State of the Reunion : Adolescents Trapped by the Past, but Honk Moves Forward

Honk and the Adolescents both come from Orange County, but watching the reunion shows thateach band staged last weekend was like visiting two mutually exclusive worlds.

Honk started out in Laguna Beach more than 20 years ago, making sunny music suffused with the still-hopeful afterglow of the hippie era. Its show Saturday night at the Coach House, the latest in a string of occasional reunions over the past nine years, was as relaxed and lightly enjoyable as a back-yard family picnic.

It was a reunion of old friends who, 20 years later, are now old pros: except for saxophonist Craig Buhler, now a forestry industry consultant, the Honk alumni all continue to make their living in music.

The Adolescents came howling rebelliously out of Fullerton in 1980, the first band from a burgeoning Orange County punk scene to make a mark on the outside world. The Ads’ show Friday night at Bogart’s was both a sweat-soaked ritual and a participatory contact sport. For as long as the band played, fans kept clambering on stage, then diving off like so many fullbacks practicing goal-line plunges.

The Adolescents members’ careers have been as uncertain as their fans’ swan dives into a pool of teeming bodies. Since the original lineup’s collapse in 1981, all five musicians have continued to contribute to the independent/underground rock scene. But none of them has made a steady living at it.

There was one common link between the two reunions: the continuing hold exerted by the bands’ old music and memories of their old performances. Both shows played to packed houses, and plenty of listeners at each concert knew the lyrics by heart.

The two shows also suggested a paradox, in which supposedly convention-defying punkers served up nothing unexpected, and supposedly slick pros--Honkers Steve Wood and Tris Imboden both were longtime members of Kenny Loggins’ touring band, and Imboden now is the drummer for Chicago--were willing to challenge their fans with new twists.

The Honk members’ solid, professional grounding gave them the versatility to play a free, wide-ranging show that brought old fans up to date with new career developments. Nostalgia may have been in the air, but it wasn’t always in the songs.

At one point, guitarist Richard Stekol, who now has the graybeard look of an aging folkie, called out jokingly to an apparently younger woman in the audience: “Are you still paying attention, or are you wishing you were listening to something from the 20th Century?”

But Stekol, whose 1991 solo album showcased a mature, often eloquent songwriting talent, led the band right into the present on new songs including “Every Part of Love,” a philosophical folk-rock tune that he embellished with sighing lap steel guitar, and “Same Drink, Different Bottle,” a blues rollick that closed the show.

Honk’s set made room for some surprising turns: a solo ballad from Stekol; a traditional Celtic song rendered in a sweet, clear voice by Beth Fitchet; and a nice, stomping acoustic blues from Will Brady that featured group harmonies and harmonica blasts from Imboden. The show was pleasantly entertaining rather than grabbing (Stekol understandably didn’t try to fit his devastating, grief-stricken solo song, “America Walking By,” into a lighthearted set). But by the time the two-hour, 15-minute show was over, Honk had made its statement about the present, as well as serving up a crowd-pleasing sampling of the past.

The Adolescents’ reunion was powerful and involving at peak moments, with its collective venting of energy, its fine selection of cover material, and the undiminished immediacy and continued relevance of songs from the band’s terrific 1981 debut album.

But the show was also hemmed in by the punk past. Perhaps daunted by the notoriously narrow tastes of hard-core punk fans, the Adolescents didn’t expand upon what they were a decade ago--even though at least three of the members have since taken their music far beyond the limits of hard-core. Tony Montana, the band’s original singer, handled all the leads in the old, bark-and-growl style. Steve Soto and the guitar-playing Agnew brothers, Rikk and Frank, didn’t get to show how their music later grew in other directions.

A more audacious approach might have showed off the pop influences obvious in subsequent recordings involving Soto and the Agnew brothers--notably “Balboa Fun Zone.”

Playing that album’s concluding ballad for a crowd intent on thrashing would have shown real punk nerve. But the regrouped original Ads were content to stick to the blitzing attack of their debut record, “Adolescents,” and “Brats in Battalions,” a 1987 comeback album cut from the same mold. The band played one new song and crumbled after a brief attempt to play another that it hadn’t properly rehearsed. Both may appear on an upcoming reunion album. Neither hinted at a broadened concept of what the Adolescents could be.

Still, the best old Adolescents material was satisfyingly fierce. Songs such as “Amoeba,” “Who is Who,” “Creatures” and “Kids of the Black Hole” were full of ire and passion, confusion and pride, vehemence and humor.

The Adolescents filled out the 65-minute set with good covers of the Stooges’ “Search and Destroy” and “I Got a Right,” the Dead Boys’ “Sonic Reducer,” and, best of all, a furious, hammering rendition of “American Society” by Orange County punk precursors Eddie & the Subtitles. From Chuck Berry’s “School Days” to Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” there’s a long lineage of rock songs about being young, mixed up, and kicked down by conformist pressures. The Adolescents hold an honorable place in that line.

Punk, however, was also supposed to be about defying limits and doing the unexpected, not catering to such nostalgic rituals as stage diving. In failing to test their fans’ expectations, the reunited Adolescents allowed themselves to be caught up in the old game. Montana tried mildly at first to discourage the divers, saying that the jostling would knock the band’s guitars out of tune. When it became apparent that the rites would go on, the Ads tolerated it instead of pressing a futile protest.

Let’s hope the band’s reunion album shows who they are now, and not just what they were 11 years ago.