Punks in the Beatles’ Room: Professor and the Madman Drop “Tolerant World”

Picture the scene. Abbey Road Studio 2, the room where the Beatles made most of their catalog, arguably the most hallowed square footage in recorded music. And tracking in it, a band whose rhythm section is the drummer and bassist from The Damned, joined by a guitarist out of the Adolescents, all of them making sixties-inspired baroque pop with cocktail jazz interludes and backwards guitar.

That is the delightful proposition of Professor and the Madman, whose new single “Tolerant World” is out now ahead of their album Dreamworld, arriving August 7 on vinyl, CD, and download from FullerTone Records. It is the second single from a record that has no business being as ambitious as it is, made by people who long ago earned the right to do whatever they please.

The Lineup Is a Punk Rock Summit

On drums is Rat Scabies, founding member of The Damned, which means he played on “New Rose,” the first single ever released by a British punk band, in October 1976. The Damned also beat everyone to the first British punk album and the first American tour. Whatever you think of the genre’s origin story, Scabies was physically present at the starting line, holding the sticks.

On bass is Paul Gray, his old Damned bandmate, who anchored the band through The Black Album and Strawberries, and who also logged time with Eddie and the Hot Rods and UFO. Reuniting that particular rhythm section is not a small thing.

Up front are Sean Elliott, formerly of Mind Over Four and D.I., and Alfie Agnew, who played guitar in the Adolescents, one of the foundational Southern California hardcore bands, and later in D.I. alongside Elliott. Regular readers may recognize the surname. Alfie’s brother Rikk Agnew, the Orange County punk fixture whose resume runs through the Adolescents, D.I., and Social Distortion, turns up on the new Rozz Williams “Flowers” 12-inch we covered recently. It is a small and gloriously incestuous scene, and the Agnew family sits close to the center of it.

The origin story is perfect, too. In 2015, Elliott and Agnew were playing a Southern California gig, heard that Rat Scabies was in the audience, and coaxed him onstage for a run through “Smash It Up.” Afterward they invited him back to Agnew’s home studio to jam. Ten years and six albums later, here we are.

The Professor Is an Actual Professor

The band’s name is not a pose. Alfie Agnew is a mathematics professor at California State University, Fullerton. He left the punk scene at eighteen for college, got out of music entirely in the early nineties for graduate school, spent years out of state pursuing an academic career, and then came back to it. There are not many people who can claim tenure and a hardcore discography, and fewer still who use the former to write songs.

Which is exactly what happened with this single.

An Anti-Crank Anthem, Which Is Rarer Than It Sounds

“Tolerant World” came out of Agnew’s day job, and its subject is generational friction. Here is what makes it worth writing about: it is aimed squarely at his own side.

Agnew has described the song as a pushback against his fellow Gen-Xers, the ones who beat their chests about how rough they had it while writing off younger generations as soft. His narrator is sharp enough to recognize what the new generation gets right, and honest enough to admit that shedding the attitudes and communication style you were raised inside is genuinely difficult.

That is a startlingly generous position for a rock song, and a much harder one to write than the standard-issue “kids these days” grumble. The easy version of this song is a complaint. Agnew wrote the difficult version, which is a confession. Music has no shortage of aging musicians yelling at clouds. It has very few willing to admit the clouds might have a point.

Musically it is melodic power pop, which suits the sentiment. The medicine goes down easy.

Baroque Pop From Hardcore Veterans

The album around it is the real flex. Dreamworld is built on a foundation of 1960s baroque pop, then wanders through cocktail jazz interludes, classical flourishes, backwards guitar, and psychedelia, all while keeping punk-pop and alternative rock in the mix. Elliott and Agnew trade lead vocals across the record, sharing a rare duet on “Songs in My Head,” to which Agnew also adds trumpet, and between them they cover lead guitar, rhythm guitar, and keyboards. Gray and Scabies get showcase turns on “12 Strings and Tambourines” and “Temple of Madness.”

There is also a cover of “Nuclear Boy,” originally by 20/20, which is a deep and correct power-pop pull.

Both Elliott and Agnew have talked over the years about feeling boxed in by punk’s orthodoxy back in their D.I. days, wanting to make something more expansive than the form allowed. Dreamworld is that impulse fully unleashed, thirty-odd years later, partly recorded in the Beatles’ room. There is something genuinely moving about musicians in their sixties finally making exactly the record they wanted to make at twenty-five.

The Vinyl

Dreamworld lands August 7 on vinyl (FRLP-1009) and CD and digital (FRCD-1009) via FullerTone Records, produced by the band and recorded between Hollydale Studios in Fullerton and Abbey Road in London. Eleven tracks, bookended by the title song and its reprise. “Tolerant World” and album pre-orders are up now at Bandcamp.

A punk supergroup making baroque pop about generational humility, pressed to wax, is a very specific pleasure. Consider this a recommendation to go find it.