Personal History | The Che Underground

Songs for the DIYper set

January 6, 2011May 15, 2010 by Paul Kaufman

(Paul Kaufman kicks out the jammies with new kid-friendly lyrics to old favorites.)

I’ve mentioned before that a little bundle of joy arrived at our house last fall. Our daughter is six months old now, and she’s a wonder to behold. She’ll soon reach the age at which I have to stop singing the real lyrics to “I Wanna Be Your Dog” during our musical play times.

But I’m thinking that instead of discarding such classics altogether, how about substitution of age-appropriate lyrics? I think Dr. Seuss could probably help with a lot of these situations:

“Somebody’s calling on the phone,
A voice says, hey, is Dee Dee at home?
Do you want to wear some socks?
Do you want to box a Gox?
Do you want wear some Gox box socks?”

‘I’m not ready’

January 6, 2011May 11, 2010 by admin

“I want to write a piece about not being ready to deal with death,” writes our friend Mark Mullen, veteran Morlocks and Wallflowers drummer and all-around good egg. He’s given me generous permission both to quote him and to solicit the support of our age mates, who are learning to face this inevitable with greater frequency every year.

“My grandma died two days ago, and my aunt died a week ago, both to have services Sunday. …. Same day.

“I pretty much shut down and did not deal with it,” Mark writes. “Maybe if I wrote the story and had feedback and other people’s situation to see, maybe I would have dealt with it.

Where on the Web … ?

December 11, 2017May 5, 2010 by admin

When we started Che Underground: the Blog early in 2008, it addressed a void in our shared history: Searching online produced very little evidence of the bands and friends who tugged at the fringes of late-’70s and early-’80s San Diego. (We started with a circle of bands who played the Che Cafe and other venues together in ’83 and ’84, then expanded out.)

The ground has shifted since then. This site itself is bringing in more than 10,000 visitors a month, including all sorts of new arrivals from the old days — but even more interesting to me, a slew of new online efforts are taking off, powered by Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and more. (I’ve recently been enjoying the Injections’ new Facebook page and Ray Brandes’ YouTube channel, to name just two vectors for San Diego underground history.)

Club Zu Boat Cruise IV

January 6, 2011April 25, 2010 by admin

Ahoy! Club Zu founder Kelsey Farris re-christens a seminal San Diego soirée.

OK GURL! I know you’re coming to my party, and if you wanted to invite friends, it’s great.

Here is a little background: Long-ass story, but when I was 17, I owned a club in San Diego called Club Zu for a few years and chartered these private parties on the San Diego Harbor.

Read Kelsey’s history of Club Zu!

Facebook has reconnected me with so many people who went to Club Zu in the early ‘80s and attended one if not all three of our Club Zu boat parties. Their requests to throw another started me asking around, and this event came together.

The insane invitations are photographs of friends from the era, and the incredible graphics are courtesy of Rodney Rodney in Los Angeles.

One for the books

January 6, 2011April 14, 2010 by admin

All your friends seem larger than life when you’re young … But I believe that many of the people who made up our scene really did have the charisma and thirst for new experiences to make great protagonists in an epic novel.

Jack Kerouac built his legend on a lightly fictionalized (and beautifully written) portrayal of his friend Neal Cassady, with a supporting cast of other people in their circle.

If you were going to write the Great American Novel about someone from the San Diego scene, who would it be? And why?

In my life

January 6, 2011April 4, 2010 by admin

(Megan S. asks where specific songs fit into your personal narrative.)

Remember that episode of M*A*S*H where a scent triggers Hawkeye to fall down the rabbit hole of unresolved pain from earlier in his life? Sound can do that too, especially songs.

Sometimes hearing a song can bring you back to a period in your life, a scene or even a specific incident. Often, the two are so intertwined it is impossible to revisit a memory without its soundtrack, or hear a song without your embedded storyboard. Lots of times, we have no control over the music or the situation; they all come together, merging, in the making of a memory.

Causes

December 16, 2017April 1, 2010 by admin

"Community Activism" graphic Here’s a first post crafted in response to my recent call for new topics: “It would be fabulous to learn about what types of positive contributions all of us scene skeptics are currently participating in to actually improve our society,” writes Robyn Wexler, who goes on to describe her personal involvement in animal-rescue causes.

A great question that I hope will inspire some spirited discussion! To what political, social or spiritual causes have you invested yourself lately? And are they the same sort of causes you would have envisioned back when we were kids?

Lyrical associations

March 30, 2019March 8, 2010 by admin

(Megan S. polls the Che Underground for top lyrics.)

I thought I would take advantage of this vast collective musical knowledge to ask a question: Which lyrics have meant the most to you?

When I was young, music was a sort of neural primal scream. The lyrics were just more sounds in the mix and didn’t really mean much at the time: I hadn’t fallen in nor out of love, been beaten down by The Man, known much about regret nor spent much time down by the river. I was mostly concerned with scraping up gas money.

The request line is open!

January 6, 2011March 1, 2010 by admin

If only February were as long as other months, we’d have another traffic record on our hands! Two years since it began, Che Underground: The Blog keeps growing; every week brings more veteran San Diego scenesters into our orbit, all of them with their own stories and insights about the town where we grew up.

In that spirit: What bands, gigs, people or places would you like to learn more about? With nearly 10,000 of us hanging out here each month, we’ve got a mighty store of memories — and chances are awfully good that someone visiting the blog has answers to your questions. Let’s train the group mind on new subjects!

Wendy Pyro: Punk pioneer

December 11, 2017February 26, 2010 by admin

(In which Clairemont High School alum Dave Fleminger strikes rock ‘n’ roll in a back issue of his alma mater’s paper.)

January 1981: Imagine the trepidation felt by young Clairemont High news reporter Alan Graham about this front-page assignment.

He has been given the responsibility of unveiling the “punk-rock lifestyle” in the pages of the Arrow, the school paper. To do so he will be interviewing Clairemont High School’s best-known proponent of the movement, Wendy “Pyro” Gaines. Perhaps he could have also gone undercover, like Cameron Crowe had done at Clairemont High a couple years earlier, but that could have gotten a little rough, and Wendy has graciously granted Alan an opportunity to stay within familiar CHS territory and still learn about a mysterious group whose meeting place (?) was at a Lions’ lodge in far-off North Park.