This excerpt is from Chapter 3 of “Tearing Down the Orange Curtain: How Punk Rock Brought Orange County to the World,” out Could 20 from Da Capo Press. The e-book explores the trajectory of punk and ska from their humble beginnings to their peak reputation years, the place their cultural influence might be felt in music world wide. Delving deep into the private {and professional} lives of bands together with Social Distortion, the Adolescents, the Offspring and their ska counterparts No Doubt, Elegant, Reel Huge Fish, Save Ferris and extra, this e-book presents a glance into the very human tales of those musicians, a lot of whom struggled with acceptance, dependancy and brutal teenage years in suburbia.
Citing the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Seaside Boys, and Motown as early influences, Rikk would bang his drums whereas their father strummed alongside together with his acoustic guitar and generally improvised songs that Rikk would play alongside to. Rikk remembers coming dwelling from college and strumming heavy, pissed-off chords on a household guitar. It started a lifelong love of taking part in music.
Early lineup of Social Distortion: Derek O’Brien (drums), left, Dennis Danell (guitar), Brent Liles (bass), Mike Ness (vocals, guitar)
(Edward Colver)
“He [Rikk] was obsessed with the Beatles, in the ’70s it was prog rock, by the mid-’70s it was Kraftwerk and electro imports from Europe. What was neat about Rikk was that he was always looking for something new, he was always fascinated by new music,” Frank stated.
Naturally, Frank and Alfie had been Rikk’s first co-conspirators and had been additionally musically inclined. The Agnew boys jammed the devices that had been current round the home.
Frank began taking part in earlier than he was ten, and identical to Rikk, he was musically gifted.
“Immediately, Frank was so f—ing good,” Rikk stated. “He could do Jimmy Page stuff when he was a fifth grader. Alfie was in second grade at that point. And the two of them would go in the garage and rehearse Led Zeppelin songs.”
“None of us was a good skateboarder,” Frank stated. “So we stuck with the instruments.”
When the Ramones’ debut album got here out in April 1976, Rikk was instantly hooked on the uncooked, aggressive sound, black leather-based jackets, and tough-guy swagger from the Queens-bred quartet.
Photograph of the Vandals within the early Nineteen Eighties
(Dina Douglass)
“The lady who lived next door would get all pissed off and come over and threaten to call the cops,” Rikk stated. “She said ‘Stop making that noise’ and we kept saying ‘It’s not noise, it’s music!’”
The brothers’ intricate mix of influences mixed with their pure skill would form the sound of their bands within the years to return. “People were calling him [Rikk] the Brian Wilson of punk,” future bandmate Steve Soto instructed OC Weekly. “And he was.”
“I could hear an ‘Orange County sound’ starting to identify itself amid the SoCal punk scene,” early Social Distortion drummer Derek O’Brien stated. “Elements of surf guitar and drums, certainly with Agent Orange but others like the Adolescents, D.I., Channel 3, and the Crowd also. Then you had rough but still actually melodic lead vocals as opposed to just yelling, two-part guitar, two-part melodies where one or both would play the melodies with octaves and the backup vocal harmonies soaring with or around the lead vocal.”
Punk roared out of London and New York in 1976 earlier than making its means out west not too lengthy after. First in Los Angeles, by the point the sound trickled previous the Orange Curtain, which was the not-so-flattering nickname Angelenos gave to the county on to the south, it gained its personal taste.
Photograph of Joey Escalante from the Vandals
(Dina Douglass)
Impressionable younger punkers, who got here from damaged houses that match exterior of the idealistic nature of the Reagan presidency, had been influenced by British bands just like the Intercourse Pistols and the Damned. It might be heard within the voices of the rising singers.
“Your punk band sings in an English accent,” the Vandals bassist Joe Escalante stated. “That’s what we do. You might be able to make your own style, but you start there.”
In bands like Huntington Seaside’s T.S.O.L., Fullerton’s Adolescents, and Social Distortion, traces of these British bands may be heard. Escalante factors to T.S.O.L.’s “World War III” because the prime instance.
Jack Grisham, singer of T.S.O.L., on the Ukrainian Cultural Middle, October 15, 1982
(Dina Douglass)
“That’s our leader in Orange County, Jack Grisham, telling us how to do what we need to do,” Escalante continued on a podcast. “We’re not going to argue with that.”
Trying again at his first time singing, Escalante remembers the Vandals singer Dave Quackenbush telling him that he appeared like a “Republican who sounded like they just got out of a John Birch Society meeting.” From there, he went with an English accent himself earlier than incorporating a few of his personal pure fashion.
When all of this provides up, it turns into clear that the model of punk that broke by within the Nineteen Nineties might be traced again to its origins in Orange County. Lots of the early bands’ sound had a preciseness to it and a simultaneous lack of pretension.
“I believe that the California punk sound came from Orange County,” NOFX entrance man Fats Mike stated. Born Mike Burkett, the singer was first launched to punk by his camp counselor, who simply so occurred to be the Vandals’ Joe Escalante.
Even in a serious metropolis like Seattle, the place Weapons N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan grew up a thousand miles away, the sound of Southern California punk was echoing into the consciousness of punk social circles. “We were aware of what they were doing—and why,” McKagan stated. “Even though in Seattle where we didn’t have suburbs, we envisioned these punks from sprawling suburbs whose parents were Reagan conservatives and these kids were rebelling against it. We got it. Could we fully identify with it? Not really. But we knew what they were about.”
Scene from OC punk present on the Cuckoo’s Nest, Steve Soto of the Adolescents within the crowd
(Edward Colver)
Fullerton had the fortune of being the house of Fender. Leo Fender’s manufacturing facility typically discarded guitars that they deemed unusable. For the locals who couldn’t afford one in every of his devices, dumpster diving to acquire a guitar was frequent and demanding. These discarded guitars discovered a brand new dwelling, typically within the palms of younger punks.
It was the literal embodiment of “one person’s trash is another’s treasure.”
Along with being the house of Fender, Fullerton was additionally the place the place many households moved looking for the perfect, pleasantville life depicted because the American dream. The realm was gentrified by tract houses the place nuclear households would settle. By the Seventies, that dream vanished for a lot of disaffected youths, and a brand new scene emerged that many locally would immediately hate.
Jackson is a deputy editor for leisure at The Instances.
E-book launch and panel occasions for “Tearing Down the Orange Curtain: How Punk Rock Brought Orange County to the World”
Tuesday, Could 20 at Fullerton Museum Middle. 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Particular visitor: Noodles (the Offspring). Tickets and information right here.
Wednesday, Could 21 at Fingerprints Music. 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. (Free occasion.) Particular visitor: Jim Ruland, creator of “Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise and Fall of SST Records.” Information right here.
Wednesday, Could 28 on the Grammy Museum. 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. Particular visitors: Adrian Younger (No Doubt), Joe Escalante (the Vandals), Jim Guerinot (legendary supervisor), moderated by Kat Corbett (Sirius XM). Tickets and information right here.
