Apparently the Che Underground crew isn’t the only set of 40-something San Diego veterans with a yen to revisit their musical past: A contingent of bands that frequented Straita Head Sound in the early ’80s has announced its own reunion show at San Diego’s 4th & B April 17, featuring Assassin; Street Liegel with Mike Liegel on vocals; Dirty Birdz (with members of Vamp); and Jonas Grumby.
“Straita Head Sound may be gone, but the music lives on,” the promoter proclaims. “So dig out your KGB cards and head downtown for a killer night. With an event like this, you never know who might show up!”
Probably Perhaps few of our own regular visitors! At 25 years’ remove, the names and places do evoke for me a few very dim echoes of a side of San Diego that might as well have been a different planet. And at the same time, the impulse to get their scene back together is awfully familiar in light of our own Che Games for May, among other projects.
We’ve chatted here a bit about Straita Head Sound (site of the former Cinnamon Cinder and an early venue for bands like Battalion of Saints and Gary Wilson before it went metal). I enjoyed perusing a Facebook group started by club loyalists.
I like the Bizarro Planet experience of looking at a whole other San Diego scene simultaneous with ours that (to my recollection) rarely if ever touched our world.
Do you remember these names and places? Is the accident of shared teenage geography meaningful to you? Do you recognize anything of ourselves in this very different scene?