Cyndie Jaynes’ TV eye catches the Tell-Tale Hearts looking smart in a variety of venues, including more outdoor performance footage from the Che Cafe.
Could the black-and-white shots on the patio of the Che date from Dave Fest 3? (I’ve uploaded those photos at maximum resolution; the cast of characters populating the background itself represents a San Diego greatest-hits compilation!)
Hey, Eric — what’s with the Telecaster in the Che shots? I don’t remember that axe.
Disclaimer: I did not take the last photo -- it was from their album, but it was a nice shot, so I sent it along.
Seeing these pictures makes my foot ache seeking a fuzz box to stomp on (pavlovian response?).
The Tele is a 70’s thinline with an added Gibson (I think) humbucker in the bridge position. I had a “Jimmy Reed” Kay that I originally bought off Carl Rusk and then traded to Lou Damian for this guitar, it was my first real Fender. I played it on the “Now Sound” EP, and live for a few years. It was a good one, and to this day I play a maple necked Telecaster.
I want Lou to join us! Does anyone have contact info?
I saw Lou within the last 5 years at a club in Kensington. He had picked up the saxophone and the jazz bug pretty seriously. He still had his trademark smile. We spoke briefly and he was gone….no contact info.
Let’s hear it for the maple necked Telecaster…my guitar of choice these days as well.
Has anyone noticed how popular Telecasters seem to be right now with indie rock bands? It seems like every photo of a band I see someone’s holding a Tele.
Hey Cyndy…
I’ve really been admiring your photograps…you seem to have always been in the right place at the right time….
I’m looking forwartd to catching up with you. I heard that you already have a book deal in the works! Funny thing, I was thinking I might write one some day….maybe one day soon!
One thing is for sure, my photo collection pales in comparisson to yours! Great work! throw me a line!…
Great photos. So let me get this right, Cyndie and Kristi were in a band called Everybody Violet? I know Hair Theatre played with them, but a lot is fuzzy now. I’d love to hear the recordings I’ve read here exist. On the Tele’s, I love the way the good ones play and sound. They’re danged expensive these days, brand name and all.
Hey Kristi!
I remember hanging out with you at quite a few shows and at your house when you were living with Jeff and Keith. Then life got crazy and there was a migration up north….
I thought you were such an awesome dancer at those shows! Hope you are doing well.
That’s the 1962 (i think) champagne sparkle Gretsch kit i bought from Tony Suarez for $200. ha. what’s it worth now? $2000? It was the second TTHs drumset. the first was a blue and silver swirly 60s Japanese “Majestic.”
And the authentic Tongues of Truth style shirt that i found at a thrift store!
Thanks very much for these great photos, Cyndie.
Now that I think of it. Lots of girls were amazing dancers. Does anyone know what happened to Laurie Shuldice?
Laurie Shouldice lives up in San Francisco. She was a roommate of Karen Shelver for a while. I saw her last at the Tell-Tale Hearts reunion and she was doing great. Here is her myspace: http://www.myspace.com/2373753
A few thoughts:
-Perceptive Che Undergrounders will spot three Eric Bacher guitars: the green Gretsch, the black and white Silvertone and the above mentioned Tele.
-A couple of these shots are definitely Studio 517, the photo in which I look like a monkey in a Kinks suit and Mike positively deranged is from the Backdoor show with the Chesterfield Kings, and the photo with Mike in the grey sweater is from 1986, after Eric left and Peter Miesner replaced him. (The Vox amp is a clue). I can’t ID the one with the curtains, or the photo in which I’m wearing a blue shirt. Why is Eric behind David? Is this PVTV03 in LA? They had an odd stage setup.
-The items displayed on Bill’s Vox Jaguar are an excellent summation of his life at the time: sunglasses? Check. Beer? Check. Harmonicas? Check. Cigarettes? Check.
-Could Lou Damien be any happier?
Shouldice calls herself “Lola” now … The Tell Tale Hearts those guys had a lot of zits … I’m still waiting for pics of 5150.
I can’t picture Lou without a mile-wide grin on his face.
Honestly, you guys know more than I do about where these were -- I didn’t write anything down, although a lot of them were from 517. I think Ray is right about the Kinks suit (which I love BTW) because I have some Chesterfield Kings photos that I scanned for Matt. I never played in a band, didn’t know how to play an instrument (although Paul Howland tried to teach me how to play bass). I just sat around with my camera -- who knew it would come in so handy all these years later?
Hey Kristi! Are you in New York? I got that impression from one of the posts. I’m still in the Bay Area, married, two boys. The first picture book is coming out in the spring, and we’re working out a book deal for a young-adult novel (or two) right now. When it’s not woefully depressing, the publishing world is fabulous. I say go for it!
I just set up a (lame) MySpace page -- I’ll drop you a note!
Great Pics Cyndie. I especially like the one of Eric and Lou. It’s Lou just as I remember him.
Dave K, RE the value of that drum kit, and everything else, I was reading a book on investments the other day, and did you know that the NUMBER ONE investment to put your money in over the last twenty years, would’ve been musical instruments?! That’s right, if we had just kept all of our money in instruments, we’d have done better than other investors in any other market -- equities, bonds, precious metals, emerging markets mutuals, you name it.
Now I think that’s actually because so many companies making instruments dissapeared from the U.S. and set up their factories in Asia in the early 70s, causing a big jump in the value of older American instruments as they started to dissapear, so its not clear if that’s going to hold true for the next twenty years (i.e. the big increment in value may have already occured, in the 80s and 90s to adjust for the impact of those factory moves), but what the hell… as your investment advisor, I say go out and buy a guitar anyway…
I was just reading something online written by a guy who’s been buying and selling vintage instruments for 30 years or so. He was talking about the absurd prices of vintage guitars and how people think they’re great investments because they keep going up. His point was that the baby boomer generation that are paying these prices (because they think they’re buying a piece of their generation’s history) are the end of the line…that no generation after them are going to put that kind of value on an electric guitar…and that in a few years none of the people who paid all this money for these instruments will be able to sell them.
As for the quality of guitars being made these day…I think its better than ever, and the prices are more reasonable than ever. Fender, in particular, is building guitars every bit as good as anything they made in the 50s and 60s…and for a lot less dough.
Dave K, I loved that blue drumset you had where the drums were kinda cone shaped! What was that?
Dave Ellison: I’m told the neck alone on my Fender Musicmaster bass is worth $1,500!!
Among the Web sites I’ve run is CycleWorld.com, so I got to learn a bit about the demographic forces driving the motorcycle market. It turns out sales peaked twice over the past 40 years: in the late ’60s and early ’70s when a bunch of young guys saw “Easy Rider” and other counterculture films and went out and bought bikes; and recently, when those same guys are retiring and indulging themselves by collecting the bikes they wanted as kids.
Obviously we need to invest in old Flying Vs, VW vans and fringe jackets!
I think we need to figure out what 20 year olds will still value in 20 years, so we can stock up and sell it back to them. Of course, we might be too old to enjoy the money then. 🙁
But yeah, people pay hundreds of dollars just for the freakin’ POTS they used in old Fenders and Gibsons.
Dave, I think you have a point here. It took me a long time to come to grips with the fact that there are actually good instruments being built in Asia these days, especially guitars. I still play a 1926 Conn also sax, but the other day I picked up an (obviously Japanese) Yamaha, and it was like it played itself compared my old antique. So we probably missed the market when it comes to investing in musical instruments. I play a Korean-built Epiphone Dot II now BTW, which I think works perfecly (or anyway, any problems there are anren’t the guitars fault, the player on the other is a bit questionable…). I’d love to own a 335 someday, but no way I’m going to part with that kind of dough just to have an American name on my guitar.
Funny enough, I never got over the anti-Asia bias when it came to motercyles though…
Dave I bought that Gretsch set from YOU for $200. That’s the old Paladins drum set too, when they were a 4 piece. You bought the Voxx Trixon kit with the cash from me. I didn’t hold on to it for very long. I drummed with The Trebels using that kick.
Man, the sweatin to the oldies gigs at studio 517. Those shows at the 517 were always chaotic and on the sheer brink of shambles. Who’s amp would fall over? would the pa fail due to the heat? I miss that edge.
I do remember that the first reunion had a bit of that chaos that always seemed to follow a TTH show. Mike’s amp fell over and Bill didn’t show up. But, we had a great time!
The thing I remember most about 517 was that you’d be sneezing black snot for the next 24 hours from whatever it was that was circulating in that basement. Amazing we haven’t all succumbed to black lung disease.
On the brink of shambles? Many nights we fell completely into the abyss. When it was right, though, it was like hurtling full speed towards the cliff and stopping right at the edge. Frequent were the drum malfunctions. At those early gigs I remember David borrowing shoelaces from the audience mid-set to fix his drumset. Bill’s amp was the one that would fall over. Typically, Bill would, too.
Those ’94 reunion shows were pretty good, and I have the videotapes to prove it. Search youtube for Tell-Tale Hearts reunion and you’ll see what I mean. It was that last show, at Al’s Bar in LA that Bill never showed, and we did it without him. I borrowed some rusty harps from an enthusiastic (and I’m sure later disappointed) fan and proceeded to drink too much. Mike refers to that show as the one at which the wheels finally came off the bus.
One of my favorite shows we ever played was in January 1985 at the Blue Note in Columbia, Missouri. We were on our only sojourn outside of the southwest and in the midst of one of the coldest winters on record. The Blue Note is a large college bar, the only thing to do in Columbia at the time, and there were hundreds of inebriated students crammed onto the dance floor. We must have played two hours, because they wouldn’t let us leave! By the end of the show, the stage of full of kids dancing and jumping off and at the end of the night, the club owner gave me $850 in ones, which I stuffed in my pocket triumphantly. At one point in the set, Bill dumped a beer onstage, shorting out the power to the building and leaving the club in total darkness for about ten minutes, during which we played two or three songs without the benefit of amplification or sight. I’m sure we each have a ton of great TTH memories.
Here’s that 1994 reunion, and you guys indeed sound righteous!
Ted, you’re absolutely right. Must be the black lung messin’ up my brain again.
Damn you Matt -- now I’ve spent an ungodly amount of time watching the TTH on YouTube and am left feeling decidedly homesick for a certain place in time.
Tony, that’s funny how i got the drum set sale memory backwards.
Did i buy that kit directly from The Paladins, i wonder. I do remember that “The Paladins” was written in permanent marker on the hi-hat cymbals (inside). The Trixon 1965 Telstar drums were the blue conical ones you asked about Dave. They were made in Germany by the Trixon company and distributed in the US by Vox. i still have them & i have been slowly restoring them.
Looking in one of the photos, I spot Tony Sanchez in the audience, along with Alena, Bart Mendoza, and even Chris Negro in his trademark Civil War “kepi” cap! Just in one frame! It’s the photo in the lower left row featuring Eric Bacher and Mike Stax mid-performance.
It’s great to see Lou Damien beaming in that other pic. This is out of the blue, but somehow back then I had seen a photo or two of Ondine from the Warhol “Factory” scene, and always thought that Lou and Ondine sort-of looked alike. Both of them reminded me, appearance-wise, of some kind of Roman Empire figure by way of Fellini (Satyricon, I guess), but I think that is just my imagination running away with me. However, in some way, I always saw laurel leaves when I looked at Lou.
That is but one of the reasons why I am living in this padded cell today.
I think she spelled it “Lori” Shouldice, rather that Laurie, but if it’s Lola now, I can dig it. Hello, Lola! We go back to days of the Gravedigger V or even just before. But I will always be grateful to Lori for loaning me her VW bus a few times years later up in Berkeley and Oakland when I was going through a rough move or two circa 1998.
It would be fun to see what photos she might have of the ’84 and forward period. I hope she’s doing really well--and chooses to come hang out here sometime.
Tom: Wish granted! Lori Shouldice is rockin’ Che Underground big-time.