Personal History | The Che Underground

This We Dug: Johnny Thunders

March 29, 2019December 26, 2008 by admin

(In this installment, Wallflowers vocalist Dave Rinck puts his arms around a memory.)

Last Saturday night, Dave Ellison and I took our wives out for dinner and a show in Los Angeles. We had a great time, and what a show it was!

Well, first there was some sort of ridiculous country/New Wave band that sucked. I don’t know why they let these guys in the door. They were called Cracker or something. They had some stupid song about taking skinheads bowling. I mean, why should I have to hear about that?

Anyway, the headlining bands were X and the New York Dolls. Obviously X was great. I mean, wow: Billy Zoom has become such a guitar virtuoso, really like a sort of punk rock Chuck Berry. Has anyone here noticed that Gretsch is releasing a re-issue of the amazing Billy Zoom Sparkle Jet guitar? BTW some guy is running an online petition to get X into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Please go and sign it — it would be so cool to see a real authentic underground band like this get in.

Madison Avenue hipster holiday, December 1985

December 31, 2010December 24, 2008 by admin

(Miss Kristi Maddocks plays the Ghost of Christmas Past with photos and memories.)

Here are some snapshots from my very bo-ho holiday season in 1985.

At the time, I was living with Michelle Krone, Jeff Rierden and Keith Lockhart (RIP) in our tiny one-bedroom in-law apartment in the neighborhood around University and Park Avenues. I think Leighton Koizumi was in town for a visit from San Francisco, where he and the rest of the Morlocks moved six months before.

This arrangement left me sleeping alone on the couch in the living room — where I am captured waking up in a haze on Christmas Day.

One of the most memorable features of the apartment were the full-scale murals of cartoon Go Go Girls that our dear friend Scott Ewalt drew on our walls — they were way ahead of their time and adored by many visitors to out pad. (Needless to say, I never got back my apartment deposit!)

Music stores we loved

December 31, 2010December 20, 2008 by admin

Blue Ridge Music in Encinitas is long gone now, but from age 12 (when I started playing guitar) to 16 (when I got a driver’s license and could explore further afield), this little place was my favorite toy store.

David Rives and I spent a lot of time in the shop and learned a great deal about instruments and their use from Andre, the proprietor, and his staff.

Blue Ridge was hardly a rock-‘n’-roll Mecca, although I did buy there the Guild guitar and Fender bass I still own today, and I did have one memorable encounter with Bo Diddley when he visited Blue Ridge to test out effects boxes for that evening’s gig at La Paloma Theater one block north.

Nostradamus, I’m not. Part 2: The Cold War

December 16, 2017December 12, 2008 by Paul Kaufman

(In which Manual Scan/Lemons Are Yellow vet Paul Kaufman finds himself back in the USSR.)

Here’s Part Two in a short series of examples of how my young self was Dead Wrong on some major issues of our time.

A defining event for our generation is that we were the last to come to adulthood during the Cold War. Remember the Cold War, kids? Soul-crushing, Gulag-filling Soviet dictatorship on one side, anyone-against-them-is-our-friend (nevermind the atrocities) NATO on the other, both armed to the teeth. This lead to deadly, pointless quagmires on both sides (Afghanistan for them, Vietnam for us). For all the vile waste of life and resources this arrangement created, it was a form of stability.

So, did anyone here think the Soviet Union would just sort of melt away like a wet witch, without nuclear holocaust, bloody civil war, or even hardly a shot fired? I didn’t.

Nostradamus, I’m not. Part 1: The Final Frontier

December 31, 2010December 8, 2008 by Paul Kaufman

(In which Manual Scan/Lemons Are Yellow vet Paul Kaufman re-evaluates his prospects for space tourism.)

Here’s the first in a short series of examples of how my young self was Dead Wrong on some major issues of our time.

If you had asked me as a 15-year-old what I wanted to be, I would have had no firm idea. But as a five-year-old, the answer was certain: an astronaut! It was 1969, and when I wasn’t listening to my well-worn copy of Yellow Submarine, I was reading about the Apollo missions and constructing home-made Command Modules out of cardboard boxes.

The future seemed obvious to me — we were just beginning to travel to space, and in the future, this would steadily become more and more of our daily lives, as had air travel, electricity, telephones, TV, et al., right? Soon we’d be booking commercial flights to distant planets, choosing among the tasty, reconstituted, colorful foods from the hip flight attendant, just like in 2001: A Space Odyssey. This would be the new frontier, and Americans are always drawn to frontiers.

Monday, December 8

January 6, 2011December 8, 2008 by admin

Toby Gibson reminds us it’s been 28 years since John Lennon’s death. We’ve already discussed at length that very dark moment just before the Reagan era, but it was an event that affected many of us deeply, provoking black humor and profound sorrow and coloring our attitudes about peace, love and understanding. (I can still recall every detail of that other Monday night.)

How about if we change gears, though, and talk a little more about what Lennon and the Beatles meant to us? For me, they were the original touchstone for what being in a rock-‘n’-roll band was supposed to be. How about you?

Pictures through the past, darkly

December 31, 2010December 6, 2008 by admin

(A plaintive cry for ephemera from Darren Grealish.)

Hey, I don’t have any pictures from my youth at all. A crazy girlfriend I had in the late ’80s threw all my photo albums away, and sadly, all my pics are gone forever.

If you have pictures from the good old days with all of us please post ’em up! Maybe if we get enough of them after time we can get a groovy slide-show movie that people can watch on the site. Maybe we can have Jerry Cornelius be the narrator!

Come on and sock it to me! I would like some visual memories to look back on. As it is now I have only memories and this site!!!!! If you got em’ put em’ up! Let’s see the gold!

— Darren Grealish

[Editor’s note: All vintage Grealish beefcake welcome at Che Underground HQ: cheunderground@gmail.com. We will ensure Darren receives your contributions posthaste.]

This We Dug: K.C. and the Sunshine Band

December 13, 2017November 28, 2008 by admin

(In this installment, Wallflower Dave Rinck revisits the bouncy side of the ’70s.)

We used to have a great Halloween tradition in San Diego, which I am frankly surprised hasn’t been covered here yet. Anyway, I’m sure someone will get around to this one soon enough. Of course I’m talking about the Pink Panther Halloween Ball. Man, that was fun!

The deal is, one year I was attending this event, and I ran into Darren Grealish and Burt Huerta, and these guys had on these leisure suits with lapels out to their shoulders. (I think I was dressed as a gerbil or something equally stupid.) I mean, they looked great, almost as if they had just stepped out of Studio 54 in about 1978. And Darren says to me, “People think I’m dressed up for Halloween, but this is how I like to dress every day!”

And who wouldn’t? I mean, come on get real: Black leather biker jackets and torn jeans every day? How much of that stuff can you really stand before you need to cut your jive talkin’ and lighten up a bit? Yes, if punk rock can be summed up as the Mister Hyde of our angry rebellious youth, then Disco would be the happy Doctor Jekyll.

Read moreThis We Dug: K.C. and the Sunshine Band

Thanks!

January 1, 2011November 27, 2008 by admin

As well-worn editorial conventions go, the thanks-on-Thanksgiving formula ranks up there with rewrites of “A Visit from St. Nicholas” come Dec. 24. Nevertheless, it seems an apt way to ask our growing ranks what debts they owe our youth and the history we share.

Months ago, we had an interesting discussion about how our early days informed our adult careers. We’ve also explored what the person you were in 1983 would make of the 2008 model.

I’ll say it again: Collaborating creatively with all of you … making do on the cheap and despite official disapproval … taught me at least as many skills I use today as I ever got from my (fine) formal education. For better or worse — and I say “better” — I’m the person I am today because of the all-too-brief time we spent together. Thanks!

All these years later, who or what makes you thankful about those times?

Peers who made it

April 23, 2012November 24, 2008 by admin

Here’s a topic that could spin in a few different directions: Many musicians from our circle have made wonderful sounds since our 1980s salad days. … Considerably fewer have made some money in the process. … But I don’t believe any of us hit the commercial jackpot in the music industry.

The wheels of that industry continued to turn, however, and musicians of our approximate age and subcultural pedigree did make it big in the late ’80s and early ’90s. (To start the ball rolling, I’ll throw out three names from our native time zone: Nirvana, Sublime and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.)

I know these big, commercial acts traveled many miles from our DIY roots (and from most of our musical discussions here). But that’s the point: What do you consider musical success, and do you hear echoes of our own aspirations in these huge revenue engines of decades past?