Punk greats Circle Jerks headline high-powered Bay Area shows
SANTA CRUZ -- Led by legendary hardcore singer Keith Morris, reunited punk band Circle Jerks share the stage with fellow greats TSOL and Negative Approach to Santa Cruz and Petaluma.
When it comes to American punk rock singers, few have a more impressive CV than SoCal hardcore pioneer Morris. Along with guitarist Greg Ginn, the vocalist co-founded the band that would eventually become Black Flag -- they were initially known as Panic -- in 1976.
While it took some time to solidify a line-up due to their dogged work ethic, Morris was still fronting the band during the recording of their groundbreaking debut Nervous Breakdown EP in 1978 and when they played their first live show under the name a year later.
Personal issues with Ginn led to Morris leaving the band that same year, but the singer landed on his feet soon afterwards when he started Circle Jerks with former Redd Kross guitarist (and future member of Bad Religion) Greg Hetson. Like Black Flag, the group would emerge as one of the cornerstone bands of the burgeoning Southern California punk scene, appearing in the seminal 1981 documentary The Decline of Western Civilization and Alex Cox's landmark sci-fi punk classic Repo Man.
The band's debut effort Group Sex featured several songs Morris had co-written with Black Flag including "I Don't Care" and the drunken punk anthem "Wasted," leading to more acrimony with Ginn and his former band who re-recorded "I Don't Care" with pointedly different lyrics for the new song, "You Bet We've Got Something Personal Against You!"
In late 1980, the band signed to Faulty Records, a subsidiary of successful indie label I.R.S. and issued their influential sophomore album Wild in the Streets. Mixing covers including the Garland Jeffreys-penned title track and a version of the Paul Revere and the Raiders hit "Just Like Me" with alternately obnoxious and politically charged originals, the album firmly established Morris and company as snide and snotty leaders of LA's punk rock pack.
While their next effort Golden Shower of Hits continued the band's streak of solid effort, changes to the band's rhythm section and indifferent production contributed to the lackluster Wonderful in 1985. The band returned to form somewhat with the Relativity Records follow-up VI two years later, but went on an extended hiatus in 1990 as Hetson focused on recording and touring with Bad Religion.
Circle Jerks would periodically reunite to tour well into the 2000s, but only managed one collection of new material -- 1995's Oddities, Abnormalities and Curiosities on Mercury Records. It was during an abortive attempt at recording a new Circle Jerks album in 2009 that led to an acrimonious split as everyone from the band except Morris demanded the firing of producer Dimitri Coats (at the time best known as the leader of the band Burning Brides).
Instead, Morris and Coats enlisted Redd Kross bassist Steven McDonald and drummer Mario Rubalcaba (Hot Snakes, Rocket from the Crypt, Earthless and numerous other bands) to form the punk supergroup OFF! which has been the singer's main creative outlet. The caustic, minute-long blasts heard on a string of EPs hearkened back to the caustic ferocity of Morris' earliest songs with Black Flag as OFF! earned fans young and old with extensive touring and several celebrated releases, including their latest effort, last year's Free LSD which also serves as the soundtrack to their demented sci-fi movie of the same name that had its premiere at the Slamdance Film Festival in January.
Morris has focused on some other projects since then, leading the group Flag with a number of other Black Flag alumni playing classic material without Ginn, who was touring and recording with his own substandard version of Black Flag. More recently, he published his memoir My Damage: The Story of a Punk Rock Survivor in 2016. The autobiography written with Jim Ruland has been met with wide acclaim for its blunt honesty and vivid portrayal of the early West Coast punk scene.
While the reconciled Circle Jerks originally announced its latest reunion tour -- its first in 15 years -- in late 2019 for the following year that was intended to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Group Sex, the pandemic derailed those plans, leading to the trek being postponed. The group managed to play a number of dates last fall -- including an appearance at Riot Fest in Chicago -- before a case of COVID in the band's ranks and the emergence of the omicron variant led to more postponements.
With cases subsiding and the deluxe reissue of Wild in the Street hitting store shelves -- like the early Trust Records reissue of Group Sex, it includes remastered sound and bonus tracks along with a booklet containing interviews and archival photos of flyers -- the current line-up of the band featuring Morris, Hetson, longtime bassist Zander Schloss and powerhouse drummer Joey Castillo (The Bronx, QOTSA, Danzig, BL'AST!, Wasted Youth) relaunched the tour last year, playing to packed houses with Orange County punk heroes Adolescents and Detroit band Negative Approach.
The band has continued performing at festivals and headlining its own shows. Their current tour which stops at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz Sunday before moving north to Petaluma's Phoenix Theater Tuesday night. In Santa Cruz, the group is supported by fellow LA punk crew TSOL with Negative Approach opening.
Founded in Long Beach in 1978 by singer Jack Grisham and guitarist Ron Emory, True Sounds Of Liberty have charted a unique path across musical sub genres over the course of four decades that have run the gamut from politically charged hardcore to gothic deathrock to bluesy metal. Filled out by bassist Mike Roche and drummer Todd Barnes, the group issued its seminal eponymous debut EP in 1981, followed by the more gothic full-length album Dance With Me later the same year.
While the EP was filled with left-leaning hardcore anthems, Dance With Me would prove a far more eclectic and influential effort, focusing on Grisham's horror-themed lyrics and ominous atmosphere that predated the dark-hearted sound of the Misfits and the Lords of the New Church. The album remains a certified SoCal punk classic that still makes up a solid portion of any T.S.O.L. setlist to this day.
On the band's subsequent EP (Weathered Statues) and second album Beneath the Shadows in 1982 for Jello Biafra's SF-based imprint Alternative Tentacles -- the first to feature new keyboardist Greg Kuehn -- T.S.O.L. would move further into a post-punk, gothic rock direction that confused some hardcore fans but broadened their base. Unfortunately, interpersonal turmoil would lead to Grisham, Barnes and Kuehn departing acrimoniously the following year.
Despite the loss of Grisham's creative direction (he went on to lead new projects Cathedral of Tears and Tender Fury into the early '90s), T.S.O.L. would continue under Emory's leadership with new singer Joe Wood, gradually moving from their Doors-influenced gothic sound to a more straightforward hard rock approach over the course of three albums for Enigma Records. Eventually Emory and Roche would depart from their own band, leaving Wood and drummer Mitch Dean in control of the T.S.O.L. name.
Grisham and the rest of the original line-up reunited to lead a competing version of the band in 1991, but the reunion was short lived. The members would branch off on other projects for much of the decade while engaging in an ongoing legal battle with Wood over the rights to the band's name, eventually regaining ownership in 1999. Sadly, drummer Barnes died at the young age of 34 of brain aneurysm late that same year.
Despite that tragedy, the remaining original players have since toured regularly and recorded four albums of new material, most recently 2017's The Trigger Complex that was produced by noted LA punk pioneer Paul Roessler (the Screamers, Nina Hagen, 45 Grave). The band celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2020. Opening the show -- and supporting at the Petaluma concert with local group Scowl kicking things off -- will be Negative Approach.
Along with fellow Midwestern band Necros, Detroit-based singer John Brannon's hardcore outfit was one of the first -- and best -- purveyors of a new faster, more aggressive style of punk rock that emerged in the region during the late '70s and early '80s. Following a trail blazed by Black Flag, San Francisco's Dead Kennedys and D.C. pioneers Bad Brains and Minor Threat, Negative Approach came together in 1981 after Brannon and original bassist Pete Zelewski reportedly attended a Black Flag show. Zelewski would not last long with the group, but Brannon soon found longtime drummer Chris "Opie" Moore and the McCulloch brothers Rob (guitar) and Graham who would make up the seminal early line-up of Negative Approach.
After recording a demo and contributing a song to the Process of Elimination compilation 7" single put out as one of Meatmen singer Tesco Vee's first releases on his Touch and Go label, the band would release it's eponymous 7" EP for the imprint in 1982. Featuring Brannon's angry, barked vocals and a blistering instrumental assault, the EP included some of the group's definitive songs like "Nothing" and "Can't Tell No One."
While growing tension within the quartet would lead to its demise the following year, they would come back together long enough to record their proper full-length debut Tied Down. The record included slightly longer tunes than the feral under a minute blasts heard on the EP while slowing the band's typical breakneck tempo for the corrosive dirge "Evacuate." Brannon would put together an entirely new line-up of musicians, but the group fell apart after a handful of dates in 1984, the last time Negative Approach would perform for over two decades.
The singer remained an important figure on the Detroit punk scene, fronting the noisy, more blues-minded Laughing Hyenas until the mid-1990s and his later garage-rock band Easy Action. Brannon and Moore would resurrect Negative Approach to play the 25th Anniversary Touch and Go festival in Chicago in 2006, teaming with Easy Action guitarist Harold Richardson and Laughing Hyenas/Easy Action/Necros bassist Ron Sakowski to fill out the band.
Negative Approach have toured regularly ever since, becoming a consistent festival attraction with it's incendiary live sets (playing All Tomorrow's Parties in the UK, Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, TX, and No Fun Fest in Brooklyn among others) and hitting the road on both sides of the Atlantic with like-minded bands including OFF! and Punch. While Brannon discovered a number of unreleased recordings by the band dating back to 1984 that saw release on the Nothing Will Stand in Our Way compilation for Taang! Records in 2011, so far there has been no indication Negative Approach will be recording new material. Luckily for Brannon fans, Jack White's Third Man Records put out deluxe reissues of the two Laughing Hyenas albums in 2018.
Circle Jerks
Sunday, July 16, 8 p.m. $35-$40
The Catalyst
Tuesday, July 18, 7:30 p.m. $35-$40 (sold out)
Phoenix Theater