London | The Che Underground

‘I was a Shambles drummer’

January 1, 2011May 22, 2009 by admin

(Bart Mendoza of Manual Scan and the Shambles counts off drummers he’s worked with.)

No doubt about it: Kevin Donaker-Ring and I have worked with a lot of drummers over the decades, keeping in mind that we first began our team-up in 1976.

Here are a few of the incredible musicians who have spent time behind a drum kit with Manual Scan or the Shambles over the past 30-plus years. Not pictured: Paul Brewin, Morgan Young, Terry Moore, Rob Wilson, Trace Smith, Brad Kiser. … There’s a future post there.

1) “I was a Shambles drummer” pin. People have sat in with the band for one song to obtain one of these.

From Scan to the Shambles

January 1, 2011May 16, 2009 by admin

(Bart Mendoza of Manual Scan and the Shambles talks about how he got from there to here.)

Of course the various members of the Shambles knew each other for years before the band’s formation, but I can put down the beginnings of the band to two events.

In the late ’80s, Kevin Donaker-Ring co-produced Manual Scan’s “Days & Maybes” EP with Ray Brandes (side note: humorous liners by Mike Stax), and we were all part of a group of musicians that frequented Megalopolis on Fairmount Ave., often playing round-robin style — David Moye and Jon Kanis amongst the round-robiners who didn’t end up in the band (though we did back up Kanis on a compilation-album track).

London Calling

April 21, 2012September 29, 2008 by Paul Kaufman

(Paul Kaufman of Manual Scan and Lemons Are Yellow reflects on the decline of empires.)

My favorite albums were always those that weren’t just a collection of songs but presented a unified picture of their time and place, a map to their own little world. Coming of musical age in the late ’70s, one notable example was the first Clash LP, which presented a rich portrait of London as a decayed and violent landscape where one struggled for survival. This echoed the theme of how the lost power and fortune of the British empire diminished the expectations of its current citizens; this was presented by many bands, from the Kinks to the Jam.

These were distant but clever and interesting voices, and very different from the “Morning in America” world view that pervaded the US in the ’80s. They seemed especially far from San Diego, where the nearly perpetual sunshine provides a completely different backdrop from London’s rain.