admin | The Che Underground

The rise and fall of the Town Criers

March 27, 2019August 9, 2008 by admin

(Excerpts from the story of the pioneering late-’80s alt-country band by founder Ray Brandes. Read the full version in our Related Bands section!)

The Town Criers was a country-rock band that featured many of San Diego’s Che Underground musicians, including myself and Dave Klowden of the Tell-Tale Hearts, Peter Miesner and Mark Zadarnowski of the Crawdaddys, Tom Ward of the Gravedigger V, and Dave Ellison of the Rockin’ Dogs. The group predated the alt-country movement of the 1990s by several years.

The last few months of the Tell-Tale Hearts’ existence were contentious times. Eric Bacher had quit the band in 1986, and many of the original San Diego scenesters had either left town or simply moved on. By the time guitarist Peter Miesner of the Crawdaddys arrived to save the day, the rest of the band members had begun to feel the effects of nearly four years together, and relationships were further strained by meddling outsiders and substance abuse.

Ted Avery O’Shea and the Mission Beach Ghetto Guerrillas

June 30, 2009August 8, 2008 by admin

(Personal Conflict bassist Toby Gibson commemorates 8/8/08.)

Author’s note: My Ted O’Shea story has been floating around my desk through several houses, five dogs, a divorce and two kids over the past seventeen or so years.

Having the same birthday as someone close to you who has died tends to keep that feeling of loss pretty fresh in your memory at least once every year, and it’s funny how it will surface now and then on paper or on my computer and I stop for a second and relax, letting myself drift back to a time when life wasn’t lived from crisis to crisis and time was measured almost solely by the 90-odd days of summer.

At some point years ago my memories of Teddy changed from that painful ache that loss leaves you to memories of some great times and a little hope, which I suppose is how things should be. Anyhow — at this point in my life I could probably write something more about Teddy that might be a little more polished and maybe sum him up a little better, but I have come to like the early-20s version for the youthful perspective alone, if for nothing else — the lack of my latter-day cynicism and the fact that the loss wasn’t yet a distant memory — and so I think I’ll let things stay as they are. — T.G.

Introducing the Rockin’ Dogs

January 1, 2011August 7, 2008 by admin

Here’s a very early artifact from the Rockin’ Dogs’ oeuvre: a flyer introducing the band to Pacific Beach’s Headquarters club in August 1982.

“This was when we just started out, when we were in high school,” guitarist/vocalist Dave Ellison writes. “What an embarrassing flyer … haha! For one thing, we spelled ‘Headquarters’ wrong.

“For another, we didn’t play rockabilly or r&b. We were probably trying to attract fans of the Paladins and Crawdaddys … and we probably didn’t care which, so long as someone showed up. (I can’t imagine anyone did on a Monday night!)

Then and now: Greenwich Village West

April 23, 2012August 6, 2008 by admin

(Roving correspondent/ photographer Kristen Tobiason revisits and documents the scenes of our youth. Today, Greenwich Village West learns Tagalog.)

Time has reduced my memory of the Greenwich Village basement to a hot cement pit: the flickering yellow light and a stairwell descending to a gully that had possibly the worst acoustics I’ve ever experienced!

I remember Morlocks guitarist Ted Friedman’s reverb hitting the wall — flat and nowhere to go, just like the smoke from our cigarettes. But we all had a good time. … Everybody who was anybody was there, right? (Maybe I’m harboring band-girlfriend resentment from schlepping equipment up and down those stairs.)

Noise 292 reunion!

January 1, 2011August 5, 2008 by admin

The Che Underground adventure inspired yet another historic gathering July 28, 2008, as veterans of Noise 292 assembled at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf to commemorate the 25th anniversary of a crucial Che Cafe performance with the Answers and Hair Theatre.

Left to right: Noise 292 guitarist/ vocalist David Rives; Answers guitarist (and frequent Noise 292 pickup drummer) David Fleminger; Noise 292 guitarist/ bassist/ vocalist Kristin Martin; Noise 292 percussionist Hobie Hodge; and Hobie’s son Trevor, standing in for Yours Truly.

Here’s everyone (except Trevor), probably at the aforementioned July 29, 1983, show:

Our family tree

December 18, 2017August 4, 2008 by admin

The Che Underground site was first conceived to capture an interesting and undocumented moment in San Diego music history — but our scene was one significant limb among several in a tree with healthy roots and many branches.

To understand this fluorescence better, we’re undertaking something ambitious: a mapping project to lay out the history of San Diego’s rock-‘n’-roll underground. Step One is to solicit some general ideas about the shape of this family tree.

Here’s my first take, which is completely skewed by my age, my location and my own tastes. For me, the San Diego underground sprang in the late ’70s from three large, intertwined roots: the first wave of SD punks (Marc Rude et al.); great New Wave bands like the Penetrators and Unknowns; and a unique SD brand of retrovisionary cool, starting with Ron Silva and the Crawdaddys.

The Morlocks: “You Mistreat Me” b/w “The Key”

June 30, 2009August 3, 2008 by admin

“You Mistreat Me” and “The Key” represent two more songs from the Morlocks’ historic show at San Francisco’s Swedish American Hall, recorded by KALX radio on Sept. 28, 1985.

“There were a couple of Swedish shows,” writes Morlocks strategist and MC Jerry Cornelius. “These were promoed by Paul Renna — another million years of tales attached to that name!

‘The first happened right after [guitarist] Ted [Friedman] went up to SFO to join the rest of the band. I was up there for the second — on my first full night after moving up, one month later. The bill was The Sea Hags, Thee Unforgiven and The Morlocks — with light show by The Brotherhood of Light.”

Remembering Renee Edgington, North Park Lions Club

March 21, 2018August 1, 2008 by admin

(David Klowden commemorates a San Diego punk pioneer and AIDS activist.)

Renee Edgington yearbook photo I was searching online for my former mentor, Renee Edgington, the founder of Shark Productions, who was responsible for creating so many cool shows in San Diego, and learned that she & her husband died in a car accident 10 years ago while vacationing in South Africa.

Anyone who attended a show at the North Park Lions Club between 1978 and 1981 has Renee to thank for making it happen.

I knew that she had been an AIDS activist in Los Angeles, but I didn’t know that she’d founded Clean Needles Now. Renee was a wonderful woman & I was deeply saddened to hear about this tragedy.

Shark Productions artifacts:

Then and now: Funland

January 1, 2011July 31, 2008 by admin

(Roving correspondent/photographer Kristen Tobiason finds that Funland — downtown arcade that inspired a Wallflowers song of the same name — has been plowed under: “This swarthy beast consumed the whole lower Broadway strip. Another boring-ass hotel. I miss Funland and all its classic wooden pinball machines.” Wallflowers singer Dave Rinck offers a requiem.)

This is not universally recognized, but the decline of arcade games reflects the soul-sucking changes that have taken place in modern life. Back in the day, arcade games had real physical moving parts, like pinball machines and Skee-ball. Then they invented computer games, and people started going to arcades to stare at computer screens.

Nowadays, kids play home video games on their TV sets, and I believe there aren’t really arcades anymore. This happened simultaneously with the computerization of the movie and music industries. Someday kids won’t even know what an arcade or a cinema even is — and as to music, well, we all know how that’s going. …

Lemons Are Yellow: “Jewish Like KISS”

January 1, 2011July 30, 2008 by admin

(Manual Scan/Lemons Are Yellow vet Paul Kaufman hails rock-‘n’-roll Yiddishkeit.)
David Klowden already perfectly summarized some pastrami- and tongue-in-cheek ethnic pride in a recent post: “I am putting together a seminar & book tour for my method: ‘Dave The Jew Shows You how to Make Beautiful Women Think You’re Cooler Than You Are in Ten Easy Lessons’ ™.”

In the spirit of David’s post (and our earlier “Hyphenates” thread), here’s “Jewish like KISS,” a musical number based on the irony of having one foot in the Ché Underground and the other in a cultural Old World. (Both had a healthy reverence for the historical.)

I thought it would be fun to have our own sort of self-referential “We’re an American Band”-type number, with all the required fake bravado. I threw in shout-outs to some of my favorite Jewish rockers, Joey Ramone (born Jeffry Ross Hyman) and KISS members Gene Simmons (Chaim Witz) and Paul Stanley (Stanley Eisen).