For Agent Orange, a European Test Run

Punk rock may appear to be all about musical mayhem, but if you want to make a career of it, you need to take a methodical approach to the madness. That’s one of the important insights Mike Palm has picked up in his 20-year career fronting Agent Orange.

Formed in Fullerton during punk’s first hurrah, the trio has diligently followed a regimen of recording and touring (self-releasing its most recent album, “Virtually Indestructible,” in 1997), which has kept it tapped in to a punk subculture that veers in and out of mainstream fashion but has never disappeared.

“After you’ve done it this long, you can see how these things go in cycles,” Palm observes. “Sometimes they’re not as big a cycle as you think. One year things can seem kind of dead, and we’ve just hung on and stuck it out and then a year or two later the tours pick up. It seems like the whole scene shifts, and fortunately we’ve been able to keep playing to young audiences.”

Over the years, Agent Orange has gradually expanded its touring range, building followings in Japan, Australia and Brazil. But when it leaves for Germany at the end of this month, it will be the group’s first European jaunt--something Palm looks forward to with great anticipation.

“We’ve actually worked on booking tours for Europe before,” he says. “And it never seemed to come together properly. One year it was the Gulf War, and basically the threat of terrorism made it so nobody wanted to gather anywhere, so shows would have been a drag. Another time we were booked during soccer finals so we decided to postpone it. This time we picked a good time of year, we picked a good [booking] agency, and we’re going for it.”

Before taking the trans-Atlantic plunge, however, a test run was in order. On Friday night, Agent Orange took the stage at Club Mesa in Costa Mesa. Palm, who lives in San Diego, says the band chose the location because it has always felt comfortable there.

“Doing warmup shows is kind of a weird thing,” he says. “You want to play someplace where you know it’s gonna be fun, but you also want to do it somewhere where, in case something goes wrong, you’re in friendly territory.”

The crowd that packed the tiny club was certainly friendly--in true punk-rock style. By the time Palm, bassist James Levesque and new drummer Steve Latanation launched into their second song, a vigorous pit began to boil, fired up by the incendiary playing onstage.

Some bands are punk by necessity. One of the genre’s greatest virtues is its go-for-broke philosophy, and many young bands compensate dubious musicianship with kick-ass enthusiasm. Other bands are punk by choice--balancing their enthusiasm with equally kick-ass chops. Such is the case with Palm and company, who tackled surf-tinged rockers, rowdy skate punk anthems and supercharged power pop with unbridled energy and airtight playing.

Based on the European press he’s done so far, Palm says he feels there’s great interest in Agent Orange’s coming tour, and he hopes to draw a good mix of fans old and new.

Dodge Dart, which shared the bill, has been around only a few years, but its lineage is fairly impressive. Front man Nick Sjobek once played bass in the Goods, which evolved out of an outfit called Electric Cool-Aid that featured (at various times) Sugar Ray’s Mark McGrath and Fastball’s Tony Scalzo on vocals; bassist Mitch Townsend does double duty, playing in Red Five as well as Dodge Dart. Though the quartet’s set was plagued by technical problems that ate into the half-hour set, it managed to whip up a meaty if succinct set of bristling, melodic rock.

Also featured were Mr. Firley, a charmingly obnoxious foursome that inspired the evening’s first flying beers, and the Burnouts, an exuberant quintet that fearlessly filled the economy-sized stage and sparsely filled room with riled-up punk rock.