Reviving San Diego's Rock Renaissance
“Hi Matthew,” writes Greg S. “Maybe you remember me. … Toby Thunderbird/ Lifehater/ Gibson told me about your site.
“I’m visiting the US and thought I’d dig up some old photos to contribute, which have been sitting in a box in my mom’s garage. … Wasn’t sure how/where to post them, so here they are.”
(Dylan Rogers commemorates another painful loss to the rock-‘n’-roll underground and recognizes the Cramps’ California connection.)
“Lux Interior, lead singer of The Cramps, passed away yesterday due to an existing heart condition at Glendale Memorial Hospital.”
Holy shit! Not again!
The Cramps are one of my fave bands. I have seen them more than any other band. They really got me through some lean musical times (late ’80s -mid ’90s); for a while, they were the only decent bands you could go see with ties to early punk.
Yes The Cramps are associated with New York, but the true beginnings of the band started in the early- to mid-1970s in Sacramento, Calif., in a small apartment on the corner of 21st and H, where Lux and Ivy first lived together. (Rumor has it Lux picked up Ivy hitchhiking, and they had been together ever since.)
(Blake, a k a Matt, Wilson, revisits his history in the San Diego scene.)
I got into the Southern California punk scene with my friend Jesus Reyes, a kid from Tijuana living in Bonita, in about 1981 through the older punks at school; school being Bonita Vista in the South Bay, the punks being Matt Hemlin; Adam Morgan; Anna Stjerne; Cindy Vitalich; and mostly Scott MacDonald, who was my best friend’s older brother.
Scott was in the SDSH, which eased the way a bit as a kid in what could be a pretty intimidating scene for a 15-year-old. Mike Stobbe was a year ahead of us at the junior high, and he was into the same scene, but we weren’t tight. I used to ride my bike into Chula Vista from Bonita to buy records at Licorice Pizza at Broadway and H Streets when Bart Mendoza, Peter and Donnie worked there. They had a little “Punk/New Wave” section, and I think we bought most of it.
Read morePortrait of my life as a young San Diego punk rocker
As the Titans of the Che Underground suit up for their 25-year reunion at Che Games for May (May 29-31, 2009, in San Diego), vocalist Dave Rinck and bassist Paul Howland of San Diego’s original Wallflowers took time out to videotape their personal invitations to the event.
Be sure to catch the Wallflowers along with the Answers; the Gay Dennys (featuring members of the Tell-Tale Hearts and the Crawdaddys); Hair Theatre; Manual Scan; and Noise 292 at the Casbah May 30, 2009!
Got Che? Check out David Rinck, Dave Fleminger and Paul Kaufman’s musical promo!
“It’s interesting that most everyone seems to be as creative (and in most cases, maybe even more creative) than in our formative years,” Toby Gibson observed in a recent thread.
“Definitely we need a topic on how everyone is venting their creative bent these days. I’ll leave it at that and save the long-winded rant for the actual thread.”
Abridging my own long-winded rant, Toby nails another great topic. Nostalgia is a rich vein indeed, but this group is more than the sum of its memories. From Toby’s own writing to Patrick Works’ and Dave Doyle’s photography to Todd Lahman’s tonsorial stylings to the welter of punk-rock chefs in the house — to the folks who are still making music, of course — there’s a lot of creativity here (both money-making and otherwise).
(In this installment, Wallflowers vocalist Dave Rinck commemorates the Sex Pistols’ cycle of self-consumption.)
I love Ziggy Stardust and Marc Bolan and all that ’70s stuff. I mean, I even wanted to cover “Metal Guru” with Fleminger at an open-mic night in San Diego last month. But given the vast sea of discontent that summed up the bloated musical mainstream of the ’70s, it was inevitable that a band would eventually appear that would challenge the very concept that pop music can or should have any meaning. “Nihilism” is a great word that gets used very loosely, but if you look it up in the dictionary, you’ll find that it has a very specific and useful meaning:
“Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy. While few philosophers would claim to be nihilists, nihilism is most often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche who argued that its corrosive effects would eventually destroy all moral, religious, and metaphysical convictions and precipitate the greatest crisis in human history.
(Roving correspondent Kristen Tobiason revisits the scenes of our past glories. Today, we find out where the bodies are buried — or not.)
“You moved the headstones, but you didn’t move the bodies!” In the Stephen Spielberg film “Poltergeist,” a suburban family is attacked by malevolent spirits provoked by a relocated graveyard.
Calvary Cemetery, a k a “Pioneer Park,” (1501 Washington Place in Mission Hills) shares a similar history (tho’ the only spirits I’ve heard of there are those of the bottled variety). Historically, the area served as a Catholic graveyard “between 1875 and 1919, with burials continuing up until 1960.” In 1970 the cemetery was converted into a public park, and “the grave markers (but not the people) were removed. A group of some of the gravestones were clustered together and a central memorial was placed in the southeast corner of the park. The exact number of people buried there isn’t known, but research alludes to possibly 4,000 burials which have occured there.”
“I stumbled across your site while checking out the Casbah page,” Bill Starling writes. “I really dig what’s on your site. I went to many shows in the early and mid ’80s. I recognize a lot of the flyers but I was also blown away by all the flyers I have never seen.
“I have quite a few flyers that are all in great shape. They are all originals from the day and I’ve saved them over the years. Many are from the Adams Ave. / Wabash Hall / Fairmount Hall days.”
Like recent contributions from Ken Fugate and Jason Seibert, the Starling Collection appears here in downloadable PDF format, about 80 flyers in four files spanning approximately 1981 to 1986 and beyond:
Preparations for the May 30 Che Underground reunion at San Diego’s Casbah are picking up steam and uniting musical collaborators separated by miles and decades.
Last weekend marked the first studio reunion of the Northern California contingent of Noise 292, comprising four of the five musicians who played together at the Che Cafe in July 1983: vocalist/ bassist/ guitarist Kristin Martin; vocalist/ guitarist David “Kavika” Rives; percussionist Hobie Hodge; and the Answers’ Dave Fleminger, who reprised his historical role as substitute drummer. (The San Diego faction — drummer Joanne Norris and percussionist Wendell Kling — are on deck to join the festivities in time for the May performance.)
Thank you to our members who wrote in yesterday that their antivirus packages were reporting suspicious activity on the blog. And a special note of thanks to one of our resident security experts (who may choose to chime in here): His screening indicates a “false positive”; his diagnosis, that we’re virus-free.
(The alerts seem to have stopped for those who were getting them. You can now resume normal relations with your blogging partners; if redness, discharge or other symptoms recur, please contact our anonymous clinic at cheunderground@gmail.com.)
While we’re talking health and hygiene, a couple of other reminders about safe Che play:
