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The Ho Hos: “Gina Says/Infinite Prague”

January 1, 2011October 12, 2008 by admin

Here’s a first entry for the new Che Underground YouTube channel: a 1994 desktop-video experiment by the Ho Hos, the band of San Diego expats I co-founded in mid-’90s San Francisco.

This production portrays a shortened version of my song “Gina Says/Infinite Prague,” another recording from our 1993 Mr. Toad’s demo session. (The video was ostensibly prompted by a long-forgotten MTV contest that compelled audio producer Jason Brownell to trim one verse and the solo, bringing it below the requisite three-minute mark.)

Noise 292: “Eyesight”

January 1, 2011October 10, 2008 by admin

Noise 292 fan turned rock ‘n’ roll anthropologist Stefan Helmreich joins our ranks with a collection of tracks, including this late live performance of the band performing my early composition “Eyesight.”

“I recently stumbled across your Ché Underground site and was delighted to read such loving accounts of those long-ago days and nights,” Stefan writes. “I was still in high school — a year behind [Noise 292 percussionist] Wendell [Kling], then a senior at at San Dieguito — when I went to to the Nov. 17, 1983, Noise show, which stunned my then 17-year-old sensibilities and tracked me toward discovering Joy Division; the Velvets; and, soon enough, prompted me to start my own band.

Tech of our lives

December 13, 2017October 8, 2008 by admin

Here’s a fun and easy one: In the consumer society of post-World War II America, nothing helps date a community like its memories of technological innovation.

Our reminiscences about mimeographs and Dymo label printers and vinyl records have been powerful reminders of the lost world we grew up in. Spankin’-new San Diego in our youth was a land of early adoption, but I bet most of us can still remember the novelty of seeing our first:

Pocket calculator
Video game
Microwave oven
Cell phone
VHS system
CD player
Personal computer
Cable TV broadcast

And maybe even our first color TV show, photocopier or portable cassette recorder.

The Zeros: I Don’t Wanna Be a Hero, I Just Wanna Be a Zero

March 27, 2019October 6, 2008 by admin

(Excerpts from Tell-Tale Heart/Town Crier Ray Brandes’ account of San Diego’s punk originators. Read the full version in Che Underground’s Related Bands section.)

Javier Escovedo: vocals, guitar
Hector Penalosa: bass, vocals
Robert Lopez: guitar, vocals
Baba Chenelle: drums

The Zeros, often referred to affectionately as the “Mexican Ramones,” cannot only justifiably lay claim to being San Diego’s first “punk” rock group but also can brag about being one of the first punk groups in the United States.

In a brief but brilliant career highlighted by some classic recordings as well as shows with the Clash and Devo, the Zeros played the first big punk shows in both Los Angeles and in San Diego as early as 1977, when they were still high-school students. It is a testament to the drive and spirit of these pointy-toed revolutionaries that such a group was able to spring from the sleepy suburbs of National City and Chula Vista at a time when greater San Diego was both indifferent to and unimpressed by counterculture movements of any kind.

“Sister Heat”

August 2, 2017October 5, 2008 by admin

(Jeremiah Cornelius describes the genesis of one of the great lost collaborations of post-Che Underground San Francisco.)

“Sister Heat is on slow drip — Someone blew her fuses”

A critical, high-concept description of my input to “Sister Heat” is “The Damned cover Bauhaus” — both of which were inspirations and targets for satire. The resulting style is a sub-genre of Glam that I call “Mock Bombastic” – A hallmark of both Romulus Johnson’s Deep Six and King Therapy, which were to follow in the next years.

The words for this song were written during a whirlwind of confusion that seems temporally located in the first half of 1985. It was conceived of as one of a dozen or so songs that I’d penned for a vaguely imagined power-trio. The ingredients for this concoction were a rooted in my revulsion at the general idea of intravenous entertainment — and a specific dismay at the introduction of a couple of young ladies to the pastime. Add large doses of imagery from Michael Moorcock books, half-digested Nietzsche and a steady diet of histrionic rock performers, and you get the kind of song that Dave Rinck hates!

This We Dug: Iggy Pop

December 11, 2017October 3, 2008 by admin

(Wallflower Dave Rinck explains how an Iguana bested the Lizard King.)

Look, let’s talk about five words that loom large in the history of the Che Underground … Or OK, well … To be more precise, five words that loom enormous in the history of all underground: Iggy Pop and the Stooges.

I guess everyone knows this story, but it apparently goes something like this: Sometime in the late ’60s (as the legend goes), in some gritty-poor Detroit neighborhood, a bunch of really bad-ass white-trash dudes left their trailer-park homes one night and went down to the University of Michigan gym and caught a show by the Doors, who happened to be on tour at the time.

Well, as fate would have it, Jim Morrison was drunk, and most of the crowd didn’t get it, and they ended up pissing him off, and he ended up getting into a bit of a shouting match with the audience, and you know how those college jocks are. But apparently one guy in the audience did get it — one of those trailer-park bad asses — an upstart little punk by the name of James Osterberg.

When Garris met Cornelius

March 27, 2019October 1, 2008 by admin

I find the pedigree of this flyer in the Tom Goddard Collection colorful enough to stand on its own: an advertisement for the Tell-Tale Hearts’ April 28, 1984, appearance with Manual Scan and the Trebles at Point Loma’s Syndicate that appears to bear the imprint of two of San Diego’s most intriguing flyer artists and raconteurs.

The side-by-side signatures at the lower right of the flyer indicate the piece was signed by “SFG 84” as well as the protean Jerry Cornelius. While “SFG” and the style of the Edward Gorey/Alice in Wonderland imagery point to Steve “Fuckin’ ” Garris, Tell-Tale Heart Ray Brandes expresses certainty that the band never commissioned San Diego’s self-proclaimed “King of the Punks” to create a flyer on its behalf.

The Morlocks in flyers

January 1, 2011September 28, 2008 by admin

Tom Goddard’s trove of flyers continues to bear dividends for Che Underground: The Blog. Today’s bequest from the Goddard Collection features show pieces from the Morlocks’ 1984 and 1985 performances in San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco, created by artists including Jerry Cornelius and Kristen Tobiason.

“For more information, call [Tell-Tale Hearts bassist] Mike [Stax],” reads the Tobiason flyer in the lead spot of this post. “If he ain’t home, call [Morlocks guitarist] Ted [Friedman] … If he ain’t home, call [Morlocks bassist] Jeff [Lucas] … ,” providing phone numbers for each. Now that’s customer service!

Hair Theatre: “Confession”

June 30, 2009September 26, 2008 by admin

Another searing track from the 1983 Lab Studios demo that featured “Rolling Soul” and “Nightfall”: Here’s Hair Theatre performing “Confession.”

Fabulous guitar work by Paul Allen; a slinky, sinuous rhythm section shaped by 13-year-old bass prodigy Sergio Castillo; and an emotionally charged performance by vocalist/songwriter/band shaman Sergio, who offers some psychological context to the song’s genesis.

“I wrote that when I was first learning how to write songs, way before I even got the band going,” Sergio says. “Being as tragic as one is as a teenager … That’s basically what that song is about — you feel like you’re the victim of everything!”

Sergio (vocals); Sergio Castillo (bass); Cesar Castillo (rhythm guitar); Paul Allen (lead guitar); Steve Broach (drums).

Listen to it now!

Ray Brandes: “Monkey Planet”

March 27, 2019September 25, 2008 by admin

(Tell-Tale Heart/Town Crier Ray Brandes channels his simian muse with the story behind the song.)

I wrote “Monkey Planet” in 1996 after watching a complete “Planet of the Apes” marathon on late-night cable. I originally saw the film in a theater when I was five years old, and the image of the Statue of Liberty on the beach stayed with me a long time afterward, even if I didn’t fully understand it at the time. I later saw all of the films in the series multiple times. One of my favorites is “Escape from the Planet of the Apes,” the one in which Cornelius and Zira return to the Earth in the early ’70s, and from which the picture on the sleeve was taken.

Read moreRay Brandes: “Monkey Planet”