Reviving San Diego's Rock Renaissance
Going into the final stretch before next Saturday’s Che Underground showcase at the Casbah, here’s a handsome commemorative flyer created by David Klowden, suitable for framing or Scotch taping!
The roster of special guests is growing, as San Diego music history is revisited and made on Saturday night.
To recap the lineup so far:
(Heads up! The next Che Underground-sponsored reunion gig is officially on the Casbah roster, with tickets due to go on sale this week. Ray Brandes opens the booth.)
On Saturday, Jan. 30, 2010, country-rock pioneers the Town Criers (Ray Brandes, David Klowden, Peter Miesner and Mark Zadarnowski) will reunite for the first time in 20 years as the Ché Underground presents its second musical event at the Casbah in San Diego.
By popular demand, returning to the stage after a blistering set in May, will be legendary San Diego mod band Manual Scan, led by sharp-dressed men Bart Mendoza and Kevin Donaker-Ring and featuring the rhythm section of Tim Blankenship and Morgan Young.
To open the evening, the all-star Blues Gangsters (Kristi Maddocks, Dave Rinck, Dave Ellison, Dave Fleminger and Matt Johnson) will make their San Diego stage debut. It’s a fresh opportunity to watch a new project by members of the Wallflowers, the Rockin’ Dogs, the Answers and Everybody Violet.
DJ duties will be performed by Louis Mello, a k a DJ Dirty Bird.
Read moreMark your calendars! Start your engines!
Jan. 30 Che Underground showcase
In the course of researching his his exhaustive biography of the Penetrators, Che Underground historian Ray Brandes referred to a seminal document that helped bring San Diego’s musical underground to a broader audience: San Diego Reader music critic Steve Esmedina’s diary of his six-day California tour with the Penetrators.
“Does anyone have a copy of that ‘Two Dollar Tour’ article from the Reader?” Rockin’ Dog Dave Ellison asks. ” When that was published, I thought it was the most glamorous, exciting thing I’d ever read … I saved it for years, but it’s gone now. I can still remember parts of it … like Dan McLain eating at Taco Bell and claiming that food with too many vitamins made him throw up!”
In honor of the pending 30th anniversary of this Oct. 18, 1979, article, I thought I’d share the copy Ray sent me (courtesy of Penetrators archivist Joe Piper). I’ve formatted it as printable PDF file and posted it for download here.
Read more‘Two Dollar Tour:
On the road with the Penetrators’
(Tell-Tale Heart/Town Crier Ray Brandes brings new Town Criers artifacts to light.)
The first of these gems is from early 1989, a performance at the wedding of Joe Hughes at Joshua Tree National Park.
The band at the time consisted of Ray Brandes on acoustic guitar and vocals, Peter Miesner on lead guitar, Mark Zadarnowski on electric bass guitar, and Dan Tarte on drums. Among the attendees captured on film at the event are Che Undergrounders Matt Johnson and Sean McMullen.
The toddler at the end of the clip is Sean Zadarnowski, Mark and Lydia’s son, who has graduated from UCSD.
(Wallflower David Rinck introduces a new project by old friends.)
Here’s our new record. As far as we know, this is the latest project by musicians associated with the Che Underground.
We wrote the music over the Internet, since we now live in various far-flung corners of the globe (Africa in my case). One of us would write a riff and a few lines of lyrics and then send it on. Pretty soon it added up to a song, and then the eight on the record (actually more, but we could only record eight ’cause of time limitations).
But we all used to be in bands in San Diego and play shows together, so we were used to working together, and the distances were easily overcome.
For those who missed Che Games for May in San Diego May 29-30 or just want to relive the magic: Good news! Thanks to modern technology, the event was captured from every angle in photographs, audio and video.
Exhibit A: The original San Diego Wallflowers raise the roof of San Diego’s Casbah with “Funland,” the band’s hypnotic paean to the city’s seamy underbelly, now lost to gentrification. (For memories of the original Funland, check out Kristen Tobiason’s “Then and now” feature.)
The May 30 performance marks the Wallflowers debut of Rockin’ Dog Dave Ellison and features original Wallflowers David Rinck on vocals, Paul Howland on bass and Matt Johnson on drums. (Che Underground jack-of-all-trades Dave Fleminger added keyboard stylings to the set.)
(Tell-Tale Heart/Town Crier Ray Brandes lays the table for May’s audio feast.)
The Che Underground Weekend Showcase:
Celebrating more than 25 years of San Diego’s underground music history
An incredible opportunity to reconnect, reminisce and rediscover will unfold as 25 years and thousands of miles of distance disappear in a single weekend — May 29 and 30 at the Casbah in San Diego.
The lineups have been set, the bands are rehearsing, and the drinks are on ice. Here’s what to expect:
(Peripatetic Wallflower Dave Rinck extends the Che Underground to East Africa.)
Somebody called me on the phone … They said, “Hey! Is David home?” It was Gilbert Barthe, lead guitarist of my current band the Beathogs. “We’re all down at Dass. You wanna come down and play a show in about 45 minutes?” Well, sure, I thought. Why not? I was always under the impression that Dass was just this sort of funky Ethiopian restaurant located on the second floor of a grim concrete building on this crazy street of bars in Westlands (a part of Nairobi near where I live). But anyway, I was at this lame party, kinda bored, so I though well what the hell … it’d be more fun than staying here. So I grabbed my guitar and headed on down.
Next thing you know, I found myself climbing this narrow cement staircase up to the second floor of this dusty old building. I knew the place on the first floor was Havanas, a nightclub and restaurant that a friend of mine named Zelalem deejays at, attracting huge unruly mobs some nights that spill off the sidewalk out front and into the street until all hours. I myself had frequently held court over plates of fish almondine on linen tablecloths and huge carafes of wine in the backrooms of that place well after midnight. But I’d never made the haul up to the second floor. Well, that was all about to change …
(Here’s Part Three from Che stalwart Paul Kaufman on how his young self was Dead Wrong on some major issues of our time.)
In the comments following Dave Rinck’s recent “This We Dug: The Sex Pistols” post, Dave Ellison perfectly nailed how I felt about hearing those records for the first time: “the Sex Pistols album made all the rock music, clothes, hairstyles, etc. that were around at the time seem completely outdated.” It’s hard to cast your mind back to fully capture how revolutionary it felt.
It was so clear in 1977. The Ramones and Patti Smith at CBGB, the Sex Pistols, Clash, Wire, X-Ray Spex, 999 and all the rest in England. So vibrant, making commercial radio (and San Diego was ALL commercial radio) taste like a mouthful of ashes. As a 13-year-old, I envisioned all the old boring stuff would be swept away in a tide of cultural and political enlightenment in the US. The UK was actually having records in the Top 10 that you didn’t have to leave the room for — why not in the US, too?
Read moreNostradamus, I’m not. Part 3: Punk rock sweeps America!
(In this installment, Wallflowers vocalist Dave Rinck puts his arms around a memory.)
Last Saturday night, Dave Ellison and I took our wives out for dinner and a show in Los Angeles. We had a great time, and what a show it was!
Well, first there was some sort of ridiculous country/New Wave band that sucked. I don’t know why they let these guys in the door. They were called Cracker or something. They had some stupid song about taking skinheads bowling. I mean, why should I have to hear about that?
Anyway, the headlining bands were X and the New York Dolls. Obviously X was great. I mean, wow: Billy Zoom has become such a guitar virtuoso, really like a sort of punk rock Chuck Berry. Has anyone here noticed that Gretsch is releasing a re-issue of the amazing Billy Zoom Sparkle Jet guitar? BTW some guy is running an online petition to get X into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Please go and sign it — it would be so cool to see a real authentic underground band like this get in.