No Slow : The leader of Agent Orange, Mike Palm, has spent 13 years powering the band’s punk surf guitar.

Had you been rubbing up against Agent Orange, the noxious chemical, over the last 13 years, by now you’d either be gone or looking like the Swamp Thing.

If, on the other hand, you had been exposed to Agent Orange, the band, for the last 13 years, the worst case scenario would find you hard of hearing, but perhaps still dancing.

“I never knew what the name meant,” bandleader Mike Palm said in a recent phone interview. “I pulled it out of a hat. I just found out what the name meant a few years later.”

The veteran power trio will be playing fast and loud at Mogz in Ventura Saturday night. It will be the band’s second local appearance--they played the Ventura Theatre earlier this year--but have played countless times in Santa Barbara, where they are a strong draw.

Agent Orange started 13 years ago in Fullerton in Orange County when the three founding members met in high school. Palm, who also plays guitar and writes the songs, is the sole remaining original member.

“I guess I’m just like everybody else in a band,” Palm said. “I played a little guitar and hung out with some friends. It was really a happening scene then. Social Distortion was just starting out, so were the Adolescents.

“There’s almost too much stuff happening now. For a new band, it’s much harder now because there are so many bands and the competition is really intense, and everyone seems so serious now, and there’s all that pay-to-play junk. I’m lucky because we started in that era.”

The band has released three albums on a couple of different labels, but nothing since 1986, which is not very fast by rock ‘n’ roll standards. And yet Agent Orange has continued to perform live, so they haven’t really gone away, they’ve just stayed off the charts.

“We actually have a live album which is about a year old now, but will soon be released on Restless Records,” said Palm, who for now is acting as the band’s manager.

“A friend of mine has a 24-track studio and we’re recording a demo tape with 12 or 14 new songs on it. My goal is to release an album of new product by the end of the year.”

Agent Orange doesn’t do a lot of slow ones. They probably don’t know any. It’s sort of ‘60s pop meets surf music in the garage. Agent Orange has well over 30 originals plus they do about 10 or so covers, including a raging, yet reverential, cover version of the Chantays’ instrumental classic, “Pipeline” and Dick Dale’s “Miserlou.”

“I used to like a lot of English pop bands like the Jam, but my biggest influences were always California bands, especially Bay Area bands such as Quicksilver, Jefferson Airplane and Moby Grape,” Palm said. “I guess we do hard-edged pop surf music, that’s what the bio sheet says. And over the years, I’ve began to realize how intense my California roots really are. I was heavily influenced by surf music.”

Originally a punk band, Agent Orange no longer attracts a bunch of angry bald people who fight. Now it’s mostly college kids.

“We’re not a punk band,” Palm said. “The wildness thing is pretty much over now. Our next record is going to prove the punk label wrong. I thought we started in that direction on our last studio album, ‘This Is The Voice.’ Yet it is important to preserve the original concept of the band, which stresses energy, fun and still preserves a human element.”

Like many natives of the 714 area code, Palm moved north. Right now, he’s in North Hollywood, which isn’t exactly on the sand, but it’s close enough to the beach to suit Palm.

“I don’t really like L.A. too much. L.A. seems to have nothing at all in common with the rest of the country. It’s totally isolated, and totally crazy. And the music business is never a sure thing, there’s always chance and an element of risk. But I can go surfing whenever I want. I just got a new board yesterday.”