(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.
I had found her just two weeks earlier by mounting an aggressive Internet search … and our favorite guy pal, David Fleminger, who I had been honestly intimidated by during my younger days in San Diego because of his musical genius. It wasn’t until I moved to San Francisco that he and I collaborated at SFSU and Café du Nord and really become true friends.
Talk of the Che Underground Blog first began in winter of 2007/8, but an earnest plan for Everybody Violet’s imminent reunion began at this event. And so, in the weeks following my 3rd REBIRTHday Party in 2008, my mind set shifted from being one of a person who just a survivor of a horrific near-death experience to a person who was looking forward to living again. Some of life’s greatest pleasures had seemingly been taken away in 2005. Now, I could see myself writing, singing and performing live on stage … somewhere in the horizon, in the not-too-distant future!
I was excited with the thought of getting back to performing with a band again but presumed it would be months down the road with Everybody Violet. Imagine how surprised I was when out of the blue (in late April or early May?) David Rinck recruited me to join a new collaborative band of Che Underground expats, still in his mind’s eye! I was game from the get-go … flattered to be invited to join a musical project with David Wallflower! I was nervous. … Was I up to the challenge? Could I still write words and music? Could I still sing, post-stroke? Would I blend in; with the more experienced male expats in the group? Soooooooooo many uncertainties!
Dave Rinck and I had been corresponding by e-mail since whispers of the Che Underground surfaced in March 2008. In his very first e-mail to me, David said, “Is this really Kristi Maddocks of SD underground fame? What are you doing these days?’ and I quickly replied,“ Good to hear from you! It’s the real deal … Miss Kristi Maddocks, thank you very much!” After alluding my many perils and near-death experience, I asked back, “How about you? Are you still wild and musical and driving motorcycles?”
It’s interesting but true: My last vivid memory of David Rinck and I hanging out in San Diego (sometime around 1985) was toward the end of his days with the Wallflowers. Now, my memory was foggy of this part … so David helped my here (blame it on the stroke). According to Dave, he came by the Pannikin and picked me up with his legendary Moto Guzzi to take me to The Wallflowers’ show at Safari Sam’s in Huntington Beach. (I thought he had come by to pick me up at the now notorious apartment on Madison Avenue.) I guess that the closing process at the Pannikin was difficult on that particular night, because Dave said that I’d brought a couple of beers that I’d “swiped” (sorry, Bob & Gay Sinclair!), and we drank them on the Beach at Marina Del Rey which, in turn, made us late for his gig.
I don’t remember who else played that night … but I remember we had a wild, fast time. And I do remember holding on for dear life during the ride there and back; as the cold and damp Pacific wind whipped in my ears and up my tiny miniskirt! Ewoouch! We were lucky that we got home safely; my opaque tights and jeans jacket didn’t offer me much protection riding on back of a motorbike — cruising down I-5 at 70 MPH! I have to admit, hanging out with David and being Bonnie to his Clyde was always an adventure! I think we got home about the time that the sun was rising … Classic San Diego sunrise … a la summer of 1985!
On the birth of The Blues Gangsters
True to his nature, the upshot of our e-mails was that Dave was going to take me on another wild ride. At the end of his very first communiqué Dave wrote “I’m going to London in September to see X-ray Spex — Wanna come?” I remember reading that line and almost falling out of my seat! You have to remember, I once was pretty wild and free, and had been to London numerous times over the years, but since April 1 2005, I had endured unspeakable physical and emotional trauma. Again arose the fear. … Could I do this? Was I ready and able? But David was very encouraging … and he also asked me to join the collaboration of the band that was shaping up to be the Blues Gangsters along with Rockin’ Dogs guitarist David Ellison. I decided to take the bait!
Now I [We] had a new mission in life… we had to get to know one another again, this time as grown adults! We had to be comfortable enough with one another to compose prepare and practice an album’s worth of material, to prepare to record an album’s worth of original songs in January 2009, when all of The Blues Gangsters would converge in San Diego for a week. Such as it was, over the next few months Dave and I swapped e-mails and made plans for our ride together to Istanbul and London where we would write and rehearse our songs and see the sights.
It was through the spring of 2008 then that Dave Rinck, David Ellison and I began to swap lyrics and audio files over the Internet and build the songs that would become The Blues Gangsters canon. I’d never met Dave Ellison, but he and I seemed to share a lot of common ideas and interests. He seemed keen on some similar musical models that incorporated both female and male vocal parts, and The Blues. Ellison would e-mail YouTube files of rare footage of Jefferson Airplane and other cool acts from Woodstock and The Monterey Jazz Festival from the late ‘60s-early ‘70s to Rinck and myself almost daily for a while, pointing out how sublime these musicians were. And then there was X-ray Spex and X. … No one could touch them. No One!
The first time I actually met Dave Ellison was during a trip down to LA to visit San Diego veteran Heather Phillips Capiello and ex-Primitive Rocker Shelley Ganz Kidd of the Unclaimed. It was July 2008, after Ellison and I had swapped audio files of my vocal ideas for a month or so, and we had a couple of written tunes under our belt, thanks to Ellison’s prolific songwriting and distinctive ear. Still, I was feeling a bit shy (and nervous) to be singing in front of him for the first time. That was until he pulled up to my friend Heather’s place in his old blue Chevy Malibu and he said hello with that warm grin and a twinkle in his eye. He was so easygoing and patient, and seemed to meet me at my musical vantage point with so little effort, that from then on most of my inhibitions and insecurities melted away. Unexpectedly, I had found another musical home for my voice.
In the beginning, to put me at ease, Rinck had told me to just send any old lyrics I might have on hand … perhaps left over from the good old days. I did indeed have some old lyrics that I had held on from the ‘80s & ‘90s, since Everybody Violet had split up, which I had continued to work on. In fact, one of my favorite tunes on “The Perils of Life” is “We Are Washed Clean,” which I had written and saved from the mid-‘80s. Several more of our favorite tunes are written with “old,” nearly forgotten lyrics that the Blues Gangsters brought back to life again! This experience has taught me to never throw poems or songs away! Never will I do that again!
Read more about the Blues Gangsters …
Interestingly, “The Perils of Life” was the first new tune I had written in a few years, most definitely the first artistic thing I had written since my stroke. It was one of those songs that came to me in a rush of inspiration. I wrote most of the lyrics within an hour, quite spontaneously, when I came home buzzed after seeing the Pirate band Skip Henderson & The Starboard Watch perform at my friend Cindy’s restaurant, Speisekammer in Alameda. Ironically, this was the same band that had performed the evening of my 3rd REBIRTHday Party (photo attached). The tune of the song had just popped into my head on the way home in the cab…so I threw my drunk ass across my bed and began to write the words hurriedly — as they came to mind, my handy new MP3 voice recorder in tow! The rest is pirate howling, wench-kissing, bank-robbing magic and history!
I had wanted to write and sing a duet for a very long time at this point … partly inspired by American Vaudeville, cabaret & jazz, and the songbooks of such greats as Cole Porter. But The Blues Gangsters are a rock-‘n’-roll band, so more forward in our minds were The Velvet Underground & Nico; X; and modern troubadours such as Serge Gainsbourg, Nick Cave and Tindersticks. Rinck did a great job of matching the my on-the-run story line with a Johnny Thunders/New York Dolls rock-‘n’-roll sensibility. (He and David Ellison always cite Thunders as one of their biggest influences, something that would resonate throughout the The Blues Gangster canon.) By the time you hear David Rinck singing, “We will survive dear — all the perils” over my response, “We’ll keep running, we will keep gunning,” you never would have guessed that he had had a morbid fear of singing duets, which almost put the kibosh on the entire idea!
The Blues Gangsters play “The Perils of Life”: Listen now!
Download lyrics to the Blues Gangsters’ “Perils of Life”!
I think that “The Perils of Life” is a special song and record on many different levels. First, to be human, one must endure the perils of life — struggles of everyday living. This is what makes each of us a “Blues Gangster” as we mitigate the struggles of life on earth. While the content of the song appears to be romantic in nature, the subtext focuses on the spirit above and beyond romantic love; the special connection of spirited friendships like those we (The Che Underground community) shared while growing up in the streets, beaches, living rooms and nightclubs of Greater San Diego in the early to mid-1980s!
I was lucky to be there … bored in San Diego and out and about with the rock-‘n’-roll hooligans of The Che Underground when I was a teenager. I was lucky to hear and make some great music in 1982-85; and I’m luckier still to have survived my near-death experience in 2005, and have a second chance at creativity with a group of four neat guys (David Rinck, David Ellison, Matt Johnson and David Fleminger) … called The Blues Gangsters de la Che Underground.
— Miss Kristi Maddocks (Bonnie)
With contributions by David Rinck (Clyde)
Thanks to my Mom Marian Maddocks for editorial assistance and typing!
Tracks:
- The Perils of Life (vocals by Maddocks & Rinck)
- Sweet Sensation (vocals by Maddocks)
- Tigershark Blues (vocals by Rinck, back-up by Ellison/Maddocks)
- Ride With Me/Sometimes I Forget I’m White (vocals by Rinck and Maddocks, with guest rap by Dylan Rogers of SWA)
- High Society (Borderline Blues) (vocals by Rinck)
- All About You (vocals by Maddocks)
- Tropical Year (lead vocals by Rinck, backed by Maddocks)
- We Are Washed Clean (vocals by Maddocks) guest appearance on cello by Heather Vorwerk (of The Comeuppance)
Links: