(Angelo Victor Mercure salutes a true son — and daughter — of the San Diego underground.)
Claude Christensen-Coma is/was a San Diego native whose initial interest in music was sparked by the early 1960s British Invasion.
At age 13, Claude purchased his first guitar. By 1979 (at age 27) he put together his most influential band: Claude Coma and the IVs. The lineup consisted of Claude (mainly on vocals, sometimes on rhythm guitar); Don Story (lead guitar); John Gunderson (bass guitar); David Davenport (keyboards); and Terry Micalizio (drums).
This band played all-original music at a time when disco still ruled the airwaves.
Claude was sole songwriter, and his titles and lyrics were a bit salacious, to say the least: “Suzy Slut”; “Babies In Convent Walls”; “Rock and Roll Derelict”; “Let’s Go to Hell”; well, you get the idea. Despite the weirdness of such titles and lyrics, Claude’s wording was always interesting, his melodies and harmonies true to the ear, and – for the era (the deeply grim Carterite recession and the grudgingly successful Reaganite “recovery”), Claude’s music somehow seemed so appropriate.
The band was very tight, very circumspect, very definitive in regard to laying down some extremely mean guitar and bass riffs. We could always depend on John Gunderson’s bass to boom, and some of Don Story’s innovative guitar work was truly incredible. David Davenport was a rather conservative keyboard player, but he was GOOD. The same goes for Terry Micalizio’s drumming: a basic, brutal beat that got the whole idea across very, very well.
Claude Coma and the IVs played at all the trendy punk and post-punk San Diego nightspots: the Skeleton Club, the Zebra Club and the Spirit, among others. Although they did not always “bring down the house,” they certainly acquitted themselves well.
The band put out only one LP titled Art from Sin. A few of their songs would eventually wind up on some “San Diego music scene anthology/compilation albums,” too.
Sad to say, the group did not endure. There were sharply opinionated differences in regard to the artistic future of the group. Gunderson, Story, and Micalizo wanted to go the “bar-band route” and play 50 percent cover material, while Claude insisted on original tunes only and trendier nightspots. Davenport left the group for personal reasons. By 1982, Gunderson, Story and Micalizio broke off from Claude entirely and formed The Ravens, an excellent blues-rock type of band with a sadly limited repertoire.
Claude – all alone now – restaffed Claude Coma and the IVs and – sad to say – the new lineup was simply not all that good. To spare anyone embarrassment, I am not mentioning names, etc. Nice people, all the new guys, but the band was NOT “tight” (not at all), and it disbanded in 1984.
Final words? The Ravens pretty much broke up in due time but – as of a few years ago – John Gunderson and Don Story were still making some pretty good music in San Diego.
Terry Micalizio, I have sadly lost track of. I heard – from several reliable sources – that Claude Christiansen-Coma has transformed himself into a male-to-female transsexual woman named “Claudette.” Oh well, whatever rocks your boat. …
All in all, Claude Coma and the IVs had the makings of a great band. Sadly – like so many others before and afterwards – their personal and artistic differences sank them before they could grasp the “golden ring.”
I still count all these gentlemen among my personal friends, even though we have lost contact many years ago. If I have committed any “errors of fact,” I will appreciate feedback and the opportunity to correct such errors.
I hold these gentlemen in high esteem and never mean to impart anything other than respect for their very real abilities and their very keen artistic integrity.
— Angelo Victor Mercure
Claude left town for a while after the IVs imploded. When he returned however he enlisted me to play sax behind his spoken word. We opened a spoken word show headlined by Henry Rollins at the Backdoor. Not exactly sure when this was. 1986? Soon after that Claude found guitarist Jeff Mattson and the 3 of us formed The Love Monsters. Lynn Savage (the name I knew her by) was brought in by Jeff to play drums… well drum, that is. She had never played drums before but Jeff gave her a single floor tom with a broken cymbal that she played with 3/4″ dowels with cloth wrapped tightly around the business ends. We played shows at 2581 and at my program of noise music I did at the Spirit called “Down There” as well as at other venues. However anemic, there was a San Diego noise music scene in the late 80s. Jeff and I formed a side group, The Purple Hand of Kareem Abdhul Jabbar. Later Jeff helped form Crash Worship. In the 90s Claude continued to do spoken word, now, however, living as a woman, Vivian Bardot. She opened for one of the Penetrator reunion shows at the Casbah, ’95 or ’96. Later in the decade she moved to Pasadena, got breast implants and formed her new band, Black Witch. I lost contact in the early 2000s. I’ve heard unconfirmed bits of news but nothing concrete since then.
Great color on the original post, James! Thanks. There was a time when The IVs were a name you could count on seeing, in every issue of the “Reader”.
I just saw this post now. Yes, I was recruited to play in the Love Monsters with Claude, Jim and Jeff. I had no musical background other than playing flute, which I occasionally played in the Love Monsters. The drums I played were what Jim described and the drum sticks were underwear glued to the end of drum sticks- my room mate was an engineer who devised this as to keep the underwear from flying off the sticks. Claude and I would do poetry readings under the name of “Coma and Savage”. I had heard that Claude had passed, but I don’t know if this is true. Jeff Matson currently lives in Louisiana, I spoke with him about a year ago.
Cool post. Sorry I missed it all these years! My “personal reasons” were, with the undoing of the IV’s I decided to move to Michigan and take up with The Burdons, a power pop/post-wave band that was recently honored with inclusion into the Legends of Michigan Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Our lone studio album, which reached #40 in the US Rock Independent chart was actually partially aligned with Claude’s Goverment Records label (yes, the “n” is missing -- on purpose). A note on the songwriting; while Claude did write all the lyrics (except on two songs on the album), the entire band worked on the music (almost always following Claude’s lead). Claude was so much more than the front man for our band. He was a tireless promoter of the local scene and perhaps the most sincere artist I’ve ever known. His crazy lyrics are too rough to play out live (except for a few tunes) in 2021, as you’d be booted off the stage or arrested, but they came from a humorous, tongue in cheek point of view. Thanks for the nice write-up. David D.
I went to elementary school with claud! Used to sit around in his room when we were like 12 years old and try figuring things out! Just wondering what happened to him! Thanks
I have a differing opinion on the IV’s ‘mark II’, Tom,Tom, and Robin. They were a great band and should have been huge. I heard they were nearly signed to Island, no idea what happened, Claude gave me a test pressing of the ‘Manslaughter’ ep, which to my ears was a better record than ‘Art from Sin’ -- more punky more metallic and better production. If you haven’t heard it, you should, still kicks ass all these years later. Regrettably, Claude was perhaps simply ahead of his time.