Apr 02, 2013 TSOL’s Jack Grisham on Long Beach (Work in Progress)
Long Beach: Work in Progress music panelist Jack Grisham is most famous for being the frontman of TSOL, a first-generation hardcore punk band from Long Beach that started singing about anarchy, moved on to create death rock, and played in legendary local dives like the Cuckoo’s Nest and Fender’s Ballroom. Like most incendiary bands, the lineup splintered but Grisham played on in new groups until TSOL eventually reunited for the surviving fans and new listeners.
Besides also fronting The Manic Low, The Joykiller, Tender Fury, Cathedral of Tears, and Vicious Circle, the Long Beach musician has written a somewhat autobiographical novel, An American Demon. Much of the book, which has been optioned to become a movie, takes place in Long Beach and is excerpted below.
On Long Beach in the ’60s and ’70s:
I was born into your world in the Bay Area of San Francisco in 1961, but didn’t stay there long. I was quickly shuttled down to Long Beach––a working-class town chock-full of blue-collared laborers, retired navy men, hustlers, homosexuals, and squares (p. 2).
Long Beach is a seaside town, and buried under the harbor and the piers is the remains of an old amusement park called “The Pike.” I guess in its heyday The Pike was something to love, but not it was more like an old beauty queen that’d gotten long in the tooth. She was still sort of pretty, but the company she kept––hookers, sailors, and IV drug users––had made her something a little less than desirable (pp. 162-163)
On Long Beach and Music:
I knew that we needed instruments––I was pretty sure of that––but the singing thing didn’t seem to matter that much. I’d grabbed a couple of punk rock 45s from Zed’s, the local punk record shop, and the singers on most of these discs were awful. Some of ’em sounded like they didn’t have any teeth and were insanely drunk when they recorded––I later learned that both of these assumptions were pretty much right on (p. 125).
On those first recordings, I sounded like I was from Long Beach via England. It was hard to listen to, but I mimicked the bands I loved; Siouxise and the Banshees, Adam and the Ants, and The Damned were all English bands. There were some very cool American bands I also adored, but soemthing about a British accent made punk rock what it was. It reminded me of pirates, and being from Long Beach––a harbor town––I’d dabbled in piracy a few times (p. 190).
Long Beach: Work in Progress will take place on Friday, April 26. Listen to TSOL, The Joykiller, and The Manic Low at the Imprint LBC mix on Spotify. Find more information about the guests, the itinerary, and ticketing at the Imprint 2013 sitec.