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True sounds of band worship
By Billy Schear
wschear@mscd.edu

If you had told me as a small child that a brood of rotting corpses would one day rise from their graves and deliver unto me the most precious gift I have yet to receive, I would have called you a liar and a scoundrel.

At the impressionable age of 17, I was invited into a wondrous world where zombies battled punks in a riotous struggle for the survival of both species. Despite having been released some 15 years prior, The Return of the Living Dead was not just another dated horror film. For me, it was a way of life. It dictated much of my early fashion choices and even my manner of speech, and its soundtrack turned me on to a plethora of awe-inspiring bands, the most important of which was none other than TSOL.

In 1985, the year the film was released, TSOL was on their second vocalist, Joe Wood, who also performed on the Change Today LP, the first album of theirs I bought. I relied on that CD like an alcoholic relies on his sponsor. Every time I came near to jumping off the edge – usually due to a girl – that album acted as a restraint, a constant reminder that sadness is an emotion experienced by all and that there are other – if not creatively better – ways to deal with pain than to commit desperate actions.

Change Today is poetry incarnate. If there were no other record I could listen to for the rest of my life, I would meet my demise without yearning for anything more. To me they were the quintessential band, with nothing to improve upon.

Formed in 1979 in Huntington Beach, Calif., the True Sounds Of Liberty emerged in what was a small but willful underground movement. Hardcore punk by generic definition, they began their career as many in their genre did, by singing songs of political protest. TSOL, though, had a knack for setting themselves apart from the herd by ignoring the standards of others, their fans included, and embarking on a path of musical experimentation few of their comrades had the balls to travel.

Ron Emory’s guitar work was mesmerizing in the way it blended traditional punk riffs with an electric horror element. The bass lines pounded out by Mike Roche literally made my heart thump with every pluck of the string. The drumming of the late Todd Barnes was nothing short of miraculous, and to this day, his style is taught to students by hip drum teachers. When I finally got around to listening to their early work, it was the vocal styling of original front man Jack Grisham that secured TSOL’s place as my favorite band of all time.

Passionate and romantic, Grisham’s lyrics ran the gamut from politics to relationships, from spies to necrophilia. They defined the word versatile. It later surprised me to find out that for fun, these boys actually would rob graves. Singing about sex with corpses is one thing, but to actually dig them up and pilfer whatever valuables they might have adds an element of credibility to your art.

After Grisham left and Wood stepped up to the microphone, it was a fast trip to nowhere. After Change Today, the music gradually became listless and devoid of originality. Members began dropping out, eventually leaving the group without a single original member in its lineup.

Then, in 1996, the still-living founding members decided to once again try their hand at writing music together. Often when these legendary acts get back together after years of inactivity, the results are nothing short of catastrophic. Typically the reunited bands fall into the trappings of trying to compete with contemporary music or trying to recreate the original sound that established their mythos. As their biggest fan and toughest critic, I am proud to say that TSOL fell into no such trap. Their last two albums, 2001’s Disappear and 2003’s Divided We Stand, showcased a true evolution in their sound without missing a beat. They picked up exactly where they left off with zero regard as to what modern bands were sounding like, living proof that punk will never grow old as long as you have something relevant to say.

The end of 2006 brought many disappointments in music – James Brown’s death, Bow Wow’s fifth album release – but for me, by far the most disappointing news was the announcement that once again TSOL has disbanded, with two members fleeing California to pursue other career goals. I suppose all good things must come to an end, and like Seinfeld, I’m truly happy that they went out while on top instead of languishing until becoming redundant. For those who have never heard, or have heard but never fully paid attention, it is never too late to do as the band said: “Live your life, ignore heroes, fuck the system, wake up, silent majority, see the True Sounds Of Liberty.”