Che Underground: The Blog

Man-eaters and mad crushes

December 17, 2017May 25, 2009 by admin

(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

‘I was a Shambles drummer’

January 1, 2011May 22, 2009 by admin

(Bart Mendoza of Manual Scan and the Shambles counts off drummers he’s worked with.)

No doubt about it: Kevin Donaker-Ring and I have worked with a lot of drummers over the decades, keeping in mind that we first began our team-up in 1976.

Here are a few of the incredible musicians who have spent time behind a drum kit with Manual Scan or the Shambles over the past 30-plus years. Not pictured: Paul Brewin, Morgan Young, Terry Moore, Rob Wilson, Trace Smith, Brad Kiser. … There’s a future post there.

1) “I was a Shambles drummer” pin. People have sat in with the band for one song to obtain one of these.

Queercore

February 11, 2018May 18, 2009 by admin

(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.

From Scan to the Shambles

January 1, 2011May 16, 2009 by admin

(Bart Mendoza of Manual Scan and the Shambles talks about how he got from there to here.)

Of course the various members of the Shambles knew each other for years before the band’s formation, but I can put down the beginnings of the band to two events.

In the late ’80s, Kevin Donaker-Ring co-produced Manual Scan’s “Days & Maybes” EP with Ray Brandes (side note: humorous liners by Mike Stax), and we were all part of a group of musicians that frequented Megalopolis on Fairmount Ave., often playing round-robin style — David Moye and Jon Kanis amongst the round-robiners who didn’t end up in the band (though we did back up Kanis on a compilation-album track).

Gigs that hooked you

January 1, 2011May 13, 2009 by admin

Hey! Let’s talk about music, and San Diego, and San Diego music …

A long, long time ago, Che Underground: The Blog hosted a thread about our musicians’ first times on stage. Let’s reach even further back into the collective memory banks and talk a bit about those formative shows that made you feel like part of a scene of interesting people listening to interesting sounds.

We’ve talked about many local bands and a slew of notable visitors at venues ranging from the Skeleton Club to the Zebra Club to the International Blend/Kings Road Cafe … Adams Ave. Theater to the North Park Lions Club et al.

Now, which ones came first for you, and why?

This We Dug: X

June 30, 2009May 11, 2009 by admin

(“Then and now” pioneer Kristen Tobiasion extends Wallflower David Rinck’s “This We Dug” franchise with an homage to Los Angeles’ punk pioneers.)

In my opinion, no band from the punk-rock era captures the essence of southern California more than the band X.

Music aficionados may argue the Germs. But after all, X’s debut album is called “Los Angeles.” How can you argue with that?

That first album is a large stone in the bedrock of what makes up my foundation today. Paul Kaufman may bring Pink Flag onto the desert island. I nominate X.

Because they are brilliant. Because they kick ass.

A very Che Mother’s Day!

January 1, 2011May 10, 2009 by admin

While waiting for the crème brûlée French toast to finish baking and the coffee to drip, I realized I was remiss in not prepping a little shout-out to the mothers among us … and perhaps to our own moms as well.

From what I’ve read on these pages, we’ve got some pretty rockin’ mamas participating here — and many of the rest of us are lucky enough to have hooked up with one.

Not a new subject for us by any means, but one that deserves its own thread: Whether you’re a parent yourself or just the product of one (or more), what’s your adult perspective on this whole child-rearing business?

And for the breeders/rearers/crazy aunts and uncles in the audience: What have the children in your lives taught you about yourself — and your own parents?

Happy Mother’s Day!

Then and now: San Diego!

January 1, 2011May 8, 2009 by admin

(Kristen Tobiason rolls out the red carpet for Che Games for May.)

With the reunion happening at the end of this month, many of you will be trekking back to your original stomping grounds after many years of estrangement. Much like the sweetheart you were squeezing 25 years ago, time has changed the landscape.

I vividly remember the car ride to the grand opening of the Wild Animal Park in 1972. The drive north to Escondido was unfettered with the suburban sprawl that congests it today. There were cows grazing, clusters of eucalyptus trees, a checkered water tower. For years we looked to the north as Los Angeles spread like a virus, choking the groves of Orange County with highways and strip malls. “Thank god for Camp Pendleton,” we’d say.

The government-owned coastal stretch from Oceanside to San Clemente seemed like a fortress, like a desert between Sodom and Paradise. But with the real-estate Gold Rush of the ’90s, we were no longer an oasis. San Diego’s population skyrocketed to over 3 million. Those cows are long gone, and in their place, a Target, a Starbucks and many Olive Garden-type feeding troughs.

So when you come back to San Diego, you may notice some big changes:

Our Lady of Chula Vista

June 30, 2009May 5, 2009 by admin

(Tell-Tale Heart/Town Crier Ray Brandes explores the nature of faith. What do you see when you look up?)

On the evening of June 19, 1991, nine-year-old Laura Arroyo answered the door at her family’s two-story apartment in Chula Vista and was never heard from again. Several hours later and a few miles away, her body was found, still dressed in pink pajamas. She had been sexually assaulted, stabbed 11 times and hacked with a pickax.

It was a heartbreaking crime. For a couple of days, the third-grader’s parents appeared on television, their faces drawn and pale, pleading for help from the public in finding their daughter’s killer. The police had no leads, though, and it appeared the story would soon quietly disappear from the headlines.

Something curious happened next. Within a couple of weeks of Laura’s murder, rumors began circulating about an image of a young girl that had appeared on a blank billboard near Broadway and Main streets in Chula Vista. The image, it was said, was that of Laura Arroyo.

You Never Give Me Your Money: IOUs and the Ché Underground

March 27, 2019April 30, 2009 by admin

(Tell-Tale Heart/Town Crier Ray Brandes takes up a karmic collection with 25 years’ interest.)

In the cafés of Madrid, in the outdoor flea markets of Barcelona, and along the beaches of the southern coast of Spain, everyone is talking about “La Crisis.” The Spanish economy is now faltering badly, on the edge of a recession brought on by the collapse of a building boom; an average household debt 120 percent above the gross domestic product; and an unemployment rate of over 10 percent, the highest in Europe.

One company, however, which employs a curious and uniquely Spanish trade, has seen its business surge in this environment of unpaid bills. El Cobrador del Frac, the “debt collector in top hat and tails,” exists to humiliate debtors, playing on their sense of public shame. For a percentage of the collection, you can have your debtor’s footsteps dogged by a man conspicuously dressed like Fred Astaire and carrying a briefcase emblazoned with his trade. It is a shrewd and imaginative premise: that people are quick to repay the money they owe when their indebtedness is paraded in public.