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(Wallflower/Blues Gangster/BeatHog Dave Rinck introduces a new Che Underground feature with culinary flair.)

Aside from music, eating is in my opinion “the other” great joyful sensory activity in life. And for the past 20 years, ever since I left San Diego, I’ve had the good fortune to travel the world trying some of the best foods the human race ever invented. (The accompanying photo was taken in one of my favorite restaurants in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon circa summer 2003. OK, it’s a Hezbullah stronghold — but man, I’d never let a little thing like Islamic fundamentalism stand between me and a good tabouli!)

Now, there’s really nothing out there that can hold a candle to three rolled tacos with guacamole or a carne asada burrito from Roberto’s, but I have discovered some fantastic grub over the years. So now, just like we’ve shared music we’ve discovered since we parted company, I wanna share with you here one of my all-time fav foods.

Read moreThe Che Underground Cookbook:
Dave Wallflower’s Peri Peri Chicken

(Miss Kristi Maddocks documents the birth of a new Che Underground collaboration.)

April 1, 2008, was an important day to me. It marks a positive turning point in my life — a day that my life changed in an unexpectedly beautiful way — a day that eventually led me back to many dear old friends, and into the lap of The Che Underground, and The Blues Gangsters.

April 1, 2008 was the date of my 3rd REBIRTHday Party, at Speisekammer Restaurant in Alameda. This was the third time I celebrated this date — the day in 2005 that I almost lost my life to a brain hemorrhage and massive stroke. By 2008, I was well on my way to a nearly complete recovery.

For the first time since I turned ill, I felt strong enough to extend invitations to my former musical partners and include them in the festivities. I was opening my heart, my mind and my world. A few of these musical guests included Anni and Carina of Everybody Violet … which in a way was a real reunion for us; neither Anni nor I had seen or talked to Carina in over 20 years.

Read moreFrom ZERO to HEROine: On becoming a Blues Gangster & ‘The Perils of Life’

(Tell-Tale Heart/Town Crier Ray Brandes checks in on our playlists and makes a couple of suggestions of his own.)

Back in April 2008, Toby Gibson asked the question, “What are we listening to now?” It’s time for an update.

I’ve got a couple of recommendations for your exploration. The first is a group whose name I’d heard lauded for years by the cognoscenti, but didn’t get around to listening to until a couple of years ago. Dr. Feelgood formed in the early ’70s in Canvey Island, Essex, and played a blistering, break-neck paced rhythm and blues that recalled the early Rolling Stones and jump-started the English proto-punk movement called “pub rock.”

The main attractions were Wilko Johnson, the manic guitarist whose quirky, pickless style often left his hands raw and bloody, and Lee Brilleaux, the filthy lead singer and harp player. Though some form of the band is still playing (Brilleaux died several years ago), stick to the first three albums, which were recorded with Wilko Johnson: “Down by the Jetty,” “Malpractice,” and “Stupidity.” I recently acquired a DVD of a film called “Goin’ Back Home,” which rivals any live concert performances I’ve ever seen on film, including the scenes of the Clash in “Rude Boy,” and even the Who at the Rolling Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus.

Read moreMy favorite things: What are you listening to?

(Tell-Tale Heart/Town Crier Ray Brandes turns the guilty-pleasure principle on its head.)

Inspired by Megan’s take on “Guilty Pleasures,” I’ve been considering those musical acts, films and books and pieces of art often hailed by critics as “brilliant,” and “ groundbreaking” but that fail to float my boat in the least.

We’re often told what to like by the “experts.” College professors devote their lives to the Western canon of literature, music and art which has been passed down like a sacred text from the wise ancients. Those most loathsome of creatures — rock-music critics — frequently publish self-congratulatory surveys of most influential rock artists, while film critics gather frequently to laud the greatest cinematic masterpieces of all time.

But let’s face it: While many of us can appreciate a work of art for its technical proficiency or for its influence on other artists, many of us are often left scratching our heads in bemusement. If I fail to be moved by an artist generally recognized as brilliant, does that somehow make me boorish, uncivilized and unsophisticated?

Read more“I don’t get it”

(An apt contribution from a Tell-Tale Heart: Ray Brandes asks about your formative flame!)

A man-eater is a carnivorous animal that has developed a taste for human flesh. Such animals, usually big cats, sharks or crocodiles, appear suddenly and without warning, creating terror and wrecking havoc upon communities.

In Monster of God, a fascinating book on the subject, David Quammen suggests that humans are fascinated with man-eaters because they raise our “awareness of being meat.” He says great and terrible flesh-eating beasts have been a part of our psyche ever since the days when “every once in a while, a monstrous carnivore emerged like doom from a forest or river to kill someone and feed on the body. It was a familiar sort of disaster — like auto fatalities today — that must have seemed freshly, shockingly gruesome each time, despite the familiarity.”

Some of the beasts are legendary:

• Read moreMan-eaters and mad crushes

(Joey Miller, a k a P Gargoyle, f k a Joanne Norris, drummer for the Injections as well as Noise 292 and Everybody Violet, explores the sexual cultures of the San Diego scene.)

In 1979, when I started playing drums in the Injections, I was just another white working-class kid who happened to be a sailor who had landed in San Diego.

The music that we were playing really had no particular label, but we did end up somehow landing in the punk genre, which was awesome. My friend recently saw the picture of us that is on the blog and commented that we all “looked like a middle-class kids.” We were not wearing leather, safety pins, ripped shirts, colored hair and spikes … There was none of that. I had 501s on and a lesbian baby butch mullet.

I was also in the Navy. and it was about the time that I had just come out of “the closet.” I was underage, so going to any clubs took some tricky business to accomplish. I could drink on the base (some watered-down beer with other underage sailors, which was as exciting as listening to a foghorn).

I felt isolated and alone and had a propensity toward off-the-wall music. I had been weaned on Lou Reed, David Bowie, Mott the Hoople and George Clinton, to name a few, but had just come from 18 months of subjection to the Armed Forces Radio and Television Network. I had just come to San Diego a few months before after being stationed in Puerto Rico for 18 months.

Read moreQueercore

(Miss Kristi Maddocks breaks down the locks.)

One song that crossed from 1980s subculture into the mainstream was Cyndi Lauper’s “throw-it-to-the-wind” anthem “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!” And (inspired by everyone from Ms. Lauper to Madonna to Siouxsie Sioux, The Cure, Billy Idol and Duran Duran to earlier rockers like The New York Dolls, Patty Smith and the Sex Pistols), teens in the ’80s had fun expressing themselves through their HAIR.

Due to its mild climate and the relatively easygoing culture of middle-class affluence, San Diego was a warm host to post-punk and New Wave hairdos. There were three great places to find fun unconventional hairdos in San Diego: If you were over 21, it was Club I-D and Trevor Watson’s Revolt In Style magazine. If you were hip and gay, Studio 9. If you were on the younger side, (like me), you might keeps busy as a hair model at Vicky Lavanti’s Avanti Salon in La Jolla/Pacific Beach. Let me tell you people, Vicky Lavanti’s girls had a lot a fun — almost too much fun, if you know what I mean!

Read moreHair obsession! Girls (and boys) just wanna have fun

(In this installment, Wallflowers vocalist Dave Rinck commemorates the Sex Pistols’ cycle of self-consumption.)
I love Ziggy Stardust and Marc Bolan and all that ’70s stuff. I mean, I even wanted to cover “Metal Guru” with Fleminger at an open-mic night in San Diego last month. But given the vast sea of discontent that summed up the bloated musical mainstream of the ’70s, it was inevitable that a band would eventually appear that would challenge the very concept that pop music can or should have any meaning. “Nihilism” is a great word that gets used very loosely, but if you look it up in the dictionary, you’ll find that it has a very specific and useful meaning:

“Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy. While few philosophers would claim to be nihilists, nihilism is most often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche who argued that its corrosive effects would eventually destroy all moral, religious, and metaphysical convictions and precipitate the greatest crisis in human history.

Read moreThis We Dug: The Sex Pistols

This flyer from the Jason Seibert Collection is evocative enough of the era and the roots of the Che Underground to merit its own post.

This gig at the Adams Avenue Theater features 5051, the Injections “& some others”; an early photo of Wallflowers vocalist Dave Rinck; and a design by David “GI” Klowden, 5051 vocalist and future Tell-Tale Hearts drummer. Note the instruction to “be there between 9:30-10:00 if you want to miss the mod bands.”

“I don’t know who the bands were,” Klowden says 26 years later, “but I am pretty sure I enjoyed them more than I did my own band that night.”

Read moreEvery flyer tells a story

(Angelo Victor Mercure salutes a true son — and daughter — of the San Diego underground.)

Claude Christensen-Coma is/was a San Diego native whose initial interest in music was sparked by the early 1960s British Invasion.

At age 13, Claude purchased his first guitar. By 1979 (at age 27) he put together his most influential band: Claude Coma and the IVs. The lineup consisted of Claude (mainly on vocals, sometimes on rhythm guitar); Don Story (lead guitar); John Gunderson (bass guitar); David Davenport (keyboards); and Terry Micalizio (drums).

This band played all-original music at a time when disco still ruled the airwaves.

Claude was sole songwriter, and his titles and lyrics were a bit salacious, to say the least: “Suzy Slut”; “Babies In Convent Walls”; “Rock and Roll Derelict”; “Let’s Go to Hell”; well, you get the idea. Despite the weirdness of such titles and lyrics, Claude’s wording was always interesting, his melodies and harmonies true to the ear, and – for the era (the deeply grim Carterite recession and the grudgingly successful Reaganite “recovery”), Claude’s music somehow seemed so appropriate.

Read moreClaude Coma and the IVs, resuscitated