982).

Punk rock was born with the Sex Pistols screaming for anarchy in the U.K.

That howl, emerging in 1977 from alienated sons of an economically blighted Britain, would seem to have had little to say to the comfortable youth of boom-time Orange County.

But as it turned out, youthful discontent was alive, even in the affluent suburbs. By 1979, the sonic spark lit first in England had touched off a smoldering fire here. The Orange County punk-rock movement was on. It has proven to be the county’s most sustained and distinctive contribution to rock since the surf music of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s and the blue-eyed soul of the Righteous Brothers.

Punk was about rebellion, about standing against prevailing norms of music, style and behavior. Perhaps, then, it is not so surprising that one of the world’s largest, wealthiest and most conservative expanses of suburbia should have produced such a persistent cadre of musical rebels. Most of the Orange County punks were well aware of their incongruity here. Maybe that is what has made them such a persistent lot. Ten years later, many of those original punks remain very much a part of the county’s musical life. These are the stories of the early Orange County punks who have bridged a decade and remain active on the local, and in some cases, national rock scene.

THE CROWD

Of the Orange County punk bands that proved to have staying power, the Crowd came first, and that made all the difference.

These were good-time punks, not angry punks. When the band formed in Huntington Beach in the spring of 1978, all but one member--bassist Jay Decker--had graduated from high school. The younger punk bands that emerged in the next two years would all pay a price for being high-school nonconformists--their choice of music and style would draw taunts and sometimes physical challenges. The Crowd was spared many of the harsher experiences that reinforced the teen anger and social rebellion of most other Orange County punk bands.

Instead, the Crowd rebelled against the prevailing late-’70s notion that rock music was for experts. “I never felt I was good enough,� recalled Jim Kaa (pronounced Kay), the Crowd’s founding guitarist. Then he began to listen to the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, and such early Los Angeles punks as X, the Weirdos and the Dickies.

“I saw other people that supposedly were poor musicians, but they had heavy attitude� and the ability to infuse rock with new energy. Kaa’s fears about not being “good enough� fell away, and he found compatible and equally willing accomplices in his own neighborhood. “I was marginal, and they were as marginal as me. So we said, ‘Let’s go.’ �

“The scene was so stale that within six weeks of our getting together, we had hundreds of people coming to see us� at neighborhood house parties, recalled bassist Jay Decker, an utter novice when the band started. “We couldn’t play. It didn’t matter.�

The Crowd saw to it that things weren’t boring when they played. “We were like a cyclone,� said Jim Decker, the singer who went by the stage name Jim Trash. Decker helped spark the trend toward flamboyant, physical front men that came to be a staple of the leading Orange County punk bands.

“It was Jim Trash who created slam dancing, just by being drunk and falling all over people� said Robbie Fields, the record producer and label owner who issued most of the Orange County punk bands’ first recordings on his Posh Boy label. Slamming, the signature punk style of dancing, is still very much in evidence at punk shows today (for the uninitiated, it is essentially a swirling pile of colliding bodies, like a Rugby scrimmage in front of the stage). The Crowd also were fashion trend-setters, adopting bright, Day-Glo clothing so they would stand out from the more ominous-looking leather-clad Los Angeles punk set.

The band’s first recordings appeared on a 1979 punk compilation album, “Beach Blvd.,� on Fields’ Posh Boy label. The Crowd’s songs echoed the fast, catchy garage-punk of the Ramones, while sticking mainly to conventional pop themes of romantic conflict. One song, “Modern Machine,� stood out with a furious guitar attack. A 1981 album, “A World Apart,� (now out of print) found the Crowd branching into more complex music, much of it influenced by Devo’s mechanical rhythms. More personal and reflective lyrics showed maturity, and in “Right Time� the Crowd came up with a blitzing punk-pop gem.

Unfortunately for the Crowd, Southern California’s punk tastes were moving away from melody and toward more thrashing, abrasive music. In March, 1983, the band broke up. “I was frustrated,� said Kaa. “Unless we were more hard-core punk, there wasn’t an audience. But you want to evolve and be more of a musician.�

Two years ago, the Crowd staged a one-shot reunion, then decided to keep going. They recently released a new album, “Big Fish Stories,� on the Flip Side label. One of this uneven, eclectic album’s best songs, “Under the Rug,� dates from the early ‘80s, when the Crowd lashed out at the narrowness of hard-core punk tastes. “Talk about punk, you stupid fool/Another trend, another drowning pool.�

The members of the Crowd, now 29 to 34, still do a good job of approximating a cyclone on stage, but they don’t give much thought to doing it for a living. Kaa is manager of finance for a large national restaurant chain; the Decker brothers have a family construction business, and drummer Dennis Walsh is a mailman. They express some regret that they didn’t have a manager in their early days, which might have helped them mount more of an organized push toward rock ‘n’ roll success.

“We would have been able to release a lot more records, a lot more profitably,� said Kaa. “But at 19, my only goal was to play as often as possible, as loud as I could.�

“It’s definitely disappointing,� said Jay Decker, “but I’m still having fun when I put on my guitar.�

SOCIAL DISTORTION

Mike Ness, leader of Social Distortion, looks back on the past 10 years from the vantage point of a newly signed major-label recording artist--a first for a band born in the Orange County punk explosion.

“I think everything that happened, happened for a reason and it turned out the way it was supposed to,� says Ness, now 27.

A lot happened.

* It is early 1980. Ness is in the Black Hole, his Fullerton apartment, which served as a crash pad and incubator for north Orange County’s nascent punk scene. For some reason, he is angry (not an unusual mood for Ness). He is taking it out by jabbing a knife into his living room wall. The knife gets stuck, Ness’s hand slips, and he accidentally filets his left index finger. Ness will never again be able to use it to pick out notes on a guitar fret board. It is not a promising development for a would-be lead guitarist. But Ness adapts and develops a distinctive guitar style that makes spareness a virtue.

* Ness is fighting outside the Cuckoo’s Nest in Costa Mesa, Orange County’s leading punk club in the early days. His antagonist bites off his left ear lobe.

* In a quieter moment, Ness, himself the product of a broken home, takes time to counsel a younger punk rocker, Tony Montana, about his own family problems. “I would see this tough guy, but I would also see the real caring side of him,� Montana recalls.

* Social Distortion is about to play a gig in San Diego when a bouncer hassles Ness for trying to walk into the club with a beer in his hand. Ness slugs his antagonist in the forehead with the full beer can, punches out a second bouncer, then runs to the stage and plays his show. Afterward, a whole crew of bouncers catches up to him. Ness finishes the night beaten and in jail, which is not the most pleasant place to be for a musician who is also a heroin addict in need of a fix.

In the course of those wild early years, Social Distortion released a fine, 1983 debut album, “Mommy’s Little Monster,� that used punk drive, pop melody and a swarming double-guitar sound to sum up the turbulence and rebellion of the punk movement.

But by the end of 1983, Social Distortion’s bassist and drummer had stalked out of the band in the middle of a New Year’s Eve show, fed up with all the junkie business. That left just Ness and Dennis Danell, his longtime friend and guitar partner. Ness had brought Danell into the band soon after it started in 1979, even though Danell didn’t play an instrument at the time--and even though the move prompted two other talented punks, Rikk Agnew and Casey Royer, to walk out of Social Distortion because they didn’t want to have the band’s progress stalled while Danell learned to play.

“He was my best friend, and he had the look,� Ness recalls. “I just realized I was going to have to have friends in the band. It couldn’t just be musicians.�

The glue of friendship held Social Distortion together, even when Ness “borrowed� his buddy’s guitar amp and pawned it to get money for heroin. As the band’s manager, Jim Guerinot, recalls it, Danell wasn’t immune to excess, either.

“Being a beer drinker as Dennis was, it’s not as expensive (as heroin). It can get you killed just as quickly, but not as expensively. They both got to the same place. Dennis took a Volkswagen, and Mike took a Cadillac.�

About four years ago, Ness decided that it was death, prison or get clean. Last year, a clear-eyed, healthy Social Distortion released “Prison Bound,� an album that kept the band’s punk edge while drawing upon Ness’s country-music influences. In the title song, one of the best rock songs of 1988, and in several other numbers, Ness sang in his nasal, deep foghorn of a voice about consequences suffered and fates forestalled, and about learning to face life with patience rather than rage. The band that no sane record company would touch became major label material, and will record its next album for Epic Records.

“These guys have an unbelievable amount of appreciation for where they are,� says manager Guerinot. “We’ve played through eight of our nine lives. This one we’ve got to live through.�

ADOLESCENTS/D.I. FLOWER LEPERDS

As Tony Montana recalls it, this was the Adolescents’ guiding musical principle while recording their debut album in 1981:

“It was just flat-out rebellion. Rebellion for the sake of rebellion. Let’s head 100 miles per hour into a brick wall and see which of us stands up.�

As it turned out, they all fell down. By the time “Adolescents� was released, this most mercurial of Orange County punk bands had already begun to disintegrate. But that debut album still stands up.

Montana was a skinny, little, picked-on punk, raised in a tidy Anaheim subdivision, but in a single-mom welfare family that he says was frowned upon by status-conscious neighbors. In the studio, his dander up higher than usual because of the band’s internal bickering, Montana spent the length of the album exacting aural revenge for every slight he’d ever suffered. That snarl was backed by a withering guitar attack from brothers Rikk and Frank Agnew, full-thrust playing by drummer Casey Royer and bassist Steve Soto, and a collection of songs that ranged from venomous hard-core to melodic hard-pop. It all added up to a record justly recognized as a punk classic, something that can sit proudly next to the Ramones, the Clash or the Sex Pistols. The last words on the album are “I hate them all.�

The Adolescents collapsed before they could capitalize on what they had wrought--but aside from Rikk Agnew, who was 22 at the time and saw the commercial possibilities, most of the other members were still teen-agers who weren’t inclined to think beyond the next gig.

A successful one-shot reunion concert in 1986 led to a second run for the Adolescents. Montana sang on the band’s mediocre 1987 comeback album, “Brats In Battalions,� then left to join the Flower Leperds. With Soto and Rikk Agnew taking over the singing and songwriting, the Adolescents achieved another artistic triumph, the 1988 album, “Balboa Fun Zone.� It was musically adventurous, ranging from hard-core to folk-rock while always keeping the accent on melody. Lyrically it was a deeply personal, thematically coherent album that reflected the members’ maturation from rabid, self-destructive punks to reflective adults. The only problem was that the old-time Adolescents fans wanted more of the rabid stuff they had loved from the first album. Concert audiences dwindled, and the band broke up earlier this year. Soto is readying a new band--Joyride--while the Agnew brothers pursue individual projects.

Montana says he went through a period of reflection soon after the Adolescents’ first breakup. He decided to pursue a college degree, and last year began a new career as a teacher working with emotionally and mentally handicapped children. Singing with the Flower Leperds is a sidelight now, he says, an outlet for energy. The Flower Leperds’ two albums with Montana are hard and fast, and generally less melodic than the Adolescents’ best work. Many of the songs are raw, disturbing portrayals of violent social and personal pathologies. The idea, says Montana, is not to celebrate life’s horrors, but to confront them as a first step toward making young audiences conceive of a saner way to live.

Royer, at 30, fronts D.I., the band he has led since 1982, in a way that lives up to Montana’s fond assessment: “Even now, Casey is still like a teen-ager. He’s always been really young at heart. He’s always had a lot of energy, a lot of spirit.�

The band started as a not-too-serious side-project for Royer and Rikk Agnew when they were still in the Adolescents. “The first party we played we were under the influence of 7 or 8 different intoxicants at the same time,� recalls Agnew: hence the name D.I.--Drug Ideology.

The initials remain, but they don’t stand for anything to do with drugs anymore, says Royer. In fact, D.I.’s best songs, along with “O.C. Life,� are a couple of searing warnings against heroin abuse, “Richard Hung Himself� and “Johnny’s Got a Problem.� They are highlights in an uneven four-album career (a fifth is due out soon on the Triple X label) that, at its best, recaptures the explosiveness of the first Adolescents album. Humor, Gothic horror stories and anti-authority broadsides along the lines of “Reagan Der Fuhrer� are the band’s continuing staples.

(After playing together in four bands over seven years, Royer and Agnew had a bitter and lasting falling out in 1986, in a dispute related to Royer’s role in the Adolescents’ reunion.)

While the forthcoming D.I. album contains the first love song the band has ever recorded--inspired by Royer’s marriage last year--the singer says he is keeping his commitment to playing hard, fast punk rock that is little changed from the early days. “I’ve pretty much stayed in the same realm,� said Royer, an avid surfer who lives in a Laguna Beach bungalow and keeps a day job as a gardener. “A lot of people have been happy that we haven’t compromised too much.�

This quintessential punker says he may settle down when he has children, but he aims to pass on the torch. He already is planning to name his first-born child Dest. Dest Royer.

T.S.O.L./TENDER

T.S.O.L. (True Sounds of Liberty) is a musical chameleon that always wears dark colors. With six albums and two EPs, the Huntington Beach-Long Beach group is by far the most prolific band to come out of the early Orange County punk era. It is also the hardest to pin down. All those records are brooding, hard-driving affairs. But, until a relatively recent move into metallic hard rock geared toward mainstream commercial acceptance, T.S.O.L. spent most of its career in constant stylistic experimentation.

“We wanted to experiment, see what we could do, see what we were best at,� said Jack Grisham, the band’s original singer. “We made it clear at the start that it was a matter of change--with our clothes, our hair styles and our music--and I think a lot of people saw the honesty of it.�

A high statement of ideals for someone who says his early motivation for becoming a punk rocker was to have a new outlet for his penchant for teen-age trouble-making. As a flamboyant, utterly unpredictable front man who was apt to turn up dressed in clownish garb and makeup, Grisham got in his share of trouble--especially with fellow band members who often found his behavior unfathomable.

Bassist Mike Roche recalled having to cajole Grisham to join T.S.O.L.: The singer had dropped out of the punk scene after a brawling show with his previous band, Vicious Circle, in which someone had tried to come after him with a gun. T.S.O.L.’s image wasn’t much gentler. The band became one of the biggest Southern California punk draws in the early 1980s, but Roche says the fan violence associated with its concerts made it hard to get gigs.

“It was like being in the eye of a hurricane,� said Roche, 28, now the only remaining original member. “You had ultimate control of this monstrous storm going on around you. But there was a calm there. You were at peace and at home in the middle of this chaos. They were your friends and you had a common goal. You were all molecules in this rage. I remember when I used to surf a lot, when a storm front came in there would be a moment of calm. That’s the way the stage was.�

T.S.O.L.’s first release was a 1981 EP of angry, anti-government songs, inspired by the reinstatement of draft registration.

“We were all mad about it,� recalled guitarist Ron Emory. “We always thought World War III was coming and we were going to be the crop for the front lines.�

That EP was the most heavily political release to come out of Orange County punk, which tended to stick to issues such as conformism and materialism that hit closer to home. But T.S.O.L. quickly moved on to other things. “Dance With Me,� also released in 1981, was a Gothic horror album, T.S.O.L.’s tales from the crypt. The next phase was stormy romanticism. “Beneath the Shadows� chronicled Grisham’s romantic tribulations and disaffection with a punk scene that was rapidly hardening into its own conformity. That conformism had no use for T.S.O.L.’s addition of lush, classically tinged keyboards for “Shadows.� The band’s popularity slipped, and by 1984 Grisham and drummer Todd Barnes had left.

Emory and Roche carried on with a new lineup that featured Joe Wood, a leathery-voiced singer who brought more of a blues edge to the band. Emory quit T.S.O.L. early last year. In his eyes, the band had grown too far from its punk roots and was too intent on emulating the metallic rock--and big bucks success--of Guns N’ Roses. Emory says he also was troubled by a Guns N’ Roses-style penchant for hard drugs within the band, and by a new emphasis on making music and cutting an image that would position T.S.O.L. for a major label record deal (Roche says that after a close-but-no-cigar courtship with one of the major companies, T.S.O.L. wound up signing again with Enigma Records, the large independent label that has released its past three studio albums).

Roche doesn’t deny that band members have grappled with drug abuse--the group’s newest crop of material includes some cautionary songs on the subject--but he says that T.S.O.L. continues to uphold punk’s ideal of reflecting social and personal realities.

“We’re not into the classic metal ‘boy-girl’ thing,� Roche said. “It’s still strong subject matter. It means something to us. We’ve got all the sensibilities of where we came from.�

Disillusioned after leaving T.S.O.L., Emory, who stills considers Roche to be “like family to me,� had no plans to continue with music. Then he heard from Tim Swenson, who as a young punk rocker had opened shows for T.S.O.L. Emory liked the blend of punk and Rolling Stones-style rock that Swenson’s band, Lunchbox, was doing, and signed up as lead guitarist. The band recently was signed by Bug Records, a new subsidiary of Capitol.

As for Grisham, he continues as a charismatic hard-rocker, fronting Tender Fury. The band released a catchy, hard-hitting album last year, but without much commercial success (Grisham’s unwillingness to tour didn’t help). After a period of discouragement and drug abuse last year, Grisham says he has straightened up and is optimistic as Tender Fury works on its second album.

“I’m looking to feel good again, to play shows and have the reckless abandon I felt (in his early days with T.S.O.L.). Right now, I can feel proud of (having been in punk rock), and I never did before. Here I am, 28, and I don’t have a career, but look what I’ve done. Not everybody gets to do shows and make records. I’ve got a high school 10th-year reunion coming up. I was thinking, ‘What am I supposed to do, go back and tell these guys I’m a bum?’ But now I don’t look at it like that.�

VANDALS

The Vandals cast themselves as the court jesters of the Orange County punk scene, a satiric band that wasn’t beyond poking fun at punk’s pretentions.

Guitarist Jan Ackermann started the Huntington Beach band in 1980, after buying his first electric guitar from a member of the Crowd.

The band’s comical character took shape when Ackermann enlisted Steve (Stevo) Jensen as singer. A love for surfing had prompted Jensen to move from Buena Park to Huntington Beach. He became a protege of T.S.O.L. founders Mike Roche and Ron Emory, a couple of surfers who had veered into punk.

“I admired the way Mike Roche and Ron and Bob Emory (Ron’s older brother) dressed and acted, and I followed in their footsteps,� Jensen recalled. But before long, he developed his own outrageous take on punk that was far from T.S.O.L.’s glowering style.

“I said, ‘We’re going to have a good time with it. We’re going to make fun of everybody and we’re going to have fun doing it,’ � Jensen said. “That’s what I wanted--fun.�

On their first EP, “Peace Through Vandalism,� the Vandals created instant folklore by chronicling the battles between the punks who frequented the Cuckoo’s Nest and their antagonists: the Costa Mesa police and the clientele of Zubie’s, the neighboring restaurant that attracted the urban cowboys.

“The Legend of Pat Brown� immortalized an incident in which punk fan Pat Brown’s car hit a patrolman as Brown tried to speed away from a police stop outside the Cuckoo’s Nest. Brown and his friends emerged unhurt after police gunfire sent three bullets into their car. “Pat Brown tried to run the cops down/Pat Brown run ‘em into the ground,� the Vandals sang. “Urban Struggle� used spaghetti-Western musical themes to mock the “the cowboy scene down at Zubie’s.�

With “Anarchy Burger (Hold The Government),� the Vandals also made absurdist fun of punk’s own inclination toward knee-jerk rebellion and political self-righteousness.

“We thought they were overdoing it, and it was kind of stupid,� Jensen, 25, said of punk’s reflexive anti-authoritarian streak. “Right away, we were taken to task for being unserious, for taking away from the movement. What I enjoyed was making people forget their problems for the time we played. They were laughing at us the whole time, and that’s what I liked.�

A 1984 album, “When In Rome Do As The Vandals,� satirized fascist skinheads and punk violence, among other targets. It also included a funk-rap number, “Lady Killa,� that later helped the Vandals land opening-act slots on Southern California bills with such rap acts as Grandmaster Flash, L.L. Cool J and Public Enemy. The Vandals also found themselves in a strange setting for a punk band when they took part in a 1984 political benefit--for the Young Republicans.

Jensen was fired for drunken performances, according to Ackermann. After a long fallow period, the Vandals re-emerged last year with a new singer on “Slippery When Ill,� an album based largely on the sort of country-inflected punk satire introduced on “Urban Struggle.�

After a national tour last summer, Ackermann, 26, decided to break up the band. “I wanted to keep it a fun thing and not take ourselves too seriously.� Ackermann said that the other members, including Joe Escalante, the only other remaining holdover from the Vandals’ first record, “wanted to turn it into something that I had never envisioned from the beginning: a money-making thing, an organization.�

Escalante kept the Vandals name, against Ackermann’s wishes, and carried on with live shows--including a current Vandals tour of Europe. Ackermann, meanwhile, recently regrouped his own version of the Vandals, with Jensen and another former member of the band, bassist Chalmer Lumary. Todd Barnes, the original T.S.O.L. drummer, rounds out the lineup.

“I think we’re going to stick with it a while, but it hasn’t been decided as far as touring and a record,� said Ackermann, who has a degree in political science from UCLA and now has a full-time managerial job. “I’m having fun again, I’m enjoying myself as much as I was back in 1980-81. But we’re still deciding how far we’re going to go� with the reunion.

AGENT ORANGE

The only member of Orange County’s punk rock Class of ’79 to acknowledge its origins (as well as a political issue) in its name, Agent Orange has also reflected the musical influence of an older generation of Orange County rockers.

Mike Palm grew up in Placentia with his older brothers’ surf records around the house. Since Agent Orange emerged, Palm’s guitar style has incorporated the dark, muscular drive of his surf antecedents (a 1982 EP, “Bitchin’ Summer,� was devoted to surf-rock instrumentals delivered with punk rawness).

Punk’s can-do ethic was evident from the band’s start: When Scott Miller heard that Palm, Steve Soto and another friend were starting a band and looking for a drummer to fill out the lineup, he fibbed his way into the group by claiming that a) he owned a drum set, and b) he knew how to play it. Miller came to the first rehearsal with a kit, but without any skill. “They said, ‘You’re the ( worst ) drummer we ever heard, but you’re our friend,� he recalled.

Soto left late in 1979 after a dispute with Palm over who would write Agent Orange’s songs (he immediately formed the Adolescents). James Levesque, who had been the starting quarterback on the El Dorado High football team, took over as bassist. He and Palm were friends from art class.

“Mike was the more artistic, emotional part of the band,� Levesque recalled. “Scott Miller was the wild man, who supplied the spark, and I provided the stability.�

Agent Orange would enjoy more stability than any of its local punk peers, maintaining the same three-man lineup from 1979 through 1987. It also would enjoy a shot of revenue from an unusual source: Because of contacts Palm developed as an avid skateboard rider, Agent Orange was enlisted to provide the sound track for promotional videos for Vision Sports, a major skateboard manufacturer. That led to the band having its own Vision-produced skateboard model, which, according to former manager Steve Levesque (James’ older brother), produced a healthy merchandising income during the mid-1980s.

Despite these links to icons of sunny Southern California, Agent Orange’s music was almost always nervous and foreboding. On the band’s excellent 1981 debut, “Living In Darkness,� Palm’s effectively symbolic lyrics meditated on his own anxieties and on what he perceived as the destruction of punk rock’s promise. Agent Orange released EPs the next two years, but it wasn’t until 1986 that it put out a follow-up album, “This Is The Voice.� Again the results were strong, if a little too unvaried: hard-hitting, dark-hued but catchy garage-rock that clearly had the potential to find an audience outside of narrow punk circles. Agent Orange became a regular attraction on the national club circuit, but it hasn’t been heard from on record in three years.

Palm, 26, said the band’s low output has been due to business problems. Agent Orange sued its first label, Posh Boy, contending that royalties had gone unpaid (the suit was settled out of court). Later, internal problems developed within the band. Palm and Miller fired manager Levesque in 1987. Loyal to his brother, bassist Levesque quit and went into a graphic-arts career. Brent Liles, former Social Distortion bassist, took his place. Then, last fall, Miller left the band after Palm complained that he wasn’t measuring up as a drummer. Miller says that officials at Agent Orange’s record label, Enigma, also were pressing him to devote full time to the band. Having recently earned a communications degree from Cal State Fullerton, Miller said he intends to pursue creative possibilities in film and video.

As for Agent Orange, it is a band with much promise, due to Palm’s proven talent (only Mike Ness can compare among the Orange County punks in all-around ability as a singer, songwriter and guitarist). But it is also a band with an unresolved future. Miller owns a half-interest in the Agent Orange name, and it is uncertain whether the band can continue as Agent Orange without compensating him.

“If it’s not one thing, it’s another,� Palm said of his continuing extra-musical troubles. “I refuse to go on pumping out records while something’s wrong in the machinery of it all. I had to stop everything and fix things before I could put out a record.�

Palm, who moved to Hollywood two years ago, said he has an album’s worth of songs ready to go as soon as Agent Orange’s business difficulties are resolved. “I can’t say exactly what we’re going to do,� he said. “We’re at these crossroads. A lot of things could happen,� including expanding beyond three members, or changing the band’s name. “I’m considering everything. Regardless what happens, basically I think there’s a batch of songs that make up a real good album.� THE ENERGY, THE CHAOS

Randy Lewis recalls--with affection--the early punk movement. Page 51-E