Reviving San Diego's Rock Renaissance
Discuss the gigs of our misspent youth!
(The latest from Paul Howland, a k a P Man.)
I made a new mix for the SD Dubstep Podcast. The selections are are combination of recent releases, classics, and unreleased material.
The Q and A consists of questions posed by members of The P Man Show Facebook Group. Big ups to the Facebook group; all the artists and labels that sent me tunes, SD Dubstep, and all my peeps; oh, and last but not least, to Heather for the photography.
— Paul Howland
More video from the original Morlocks has emerged on YouTube, including covers of songs by the 13th Floor Elevators, Q65 and the Count Five.
Exhibit A is a video by Eric Predoehl of the Morlocks performing the 13th Floor Elevators’ “You Don’t Know.” According to the post, it’s from an event produced by KFJC Radio and I.B.S. at the Works Gallery in San Jose, Calif., on Nov. 22, 1985:
(Bart Mendoza gets a sneak peek at a new DVD collection straight out of SD.)
San Diego has many great music-related companies within its borders; besides music labels, Taylor Guitars, NARM, Carvin Guitars and Deering Banjos immediately spring to mind. Top of the list for me, however, is El Cajon’s Grammy-nominated music archivist Reelin’ in the Years, “The world’s largest and most respected source of music footage.”
I bring this up because I’m really excited about a new DVD series from RITY, The British Invasion. The first four discs are out March 30, the box set featuring a bonus disc. I love that this, and RITY’s other series devoted to jazz, folk, blues and Motown, are from a San Diego company. But as you’d guess, any series that includes The Small Faces is especially going to get my attention.
A quick one, while he’s away: I’m blogging from the Hilton in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter, where I’ve arrived for a very short conference. In all my years of business travel, this is my first event in San Diego … And I do believe this is my first time in this part of SD since moving away in February 1987!
Thanks to Kristen Tobiason’s documentary efforts via her “Then and Now” series, we’ve virtually revisited sites of past glories before this neighborhood was cleaned up and relabeled the Gaslamp: the Zebra Club/Saigon Palace, Greenwich Village West, Studio 517, Funland …
My time is short and packed with grown-up business, but I’m hoping for a few minutes to stroll the old ‘hood. What do you think I’d see, if I could walk away from me?
Manual Scan has returned to the studio for the first time in 22 years and emerged with five new tracks that will debut on San Diego radio Sunday, March 14, at 9:30 p.m.
Scan (last seen tearing it up with members of the Penetrators at the latest Casbah Che Underground showcase Jan. 30) will be the featured band on FM94.9’s “The Pyles Sessions,” hosted by DJ Tim Pyles. The songs were produced and engineered at Signature Sound Studios by Alan Sanderson, who has worked with such luminaries as the Rolling Stones, Elvis Costello, Paul Westerberg and Weezer. Listen live at www.fm949sd.com!
(Dave Fleminger and Heather Vorwerck of the guitar/cello duo The Comeuppance ride the Mad Hatter’s coat tails and drop some fresh new tracks into the rabbit hole. Dave describes the journey.)
Recently I chanced upon the English director Cecil Hepworth’s 1903 movie “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” It was the first cinematic portrayal of Lewis Carroll’s famous Victorian novel. The only remaining print of the film is unfortunately quite damaged, even missing some scenes, but it’s a magical movie. And if anything the state of the film stock even adds to its otherworldly quality — perhaps because it was made less than 40 years after the book was first published. it offers a small glimpse into the very world from which the story originated.
Clearly, the storyline was already well-known to the 1903 movie-going public, as Hepworth chose to illustrate scenes from the book without much explanation of the plot.
(More international love for the work of Paul Howland, a k a P Man.)
I’m pleased to announce Fused Forces will be covering my weekly CybaFM show on Tuesday March 9 at 10 pm GMT. (I’m gonna be out of town.)
For those who don’t know, Fused Forces are a two man production and DJ team out of Essex UK. They’ve got an impressive discography of vinyl and digital releases, as well as a whole slew of really good Dubstep Forum freebies. They are known for their Dubstep and Grime stylings, but they assure me they are gonna switch it up a stylistically for this special cover show.
If only February were as long as other months, we’d have another traffic record on our hands! Two years since it began, Che Underground: The Blog keeps growing; every week brings more veteran San Diego scenesters into our orbit, all of them with their own stories and insights about the town where we grew up.
In that spirit: What bands, gigs, people or places would you like to learn more about? With nearly 10,000 of us hanging out here each month, we’ve got a mighty store of memories — and chances are awfully good that someone visiting the blog has answers to your questions. Let’s train the group mind on new subjects!
(How the other half lived: Jay Allen Sanford takes us briefly out of the underground to revisit a San Diego band’s dip into mainstream success.)
“Could you be the one I’m thinking of?
Could you be the girl I really love?
All the people tell me so,
but what do all the people know!”
(The Monroes, “What Do All The People Know”)
“To me, my whole life was just destiny,” says Eric Denton, one-time keyboardist for ’80s pop faves The Monroes. “I just felt I was destined to be a rock star, and there was just no doubt about it. And it all kind of came to a crushing end when The Monroes basically fell apart.”
On the heels of their live debut at last weekend’s Che Underground showcase at San Diego’s Casbah, the Blues Gangsters will be joining our own Jeffrey Luck Lucas at the Speisekammer restaurant in Alameda, Calif., Feb. 11 for an evening of semi-acoustic dinner theater.
Jeffrey Luck Lucas is a veteran of the Che Underground scene and longtime resident of the San Francisco Bay area who has played with many of us over the years. He recently sat for an interview with Osmosis Online, where he discusses his musical roots; his methodology; and his latest album, titled “The Lion’s Jaw.”
Read moreJeffrey Luck Lucas + Blues Gangsters:
Live in Alameda, Feb. 11