The Che Underground

Here’s a shot from within the Headquarters club in Pacific Beach, where many of us had the honor of playing. This is presumably during an Answers gig … What do you recall from the Headquarters? I remember the sound system was decent; I liked the pinball and video games out front; and I spent many evenings after shows at Sheldon’s restaurant next door, home of thick ‘n’ creamy shakes and individual loaves of bread.

I believe Leighton played his first rock-‘n’-roll gig with us there when Noise 292 opened for the Pandoras and the Answers in August 1983: electric violin on our cover of “Heroin.” I’ve always worried that he took the song too seriously!

That snot-nosed punk Jakob Dylan has made it almost impossible to Google up our own beloved Wallflowers, but I’m starting to sift out some Web references to the superior and original model.

Here’s a citation of their cut on that Mystic Records compilation disk, which I believe came out in ’84:
“V/A – Mystic Sampler #2
“Record Label: Mystic Records
“Review: The second (in the series of three or was it four?) sampler. There are 2 versions of this out there. The 7″ has the likes of Dr. Know, Wallflowers (no, not the Jacob Dyllan band), Insolence, NOFX (their old stuff was good), Doggy Style, Rat Pack and Party Doll. The LP (blue vinyl – probably a later release) has Agression, Rat Pack, Ill repute, Flower Lepers, Corpus Deleti, RKL, Dr. Know, Doggy Style and a couple more (all the songs from the original 7″ are on here). I’m guessing both are out of pring or at least hard to find. 9 stars (out of 10)”

And over here, somebody’s selling that record for $50!

Finally, this band (also Mystic artists) counts the Wallflowers among its peers.

Don’t I remember something about how the Wallflowers were huge on Yugoslav pirate radio?

Somebody loves those old Hair Theatre fliers: I’ve located three of them on eBay for $10 a pop! If I can sell all the fliers in my attic, I’ll be rich.

Two things I dearly wish we’d had back in the day:

1. A great photographer with a keen interest in documenting the scene; and

2. A systematic plan for creating and archiving high-quality audio of studio and live performances.

We’d have karmic bonus points today if we’d had:

3. A forward-thinking videographer who realized the importance of video documentation 25 years after the fact.

Lacking all that, we’re going to have to do some serious forensic archaeology to reconstruct our sights and sounds.

Let’s start comparing notes on what audiovisual resources we’ve got … I’ll start with the archive of fliers to back up this gig list I posted on my personal blog, plus about 20 crappy snapshots of Noise 292 in performance. Ante up: What have you got?