Agent Orange

And you were doing a gig at a fraternity house at UCLA.

You and I think Agent Orange.

And I was.

the host, introducing it inside a fraternity house.

Back in '78, the scene around San Pedro saw skateboarders flocking to places like the infamous Skateboard Palace, where the local punk club, The Cat Club, would open a second floor for skaters.

It became an unofficial hotspot that let bands like Fear and Agent Orange drop sets before they hit any big stage.

Agent Orange's bassist, James Levesque, who grew up riding a board while listening to The Stooges and MC5, carried that same aggression into his music, making the band's first albums feel like soundtracks for skate videos even before the term skate rock existed.

The early '80s saw a surge in homemade VHS tapes, like the legendary Skate Visions, that mixed jump footage with band demos.

Fans would trade them at local record stores, and the visual storytelling helped cement a shared identity that spanned both skateboarding and punk fans.

And when the sun set over Mission Viejo and full-backed with palm trees, these kids turned to skate parks like South Coast Skate Park as a playground and an outlet for their restless energy.

The first wave came out of a garage in Placentia, with Mike Palm fronting what would become Agent Orange, blending punk’s raw energy with the jangly chords and guitar licks straight from surf rock.

Their debut LP, Living in Darkness, was recorded on a tight budget but had a sound that was both aggressive and melodic, a blueprint for what would later be called skate rock.

You hear the opening riff in Living in Darkness.

And yet the scene was never a tidy, uniform group.

It was a patchwork of individual garages, coffee shop rehearsals, and skate parks where people met over broken amplifiers and burnt-out tires.

A key venue that anchored the scene was the Southern California club The Poppy, which hosted early gigs for both Agent Orange and the Adolescents, providing a gritty stage that amplified their raw power.

The influence of skateboarders was so intense that many OC bands recorded in the garage while listening to the latest video from Tony Hawk, knowing full well that the soundtrack would be the next soundtrack for the sport.

Yeah.

Agent Orange, Ill Repute, Naked Aggression, Lower Class Brats, Total Chaos, Funeral Dress.

Oh, the Funeral Dress.

That was a good show.

I love records.

And it seemed like it was performed by rich people who had gobs and gobs of talent and were in big media kind of uh areas like new york and in los angeles and i live in orange county and but in the in the kind of mid to late 70s this punk rock thing started to happen and um i was living in orange county in a town called placentia and right next door was fullerton and a lot of really great orange county punk rock bands were kind of springing up at the time Agent Orange and Social Distortion and Adolescence and that kind of stuff.

And I could go see those bands, you know, in Elks Clubs and in high school gymnasiums and in people's backyards.

And it, you know, making music seemed to, it started to seem very accessible to me.

Keanu, Ioni, Sky, Crispin Glover, Daniel Roebuck, Dennis Hopper, star-studded cast, great metal soundtrack that really fits the movie, I think, as well.

What did you play, Agent Orange? I played Agent Orange, but I would have played the Wipers song, Wipers from Portland, Oregon, from their Land of the Lost album.

There's a track on there that's great.

Anyway, River's Edge would be my recommendation.