Reviving San Diego's Rock Renaissance
What can we say about Cyndie Jaynes? Not only is she a published author and successful graduate of the San Diego underground, she’s also a marvelous documentarian with an unrivaled cache of photos and flyers from early-’80s SD.
Here’s a sampling of the great things she’s shared with me … I’m very grateful for the chance to bring these treasures to light. Stay tuned for more!
Personal Conflict bassist Toby Gibson and I have been corresponding about a seminal document in the history of San Diego punk: the “Our Blow Out” cassette. Released in 1983 under the Slow Death label, this compilation featured 34 tracks from 14 bands, including some we’ve discussed before (5051, Personal Conflict, Social Spit, the Injections, Sacred Lies) as well as Battalion of Saints, Manifest Destiny, Moral Majority, the Skullbusters, Men of Clay, Black Tango, the Front, Catch 22 and District Tradition. I remember this tape well as the definitive snapshot of a major slice of SD underground history.
Toby’s a far more acute observer, however. Here’s what he has to say: “I posted this on Dave Klowden’s thread but rethought that, both because ‘Our Blow Out’ will make a decent topic on its own and because I didn’t want to detract from the topic of how great 5051 were. But District Tradition were pretty great in their own right, and I think Tommy Rulon could have taken that thing a lot farther. Musically speaking.
(Where are we now? Wallflowers bassist Paul Howland describes his current musical adventures in the very cool cyberworld of Dubstep. Check out the links and the P Man’s own online radio show!)
I first encountered Dubstep when I downloaded a recording of a radio show on London Pirate station Rinse FM from barefiles.com. The show was the “DJ Youngsta” show with his longtime MC, Task. As I remember the first tune was one by an artist known as D1 entitled “Degrees.” I was immediately intrigued by the sound.
I started downloading more sets from Rinse, including “Stella Sessions” by Skream. One of the tunes Skream was playing a lot at the time was Conquest “Hard Food.” I looked around on barefiles and saw that Quest had a show, so I downloaded a bunch of his archived shows. I ended up purchasing “The Hard Food E.P.” from dubplate.net, along with D1 “Degrees” and a bunch of others.
(A sentimental epicurean journey by Manual Scan/Lemons Are Yellow veteran Paul Kaufman.)
Regardless of where the show was, chances are the night would end up at Sheldon’s, the Eisenhower-era styled, non-conglomerate “family” restaurant that once loomed large in the all-night dining Pantheon of San Diego. Most memorable for me were items with descriptions like “Large 24 oz. Malted Milkshake, Thick and Creamy, $1.25” and “Demi-loaf of home-baked bread, served here with butter, 75 cents.” Those Thick and Creamies became a significant part of my diet, and one of their original ashtrays still is on the mantle. Also iconic was their placemat, with postwar cartoon depiction of San Diego’s highlights.
My first time was after the first Manual Scan show at the London Tavern.
Yesterday Kristi Maddocks, Tom Ward and I (Matt R.) had a reunion lunch (at the fabulous uptown Vynl restaurant on NY’s Columbus Ave.), and we were comparing notes on our respective migratory patterns since leaving San Diego.
The conversation turned to a subject I’d planned to raise here: While many of us used LA as an occasional or frequent playground in our youth, it seems most of the expats on this blog made a beeline to San Francisco once they’d decided to leave San Diego.
We were all connected by music back in the day, but I hope our musical adventures aren’t all retrospective. Time to look beyond the Reagan Administration for inspiration!
What have you created since 1985 that we can share here on Che Underground: The Blog?
Putting my MP3s where my mouth is, I’ll go first. Here are two tracks that live on a nascent site dedicated to the Amazons, my aforementioned San Francisco-based acoustic trio. “Tales of Brave Procrustes” and “Roll Like Sisyphus,” recorded at the Amazons’ farewell gig March 2001 (with the fabulous Lemons Are Yellow), are two installments of an unfinished triptych (Greek mythology-themed, in keeping with the Amazonian imagery). The unwritten Icarus song has been percolating for nearly a decade, and maybe sharing these tracks will shake it loose at last.
To celebrate the diversity of the early-’80s San Diego underground (and shamelessly solicit contributions to Che Underground’s Related Bands page), here’s a double-decker salute to David “GI” Klowden, nimble navigator of the San Diego scene and keystone of 5051, the Mystery Machine and the Tell-Tale Hearts.
Side One: “El Salvador” from 5051’s 1981 seven-inch. David Klowden (vocals); Sam Topper (guitar); Squirrel Oberg (guitar); Scott Harber (bass); Joel Roop (drums)
Side Two: “She’s Not Mine,” recorded in 1983 by the Mystery Machine. Ray Brandes (vocals, tambourine); Carl Rusk (six-string Guild Starfire, 12-string Rickenbacker 370-12, vocals); Mark Zadarnowski (bass); Bill Calhoun (Vox Jaguar); David Klowden (blue Japanese Majestic drumset).
What a difference two years make!
Time for a little topical palate-cleanser after all this rear-view mirror-gazing: I want to know if we really are the people our parents warned us about. (Well, not mine, considering some of their friends — but maybe yours. Maybe.)
Here’s the question: If you had the chance to spend half an hour chatting with yourself ca. 1983, what would the 1983 you have to say about the 2008 you? (Let’s say you couldn’t reveal your identity or tell yourself to buy Microsoft.)
A true Che Underground supergroup — comprising David Fleminger (guitar, vocals); Kristin Martin (bass guitar, vocals); Paul Kaufman (guitar, vocals); and Ed Meares (drums) — Lemons Are Yellow first formed in high school, then regrouped in the San Francisco Bay area in the early oughts to create an amazing CD titled “Destroy All Music.”
“Thousand Island” off that 2006 album is a rip-snortin’ salute to El Cajon Blvd. Denny’s of early-’80s San Diego legend and to the waiter there who was rumored to provide patrons who requested “coffee with” a little something extra on the side. How’d you like your coffee with?
(N.b.: Che Underground: The Blog does not condone the use of illicit substances, except to propel a good lyric. The views expressed in “Thousand Island” are humorous and reflect neither Che Underground’s zero-tolerance house policy nor any verified menu practices employed by the Denny’s restaurant chain past or present. Please keep your comments theoretical.)
Let’s talk about how geography shaped the San Diego underground. Rockin’ Dog Dave Ellison cogently observed that San Diego “was big enough that you had enough like-minded, creative kids from different parts of the city coming together to start bands and play shows together … but small enough for musicians and bands to have a sense of community.” Our gatherings brought together eclectic pockets of North County, downtown and inland musicianship; every exit on the freeway seemed to point to a different little scene.
From my perch in Encinitas, Hair Theatre represented the underground’s Carlsbad-Oceanside bloc; the Rockin’ Dogs proved Poway was cooler than I knew; and each high school downtown seemed to have allotted a special smoking wall to a smart, edgy, aesthetically acute fringe element.
How do you map San Diego music ca. 1980-85? Where were the epicenters, and where were you?