Che Underground: The Blog

Who’s next? Bands that mattered

March 30, 2019March 31, 2009 by admin

I’ve likened Che Underground: The Blog to one of those God’s eyes many of us made in the groovy ’70s: While the original effort has been focused on a small set of bands playing together in San Diego in the early ’80s, much of the beauty has come from the warp and weft of wider connections.

Along the way, we’ve talked about many local bands that influenced us and some later bands that shared members or aesthetics with the scenes and sub-scenes at the tight core of the site.

A few examples: Ray Brandes has done unprecedented historical research on the Crawdaddys, the Zeros and the Unknowns, and participants themselves have told us tales about Claude Coma and the IVs, the Injections, 5051, the Front, the Frame, Atrocity Exhibition and Structural Fracture, among others.

So, whose story should we tell next? Let’s discuss local bands you’d like to learn more about!

New Sounds and out-of-towners

June 30, 2009March 28, 2009 by admin

(Bart Mendoza of Manual Scan and the Shambles recalls visitors to the San Diego scene.)

During the mid ’80s, quite a few musicians from beyond the county line had extended stays in San Diego. In more recent times, musicians like The Thrills (from Ireland) are sent to live in San Diego for a spell to “soak up the culture,” or like Beatles compatriot Tony Sheridan and Secret Affair’s Paul Bultitude, they have close friends or family in the area.

In the ’80s, the draw was the local ’60s scene and numerous groups, including New Jersey’s Mod Fun and Tuscon’s Marshmallow Overcoat (and later Grimblewedge) mixed with locals for short spells of time. Lots of lifelong friendships and relationships started during that time. I’ve helped bring many groups to town over the years; back in the day, many of them stayed wherever I was living or my parents’ house. I still remember how thrilled my roommates were to find a “tent city” had sprung up in our front yard during a New Sounds Festival.

Hair obsession! Girls (and boys) just wanna have fun

December 14, 2017March 25, 2009 by admin

(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!

He’s a complicated man … Who’s your hero(ine)?

December 18, 2017March 23, 2009 by admin

(Patrick Works invokes a roll/role call of history.)

A long while back I went to see the remake of “Shaft.” I decided in the end that the movie fell kinda flat because the director missed a crucial half of the character. As I see it Shaft was Shaft because of two distinct things:

1. Shaft is a bad motherf*cker.
2. The chicks really dig him.

While Sam Jackson’s Shaft was definitely a pretty bad dude … Richard Roundtree he ain’t.
Then it occurred to me that Shaft was really a rock star character on screen … or that our rock stars are really screen stars on stage. Mick Jagger has of course explored this at length, as has David Bowie more fully and completely.

Now of course we have more than just music figures as role models, though so many of us fix on entertainment. Lately some dialog here has revolved around historical figures of influence so I thought I’d post the Lester Bangs Memorial Personality Survey:

Who in history is your underground hero? Punk progenitor? Fifth Column Forebearer?

Lemons Are Yellow: “Spotted Dick”

December 13, 2014March 20, 2009 by Paul Kaufman

(Lemons Are Yellow member Paul Kaufman describes the secret sauce behind the song.)

Back in the day, Tower Market atop Mount Davidson in San Francisco was the place for the band Lemons Are Yellow to stock up on snacks. This medium-sized grocery had an inexplicably large “British Foods” section, where you could stock up on Devonshire cream; HP sauce; and a mix for making your own dessert known as “Spotted Dick,” a baked pudding containing dried currants (hence the spots). Of course, the packaging called out to us, and soon we were at the Fleminger kitchen, baking up a batch.

“Why are the $^%%$&# comments switched off??”

January 1, 2011March 19, 2009 by admin

Urgent Che Underground alert: It’s just come to my attention that sometime last night, commenting was disabled on every one of the hundreds of posts on Che Underground: The Blog.

That means that nobody has been able to add new comments to any posts. It also means that some poor soul(s) with administrative privileges will have to open each post and click the little “Allow Comments” box. With more than a year’s worth of history now, that’s an ugly task. … And this is (I believe) the fourth time that gremlins have inflicted this glitch.

For now, I’ve reactivated commenting on the most recent posts, so you-all can start chatting again. And once I stop crying, I’ll gather a posse and go fix all of them.

Apologies! We’ve got a creaky old version of WordPress, a lot of content and limited technical resources.

While I’m at it (and with comments enabled on this post!) do you have any other questions about or issues with the technical side of the Che Underground online empire?

Question line: Che Games for May

December 11, 2017March 17, 2009 by admin

The Che Underground’s quarter-century reunion weekend is taking off like a rock-‘n’-roll Hindenburg! Here are some updates and an opportunity to ask additional questions about the greatest May 29-30 event since Wisconsin achieved statehood in 1848.

First, a couple of hot topics that have already arisen:

Impresario Tim Mays informs us that tickets for Che Games for May will go on sale March 21 27 via the Casbah Web site. Tickets are $10 in advance for a single night, $16 for a two-day pass. Buy early and often!
Some out-of-town visitors have inquired about sharing hotel accommodations the weekend of the show. If you’re anxious for someone to sleep with, cheap, I’ll be happy to make qualified introductions offline. (If you’re bashful, e-mail the Che Underground address privately.

Other burning issues to raise — logistical, rhetorical or existential? Float ’em here!

‘I saw a film today, oh boy’: A Che Underground feature film

October 18, 2014March 14, 2009 by admin

(Ray Brandes brings the casting couch to your browser.)

director's chair The characters and events of our youth, it has often been suggested, would make excellent material for a big budget, Hollywood drama. Imagine having $100 million to re-create a show at the Che Cafe, a late-night Presidio Park gathering, a line of scooters outside the Ken Cinema for a showing of “Quadrophenia,” or a fight behind the North Park Lions Club, for example, using some of the top names in the business today.

Earlier threads, back in the days of the Che Underground blog’s infancy, floated names like Christopher Walken, Shia LaBeouf, Johnny Depp and Daniel Radcliff (of Harry Potter fame) to play Steve Garris, Matthew Rothenberg, Jerry Cornelius and Bart Mendoza, respectively.

I Laughed, I Cried: Rock-‘n’-Roll Lyrics at Their Best and Worst

June 30, 2009March 10, 2009 by admin

(Ray Brandes tracks lyrical highs and lows.)

In the 1950s, entertainer Steve Allen, a relic from the sheet-music era, virtually made a career out of a comic bit in which he spoofed the hilariously incoherent, sex-crazed nonsense he believed spewed from the mouths of young rock ‘n’ rollers. In one notorious sketch, he mocked Elvis Presley by singing “Hound Dog,” wearing a tuxedo, to a basset hound. To Allen, rock ‘n’ roll was a childish fad whose day would soon pass, leaving the charts once again to Rosemary Clooney and Perry Como.

Rock ‘n’ roll, of course, has outlasted Allen, Clooney and Como. In various guises including everything from rhythm and blues to heavy metal, hip-hop and punk, rock ‘n’ roll has for more than fifty years been the primary outlet for the creative energies of young people to express their politics, sexual frustration, anger and love. Its lyrics have horrified parents, been debated in Congress, discussed in college classes and scribbled on Pee-Chee folders ever since Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” hit the airwaves in 1955.

A decade of Hair Theatre from the Allen Collection

January 1, 2011March 7, 2009 by admin

Of all the bands launched by the Che Underground diaspora, Hair Theatre was easily the most consistently active, gigging on the West Coast well into the 1990s.

This set of flyers from the collection of Hair Theatre lead guitarist Paul Allen spans a full decade, from 1984 to 1994. In the intervening years, the band underwent some personnel changes — most notably in the lead-guitar position — but they never stopped working.

Warning: Flyer #4 below is most likely Not Safe for Work (unless you work in a specialty bookstore or urologist’s office).