T.S.O.L.

T.S.O.L. were major players in the West Coast punk scene of the ’80s, due in large part to Jack Grisham—a complicated, polarising figure both infamous for his misdeeds and revered as a SoCal punk pioneer. The Long Beach band started out as Vicious Circle in 1978 before becoming T.S.O.L. (True Sounds of Liberty) in 1980. Their self-titled 1981 debut EP displays a raging hardcore sound with Grisham’s equally fiery, anarcho-political lyrics. By the time of their first full-length album, Dance With Me, they had already begun evolving into a less frenetic, more musically sophisticated style replete with gothic and death-rock overtones and sometimes morbid lyrics. After a 1983 gig turned into a riot, Grisham, keyboardist Greg Kuehn and drummer Todd Barnes quit the band, but T.S.O.L. continued on, drafting Joe Wood as frontman and developing a harder rock sound that would eventually border on metal. Grisham rejoined in 1999 to lead the band through several records in the 2000s and 2010s that marked a return to their early-’80s sound.