Location: Long Beach, California
Active: 1978-current

In the early 80s California punk scene, alongside the Hollywood and Los Angeles proper bands, the outlying areas like Orange County and Long Beach developed similar, yet at the same time brilliantly different scenes. In Orange County, T.S.O.L. (an acronym for True Sounds Of Liberty) formed in the city of Huntington Beach during 1978. Many of the OC bands (Adolescents, Agent Orange, D.I., Middle Class) were faster, harder and had something of a weirder streak – perhaps a penchant for narrative that was lacking from many of the more traditional LA bands. None more weird than TSOL, their singer Jack Grisham was a west coast nod to Dave Vanian of The Damned, with his gothic dress code, and their songs conjuring up such subjects as horror movie chic, film noir and… necrophilia.

Their self-titled 1981 EP presented a political focus, but with the release of their LP later that year, ‘Dance With Me’, their horror punk/deathrock influences were in the forefront – gothic typography with a graveyard scene on the cover, and more than half of the track listing dedicated to death, darkness and and a ghoulish, high-camp creep factor including the infamous “Code Blue”, giving necrophiliacs the world over a catchy anthem. This was followed by the 1982 ‘Weathered Statues’ EP, which continued their more goth-punk direction. Later that year saw the ‘Beneath The Shadows’ LP, with the addition of a permanent keyboard player, taking their sound in a more artistic direction with synthesizer driven punk rock, without altogether losing their darker themes. It was this lineup that appeared in the 1983 Penelopee Spheeris punk drama ‘Suburbia’, playing “Wash Away” from the ‘Beneath The Shadows’ album, and ‘Darker My Love’ (recorded at the same time as the album, but was not released until 2014).

Prior to their first album, Grisham and Barnes disbanded the first incarnation of TSOL to form Vicious Circle, only to reunite in 1979. By 1983 Jack Grisham, Todd Barnes again left, as well as keyboard player Greg Kuehn, but instead of this being the end of the band, Joe Wood (Der Stab) stepped in on vocals and ‘Change Today’ was released in 1984 on Enigma Records – maintaining the dark romantic punk direction. At this point, Roche and Emory were the only original members remaining. However they too would eventually depart the band, leaving none of the original lineup. This incarnation of TSOL took a drastic detour into the then-popular hard rock / metal direction. 

Meanwhile, Grisham moved on to form a succession of projects – Cathedral of Tears, Tender Fury and joined by Emory with Joykiller. Interestingly enough, one of the other projects Grisham formed with Barnes, Roche and Emory was a duplicate TSOL (also under the name LOST), which existed concurrently with the previous TSOL that had shed all relation to it’s original lineup. Needless to say, legal battles ensued, and eventually by 1999, Jack Grisham obtained the rights to the name, resulting in a reformation of the original lineup, and despite the untimely death of Todd Barnes in 1999, the excellent ‘Disappear’ album in 2001. As of 2020, TSOL remains active with Grisham, Emory and Roche still in the lineup.

Related: Vicious Circle, Der Stab, Cathedral of Tears, Tender Fury, Joykiller, LOST

Links:

Discogs: https://www.discogs.com/artist/255060-TSOL
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T.S.O.L.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tsol_official/
Bandcamp: https://tsol.bandcamp.com/

TSOL performs “Darker My Love” in Penelope Spheeris’ 1982 film ‘Suburbia’:

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