Reviving San Diego's Rock Renaissance
Perhaps the most satisfying aspect of the Che Underground blogging adventure has been the opportunity not only to revive longstanding friendships but to revisit old acquaintances and find new kinship there.
Case in point: Ray Brandes, the vastly talented veteran of the Hedgehogs, the Mystery Machine, the Tell-Tale Hearts, the Town Criers, the Shambles and a variety of superb solo projects, who celebrates another solar orbit today.
(Paul Kaufman gets Crass with a Beatle’s musical legacy.)
On Saturday, John Lennon would have been 70 years old. Hard to fathom for someone who personified youthfulness; I felt the same way when this occasion passed for John Kennedy back in the ’80s.
These days, everything in this country is FOR $ALE, including democracy itself. So I’m afraid the most likely scenario I imagine had he lived is a barrage of advertisements, ready to ride the huge demographic wave of baby-boomer retirees:
“Picture yourself taking some Metamucil…”
“Well, you should see Polygrip Pam…”
“Viagra, yeah, yeah, yeah … Viagra, yeah, yeah, yeah … And with a pill like this, you know you should be glad … ”
(Reporting from Burkina Faso, David Rinck searches for our rock-‘n’-roll roots in the landlocked shore of Africa.)
“Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don’t be sorry.” — Jack Kerouac
To a visitor today to these scrappy, drab concrete towns in the center of West Africa, it’s hard to believe that just a century ago this was the epicenter of a magnificent and vital trans-Saharan caravan trade in gold and salt, stretching across the world’s greatest desert. Linking Morocco and Mediterranean Europe with the gold kingdoms of the Gulf of Benin, and giving rise to mysterious and fabled cities that were centers of learning and culture, like Gao; Djenne (with its famous UNESCO World Heritage Grand Mosque); and Timbuktu, today the epitome of remote, it was where the Moors built one of Africa’s earliest universities and a library famous throughout the Islamic world for its handwritten manuscripts and Korans.
Likening it to the shore of the vast sand ocean that is the Sahara, south of which lies the Bilad as Sudan, or “land of blacks” (Sudan, means “black” in Arabic), the Arabs named this part of the world the Sahel, or “shore” (the same root from which we take the word for Kenya and Tanzania’s national language, Swahili, or “the language of the coast” — Saheli).
Thanks to my day job, I’m currently on a whirlwind tour of bookstores across the country: from New York to points south, through Texas, up California and ending up in Chicago. I’m riding trains, I’m taking planes, I’m doing interviews and grabbing naps where I can find them. The next week or so should be a blur (and I’m hoping to see many of you along the route)!
But it also reminds me that I never actually had the stress and pleasure of touring with a band (besides a few forays to Los Angeles and of course our recent San Diego reunions). It’s a dynamic that’s always fascinated me: how creative types function move in a group from town to town and get up in front of a new audience each night.
(Infrequent concertgoer Paul Kaufman catches up with a band from the last era he had time to appreciate.)
Friends, San Diegans, countrymen, lend me your ears. There actually were good records made in the 1990s!
Curiously, most of my faves from that decade came out on a single record label, Matador, which boasted Guided by Voices; Liz Phair; Cat Power; and today’s topic, Pavement. After a decade of Splitsville, they’ve reunited and are coming to a town near you!
Tickets had gone on sale ages ago. I had snapped one up, sure that this was my one chance to see them live, having gotten into them late (that is, after their best records, around 1997). Right before I left for the show, I was thumbing through the New Yorker, which had an article about nostalgic 40-somethings desperately searching their apartments for the Pavement tickets they had lovingly bought the previous year. You know you’re middle-aged when your fave indie band is profiled in the New Yorker.
(Manual Scan co-founder Kevin Donaker-Ring talks about a cool new club in San Diego and a turning point for this enduring band.)
I’ve been working security for over four years now. Last September, I started working at Small Bar, owned by the same people that run Hamilton’s Tavern in South Park.
Dennis Borlek, the first person in San Diego I ever met who had a scooter, and who continues to be a San Diego music scene fixture, is the general manager there. Small Bar’s owners recently purchased the Radio Room (formerly the Zombie Lounge) on El Cajon Boulevard, just east of 35th St., and renamed it “Eleven.” (Yes, that’s a direct Spinal Tap reference.)
They improved the sound system and the acoustics (not to mention expanding the beers on tap by an order of magnitude). But anyone who has been into the San Diego music scene will want to visit this place — they wallpapered large sections of the bar with reproductions of vintage San Diego show flyers.
(David Rinck freaks out to a Moon Age daydream.)
NOTE: This post works best if you slip on Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust album and cue up the tune “Soul Love” as you read it.
That tune, “Soul Love,” always takes my mind to a hip London of the very early ’70s, a sleepy, happy, self-contented London where hippies happily ate organic alfalfa sprouts in little cafes, and men wore frocks, complacently proud of having created and survived the ’60s, and looking forward to wallowing in their achievements spreading peace and love ad infinitum. The war was protested, the pot was plentiful, and everybody’s hair was down to his or her ass.
But it’s actually an unsuspecting London, on the eve of the explosion that was Glam, and then the firestorm of punk rock.
Read moreDIY: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust
and the Punk Rockers from San Diego
Here’s another chance to compare notes a few decades down the road.
After a slightly meandering start, my adult career has proceeded quite nicely. I get to do interesting work, and (in the big picture) I’ve progressively been given more authority over it. My employers trust me to lead teams of people and try new ideas.
Learning about what you’ve been up to over the past couple of decades, it sounds like a lot of you have found jobs you like and are good at — and a disproportionate number have started your own businesses, from restaurants to barber shops.
For myself, it’s not just hyperbole to say I gained more fundamental career skills playing music with you folks than I did in the classroom. Here are a few lessons I picked up:
(If you missed the opening festivities July 30 at the Che Underground Rock-‘n’-Roll Weekend, Dave Doyle invites you to join him and fellow photographer Sean McMullen for the closing of their joint show. Event photography by Kymri Wilt.)
As is often said, all good things must come to an end, and art exhibits are no exception. So in celebration of our first exhibition together, Sean and I thought it would be fun to close it with another party.
We will be hosting a simple reception at Lestat’s Coffee House on August 28 around 7:30. Then afterwards any willing adults are welcome to the Ould Sod for drinks, merriment and pontification on all things art, politics or whatnot. Lestat’s is child friendly, so feel free to bring your offspring or someone else’s.
For many of the participants in this blog, our involvement with San Diego music ended with our wholesale departure from San Diego. A large contingent of us decamped first to San Francisco, and we now make our homes in places like Seattle, Oregon, New York, Boston, Wisconsin and Haiti.
That means the string of Che Underground gigs we’ve hosted in San Diego (including May 2009 and January and July 2010) marked the first time in more than two decades that many of our musicians have played in front of a hometown crowd.