by Don Ruane
Watch Tony Hawk’s “Pro Skater 4” and you will hear Agent Orange’s “Bloodstains” featured prominently in the game. Hawk once stated the song was one of his all-time tunes, which he started listening to as a budding skater.
Mike Palm brought his band to Saint Rock, in Hermosa Beach last month.
“We added Hermosa to the start of our West Coast Tour that takes us up to Seattle and back. The show wasn’t private, but it was a party,” he said.
“Our booking agency loves us because we draw such a large cross-section of fans. One of advantages of being around so long is if you add the diehard fans with the new young fans, throw in some surfers, some skaters, some punks, and we have a sold-out show.”
Palm, who now lives in San Diego, has fond memories of the South Bay in punk’s early days.
“When everyone in OC was hanging around doing nothing at Brea Beach or the Black Hole (Social Distortion’s Mike Ness’s apartment), I was splitting my time between Huntington, Hollywood, and the South Bay. I would usually take the bus to Huntington from my home in Placentia, then borrow a car and drive up to the Church in Hermosa, where Black Flag rehearsed. Even before that I came up to the Fleetwood in Redondo with an early OC band called Berlin. That club became one of the most significant venues for the west coast punk scene. We played there all the time. After it closed we played a succession of different clubs in the area, and I started seeing the Halibuts at Toe’s. By then I had moved up to LA, so I started surfing with Joe and Rick (from the Halibuts). It took a serious effort to convince John (the owner of Toe’s) to book Agent Orange. I already knew Tootie, the manager from hanging out at the Halibuts shows (Gary “Tootie” Cullen, later the owner of the Pitcher House in Hermosa.) Tootie was always behind us, so maybe he put a good word in for us. All of a sudden we were playing Toe’s all the time. We basically toured around and played every location (there were four Toe’s Taverns). We played the Lighthouse a few times. That was a big deal for me because I’m way into west coast jazz. Bud Shank played there!”
Palm used to take surf trips to Mexico in a ’65 Country Squire wagon.
“I shot some great 8mm movies on those trips. I miss Mexico. Have you seen the news lately? I’m not going down there now!”
Nowadays, he said, his downtime is spent on domestic duties, like cleaning his garage.
“Seriously. We have been on the road so much in the past few years that we just had to take some time off to do all the day-to-day stuff that doesn’t happen when we are away all the time. We were planning to use the time to do some recording, but that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen right now. Time’s up, get in the van,” he said.
After the West Coast tour, the band heads to Brazil for a slew of shows. Back when they were signed to Enigma records, the company licensed their recordings to a South American label. The band became well known for their music in surf videos like Billabong’s “Surf into Summer.”
A recent tour of Brazil peaked with a huge show on the beach in Rio. It was a free concert promoted by a local radio station. “Scary huge,” Palm said. It was the biggest crowd they had ever played to.
“We make a point of going back to Brazil every couple of years. There’s a huge movement of surfers/skaters there and we’ve developed a tremendous following.
Besides, that’s the birthplace of Bossa Nova.” ER
