Reviving San Diego's Rock Renaissance
If you enjoyed (or missed) Che Games for May in 2009, here’s another chance to join us at San Diego’s Casbah for the first official Che Underground event of 2010, featuring the Town Criers, Manual Scan and the Blues Gangsters.
This Saturday night event will feature historic performances by some of San Diego’s finest sons and daughters. Jubilation guaranteed!
Che Underground: The Blog has been immeasurably enriched by our recent interactions with the Penetrators. As Ray Brandes has chronicled here, the Penetrators have been one of the most influential and beloved forces in San Diego’s music underground from the band’s genesis in 1977 until decades after its dissolution in 1984.
Good news for all their fans: Pens frontman Gary Heffern has given us the green light to announce a run of Penetrators-related fun at San Diego’s Casbah from Jan. 27-31, 2010 — including an evening presented by the Che Underground.
(Tell-Tale Heart/Town Crier Ray Brandes brings new Town Criers artifacts to light.)
The first of these gems is from early 1989, a performance at the wedding of Joe Hughes at Joshua Tree National Park.
The band at the time consisted of Ray Brandes on acoustic guitar and vocals, Peter Miesner on lead guitar, Mark Zadarnowski on electric bass guitar, and Dan Tarte on drums. Among the attendees captured on film at the event are Che Undergrounders Matt Johnson and Sean McMullen.
The toddler at the end of the clip is Sean Zadarnowski, Mark and Lydia’s son, who has graduated from UCSD.
(Wallflower David Rinck introduces a new project by old friends.)
Here’s our new record. As far as we know, this is the latest project by musicians associated with the Che Underground.
We wrote the music over the Internet, since we now live in various far-flung corners of the globe (Africa in my case). One of us would write a riff and a few lines of lyrics and then send it on. Pretty soon it added up to a song, and then the eight on the record (actually more, but we could only record eight ’cause of time limitations).
But we all used to be in bands in San Diego and play shows together, so we were used to working together, and the distances were easily overcome.
For those who missed Che Games for May in San Diego May 29-30 or just want to relive the magic: Good news! Thanks to modern technology, the event was captured from every angle in photographs, audio and video.
Exhibit A: The original San Diego Wallflowers raise the roof of San Diego’s Casbah with “Funland,” the band’s hypnotic paean to the city’s seamy underbelly, now lost to gentrification. (For memories of the original Funland, check out Kristen Tobiason’s “Then and now” feature.)
The May 30 performance marks the Wallflowers debut of Rockin’ Dog Dave Ellison and features original Wallflowers David Rinck on vocals, Paul Howland on bass and Matt Johnson on drums. (Che Underground jack-of-all-trades Dave Fleminger added keyboard stylings to the set.)
(Manual Scan/Lemons Are Yellow veterans Paul Kaufman and Dave Fleminger put the jangle in the world’s first Che Underground jingle!)
Hey Ché fans, Dave Fleminger and myself have put together a little musical promo for our much-anticipated reunion at the end of May at the Casbah in San Diego.
Here are the lyrics, so you can sing along at home:
All you Rockin’ Dogs on the blog,
Meet us there.
The Wallflowers still have raw power!
You can see them there!
Lori Stalnaker-Bevilacqua continues to enrich our historical understanding of the Rockin’ Dogs with priceless artifacts. Here’s a pre-Jane Bunting photograph of the Dogs — ca. 1982 — when Scott Harber was the bassist.
“I loved this shot from the series,” Lori writes. “I love the fact that you got two lookin’ at the camera and two turned to the side. I don’t think I directed them to that, just spontaneous. Nevertheless, it works!
“That is one good-lookin’ band! ;)”
“I remember the photo, but I don’t remember much about it other than the fact that the red plaid scarf belonged to a girl I was dating,” writes Dave Ellison. “Scott didn’t play with the band for very long. I remember he was planning a long trip somewhere … to another country, I think … so he was more or less filling in for a while.”
A long-sought contribution from recent blog arrival Lori Stalnaker-Bevilacqua: a flyer that puts a date (Feb. 10, 1984) to the legendary Saigon Palace gig featuring the Rockin’ Dogs and Noise 292.
This show (which found Sam Wilson covering all Rockin’ Dogs vocals while Dave Ellison recuperated from laryngitis and 17-year-old Wendell Kling evading ID inspection in the men’s room until Noise 292’s appearance) was also photographed by Ms. Stalnaker-Bevilacqua. But this is the first time we’ve been able to put it on the calendar. Mystery solved — thanks, Lori!
Bonus artifact: an ad featuring a July 29, 1983, appearance by the Rockin’ Dogs at the Headquarters (with the Ripsaws and Jimmy & the Vandals). I’m afraid I didn’t catch this show; the Answers, Noise 292 and Hair Theatre were playing the Che Cafe that night.
Courtesy of Rockin’ Dogs drummer and band archivist Cole Smithey, here’s a collection of photographs from the band’s last phase, when it became a trio with the departure of founding guitarist/vocalist Dave Ellison.
In addition to Cole, these pictures from late 1984 and early 1985 feature Sam Wilson (guitar, vocals) and Jane Bunting (bass, vocals).
“OK, now we’re diggin’ into the archives!” writes Rockin’ Dog Dave Ellison of “Bye Bye Bye,” the latest stellar Dogs single and earliest Dogs recording to join our hit parade.
“This is from the historic Rockin’ Dogs San Marcos Sessions, featuring the earlier lineup of Sam Wilson on guitar/vocals; Dave Ellison on bass/vocals; Jim Meisland on guitar; and Scott Nichols (a k a Scott Slob) on drums.
“In 1982, we had a rented practice room in a metal building in San Marcos, which was owned by Vietnam vet auto mechanics. They used to work on cars in that building all night long. We used to practice until late at night, and they gradually grew tired of our racket and evicted us.
