The Triumphant Resurrection of a Long Lost Altar Boys Album

Last summer I got to do something that fifteen year old me would have never imagined possible. While visiting Los Angeles for the Prayer Chain reunion concert I got to spend some time with Mike Stand and Steve Pannier of The Altar Boys. They were playing an acoustic show at a festival in Downey CA and offered to pick me up so I could ride with them and he could play their new album for me. Riding in the back of his truck I got a personal tour through each song; hearing the story behind each one. Listener’s will get to hear that conversation, and songs from the record, on the soon-to-be-launched True Tunes Podcast.

Now, between the ages of thirteen and fifteen The Altar Boys had an almost frightening influence on me. The simplicity of their lyrics, the accessibility of their version of “punk” music, and even their visual style, all hit me right in the sweet spot. Seeing the Altar Boys in concert was one of the things that really inspired me to get serious about being a musician. They made it all seem doable. I even wrote a letter to the band asking them for sheet music. I was just learning how to play guitar and I had taught myself how to play a few of their songs. I was beyond thrilled to get a hand-written letter back from Rick Alba, the bassist for the band, thanking me for my note, and mentioning that they didn’t get much mail from outside California so my letter was pretty exciting. He then told me that they didn’t have sheet music, and he couldn’t even read music, but that the songs usually only had three or four chords and most of them had a “D” in them.” I hung that letter up on my wall and it stayed there for years.

As I grew up, so did they. Eventually we became friends. I promoted a couple of Altar Boys shows in the Chicago area. Although the band closed up shop over a quarter-century ago, we never lost touch. Stand went on to form a band called Clash of Symbols, and released more solo material, and has been a worship leader at his home church for decades. He is also a high school music teacher. Although we were able to convince the band to do a special reunion show at the Cornerstone Festival in 2002, The Altar Boys mostly remained a thing of the past.  Stand did eventually find a deep love of rock-a-billy and formed a scorching band called The Altar Billies that play regularly around California. They are quite good.

But now The Altar Boys have done something that may not have ever been done before; released a brand new 27 year-old album, like “New Old Stock,” that sounds both classic and fresh at the same time. It’s a mind-bender for sure, and it probably shouldn’t be possible, but with No Substitute, Mike Stand, Steve Pannier, Mark Robertson, and Jeff Crandall have bent time to their will with a record that represents everything fans loved about the Orange County rockers back in the 80s, and yet sounds completely relevant today.

History Comes Back

The story is both interesting and frustrating. Like many bands that had dialed some kind of success in the 80s, the 90s loomed and threatened for The Altar Boys. The band’s early success was built on simple, even simplistic, pop-punk anthems that youth group kids could relate to without even trying. Slogan lyrics like “I’m Into God” and “When You’re A Rebel” were perfect for the 80s and the band delivered them well, alongside more sensitive and emotional fare that reassured teens that they weren’t alone in their angst. But as front man and vocalist Mike Stand grew as a songwriter and musician, and the band inevitably hungered to expand their creative template, things got complicated.

The band, with Mark Robertson replacing longtime bassist Rick Alba after the Forever MercyTour in 1990, began working on tracks for No Substitute in 1991, finishing tracks that they may have considered demos at the time. Budget disputes with their label, and Robertson’s decision to leave California for Chicago, led Stand to put the band on “indefinite hiatus” in 1992, leaving the tracks for No Substitute in the can. He would re-cut a couple of the songs for a new band project he created the following year called Clash Of Symbols (which True Tunes was proud to help release,) but the remaining songs were heard by almost no one until now.

Robertson formed the rock-a-billy / power-pop band This Train in Chicago, as well as the industrial rock outfit Under Midnight, and continued to play a significant supporting role in The Stand and The Allies, and became a regular contributor to the print edition of True Tunes before moving to Nashville and joining Rich Mullins’ Ragamuffin Band. He is currently one of the most respected bassists in the rock-a-billy scene, having spent years as a core member of The Shack Shakers. He currently tours regularly with The Eskimo Brothers and continues to create experimental music in various forms, including the 2017 project Prayer Flags.

Flash forward to the summer of 2017 when Stand was forced to have a surgical procedure that would keep him away from his work as a music teacher for several months. His son, by then an accomplished multi-instrumentalist and audio engineer, had been bugging him about the old album that had been started before he was even born. The tracks were originally recorded on a piece of obsolete digital audio equipment that no longer worked. But, he thought, if he could get the machine working, and get those tracks imported into Pro Tools, maybe they could finish that long-lost album while his father recuperated. Stand agreed to give it a shot. Once they got the machine running and heard the original vocals, guitars, and drum parts, they were both surprised at how good it all sounded. All it needed was a bit of beefing up.

With the support of Lo-Fidelity Records, a Chicago label that has been helping veteran acts re-issue classic albums on vinyl for many years, the band ran a successful Kickstarter campaign and gathered enough funds to finish the album they started 27 years ago. They were able to keep all of Stand’s original vocals, electric guitar tracks, and drum tracks. They added new doubled electric parts, lead guitar parts, acoustic guitar parts, bass tracks (cut by Robertson in Nashville) and some backing vocals, and then gave the whole thing a modern mix and mastering job. The final result is a fascinating blend of original and new. But there’s more to it than that.

The Original Vision for No Substitute– Restored

Where Forever Mercy had endeavored to find a more sophisticated tone for the band, it had lost some of the anthemic flavor that had made them so popular in the first place. Talking to Stand outside the venue in Downey he put it plainly. “Musically, in some ways, we had lost our way,” he said of the band’s late 80s output. But when Rick Alba decided to leave the band in 1990, and Stand found his way to Mark Robertson as a replacement, a new fire was lit. Robertson’s extensive awareness of the punk scene, and his wide-ranging musical tastes, were a shot in the arm for the Boys. “I knew I wanted to make a record with him,” Stand recalls. “I wanted to do something that was closer to When You’re A Rebel and Gut Level Music. But I was in a different place spiritually and emotionally. I couldn’t go back to ‘ra ra ra.’ There needed to be a little more articulation in the lyrics. But we needed to keep the anthems. So that’s what I did – and I wrote like a crazy man.”

How to achieve the hooky feel of their first couple of records, with greater lyrical maturity, was the challenge Stand undertook in 1991. It’s clear on each of these twelve tracks that he was more than up to the task. Though there’s no way to know what audiences would have thought back then, (I can safely guarantee that “Hands In The Air” would have been a fan favorite,) with the benefit of time and perspective it is clear that Stand has a knack for this kind of songwriting. The songs fit right in his weathered back pocket, somewhere in the neighborhood of The Replacements, The Clash, and The Alarm. There’s even a lone bluesy romp, “Revolution of Love” that finds the same kind of groove The Alarm was establishing on their 1991 album Raw. Seriously, there’s not a skip-track in the entire set.

The record opens with “Rebel Rock,” a song that might flounder into cheese land in the hands of a lesser band. As it plays out here, however, it manages to immediately connect with the earliest Altar Boys stem cells, while somehow cosmically reassuring those of us who are no longer teenagers that there are still some things worth rebelling against in this world. The title track blasts out next, with a killer riff and another lyric that might ring hollow in lesser hands. Coupled with a crazy catchy melody, and delivered with Stand’s perfect rock voice, though, it works in spades. “Let Me See Your Hands,” it turns out, is not a youth group purity check, though it certainly would have been used as one back in the day. It is, however, a rousing rock worship song that takes the kind of passion The Alarm always had, but adds some Gospel specificity.

Track after track, the hits keep coming. “The Kids Cry” covers the sensitive territory this band was always willing to explore. “History Comes Back to Haunt This World” makes the apocalypse sound like a pretty good idea. “Surround Me,” “Thousand Miles,” and “Give Our Hearts Back To God,” keep the throttle open, the hooks flying, and the sentiments right in the bulls-eye. It’s actually pretty surprising that their label didn’t listen to these demos back then and give the band the money they needed. This record could have had countless hit singles back then. Then again, considering that the label was Frontline Records, it could very likely have been that they were more unable than unwilling to take advantage of this opportunity.

When Robertson decided to move to Chicago for personal reasons, though, the wind quickly came out of the band’s sails. They replaced him for a time, and did some more shows, but by the end of 1992 they knew it was time to call it. The Altar Boys, one of the most spirited and effective bands of their era, was over. No Substitute was abandoned.

But you can’t stop the Rebel Rock.

Altar Boys fans absolutely need to hear this record and, hopefully, pick up a copy on CD or vinyl. The production is fantastic and it is worth listening to on a good system repeatedly. But existing fans probably already know this. Other than the thrill of a record over-delivering for fans (how rare is that these days?) the biggest opportunity here is for a new, younger, crowd to discover a fantastic band that called it quits 27 years ago. This is a legit record for fans of power pop, pop punk, raw classic rock and even modern pop, rock, or pop-punk bands like Fall Out Boy, Jimmy Eat World, Cage the Elephant or Green Day.

It’s also so good to see and hear Mike Stand, long regarded as one of the most sincere and genuine members of Jesus music’s “second wave,” still sounding so good. Beyond his uncanny youthfulness and ability to physically rock faster, harder, and more passionately than most 20 year-olds I see, Stand is legendary in the scene as one of the truly, good guys. He is a rock and roll example of Eugene Peterson’s “long obedience in the same direction” if ever I’ve seen one.

I asked him to what he attributed his longevity – not just musically, but spiritually. “There’s no magic bullet,” he says. “I keep coming back and being honest with God. I went on a walk today to just talk and be honest with Him. I still go to the same church – for thirty years! Nancy has stuck with me, by the grace of God. I don’t think another woman would have. I went back and got my degree. I’ve got great friends, and they pray for me. It’s a combination; it’s not one thing. It’s lots of little things and decisions, little things that happen in your life – all the little things add up to encourage you to either walk straight or not walk straight.

“I really attribute it to the grace of God,” he adds. “It’s easy to say, but it’s not been easy for me.”

The Altar Boys performed a special live show at The House Of Blues last fall to celebrate the release of No Substitute. It is available now.

My conversation with Stand and guitarist Steve Pannier will be featured on an upcoming episode of the True Tunes Podcast. Be sure to subscribe to our email list for updates.