An Old-School Reappearing Act

By RANDY LEWIS

June 26, 2001 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

TSOL, one of the most volatile groups on the always volatile Southern California punk-rock scene, is back.

Its first order of business: putting the “un” back in “punk.” “Un” as in unconventional, unpredictable, uncooperative, unrepentant and unbowed.

Like most old-school punk bands, TSOL railed against society’s scorn for punk rockers and punk music. But unlike most peers, TSOL also defied what quickly became the punk establishment.

TSOL kept fans guessing, changing its sound with each album. The Orange County-Long Beach group never bought into the punk scene’s fashion rules--lead singer Jack Grisham liked to taunt punk hard-liners by showing up on stage in a dress--and the band members have jabbed modern punks for seeming to be more concerned about the amenities in their dressing rooms than with rattling the status quo.

TSOL’s three surviving original members haven’t mellowed with age, either, something that was quickly evident last year when the reunited group joined the Vans Warped Tour.

“We walked off stage after the first show, and [Warped Tour producer] Kevin Lyman walks up to me and says, ‘Great show. Cops are looking for you,’ ” recalls Grisham, who is together again with guitarist Ron Emory and bassist Mike Roche. The only missing link from the original quartet is drummer Todd Barnes, who died in 1999 of a brain aneurysm.

They’ll release their first album of new material in 16 years, “Disappear,” on June 26. The album is produced by Thom Wilson, who produced the foursome’s 1981 album “Dance With Me” and 1982’s “Beneath the Shadows.”

It’s coming out on Nitro Records, the Huntington Beach label started by singer Bryan “Dexter” Holland and bassist Greg Kriesel, who enlisted Wilson to produce the Offspring’s 1994 breakthrough album, “Smash,” because of his work with TSOL.

“They were a really influential band for us,” says Holland, explaining the signing. “It’s funny how things come full circle.”

Nitro also is reissuing some of TSOL’s old albums, which brings up an example of how even hero worship doesn’t necessarily make a rowdy band behave.

“We sold ‘Beneath the Shadows’ to Nitro,” Grisham says during a group interview at his Huntington Beach apartment, a short walk from the ocean, “and we didn’t even have the rights to it.”

He breaks out with a modestly apologetic laugh. “They sent us a check for the money, then they called up and said, ‘Hey, where’s the record?’ We said, ‘Oh, you don’t have it?’ Sorry, we already spent the dough.”

Ultimately, Nitro did acquire the rights. Holland doesn’t seem to bear any ill will for the bogus sale (“That’s rock and roll,” he says with a chuckle), and the Offspring have drafted TSOL to play at their sold-out July 14-15 shows at Universal Amphitheatre.

With “Disappear,” TSOL continues another tradition that separated it from the punk pack: a new sound every time out.

Its 1981 debut EP, “T.S.O.L.” (An acronym for True Sounds of Liberty, although the band members have offered numerous other explanations over time) contained assaultive punk not unlike what the Germs, Black Flag, the Circle Jerks and other Southland punkers were playing two decades ago.

The follow-up, “Dance With Me,” brought in gothic rock influences, then “Beneath the Shadows” departed even further from the basic mile-a-minute thrash with haunting piano and synthesized strings in moody, ethereal songs.

“Disappear” finds TSOL returning to a classic punk sound full of of high-octane, slashing guitars. In the album-opening “Motivate,” however, eerie electronica sets the tone as a straight-faced Grisham recites upbeat phrases that sound lifted from a daily affirmations booklet.

“Bands like Bad Religion or the Ramones, they’ve got it easy, man,” Grisham says. “A lot of those records sound a lot alike. . . . Our stuff had been so diverse before, it was hard to us to [answer when someone asked] ‘Well, what do you do?’ We couldn’t just pick out one song and say ‘Let’s write 30 songs like that.’ ”

Grisham’s artistic and philosophical restlessness prompted him to leave TSOL in 1985, when he formed what would become a succession of other bands, from Cathedral of Tears to Tender Fury to the Joykiller.

TSOL continued with new lead singer Joe Wood, who brought in drummer Mitch Dean when Barnes left to rejoin Grisham. TSOL shifted to a blues-metal sound in the late 1980s, and after a couple of albums with that lineup, Roche and Emory left. Wood and Dean continued as TSOL with a new guitarist and bassist and no original members.

That led to a tussle over rights to the TSOL when Grisham decided to reconvene the original lineup in 1999, and for a time they toured as LOST. A lawsuit by Wood (also, in an odd twist, Grisham’s brother-in-law) to prevent the original members from calling themselves TSOL has been settled, and the old TSOL players now play with their name intact.

Emory and Roche, meanwhile, spent much of the ‘90s fighting drug problems--Roche got a three-year sentence for possession--and both say they eventually followed Grisham’s lead in getting sober. As the resuscitated TSOL is preparing to tour again to promote “Disappear,” Roche, Emory and Grisham supplement their income with part-time jobs as house painters.

“This band is about as soap opera as you can get,” Grisham says, laughing. “It’s like a [bad] VH1 movie.”

With age--they’re all now in their early to mid-40s--has come some new perspectives, but remarkably little in the way of softened attitudes.

“We’re still hard-core libertarians,” Grisham says. One difference he notes in songwriting approach is that “now we might sit back and say this might influence somebody, it might be taken at more than face value.”

But, Roche adds quickly, “talking to us and listening to us play are two different things. We might be kind and considerate and maybe have a bit of wisdom here and there when you speak to us. But that’s all off when we’re on stage. Then we’re [urging the crowd to] jump, jump, jump!”

* TSOL and the Offspring play July 14 and 15 at Universal Amphitheatre. 7:45 p.m. both nights. $25. (888) 777-3931