A punk defies punk rock — Jack Grisham and T.S.O.L. cover Amerie, Bowie, even Louis Armstrong on `A-Side Graffiti.'
Jack Grisham and T.S.O.L. cover Amerie, Bowie, even Louis Armstrong on `A-Side Graffiti'
Jack Grisham has been in and out of a variety of punk bands for more than four decades. Best known for fronting Huntington Beach/Long Beach-based hardcore punk band T.S.O.L. (True Sounds of Liberty), Grisham has experienced some wild stuff on and off the stage. But he wasn't prepared for the response he's received for T.S.O.L.'s latest record, “A-Side Graffiti,” which officially dropped on Kitten Robot Records on Feb. 27.
“We recorded these songs like no one was ever going to hear them except for us; that was the plan,” Grisham said with a laugh during a recent phone interview from his Huntington Beach home. “You can make something and want people to hear it and they're like, `Yeah, it's all right.' Then you make something that's not really for anyone else and they get to hear it and it's like, `Oh, well, this is the best!' It's crazy to me and it just proves that I have no idea what's going on.”
The album is a collection of unexpected covers, upbeat originals and songs that others had asked the band to record as favors that its members truly never thought would see the light of day. It was an experiment, Grisham said, something to shake up the flavor of a band that has been serving up loud and rowdy West Coast punk rock anthems since the late '70s.
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From the jump, the original songs “Low Low Low” and “Rhythm of Cruelty” are like siren calls to the mosh pit. Yeah, it may hurt a bit tomorrow, but the dancing and singing along will undoubtedly serve as a temporary sweet relief from reality.
And then comes a cover that at first elicits a “Wait, what?” response, which is swiftly followed by “Oh, this makes sense,” when considering the overall career and catalog of T.S.O.L. paired with Grisham's affinity for wearing makeup on stage.
His vocals soar through “Sweet Transvestite,” mimicking Tim Curry's operatic and cheeky singing style from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Grisham also called in fellow punk legend Keith Morris of Circle Jerks and Off! to assume the role of Brad Majors in the song.
“Keith owed me,” Grisham said with a loud laugh, explaining that he had appeared in several Off! music videos. “Somebody asked us to pick out a song for a compilation record and we picked `Sweet Transvestite' and I was thinking, Keith would be the perfect Brad. He sounds like Brad!”
When the punk rock pals delivered the song to the person who had asked for it, it was rejected.
“The guy says, `Well, I expected something more punky,' ” Grisham recalled. “I said, `What are you talking about? We are punk! What were you expecting from us?' He said it sounded too much like the original and that it was too good, which was funny to us. So we just kept it and put it on this record. We haven't done it live yet. But we could; we've just never tried.”
Another seemingly odd choice is a cover of R&B singer Amerie's 1995 hit single “1 Thing,” a track that borrows its groove from The Meters' '70s funk song “Oh, Calcutta!”
“If you hung out with me all the time you wouldn't be that surprised by this,” Grisham said, noting that he loves R&B and cites Luther Vandross as one of his favorites. He also said that within Amerie's lyrics, he didn't just hear a woman letting her man know that she's had enough of his behavior, and that though he said all of the right things, his actions certainly didn't match his words. Grisham heard a protest song.
“I thought, oh my God, this is political! Yes, she's singing to a man, but what if you look at this like a protest song towards the government,” he said. “Oh, you tell us you're great and this and that, but wait a minute, this one thing has got me trippin,' dude! I asked the guys if we could do it and they said yeah, let's do it. The guys in my band cut me a lot of slack and are very open-minded towards whatever craziness I'm coming up with these days.”
Grisham is also a big David Bowie fan, specifically of the “Young Americans” period of the mid-'70s, which is why he chose to cover the ballad “Can You Hear Me?” The recording includes guitarist Frank Agnew of the Adolescents, Sugar Ray bassist Murphy Karges and drummer Chip Hanna.
“I got to meet Bowie a couple of times because I was in a band with Hunt Sales, who played with Bowie and also Iggy Pop,” Grisham said. “(Bowie) was a really, really nice guy and I just loved that song and I thought, man, I'd love to try that. So, once again, it's a song that was never meant for release. It was more of an `I want to try something,' so I did and it seems like it went OK. It's funny because I was talking to Dexter from The Offspring and he goes, `Man, you're really singing falsetto on these parts' and we were laughing about it. But yeah, what the hell? Let's give it a shot.”
The new album also includes Louis Armstrong's classic “What a Wonderful World,” but with a twist. This was another song a friend had asked Grisham to record some parts for, and he sang along on piano and brought in the Los Angeles-based Section Quartet, headed up by Eric Gorfain.
“I started to do it, but the lyrics bothered me,” he said. “I was like, well, things aren't so great right now, so wait, I'm going to just rewrite these lyrics. Again, who the hell was going to hear it? It was for a friend of mine! So I rewrote the lyrics and Eric came in and put the string parts to it and there it was.”
Grisham has never shied from singing or talking about politics, though he stopped himself from spiraling down a rabbit hole during our interview to simply state: “It's almost like you're in a bad dream,” he said of the 2024 selection of presidential candidates. “It's like, is this really the best you've got? On both sides?”
In 2003, he was one of the more than 100 candidates who ran for governor of California during a recall election, and though he was against the recall, he said he used it as an opportunity to talk about health care in California.
“The cool thing about that was I got to go into schools and talk to kids about how to get involved, so that part was really fun,” he said. “But the bar has been lowered and I'm actually a viable candidate now, which I find amusing.”
Though the majority of the songs on the album haven't been incorporated into the live sets, Grisham said he did get to sing his version of “What a Wonderful World” during a show at Largo in Los Angeles a couple of years ago.
“I was terrified,” the seasoned frontman admitted. “I did it with a string quartet and it was absolutely terrifying. I have stage fright and I'm very panicky even after all of these years, but with punk rock, there's so much craziness going on that really, are people lookin' at me? There's people jumping off the stage and so many sideshows going on that I don't feel so stared at. But, man, when I sang `Wonderful World' with a string quartet and it was just me, one light and I had a nice suit on and everyone was looking at me, my legs were shaking. With a string quartet, everyone has a note they start on and I had to know my note and it was so terrifying, but at least I did it. I thought, hey, what's the worst thing that can happen? I screw up? Who even cares?”
Fans that attended a couple of T.S.O.L. shows in Los Angeles and Orange County back in December were sharing on social media that those gigs would be the band's last shows ever. Grisham reports that wasn't entirely true, though it was the original thought.
The band was recently announced as part of the lineup of the San Francisco edition of Punk in the Park's American Road Trip alongside acts like Descendents, The Vandals, Dead Kennedys, Black Flag and more on May 4 at The Cow Palace. T.S.O.L. is also on the No Values Festival lineup, which includes Misfits, Social Distortion, Bad Religion, Iggy Pop, Turnstile and more at Pomona Fairplex on June 8. T.S.O.L. is playing at several Punk in Drublic Festival dates throughout North America this year, which is serving as Los Angeles-punk band NOFX's farewell tour. T.S.O.L. will not, however, be part of the lineup for NOFX's final shows in San Pedro on Oct. 4-6.
“I'm getting tired, man,” Grisham said with a sarcastic sigh. “We're basically not touring anymore. We'll do one show here and there, but no more touring. Those are always famous last words, though. I think I told somebody that we've had more comebacks than Cher. It's ridiculous.”
However, Grisham added that he is grateful and inspired by all of the people that keep coming out to see his band, including a younger generation of fans.
“It trips me out,” he said. “I'm 62 onstage, I'm a dad … oh man, it's not sexy. Every time I say that it's not sexy, my daughter goes, `Ugh, gross.' But it is a shock to me that people still come out.”