Punks Gather to Say Hello, Goodbye : Shattered Faith Changing Direction After Reunion Concert at UC Irvine Tonight

It’s a pretty safe bet that no Beatles music will be heard tonight when four bands from the original Orange County punk rock boom get together for a reunion concert at UC Irvine’s Crawford Hall.

Still, there will be a certain “Hello Goodbye” theme to the event.

The two headliners, TSOL (billed as Superficial Love for legal reasons) and the Adolescents, will be saying hello again. For both bands, the show will mark one of the infrequent reunions of their original lineups.

But third-billed Shattered Faith is using the occasion to say goodby to its punk past.

The band, which emerged from Fountain Valley in 1980, around the same time that the Adolescents and TSOL were taking shape, plans to continue under a new name, playing new music. The Crawford Hall bash, band members say, seems like as good a time as any for Shattered Faith to bid a final hail and farewell to its old repertoire of hard-and-fast punk music.

Since regrouping in 1990 after a four-year layoff, Shattered Faith has tried to juggle its old punk material against newer songs in a garage-rock vein that is raw but much more deliberate. But as long as the Shattered Faith name remains, members say, fans will come to shows expecting punk rock oldies.

“We’ve been waiting for a show of this magnitude” to do justice to the punk material one last time, singer Spencer Bartsch said during an interview Wednesday at a Costa Mesa bar where he and the other members of Shattered Faith had gathered.

Bartsch, guitarists Denny McGahey and Kerry Martinez and bassist Bob Tittle all played in the original Shattered Faith. They’ve been joined by drummer Scott Kellems, a longtime friend of the band who used to play in another punk group, the Dischords.

“I’m proud of Shattered Faith, but it’s time for something better,” said Bartsch, a tall, bony-faced man with purple highlights in his hair, large silver rings and bracelets on his fingers and hands, and the booming, boisterous speaking voice of a full-fledged extrovert.

“I’ll be honest, I don’t like to play old Shattered Faith songs that much. It’s not what I want to say (now), or what I care about. After 10 years, you just don’t have the same feeling for something. I have a bigger feeling in my heart for the new songs.”

Still, Bartsch promises to gather his enthusiasm for tonight. Indeed, he said, “this will be the best show that you could have ever seen Shattered Faith play”--with all the other old-line punks on one stage, none of them is going to want to appear as if he has lost his edge.

After its last shot of punk rock, Shattered Faith will re-emerge as Stinky Toys, a provisional name that the band has decided to try on for a while, starting with a show Friday night at New Klub On The Block at the Newport Roadhouse in Costa Mesa. Martinez is the one member not making the transition from Faith to Toys. He’ll play, instead, with Lifestyles, a band that includes former Vandals bassist Chalmer Lumary.

Now that the members range in age from 26 to 31, instead of 16 to 21, as they did when their first recordings emerged, Shattered Faith’s songwriting has been reflecting the passing of time and the accumulation of experience.

“We’ve had guys in the band die, had kids, been through divorces,” said McGahey (actually, there has been only one death: The original drummer, who went by the stage name Skitch Blade, was killed in a 1982 car wreck).

“All the newer songs are tormented love songs. I’m going through a divorce,” said Bartsch, who writes the lyrics. “Words are my outlet, and the band is my psychiatry.”

In its early days, Shattered Faith sent out some interesting mixed messages as it tried to avoid falling into stereotypical punk positions. Songs such as “U.S.A.,” “I Love America” and “Final Conflict” departed from the usual punk nihilism and suggested that God-and-country values were not to be despised. At the same time, Shattered Faith still managed to take potshots at Ronald Reagan, and its patriotic declarations were tempered by a measure of irony about the my-country-right-or-wrong ethic.

It all added up to a band that was fully representative of what it is like to be in post-adolescence, when one doesn’t quite know what to think, yet tends to be extremely vehement about expressing whatever it is one happens to be thinking.

Kellems, who wasn’t in the band at the time, recalled hearing the profession of Christian faith in “Final Conflict” and not knowing what to make of it. “I remember being puzzled. ‘They’ve joined the Jesus freak thing? What’s going on?’ ”

McGahey said that it was apparent, though, that Shattered Faith wasn’t very strict about keeping the faith. “People may have thought we were a Christian band until they came and saw us. We’d be out front (of a nightclub), puking in the gutter.”

“I wrote the words (of the religious songs) to say, ‘If there is a God, I’m sorry, please forgive me,” said Bartsch, who today professes no deep religious feelings.

In its initial run from 1980 to 1985, Shattered Faith confined itself to short tours along the West Coast and forays to Arizona. The band members weren’t interested in touring extensively to promote the 1982 album and 1985 EP they released independently. Making money and landing a record contract were not big priorities.

Under the punk ethic, Martinez said, “it wasn’t cool to make money.”

But in the band’s new incarnation, the members are aiming for a recording deal and a higher profile.

“I want to do the college circuit,” Bartsch said. “Be one of the national killer college bands, for the people that really care about music.”

Superficial Love, the Adolescents, Shattered Faith and the Crowd play tonight at 8 p.m. at Crawford Hall, off Bridge Road on the UC Irvine campus. Tickets: $18. Information: (714) 856-5547.