Agent Orange
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Agent Orange

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“The whole music scene has come a long way since [Agent Orange started],” Palm says, speaking down a phone line from his home in San Diego. “Technologically, things have come a long way, there’s so many things that are different. It’s just crazy. But one of the other things about it is, the more you’re around, the more you tend to take advantage of that. In the sense that people come up to us and say, ‘Oh man, me and my friends built a big ramp in my friend’s backyard, and we had this big ghetto blaster and we played your cassette all the time.’ That’s the kind of story that new bands don’t get to hear. You only get to hear that type of story if you’ve been around that long.”

Agent Orange were among the true pioneers of the surf-infused punk rock sound that has become synonymous with the US West Coast. Palm is proud of this fact, and hears the influence of Agent Orange in many of the acts that followed them.

“Not just us, but all of the Southern Californian bands that we grew up with and were our friends – we built a sound,” he says. “You hear the influence today, and that is what music is all about. It’s about passing the baton on and the stuff that doesn’t work out, it’s just forgotten.

“When I listen to new bands, there’s always a new twist on it. But it’s kind of strange to look back and realise that we were building the basics, it was the basis of the whole thing. We certainly weren’t the first; we had our own influences. It’s just how it’s re-interpreted, it turns it into something original.”

Australian fans will get to experience the Southern Californian trailblazers in the flesh when they head our way over the New Year’s period. It’ll be the band’s first trip Down Under in almost 20 years, and Palm feels a touch of trepidation about making the lengthy journey, but is nevertheless looking forward to playing.

“Pretty stressed right now, but yeah really excited too,” he says. “For us it’s a case of, we did a little bit of work on it back in the mid-to-late-‘90s, we were there two or three times. But then we just got side-tracked doing other things, touring South America and Europe, and we haven’t made our way back around in a while. So it’s a big deal for us.”

Agent Orange have released just three full-length albums to date plus an equal number of EPs, so Aussie fans can expect to hear all of their favourites during the upcoming tour. “We play pretty much everything everybody wants to hear,” Palm says. “It has to be pretty obscure to be left out of the set. We also play all the songs faster. It’s just a natural thing, feeding off the energy of the audience. We tend to crank it up a bit and play it pretty rapid-fire, so we get through a lot of the catalogue in one short, sharp set, no problem. It’s all the favourites and a few extras.”

Approaching 40 years since their formation, Palm says Agent Orange are nowhere near done. “I’m going to hang on to this thing and see how long I can make it last.”

BY ROD WHITFIELD