On a recent Sunday morning on the 134 Freeway, singer and punk rock icon Keith Morris was behind the wheel of his Honda, rolling toward a final rehearsal with his band Off! in a Pomona studio. Blasting on his car stereo were songs from “Free LSD,” the quartet’s latest album, so Morris could reacquaint himself with the record’s far-out lyrics of alien invasions and mind control. As he drove, the recording of nervous guitar riffs and Morris’ panicked vocals roared ominously from the speakers: “Disappeared without a trace/Another world beyond the realm/The flying lights, not of this Earth .
.. The hour of reckoning’s here!” The song was “War Above Los Angeles,” a raging highlight from the 2022 album, written by Morris and Off!’s co-founder and guitarist Dimitri Coats.
But after months of touring with his other band, the reunited Circle Jerks, Morris needed to clear his head of one band’s setlist and replace it with the other. He would study up on Off! lyrics for another few days before leaving for a final run of shows in Chicago, New York and L.A.
before the band officially disbands. “Those guys, they’re all going to be good,” Morris says confidently of his bandmates in Off! At 68, bearded and with dreadlocks stretching past his knees, the singer has never been busier. “Once we start rehearsing, that’ll help me cough up a lot of that stuff in my head.
” Off! is going on indefinite hiatus after its farewell performance Friday at the Belasco in do.