Reviving San Diego's Rock Renaissance
What have we got to work with?
We’re overdue to devote a post to the recent work of one of the Che Underground’s most protean talents: Jeffrey Luck Lucas, veteran of San Diego’s Morlocks, Mirrors and Answers and a prolific Bay area solo artist.
I was privileged to play with Jeff for a few years in San Francisco — a longtime aspiration of mine — and I can testify to the intensity of his artistic vision through many incarnations.
(Ray Brandes puts out a call for swinging singles.)
Later this month, Mike Stax’s Ugly Things Records will release a celebrated local recording, the Nashville Ramblers’ “The Trains.” If one were to rank the best recordings ever to be made by San Diegans, this one would no doubt place in the Top 10.
On any list it would face some tough competition, though, from Rosie and the Originals’ 1961 classic, “Angel Baby,” to my personal favorite, the Crawdaddys’ “5 X 4” EP, released in 1980.
What is your favorite San Diego recording and what is your personal connection to it? (Feel free to consider artists from San Diego who moved or recorded elsewhere.)
— Ray Brandes
Che Underground New Year’s resolution #1: Get better about tackling our backlog of treasures.
Here’s an assortment of photographs I’m long overdue to post from the collection of Laura S. These 10 photos include mid-’80s shots of Hair Theatre and other nears and dears, followed by Laura’s recollections of the circumstances behind each. Help fill in the blanks!
(Ray Brandes alerts us to the long-overdue release of “The Trains,” with attendant parties in San Diego and LA.)
It is true that good things come to those who wait. The Nashville Ramblers’ song “The Trains,” which Steven Van Zandt once called “one of the most unspeakably gorgeous instances of romantic yearning disguised as a pop song,” will finally, after 25 years, get its own release.
Mike Stax’s Ugly Things Records will release “The Trains” at a special record release party on Friday, Jan. 21, at the Til-Two Club at 4746 El Cajon Blvd. in San Diego.
Here’s a striking new collaboration with deep roots in San Diego: Eris Sisters, an electronica duo featuring Kristi Maddocks (Everybody Violet) and Clay Colgin (Men of Clay), a k a MCC.
They recently released their debut record “DownHEAR” on True Node Records.
(You asked for it, you got it! Che Underground: The Blog is proud to add San Diego female rock pioneers the Dinettes to its lineup. Doriot Negrette provides the narrative, with audio and visual artifacts contributed by Joyce Rooks.)
Disclaimer: Of course you understand that by daring to disturb the XX* Ark of the Covenant, all must pay by listening to the demanding sounds of San Diego’s own Dinettes. No longer satisfied and blissfully ignorant, the history camel has now gone and pushed its nasty nose under the tent and into the den of wild female rhythm. Lo, what a cavalcade of late-’70s sonic value those first recordings were…you’ll see. Left in a state of utter incomprehension and curious disbelief, any listener will be changed, forever.
*That’s chromosome, to you. Nothing more.
(Ray Brandes reopens the case of People vs. the Che Underground.)
Thursday morning, during the last week of August, 1985, I arrived at work at 4:00 a.m. to begin my shift collecting and baling the cardboard boxes left scattered on the floor of the Food Basket on Washington Street. As I donned my apron, the hoots and catcalls began. “Hey, Hollywood!” shouted one of the night-crew guys as he leaned back in the seat of the forklift, a smug look on his face. In one hand he held a can of New Coke; in the other was the latest copy of People, emblazoned with the headline, “Madonna Weds Sean.”
A few weeks earlier, my bandmates and I had made the trek to Los Angeles and endured a several hours-long photo shoot at the Cavern, music maven and cult impresario Greg Shaw’s modest live-music club located in an alley off Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood. The article, we had been told, would put Bomp! Records on the map and catapult the Tell-Tale Hearts to stardom. This would be my ticket to fame and fortune, I believed. I would quit my job bagging groceries and baling cardboard, take a few semesters off from college, and enjoy the good life.
Read moreIt’s 1985: Do you know
where your bell-bottoms are?
(Dave Rinck a k a Wallflower keeps us posted on the Kidz’s revival.)
It’s been an honor for me play rhythm guitar for the last few months with this classic punk-rock band. This is a working band, and it has a new lineup, new CDs (I’ve never released two CDs on the same day before!), and new shows! Here’s an update:
THE NEW LINEUP:
Jim Ryan – bass and vocals
Jerry Flack – guitar and vocals
Jimi Flynn – drums
Dave Wallflower – guitar and vocals
Going on three years since the launch of this blog, we’ve come a long way: We’ve posted all kinds of wonderful treasures from our musical youth, reunited with hundreds of old friends, started new collaborations — and in October alone, drew more than 15,000 visitors here.
That means we’re in a great position to locate just about any surviving sounds, images and accounts from our past … or to re-create anything we want to revisit.
So where do you want to dig next? What recordings, flyers, photos, bands, events and people have you missed all these years? Working together, there’s a great chance we can find them.
(Abortive record mogul Kevin Chanel heralds the post-Internet return of his label with two releases into the brave new world of online media.)
“Why now?”
Been asking that myself. After 15 years of somewhat complete dormancy, Scheming Intelligentsia Records is back with a line of retro classics and unfinished tchotchkes of historical whatnot.
“But why?”
If you recall, back in ’95 we didn’t have no MP3 technology or iZunes being given away with a ten-pak of ramen. You wanted music, you had to buy it on cassette, vinyl or CD. For us instant-gratification enthusiasts, this is a great time to be human.
We are celebrating with the first two releases in our exhumation process: 1987’s PERSONAL CONFLICT album “Rest In Peace” and the previously unreleased, half-baked SOUL BROTHERS masterwerk, “Find My Keys And We’ll Drive Out Of Here.”