Clairemont High School

(Dave Fleminger provides video evidence and more of Manual Scan’s threat to the social order of 1980s San Diego.)

In my senior year at Clairemont High, I managed to get Manual Scan onto the roster of the talent show, despite me being the only member of the band that attended the school. Also on the bill were the X-Offenders, who were all either currently students or alumni of Clairemont High.

During Manual Scan’s performance a quote-unquote “riot” broke out amid the audience, and the police were called in to restore the peace. … I think calling it a “riot” is more than a bit of an exaggeration, but I don’t want to diminish the fact that some friends of the band did get whaled on a bit by some of CHS’s football team. Or at least I had heard it was the football team that decided they had had enough of these crazy mod kids calling attention to themselves by dancing it up at the far edge of the aisle near the side exit — a smart spot for quick getaway.

(In which Clairemont High School alum Dave Fleminger strikes rock ‘n’ roll in a back issue of his alma mater’s paper.)

January 1981: Imagine the trepidation felt by young Clairemont High news reporter Alan Graham about this front-page assignment.

He has been given the responsibility of unveiling the “punk-rock lifestyle” in the pages of the Arrow, the school paper. To do so he will be interviewing Clairemont High School’s best-known proponent of the movement, Wendy “Pyro” Gaines. Perhaps he could have also gone undercover, like Cameron Crowe had done at Clairemont High a couple years earlier, but that could have gotten a little rough, and Wendy has graciously granted Alan an opportunity to stay within familiar CHS territory and still learn about a mysterious group whose meeting place (?) was at a Lions’ lodge in far-off North Park.

Mods gone wild! Clairemont High ‘riot’ ’82

Wendy Pyro: Punk pioneer