Reviving San Diego's Rock Renaissance
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Among the highlights of our Che Underground event Jan. 30, 2010, at the Casbah was “Manual Penetration.” This collaboration brought Chris Davies and Chris Sullivan of San Diego’s legendary Penetrators onstage with the equally storied Manual Scan to perform a mini-set of Penetrators songs.
Scan co-founders Bart Mendoza and Kevin Donaker-Ring talk about the origins of this matchup, captured here on video shot that night by Eric Rife with sound engineered by Dave Fleminger.
(David Rinck cuts the ribbon on a late-July musical extravaganza in San Diego!)
How could we let a year go by since the Che Games for May? It is high time to do it again!
Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seatbelts and get ready to experience the Che Underground Rock-‘n’-Roll Weekend. Here’s what we have in store for you:
Friday, July 30, at Lestat’s Coffee House (3343 Adams Avenue; $10; doors open at 9pm)
Plus a photo retrospective of San Diego Underground Rock ‘n’ Roll by Dave Doyle and Sean McMullen.
Saturday, July 31, at Bar Pink (3829 30th St.; free; doors open at 9pm)
Plus, dubstep deejaying by the P Man
The wave of reunion gigs continues as San Diego music vets the Cardiac Kidz announce their “Last Chance Tour,” featuring an appearance in Ramona, Calif., July 10.
The band’s triumphant return, supported by Doggy Daddy and the Fry Catz as well as French Vampires, runs 7:30-11pm at Ramona Mainstage (626 Main St., Ramona, Calif. 92065).
To warm up for the show, here are a couple of covers by the Kidz, separated by more than 30 years.
Two things that make me happy about this blog: It puts a lot of people and images and music I loved as a kid in one place, and it gives me a second chance to understand what I witnessed the first time around.
Sharing an adult perspective on the passions of our youth is a very cool thing to me. Even with those tools, though, I sometimes find it hard to explain to people who know me now what excited me then.
Hence today’s conversation-starter: Is there anyone you wish you could take back in time for a one-day tour of your wasted youth in San Diego? If so, who would it be? What would you like to show them?
Clayton Colgin continues to reimagine his formative Bamboohead ‘zine online. This week, Bamboohead 3000 touches bases with another historic figure of the San Diego punk scene: Terry Marine, founder of Be My Friend magazine and a familiar face to anyone who frequented the SD underground of the late ’70s and early ’80s.
“I was always fascinated by Terry because something told me he was crazier than most of us,” Clay writes by way of introduction. “Nobody ever told me to watch out for him, and I never heard any ugly stories about him back then. I never saw him needlessly brutalize anyone. I did see him rush to defend the ranks when particularly-ornery-crews of LA-punks would come to our shows for the purpose of flexing fear-and-intimidation. He never shied from these situations.
(Ray Brandes queues up a revelatory new documentary about Gary Heffern.)
For more than 30 years, Penetrators vocalist Gary Heffern has been celebrated as a local legend. He is known to most as a dynamic performer, a captivating storyteller and poet, and a tireless networker and promoter of music and art in all of its forms. Charismatic, gregarious and easily approachable, he has good friends and admirers who number in the tens of thousands.
Nearly every article that has ever been written about him suggests his life story would make a incredible book. Few who know Gary, however, know the burdens he has shouldered for his entire life. His real story is one which is reminiscent of the novels of Thomas Hardy, perhaps even Charles Dickens. This past decade, it has led him back to Finland, a few kilometers from the Arctic Circle, a land of desolate beauty and the setting for his remarkable childhood.
Read more‘Sweet Kisses From Mommy’:
An introduction to an old friend
(Ray Brandes ushers in the season with a call for signature songs.)
“In summer, the song sings itself.”
— William Carlos Williams
“School’s out for summer!”
— Alice Cooper
Some of the greatest songs in the rock-‘n’-roll era were released in June, July and August. A great summer song doesn’t necessarily have to be about summer itself, but rather capture the quintessence of the season: that feeling of long, lazy sunburned days and humid nights spent making love to the sounds of crickets.
The summer of 1965 alone gave us the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction,” the Beatles’ “Help,” Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” James Brown’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” and Martha and the Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Street,” songs that are quite different in theme but are bursting with the exuberance of the sunny season.
Read moreRemember Walking in the Sand?
Sunscreen, lemonade and summer radio
Che Underground: The Blog has written before about the legendary Skeleton Club, the backbone of San Diego punk that Laura Fraser and Tim Mays ran for a scant two weeks at 921 4th Ave. before reopening (always a half-step ahead of SD authorities) at 202 Market St.
Now Mikel Toombs enriches our store of Skeleton Club lore with a wealth of flyers, including announcements that accompanied the original venue’s opening and closing.
“The one about the Skeleton Club closing was handed out at the final show at the original Skeleton Club,” Mikel writes. “I don’t have any recollection of the other one.”
One year later, we’re finally on deck to start releasing performance footage shot by Eric Rife at May 2009’s Che Games for May reunion, synchronized to Jason Brownell’s high-fi audio courtesy of resident polymath Dave Fleminger.
First up, the first live performance of the original San Diego Wallflowers’ signature “Walldrugs” since 1985. Lead singer David Rinck reflects on resurrecting the song:
“When we were putting together the Wallflowers set list for the Che Games last year, we had to listen closely to the old recordings to figure out how we played those tunes, in order to get us all on the same page on the arrangements and all, since with me in Africa and the rest of the band spread out all over California, we were basically working via the Internet.”
(David Rinck reports on recovery and music in Haiti.)
Port-au-Prince, Haiti — Jan. 12, 2010, was a date that changed literally every person’s life here in Haiti, and still continues to define daily existence for so many people, even as the eyes of the world slowly and inevitably forget and turn to the next disaster area, wherever that may be.
When I turned on the computer at my desk in Nairobi to check the news on that day and read that an epic earthquake had rocked this country (destroying most of the capital Port-au-Prince and killing over 250,000 people), I knew it was only a matter of time before my life changed as well.
Read moreBlues Haitien and the Best Nightmare
on Earth: Update from the West Indies