Artifacts | The Che Underground

There to Here: Cynthia Jaynes Omololu,
Young Adult fiction phenom

January 2, 2018July 10, 2012 by Mmrothenberg

(In this installment, Che Underground: The Blog talks to San Diego scene documentarian Cynthia Jaynes Omololu about her career in young-adult fiction. If you’d like your story told, e-mail cheunderground@gmail.com!)

With the publication of Dirty Little Secrets and the recent release of the first installment of your new Transcendence series, C.J. Omololu is developing a growing reputation as an author of fiction for young adults. How did you get from the San Diego scene of our youth to a writing career in San Francisco?

Aw, thanks, Matthew. I’ll take that kind of reputation. It actually makes a lot of sense – I have to write from the perspective of a 16 or 17 year old and a lot of people say I’m emotionally stunted at around that age. Okay, not totally true, but I started hanging around the San Diego scene at about that age, and it was a pretty influential time for me. We’d moved to Del Mar from Poway in the summer between 9th and 10th grade and I felt like I never fit in there – we were renting an apartment in the land of multimillion dollar beach houses and honestly, I couldn’t compete.

Gary Heffern & Beautiful People:
‘Baby You Just Don’t Get It’

February 16, 2012 by Mmrothenberg

(Just in time for Che Underground: The Blog’s fourth birthday, Gary Heffern shares an international collaboration featuring some of San Diego’s finest!)

Here is a new song by Gary Heffern & Beautiful People with lyrics written by myself, music by Rustman, and arrangement by Beautiful People: Selinda Shirley, Oulujoe, Mad Mulligan and Rustman.

It also features Ray Brandes, Joe Piper and Dave Fleminger on backup vocals and Ray doing some great harmonica as well. I thought if you would want to feature it on Che, you can do so and have first grabs at featuring the song.

Crawdaddys/Unknowns Labor Day
showcase from the McMullen Collection

January 19, 2012September 15, 2011 by Mmrothenberg

San Diego photographer Sean McMullen is a true friend of Che Underground: The Blog and of most of the participants featured here. He’s also a friend to anyone who cares about preserving gorgeous images of the town’s most exciting gigs.

Sean McMullen, Dave Doyle talk photography

I’m very grateful to him for his latest contribution: this wonderful set of photos from our recent showcase at the Casbah, which ran Sept. 2 and 3 and featured the 30-year San Diego reunions of the Crawdaddys and the Unknowns, supported by a galaxy of local stars.

Stay tuned in the coming weeks for video and audio from Labor Day Weekend 2011!

Here are the acts, in chronological order:

Support for ‘The Lion’s Jaw’

December 19, 2011September 6, 2011 by Mmrothenberg

Here’s an urgent opportunity to support one of our own and get some fine, fine music in return!

San Diego expat-turned-San Francisco solo artist Jeffrey Luck Lucas is preparing to re-release his third CD, “The Lion’s Jaw,” and it will require $1,300 within the next two weeks to print the CDs his record label will distribute and promote.

It’s a quid pro quo: Donate to to “JLL, The Lion’s Jaw CD Release and General/Overall Local Artist Support Fund,” and Jeff will send you a signed copy of the newly redesigned “Lion’s Jaw” CD as well as his nearly completed new studio album, “The Love of Leaving.”

Read moreSupport for ‘The Lion’s Jaw’

The Sidewalk Scene plays “Richard Cory”

December 11, 2017August 30, 2011 by Mmrothenberg

It may be a new band on the block, but the Sidewalk Scene represents a veritable Murderer’s Row of San Diego musical talent. (Don’t miss your chance to see the band open for the Unknowns along with the Comeuppance on Sept. 3 at the Casbah — Day Two of a Labor Day weekend blowout that also features an evening comprising the Crawdaddys, the Amandas and the Baja Bugs.)

Buy your tickets now for the Crawdaddys and the Unknowns at San Diego’s Casbah, Sept. 2-3!

This video clip (accompanied by photos shot by Unknowns bassist Dave Doyle) portrays the Sidewalk Scene tearing into Paul Simon’s “Richard Cory” at Lestat’s July 30, when they headlined “Che Underground present Sounds of the Sunset Strip.” A great band with hundreds of years of San Diego history among them, delivering with the passion we’ve come to expect from these consummate musicians!

Crawdaddys/Unknowns reunion flyers
from Kristen Tobiason

December 11, 2017August 26, 2011 by Mmrothenberg

(To celebrate Labor Day weekend’s 30-year reunions of the Crawdaddys and the Unknowns at San Diego’s Casbah, longtime graphic artist and Che Underground blog contributor Kristen Tobiason has prepared a striking pair of flyers to feature each night’s lineup. Here’s the story behind the art and a glimpse of the sociology of music flyering.)

It seems like yesterday I was drawing a flyer for the Wallflowers’ first gig with a black Sharpie.

Twenty years later, here I am putting together a poster for the Unknowns, while listening to one of their songs on YouTube.
I still sketch my preliminary ideas on paper, but my medium has evolved, becoming less primitive and infinitely more digitized.

Buy your tickets now for the Crawdaddys and the Unknowns at San Diego’s Casbah, Sept. 2-3!

Some girls love shoes, I love color and typography. I was never patient enough to learn guitar, but drawing came naturally. I loved record albums as a kid, and some of my earliest memories are of studying the covers from my dad’s collection. As a teenager in the San Diego music scene, flyering was a way that I could contribute to the music without having to actually be in a band. When I was 16 I got my first box of rapidograph inking pens, which I had seen Jerry Cornelius use for his illustrations. Jerry’s art was intimidating, but inspiring too. I learned by emulating his style, and used to sit and copy Tennielle’s drawings from “Alice in Wonderland,” or the covers of H.P. Lovecraft, to learn how to do the crosshatching/shading.

The Penetrators, the Bedbreakers
and Manual Scan at the Casbah

September 30, 2011August 17, 2011 by Mmrothenberg

(After collecting a lifetime achievement award at last week’s San Diego Music Awards, the Penetrators performed Saturday at the Casbah Club, supported by fellow music veterans the Bedbreakers and Manual Scan. Che Underground: The Blog presents accounts of the evening by Sean McMullen, Gary Heffern and Kevin Donaker-Ring as well as a luminous selection of photos by Mr. McMullen.)

It was a full moon, I remember, and I was already sweating and thirsty after walking down from Banker’s Hill to the club, but couldn’t seem to get past the patio to the bar for a bubbly cold Tecate due to the onslaught of embracing and handshakes and stories that followed. Every one of these nights serves to reinforce the depth of this bizarre alter-family I have collected since I was a wild-eyed runt getting dropped off at Golden Hall for a Penetrators show, amongst others, full circle.

Indeed there are few things in my life as gratifying as seeing people who used to revolt and butt heads like rams getting along with so much love and joy and pride. And the sheer fact that we remain so devoted to our music, to this town and each other, speaks volumes of the magnitude of our youth, and how we carry it forward incessantly with age.

The Penetrators play SDMA!

December 19, 2011August 10, 2011 by Mmrothenberg

Thanks to documentarian Eric Rife, those of us far from Southern California can enjoy video of the Penetrators performing at the 2011 San Diego Music Awards at Humphrey’s by the Bay August 8, when the band received a lifetime achievement award for its contributions to local music. (Vocalist Gary Heffern in June shared his thoughts on the honor with Che Underground: The Blog.)

If these performances of “Walk the Beat” and “Sensitive Boy” put you in the mood for more stimulation, don’t forget: The Penetrators will hold another reunion performance at the Casbah August 13!

The Crawdaddys, Nashville Ramblers
in Spain: A view from Toledo

January 23, 2018August 6, 2011 by Mmrothenberg

In mid-June, the reunited Crawdaddys and Nashville Ramblers were the latest of our San Diego crowd to enjoy the hospitality of Spain. Both bands played the Go Sinner Go! festival in Toledo June 10 and 11, and the Crawdaddys followed up the next day with a surprise appearance at the renowned El Sol club in Madrid.

I’m grateful to Silvia Zadarnowski (spouse of Crawdaddys bassist Mark) for these photos of all three events and to musician and show organizer Eduardo Arriero Hernandez for answering my questions about the show and Spanish fondness for this San Diego scene.

Buy your tickets now for the Crawdaddys and the Unknowns at San Diego’s Casbah, Sept. 2-3!

What is your own involvement with the Spanish music scene? You have a band, and you’re an organizer of the Go Sinner Go! Festival. Can you tell me briefly about those and how long you’ve been part of the music scene over there?

I’ve played in bands since I was 17, and I’m 32… so half of my life!! I’ve played guitar and sung with Hollywood Sinners for 11 years and keyboard with Fumestones for one year. I started organizing concerts in Toledo, my home town, of national bands I liked, and I continued it in Madrid. I can try get my favorite bands from all around the world, spend some days with them and have fun!!

From Spain, with love

December 11, 2017July 30, 2011 by Mmrothenberg

(From across the Atlantic, here’s a graphical gift to celebrate the 30-year San Diego reunions of the Unknowns and the Crawdaddys. Ray Brandes sets the scene.)

This beautiful poster is a gift from artist Marc Argenter to the Che Underground. Marc, who lives in Barcelona, Spain, is also an accomplished musician and has played guitar and recorded with bands such as the Flashback Five and Els Trons for more than 20 years.

Marc jumped at the chance to design a poster for a show featuring the Crawdaddys, whom he first heard at the tender age of 16. He is well known in Spain as a graphic designer, and has an impressive portfolio of work, some of which can be seen here: http://argenter.blogspot.com/