Channel Three Back in Picture : Band That Went Blank After Punk Rock Beginnings Is Switching On With a Reunion in Long Beach

In most places without cable, Channel 3 on the television dial leaves you in a video void of white noise and static.

That image had its appeal a decade ago for Mike Magrann and Kimm Gardener, two young punk rockers who grew up together in Cerritos. They dubbed their band Channel Three and began playing songs full of noisy commentary about some of the pictures in society, in the punk rock scene and in themselves that they thought needed adjusting.

After a seven-year career that saw the release of three albums and two EPs, several national tours and considerable musical maturation beyond those dark, hollering hard-core punk beginnings, Channel Three went blank in 1987. But recent developments have prompted Magrann and Gardener to switch the picture back on, at least temporarily. Channel Three will stage a reunion show Friday night at Bogart’s in Long Beach. They also will make a live television appearance Friday at 4:30 p.m. on the “Request Video” show on Anaheim-based KDOC Channel 56.

The occasion for the reunion concert is the recent release of “Rejected,” a wryly titled collection of demo recordings that Channel Three made from 1985 to 1987 in a foiled bid to land a major-label contract. Released on Lone Wolf Records, a custom label owned by a Canadian fan of the band, “Rejected” is a welcome addition to the Channel Three file, full of boisterous, Rolling Stones-style rock and well-wrought lyrics by Magrann, one of the best musical storytellers to come out of the early ‘80s Southern California punk boom.

In an interview this week in Magrann’s apartment in Seal Beach--a spacious, airy place with a skylight and contemporary, pastel decor upstairs; a shrine to Elvis Presley and assorted punk rockers in a small den downstairs--the two Channel Three founders said they are not trying to jump back into the rock ‘n’ roll success sweepstakes.

Magrann, who fronted the band as its singer, and Gardener, who played guitar, think it’s fun that Channel Three has found a cult audience in Europe, where its early, hard-core recordings were released last year on a CD called “The Skinhead Years.” They also are happy that two of their old punk anthems turned up recently on an episode of the television show “21 Jump Street.”

But Magrann, 29, and Gardener, 28, aren’t keen about renewing their pursuit of a full-time rock ‘n’ roll career. Weariness with the careerist aspects of rock music caused Channel Three to break up the first time around.

“It got so business-oriented that it just wasn’t fun anymore,” recalled the tall, deep-voiced Magrann, whose black hair sweeps upward in a modified version of a Presley pompadour. “That’s part of the reason we drifted apart. When it got to the point where the band was a deal to be offered to people and argued over the phone, it wasn’t the band anymore.”

Channel Three had no trouble building a following in its early days on the punk scene, where it first emerged with shows at Orange County’s early-’80s punk breeding ground, the Cuckoo’s Nest in Costa Mesa. Channel Three’s blazing-fast music and rebellious themes fit right in with what slam-dancing, stage-diving young audiences were looking for. But as time went on, Channel Three found itself in a dilemma faced by many of the early punk bands: should it keep playing hard and fast, thereby guaranteeing it a solid following, or should it follow the inner voices that said there must be more to musical life than hollered vocals and racing tempos?

Channel Three’s break with hard-core came when it shifted from Posh Boy Records, the label that first recorded such bands as T.S.O.L., Agent Orange, the Adolescents and Social Distortion, to Enigma Records. A 1984 EP, “Airborne,” and the 1985 album “Last Time I Drank” were melodic hard-rock albums, not punk records.

“They’re both deleted,” Magrann said. “We were more or less in confrontation with Enigma before (‘Last Time I Drank’) even came out, which does wonders for your marketing. They were expecting to take over a punk band which was a proven seller. We wanted to experiment.”

The experimentation continued with the tapes now collected on “Rejected.” Originally inspired by the Ramones’ breakneck pop, the members of Channel Three became interested in exploring such influences as the Rolling Stones, the Band, and country music. Magrann’s creative writing studies at Cal State Long Beach came in handy as he crafted literate but unpretentious lyrics such as the half-funny, half-pathetic relationship crackup ballad “Gone Drinkin’.” Several other songs honed in on a recurring theme that runs through all of Channel Three’s releases--the fear that life is going to grow stale and soggy as time goes on, making it hard to keep a youthful spark lit.

Channel Three’s shift in style made it a hard band to sell, said Steve Rennie, the former Avalon Attractions vice president who took over as the band’s manager in the mid-’80s and tried unsuccessfully to sign it to a new recording deal.

“I think they alienated some of the punk fans, and they weren’t quite mainstream enough” for major labels, Rennie said. Maybe if Channel Three could have kept playing and recording for a few more years, Rennie suggested, it could have caught the same wave that has elevated Social Distortion from a former cult band for hard-core punks to mainstream-contender status.

“People were saying, ‘Is it a punk band, or is it a rock ‘n’ roll band?’ recalled Gardener, who still wears punkish spikes in his long, reddish-blond hair. “If we had waited three years down the line, the timing would have been better.”

The two Channel Three founders, friends since second grade, don’t see their reunion as the start of another all-out attempt to land a recording deal and revitalize their rock careers.

Gardener and Magrann both said they are happy with less ambition-driven forms of music making. Besides working a daytime job in a metal shop, Magrann knocks out blues and rockabilly sets with a band called Blue Diamonds, which sometimes appears at the cozy Sunset Pub in Sunset Beach.

Gardener, a manager for a La Palma computer company, played in a band called Bulldog until a year ago. Now that he is out of the rock scene and no longer has to devote time to booking shows and paying attention to band business affairs (a role he played in Channel Three), Gardener said he has the time to polish his guitar technique by taking lessons. Both former punkers are engaged to be married.

Besides Magrann and Gardener, the Channel Three lineup for the show at Bogart’s features Ron Wood (the last of the band’s 11 drummers), guitarist Mike Dimkich, who played bass in the final incarnation of Channel Three, and bassist Alan Bloch, late of Concrete Blonde, who is filling in for longtime member James Lansford, who last year moved to West Germany to work for a record company.

Magrann and Gardener said that Lansford, who co-wrote the songs on “Rejected,” has suggested doing a new album for his German label, and perhaps staging a Channel Three tour of Europe.

“There’s a lot of talk,” said Magrann. “The possibility of recording in the future seems real attractive, because we all have tons of songs ready to go. Promoters are calling. It’s apparently a valuable commodity now. But if anything comes, it has to be on our terms.”

“I just don’t see that the end of the rainbow is driving around in a van for 10 months of the year,” Gardener said. “We did that.”

Channel Three, Rhythm & Booze and the Cause play Friday at 9 p.m. at Bogart’s in the Marina Pacifica Mall, 6288 E. Pacific Coast Highway, Long Beach. Tickets: $10. Information: (213) 594-8975. PUNK FLASHBACK: Frontier Records will finally issue a CD version of “The Adolescents,” the bracing debut album by one of the key bands of the Orange County punk-rock boom. The release is scheduled for next month, according to label head Lisa Fancher. It is part of a CD-reissue program for Frontier, with distribution through its major-label partner, RCA/BMG. Regrettably, the late, lamented Pontiac Brothers won’t be part of the CD reissue effort, because their first two Frontier albums, “Doll Hut” and “Fiesta en la Biblioteca,” never sold more than a pittance when they first appeared, Fancher said.

GOSPEL OF THE BLUES: Borrowing a chapter from the Cowboy Junkies, who recorded their acclaimed album “The Trinity Sessions” in a church, Huntington Beach bluesman Robert Lucas is going to record his first full-length album live in a cathedral in Montecito, near Santa Barbara.

Lucas, who sings and plays guitar and harmonica, will be accompanied by bass, mandolin and violin in the sessions, which are scheduled for July 1 through 3. The album will be released this fall by AudioQuest, a new label that is an offshoot of a San Clemente-based maker of high-tech sound components geared for the audiophile market. Lucas will be playing solo shows every Tuesday night through July and August at Takao in San Clemente, and every Thursday at Cagney’s in Huntington Beach.