Reviving San Diego's Rock Renaissance
It’s hard to believe the earth has already circled the Great Pumpkin completely since Ray Brandes reviewed hip-and-spooky Halloween music and his sister Claudia recalled her 1984 Halloween party featuring some of our favorite boys and ghouls.
But indeed, Samhain is here again … and I realize that I experienced the holiday in three distinct modes:
(In this installment, Wallflower Dave Rinck revisits the bouncy side of the ’70s.)
We used to have a great Halloween tradition in San Diego, which I am frankly surprised hasn’t been covered here yet. Anyway, I’m sure someone will get around to this one soon enough. Of course I’m talking about the Pink Panther Halloween Ball. Man, that was fun!
The deal is, one year I was attending this event, and I ran into Darren Grealish and Burt Huerta, and these guys had on these leisure suits with lapels out to their shoulders. (I think I was dressed as a gerbil or something equally stupid.) I mean, they looked great, almost as if they had just stepped out of Studio 54 in about 1978. And Darren says to me, “People think I’m dressed up for Halloween, but this is how I like to dress every day!”
And who wouldn’t? I mean, come on get real: Black leather biker jackets and torn jeans every day? How much of that stuff can you really stand before you need to cut your jive talkin’ and lighten up a bit? Yes, if punk rock can be summed up as the Mister Hyde of our angry rebellious youth, then Disco would be the happy Doctor Jekyll.
(Not satisfied to supply the holiday tunes, the Brandes siblings come through with a swingin’ Halloween photo gallery for recovering SD scenesters! Claudia Brandes provides the back story.)
These photos were taken at the Halloween party that Zoe and I threw at her loft downtown in 1984. Zoe and I were great friends at the time, and we talked all year about wanting to have a huge Halloween party. She was the only person I had ever met, besides Kristen Schwartz, who loved Halloween as much as I did.
Kristen, in one image, is a “jigsaw puzzle,” and Zoe is George Washington. It was a great costume, and she was quite convincing! I was Peter Pan, which allowed me to wear my Beatle boots and a short skirt and still look cool. One photo has a very handsome young Peter Miesner dancing with Zoe.