Now, I can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of TSOL. OK so they were pretty huge in the early 80s, headlining the Hollywood Palladium, getting paid £4,000 a show, causing mayhem around the country and trashing & setting fire to house parties, but when you actually cut to the music, well, I just don’t ‘get?Eit. I guess you could put their popularity down to their notoriety & hardcore punk rock rebellion and the fact that budding anarchists needed a band that epitomised the destruction and chaos that would act as a catalyst for their sedition.
This figure came in the form of Jack Grisham, except to some people he probably took things too far! This is the guy who, with escalating alcohol & drug problems got a young girl pregnant & moved her into his house, while at the same time marrying a 14 year old fan in Mexico!! Pretty soon all the band members of TSOL left one by one to cure their drug problems, each being replaced. The bizarre thing is the original TSOL reformed last year while TSOL mark 2 were still performing, and Disappear is the test to see if they can still cut it.
Well, as I said before, I never really ‘got?ETSOL. It’s rough, basic punk rock how it used to be played ?Ewith little talent but with plenty of power. You can still sense a kinda goth twinge in those bass lines and Jack’s voice. In fact, it’s his voice that’s probably put me off. As gloriously unique as it is I guess, like Billy Corgan, it's a voice you either love or hate. It might be how it ‘should be played?Eand it might show today’s crop of so-called punk bands what punk’s all about but no matter how ground-breaking they were at the time this record, in today’s punky climate, is pretty average. I guess in a bizarre twist they could learn something from the generation of bands they influenced. Like AFI.
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5Mat Hocking's Score