Uncategorized | The Che Underground

Mike Stax talks Loons in lockdown

January 1, 2022 by Mmrothenberg

As The Loons prepare for their Feb. 19 appearance at The Casbah San Diego for A Che Underground Midwinter Masque, lead singer Mike Stax reflects on how he and the rest of the band — Chris Cancelliere, Chris Marsteller, Marc Schroeder and Anja Stax — have kept their collaboration fresh despite pandemic pressures.

Navigating the lockdown as a band was strange.

I know some other bands were anxious to stay “relevant” and felt the need to release new music or new videos to remind people of their existence. We never felt compelled to do that.

We figured that everybody was preoccupied with a potentially life-threatening global pandemic — that raised uncertainty about their income, their health, their families, their futures — and the last thing on their minds would be whether or not the Loons had any new music to share. So we went about our lives, and took care of our families and didn’t fret about staying “relevant.”

Friday was always the Loons’ practice night, so during the lockdown Fridays nights were Loons Zoom meetings. We’d spend two, three, four hours hanging out on camera, having some laughs, catching up on the previous week’s news and of course talking about music. So even though we weren’t playing music, we still felt bonded as a band.

The genesis of Elvis Christ

September 30, 2011August 2, 2011 by Mmrothenberg

(Jack Gamboa continues his Che-infused memoir of his mid-’80s band.)

It was the very first day of school after summer break. I was walking to my Propaganda Films of the Third Reich lecture. (I had already taken Bram Dijkstra’s “Devils, Vampires and Other Horrible Creatures of 19th Century Literature.”) Suddenly on the path to the quad I saw my best childhood friend Steve. I had not seen him in months!

He was a guitarist, so we were talking about the local band scene, I was telling him about the rockabilly outfit the Wild Desires. I “BongoChild” drummed for Dave “LadiesLove” Ellison on Magnatone Typhoon and bass legend Andy “ThunderTrain” Seidlinger on lownotes. A bad-ass situation too perfect to last. We had broken up a few months before. Andy had also been playing my borrowed drums for a pair of punks who called themselves Leather Geek, but he transferred to UCLA to study Structural Engineering. I told Steve: “I would love to meet up with Leather Geek! I never saw them play, but I hear that they threw legendary parties. Rumor has it that Jory is an excellent guitarist, and Eric did a poetry reading of ‘Walk This Way’ by Aerosmith!” Steve was laughing and digging that. So we were gossiping about musicians and stuff like that. We turned a corner and entered an open lawn area (I think it was called ‘the Quad’ in those days) …

The Penetrators in August:
SDMA lifetime kudos, Casbah gig

September 4, 2011June 13, 2011 by Mmrothenberg

August 2011 is a momentous month for San Diego hometown heroes the Penetrators, when lead singer Gary Heffern returns from Finland in time for the band to receive a recognition for lifetime achievement at the 2011 San Diego Music Awards August 8! The event will also occasion another Penetrators reunion performance at the Casbah August 13.

“As a child, I was told, ‘You will never amount to anything,’ ” Heff recalls. “Still that voice in the back of my head repeats that over and over again. It’s a mantra I fight against on a daily basis.

“When I first heard the Ramones’ ‘Beat on the Brat,’ the New York Dolls’ ‘Trash’ and the Sex Pistols’ ‘No Future,’ they weren’t just words but anthems to me, something that was personal, and all mine … People who understood those songs and what they meant to me became instant friends … It was us against the world …

The Crawdaddys at Rhino Records!

December 11, 2017June 4, 2011 by Mmrothenberg

(Crawdaddys Redux: Joe Piper channels his inner Andrew Loog Oldham to write this eyewitness account of the Crawdaddys’ long-awaited return to the stage last Sunday.)

What was originally intended to be a “low-key warmup gig” for the reunited ’81-model Crawdaddys prior to their jetting off to Spain for a prestigious appearance alongside The Nashville Ramblers at a bullfight or somesuch (actually “Go Sinner Go!! 2011”), quickly turned into The Event Of The Summer one whole day before summer even officially kicked off.

A capacity crowd crammed into the Rhino Records pop-up store on Santa Monica Blvd. last Sunday evening to raise money for a most worthy cause (MusiCares, providing a safety net for music people in times of need — feel free to contribute any time) and get their Rave Up R&B groove thangs righteously refurbed.

Tube rox: San Diego public-access TV

December 11, 2017March 13, 2010 by Mmrothenberg

(Jay Allen Sanford tunes into San Diego music on the public airwaves.)

One of the many things we can either thank or curse the U.S. Congress for is public-access television. In the 1970s, as TV cable companies were growing into regional monopolies, Congress mandated that larger cable providers must put aside channels for public-produced community programming.

Today, there are over a thousand public access TV stations operating nationwide. When the city of San Diego grants charters to cable giants like Cox and Time-Warner, those companies guarantee this access to the airwaves, training (at no charge) interested community residents to run the equipment and to shoot and produce their own programs.

Big hair, long memories:
Straita Head Sound games for April

December 14, 2017February 22, 2010 by Mmrothenberg

Apparently the Che Underground crew isn’t the only set of 40-something San Diego veterans with a yen to revisit their musical past: A contingent of bands that frequented Straita Head Sound in the early ’80s has announced its own reunion show at San Diego’s 4th & B April 17, featuring Assassin; Street Liegel with Mike Liegel on vocals; Dirty Birdz (with members of Vamp); and Jonas Grumby.

“Straita Head Sound may be gone, but the music lives on,” the promoter proclaims. “So dig out your KGB cards and head downtown for a killer night. With an event like this, you never know who might show up!”

Probably Perhaps few of our own regular visitors! At 25 years’ remove, the names and places do evoke for me a few very dim echoes of a side of San Diego that might as well have been a different planet. And at the same time, the impulse to get their scene back together is awfully familiar in light of our own Che Games for May, among other projects.

Roots of San Diego rock ‘n’ roll, Part 2

December 16, 2017January 11, 2010 by Mmrothenberg

(Thanks to Jay Allen Sanford’s archives and Mikel Toombs‘ text conversion, here’s the second part of Steve Thorn’s epic history of SD rock ‘n’ roll. This installment first ran in Kicks #4 in December 1979. Read Part One here!)

April Fools Day, 1964, was the day KGB began its strategy to become the number one rock station. KCBQ and KDEO were the unsuspecting victims of the April Fools surprise — “Boss Radio” had come to town.

The brainchild behind the Boss Radio sound was programming wizard Bill Drake, who, prior to bringing the format to KGB, had a successful track record with radio stations in Northern California and a station in Atlanta.

The roots of San Diego rock ‘n’ roll

December 16, 2017November 24, 2009 by Mmrothenberg

(Here’s a long post, but one that answers a lot of questions about our earliest prehistory … Many thanks to Steve Thorn for writing the following piece exactly 30 years ago and to Mikel Toombs for scanning and sending it to Che Underground: The Blog.)

“This is ‘The History of San Diego Rock ‘N’ Roll, Part One: A Sleeping Town Wakes Up’ by Steve Thorn, from Kicks #3,” Mikel writes. “11/1979. Perhaps Steve — I believe he now writes for San Diego Troubadour — can chime in with Part Two.”

“The only thing happening in San Diego County is Eno and closet homosexuality.” — Kim Fowley, quoted in Phonograph Record Magazine.

The above quote from Sunset Strip’s famous rock impresario is one of the many snide remarks that have been hurled at San Diego and its people for years. Fowley’ s comment is not the most famous barb, however; that distinction belongs to satirist Mort Sahl, who once said, “There are only two things to do in San Diego — visit the zoo or join the Navy.”

As a native San Diegan, I’ve beeh buried over the years with comments made by immigrants to the county, telling me that San Diego has shallow musIcal roots, particularly in rock ‘n’ roll. A little research into the city’s musical past, however, reveals this is not the case at all.

Read moreThe roots of San Diego rock ‘n’ roll

Sensational: The All Bitchin’ All Stud
All Stars and the roots of
Country Dick Montana

December 11, 2017October 17, 2009 by Mmrothenberg

(Ray Brandes’ exclusive account of a San Diego underground supergroup. Read the full version in Che Underground’s Related Bands section.)

Part impresario, part cheerleader and all entertainer, Beat Farmer, Penetrator and Crawdaddy Dan McLain had such an impact upon the San Diego music scene in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s that it is difficult to imagine how it might have developed without him. Those who knew him well speak of him reverentially — as a forefather, a catalyst and revolutionary. But it was his personality that endeared him to everyone he met.

Joe Piper, guitarist for the Crawdaddys, Decagents and Bogtrotters, remembers McLain fondly: “Easygoing, friendly, funny and personable, he had charisma out the ass. Dan really was one of the most decent, good-natured guys I’ve ever had the pleasure to know. He was an old school kind of guy. He was a gentleman and a scholar, a man’s man. Possibly he’d heard that old saw that a true gentleman will engage in an occupation that risks his life. Would that explain those precarious traverses across beer-slick bar tables like so many ice floes?”

Local heroes

December 12, 2017September 21, 2009 by Mmrothenberg

Ray Brandes is not only a San Diego musical treasure in his own right; he’s also established himself as a remarkable curator of our musical history.

Ray’s recent biographies of the Penetrators, the Unknowns, the Crawdaddys and the Zeros, among others, are unprecedented for their depth, narrative clarity, and comprehensive work with the original musicians and other key sources.

Other contributors to Che Underground: The Blog have added more pieces to the puzzle, with posts on formative bands such as 5051, Claude Coma and the IVs, and the Injections.