Agent Orange: Greatest & Latest

AGENT ORANGE: GREATEST & LATEST: THIS, THAT-N-THE OTHER THING (2000)

1) It's All A Blur; 2) Say It Isn't True; 3) Breakdown; 4) Wouldn't Last A Day; 5) Everything Turns Grey; 6) Mes­sage From The Underworld; 7) Eldorado; 8) Tearing Me Apart; 9) Cry For Help In A World Gone Mad; 10) I Kill Spies; 11) Bloodstains; 12) What's The Combination?; 13) Bite The Hand That Feeds.

No one knows why this record exists. It's not like the band owed anybody any contractual obliga­tions. There are three new songs here: the originals 'It's All A Blur' and 'What's The Combina­tion?' are decent, crunchy, speedy riff-rockers in the vein of Virtually Indestructible, and 'Mes­sage From The Underworld' is a cover version, recorded as tribute to a nearly-forgotten, but quite pioneering punk band from the West Coast — the Weirdos. That's all fine, but...

...the rest is just a bunch of re-recorded versions of Mike Palm's favourite songs — a career retro­spective with a penchant for unnecessary modernization, as if Palm were some sort of «George Lucas of hardcore», unhappy with the thin guitar tones and lo-fi production of the originals. I don't know, sounded quite adequate to me the first time around. Not that the re-recordings are de­void of spirit, feeling, passion, or technique, the guy still recreates the laser-like solo on 'Every­thing Turns Grey' as if he were presenting the song to us for the very first time. But couldn't they at least do like all good people do and release this as a live album? We can all be smartasses and state that there is really no big difference between Greatest Hits Live In The Studio and Grea­test Hits Live Before A Bunch Of Passed Out Riff-Raff In A Downtown Bar, but somehow tradition has it that even a very small bunch of passed out riff-raff lends authenticity to the spon­taneity — it's a whole different thing when you're playing into a glass wall.

Anyway, the good news is that, as of 2011, Agent Orange still exist and tour, meaning that this weird bastard recording may not be their very last — although, considering that more than a de­cade has already passed by without a new Agent Orange record, chances are getting slimmer with each new day. In the meantime, 'It's All A Blur' is worth hearing, it's like a brief confirmation that the Force still remains with these guys — oh no, not another Star Wars reference — and that, perhaps, it is better to have this teeny-weeny bit of a new millennium welcome from them than a whole new album of mediocre washed-upness. Clearly, though, spending money on this CD is only worth it if you want to set an example as the President of the Make Mike Palm A Millionna­ire For Chrissake Foundation.

Agent Orange: Virtually Indestructible

AGENT ORANGE: VIRTUALLY INDESTRUCTIBLE (1996)

1) This Is All I Need; 2) Make Up Your Mind And Do What You Want To Do; 3) Electric Storm; 4) Wouldn't Last A Day; 5) Let It Burn; 6) Broken Dreams; 7) Unsafe At Any Speed; 8) So Close And Yet So Far; 9) The Truth Should Never Be Concealed; 10) You Belong To Me; 11) Just Can't Seem To Get Enough; 12) Tiki Ti.

Well, obviously, your band will be «virtually indestructible» when you reserve the right to rotate band members at will around your sole exclusive personality. The rhythm section here is Sam Bolle on bass and Charles Quintana on drums and there is nothing of note that could be said about them except that they probably wouldn't be there in Palm's band if they didn't know how to keep the beat and steer the groove. But there they are.

Considering that Agent Orange, a.k.a. The Mike Palm Project, had only released three original studio LPs in twenty years, it would be understandable and forgivable if they all sounded the same; miraculously, they all sound seriously different. On Indestructible, Palm pretty much lo­ses the last traces of «punk», everything bar the angry spirit (which is, after all, diagnostic of any good rock'n'roll, not just the Ramones/Pistols-twisted variant of it). This is more like «garage metal». Or «hard pop-rock». Or... well, you can come up with your own favorite synthetic term.

The major difference is the guitar sound: here, it is big, fat, sonically overwhelming, deeper, den­ser, lower, and more distorted than it used to be, which normally does suggest moving away from «punk» into «pop metal» territory («pop», because former punksters usually lack the chops to begin competing with true speeders and thrashers). On practice, this often leads to awful results — lotsa head-splitting noise with no positive side effects — but Mike Palm is a smart guy. Most of the songs here are either (a) anthemic, meaning that the noise is compensated by catchy sing­along and fight-along vocal melodies, or (b) riffalicious, meaning that the noise is somehow mol­ded into a series of distinct notes, out of which there sometimes emerges a tremendous hook.

Both categories are best illustrated by the opening tracks. 'This Is All I Need' is a perfect rip-roa­rer, on which a hundred-percent sincere Palm asserts that "I'll never stop until the music takes con­trol" to a breakneck-speed-beat. Normally, I'd expect this kind of song to open one of those dinosauric comeback albums that need a one-two-three kick-start punch to convince the listener on the spot — Aerosmith really need to consider covering this — but since, with Agent Orange, it is hard to speak of «comebacks» («Halley's comet» is rather the term that springs to mind), it is sad that such a classy punch will basically be wasted into thin air. 'Make Up Your Mind', on the other hand, is just a catchy hard-rocker that could as well come from the hands and minds of, say, Accept — its chorus, whose simplistic message seems to have been decoded from a 1967-launched time capsule, is also anthemic, but it is nowhere near as at­tractive as the metallic riff used for the verses.

From then on, the two approaches — anthems with fat tones and riff-rockers with subtler me­lodies — alternate between each other in compa­rable quantities, with only one or two notable exceptions: 'Broken Dreams' is an almost sunny power pop number, and 'Tiki Ti', coming at the end, is like a sudden remembrance that, decades ago, this band had a reason to be labeled «surf punk», and this saddles it with a reputation that needs to be upheld.

Overall, as you may have guessed, the album is far from a masterpiece, and will never threaten to upstage Living In Darkness as the reason to remember Agent Orange, but it is still a decent col­lection that rocks much better than you'd expect a former hardcore band to rock fifteen years after its bursting-out masterpiece. Thumbs up, modestly.

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Agent Orange: Real Live Sound

AGENT ORANGE: REAL LIVE SOUND (1991)

1) Fire In The Rain; 2) Everything Turns Grey; 3) Tearing Me Apart; 4) Too Young To Die; 5) It's In Your Head; 6) I Kill Spies; 7) Bite The Hand That Feeds (pt. 1); 8) Somebody To Love; 9) No Such Thing; 10) Say It Isn't True; 11) Bloodstains; 12) Pipeline; 13) The Last Goodbye; 14) Police Truck; 15) This Is Not The End; 16) Shakin' All Over.

Agent Orange's only live album tends to get occasional flack from fans, mostly for ideological rea­sons: it was not entirely «real live», not because the playing was «doctored», but because, apparently, the producers threw in extra audience cheer, making the band's show at the Roxy in L.A. seem like a concurrent pop metal stadium show. The horror!

Fact is, this does not bother me personally one little bit. Already on their second album, Agent Orange were a big-sound-oriented rock band rather than a compact hardcore punk outfit, and their material may be as well suited to the needs of arena-rock as it may be compatible with smaller clubs. If there is a little too much audience screaming in the background, this is, at worst, stupid (The Beatles Live At The Hollywood Bowl is not the kind of experience one needs to associate with an Agent Orange show), but who really cares if all the instruments are captured reasonably well? At least the shouting miraculously goes away during most of the solos.

For the record, Mike Palm is the only surviving original member on here; Brent Liles, originally from Social Distortion, handles the bass duties and Derek O'Brien, originally... also from Social Distortion, is on drums. They are fairly good, though, perhaps, a little less trained in surf-style playing than their predecessors (as can be ascertained by comparing the live version of 'Pipeline' with the studio original — then again, a live setting is a live setting). Palm himself is in fine form, never neglecting the vocal hooks and taking good care to preserve all the captivating build-up tricks in his solos (the solo on 'Everything Turns Gray' is only marginally less breathtaking than in the stu­dio).

Setlist predictably draws heavily on the two studio albums, with nice alternations between the rapid-fire attacks of Living In Darkness and the gloomy creepers of This Is The Voice. We also get two tracks off the 1984 EP, When You Least Expect It..., both of them classic covers betray­ing the band's fanatic embracement of the Sixties — the Airplane's 'Somebody To Love' is re­worked as an «old school punk» number, and for the Pirates/the Who's 'Shakin' All Over' there is not even any true reworking to be done, but both are also stretched out with relatively lengthy solos from Palm — both of which totally rip, by the way.

In short, the album is a must for the A.O. fan and a solid recommendation for anyone interested in seeing the band, or the Mike Palm Project, whatever, as not just a one- or two-album wonder, but as a god-honest representative of the good old force of rock'n'roll: come to think of it, not many other bands around 1990 could sound as close to that force as the Mike Palm Project. Me, I'm perfectly happy with a regular thumbs up. I mean, with the first track being 'Fire In The Rain', and the second being 'Everything Turns Gray' — two of the sharpest-delivered shots of the de­cade — how could anyone complain?

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Agent Orange: This Is The Voice

AGENT ORANGE: THIS IS THE VOICE (1986)

1) Voices (In The Night); 2) It's In Your Head; 3) Say It Isn't True; 4) Fire In The Rain; 5) In Your Dreams Tonight; 6) Tearing Me Apart; 7) So Strange; 8) Bie The Hand That Feeds (pt. 1); 9) I Kill Spies; 10) This Is Not The End.

Curiously, some reviewers still see it fit to employ the term «surf-punk» while describing bits and pieces of Agent Orange's second album, but this must stem from a common desire to look deeper than the soil (and find bare rock). Because, from a purely sensual standpoint, this is «apocalypse punk», darker, bleaker, much less friendly and much more pretentious than Living In Darkness. Retaining the melodicity and retro spirit of the original, the band moves further away from hard­core territory and somewhat more into artsy hard rock — a good decision, since it helps them to avoid the pitfall of «sophomore hardcore».

Because, come to think of it, normally it is hard to imagine a hardcore punk performer advocating you to "intensify the feel, the sound, the sight — I promise I'll be in your dreams tonight". You could expect this from a David Bowie, a Bryan Ferry, perhaps even a Sting, but from an Orange County whippersnapper? And yet it works, because the band keeps the hardcore crunch while let­ting go of the hardcore ethics. More than half of these songs smell of creepy mysticism; parts of this impression are due to awful production (the singer sounds like he's been placed in a bucket and lowered down a hundred feet-deep well, and all the instruments seem re-recorded by placing two cassette players next to each other), but even the awfulness of production, I believe, was, to a certain degree, deliberate.

That This Is The Voice somehow failed to become a bona fide Eighties' classic is something I'd like to ascribe to an unfortunate coincidence. Every single song here is memorable and «message­able», to coin an appropriate term on the spot. How can anyone with at least a passing interest in conspiracy theories or film noir, not love 'I Kill Spies'? How could 'Fire In The Rain' avoid being hailed as an epoch-defining anthem for its generation? Any possible explanations, such as lame production, defied expectations (people possibly wanted for the band to keep on delivering up­dates of surf classics), or lack of proper publicity, should by now be judged obsolete.

Even when the band slows down, almost descending into «goth-rock» on the doom-drenched 'Bite The Hand That Feeds' that echoes Joy Division, they still sound impressive: Palm rings, ra­ther than rocks, his guitar like a set of hell's bells, and the rhythm section switch from breakneck pummeling into a stern metronomic mode as if it were no problem for them at all. Minimalistic arrangement is sort of crude for this attitude, of course, but it's not like in the Eighties you had to be a workaholic-master-technician like Robert Smith in order to get respect for your artistic drive — London Calling was done just as crudely, and look where that got it.

I have to admit, though, that This Is The Voice, if heard immediately after Living In Darkness, can be fairly off-putting. «Surf-punk» just somehow seems like an overall nicer idea than «apo­calypse punk» whose new motto is to wail and to threaten rather than to bark and to hate. You have to give it plenty of time to grow and plenty of chances to convince you that «maturation from hardcore» can actually be finalized with success. Living In Darkness still wins out as the band's brightest hour because of its freshness, uniqueness, and energy combined, but here we have ten more songs every bit as valuable, if a lot different. Thumbs up.

Agent Orange: Living In Darkness

AGENT ORANGE: LIVING IN DARKNESS (1981)

1) Too Young To Die; 2) Everything Turns Grey; 3) Miserlou; 4) The Last Goodbye; 5) No Such Thing; 6) A Cry For Help In A World Gone Mad; 7) Bloodstains; 8) Living In Darkness; 9*) Pipeline; 10*) Breakdown; 11*) Mr. Moto.

Agent Orange's Living In Darkness might be the perfect place for the quintessential hardcore punk skepticist (or any punk skepticist, for the matter) to start shattering that skepticism. Like every respectable hardcore punk band, Agent Orange only released one perfect album, clocking in at about twenty minutes without the bonus tracks; unlike most of the standard hardcore punk perfect albums, though, Living In Darkness took just as much from surf-rock and power-pop as it did from the Clash, and the resulting album happened to be just as melodic as it was ripping — an awesome rarity from the white trash crowd of Orange County, CA.

The band's major driving force is Mike Palm. He writes all of the songs (except for the surf-rock covers, of course); sings most of the vocals — in a manner that is more reminiscent of rough, but note-respecting garage-rock vocalizing than the unmannered barking of the post-Sex Pistols era; and plays respectable guitar that places high emphasis on speed, volume, and crunch, but also on precision and melodic phrasing. In short, the guy is as punk as it gets, but always strives to tem­per the punkishness with a little finesse and a little nostalgia.

It goes without saying that, under such a strong leadership, the rest of the band has to conform, and the rhythm section of Scott Miller on drums and James Levesque on bass provides Palm's style with all the required tightness and ferociousness. Their collective performance on 'Miser­lou' is like a second mini-revolution: just as in the early Sixties this Middle Eastern/Greek ditty sud­denly started to sound like it was the embodiment of surf-rock itself, so do they effortlessly trans­form it here into a frickin' hardcore standard.

But, although the band's interest in merging surf with punk is well-pronounced (and 'Pipeline', appended here as a bonus track from a 1982 EP, is even more crunchy and brutal, with an almost proto-Metallica guitar tone), they are certainly not just a band of merry teenagers inspired by the same Californian vibes that gave us Brian Wilson twenty years earlier. Most of the songs are ty­pically early Eighties punk in spirit — mean, cynical, desperate anthems to how fuckin' bleak it all looks in the near perspective. Just look at the title tracks.

It is, however, the fact that this run-of-the-mill punk spirit is so neatly packaged in instrumental and vocal hooks that makes Agent Orange's debut so special. 'Everything Turns Grey' is simply one of the hardest rocking and simultaneously grandest and stateliest rock songs of the early 1980s, with its cascading, unescapable guitar machine-gunning, self-oblivious vocal runs that tumble over the edge with each refrain of "No matter what you think or do or say, everything turns gray", and the climax — a guitar solo crescendo that is so brilliantly executed, it's a wonder the local hardcore union did not sue the band for unprofessional behavior.

'Everything Turns Grey' is just one major standout — 'The Last Goodbye' is, in a way, even more apocalyptic; 'No Such Thing' denies the reality of love as decisively as the other songs deny the reality of social happiness; 'Bloodstains' is one of the sharpest-biting songs against the temptation of cheap thrills ever recorded (should be required listening for every aspiring rock star preparing to earn his first million); and the title track manages to convey an atmosphere of personal fear and sadness even through all the loudcracking.

In short, these twenty minutes are real killer stuff — the Adolescents and the Angry Samoans may have been more proverbially «hardcore», but I could not really claim that their classic debuts, free of Sixties' nostalgia and concentrating more on the feeling than on song quality, really reflect the tormented spirit of the times better than Living In Darkness. This here is just an attempt to tell the same story in a wee bit more traditionally-oriented way, while at the same time making ideal use of all the sonic achievements of the hardcore movement. By the rules in me little red book, that's cooler than cool, and almost automatically commands a thumbs up. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), nothing else in the band's catalog sounds quite like this masterpiece.

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