Reviving San Diego's Rock Renaissance
(Ray Brandes provides a brief history of a new band with a long San Diego history.)
The Secret Squares: pleased to make your acquaintance!
The Secret Squares is a musical project that has its origins in Gary’s Kids, a band assembled to back Gary Heffern on a solo performance at the Casbah in January 2019, and The Wrecktangle, which performed once at the Che Underground’s Leap Year show at the Riviera Supper Club, mere days before the world went into quarantine in March 2020.
A Che Underground exclusive: San Diego legends The Nephews revisit four decades of music ahead of their Feb. 18 appearance at The Casbah San Diego for A Che Underground Midwinter Masque. Book your tickets early and often!
The Nephews began as a comedy act in middle school around 1980. The original name was Ceilings and Floors, but we changed it to The Nephews (which has the same amount of meaning as “Ceilings and Floors”) around 7th grade.
We were very heavily into music, started playing as a rock band in high school, and were able to start playing club shows fairly quickly. Actually, our very first show outside of inland North County where we grew up was at the Che Cafe in 1984. We supported Manual Scan at Club Zu pretty early on.
Eric Cullen (Nephews keyboardist, 1989): “The first memory I have of The Nephews is of them playing during lunchtime at Poway High School. The
thing that immediately hit me about their music was how sophisticated their sound was, considering this was high school and all. Their harmonic language was dense, their chord progressions rather abstract, the lyrics obtuse. The Nephews’ music seemed advanced and not really belonging to the time, which was 1984 or ‘85. They were mining their own sound, and to this 17-year-old it sounded great. They had an air of ’60s psychedelia but were in touch with current underground bands like R.E.M., Minutemen and Pere Ubu. They also had a slight Zappa/Beefheart side about them, as well.”
Trebels bassist Oscar Barajas provides a backgrounder, sounds and images for a band that took California by storm in the mid-’80s.
The first bass I bought was at Freedom Guitar in downtown San Diego, a Fender Precision copy. I couldn’t play a lick. Yet with time and a bit of practice, I became somewhat competent. What helped was some guitar chords and ditties I learned from my older brother Fernando.
Guitarist Xavier Anaya also picked up on the guitar and learned from his Tio Chato, an original Treble. The original Trebles were a popular outfit in Tijuana back in the ’60s and ’70s.
John Chilson was an instant pro at the drums the minute he picked up those sticks, a natural. Jay Wiseman fell in perfectly as singer and frontman.
The Trebels were born, a future of cops breaking up house parties because of our Maximum RnB; a wedding reception where we were bullied by the bride’s father (understandably so, looking back on it); a triumphant show at the White House in Imperial Beach; and thanks to our great friend Dan Holsenback, our most highly compensated gig — the graduation party for UC Davis Law School.
Che Underground: The Blog has been graced over the years by the generosity of contributors who documented our scene back in the analog days, before a sea of smartphones captured every event.
From the late Cyndie Jaynes to Harold Gee to Jason Seibert to Juni Bravo to Margarat Nee and on and on — including a number of key contributors who’ve requested anonymity — this archive is built on the photos, video, audio, flyers and other artifacts of an incredibly creative community.
Add to the ranks David J. Watkins, whose recent house move unearthed a treasure trove of photographs we look forward to sharing in coming months.
Read moreTell-Tale Hearts from the David J. Watkins Archives
Congratulations to John Nee for his high-profile hire as the leader of Marvel’s comic-book pack, where he’s taking over as publisher in the wake of Dan Buckley’s promotion to president of Marvel Entertainment. “As the Marvel publisher,” writes ComicBook.com (which got the exclusive), “Nee will oversee the health of the comics line both print and digital [and] be tasked with ensuring the quality of the line, managing budgets [and] guiding marketing.”
John has been a legend in the comics world for decades. He ascended to president of WildStorm Productions, then joined the executive team at DC Comics when DC bought WildStorm in 1999. John rose to Senior Vice President of Business Development at DC before staking an independent claim as co-founder of Cryptozoic Entertainment in 2010.
Like the rest of the heroes portrayed on this blog, John Nee arrives at his new job with his own Che Underground origin story.
Read moreJohn Nee: From UCSD’s student impresario to Marvel Comics maestro
(In the first installment of a series, San Diego musician and impresario Bart Mendoza selects unexpected covers of local bands.)
The ultimate compliment for a band? It has to be having your songs covered – it’s a clear sign you’ve made an impact. It is a rare thing indeed, but percentage-wise, San Diego’s bands circa the late 1970s through the mid 1980s actually have fared quite well, with new generations of musicians taking up inspiration in their songs. Here are 10 examples:
1. Brandywine Road – What Do All The People Know? (originally by the Monroes) This song is well on its way to being a standard, and this is a terrific version.
(In this installment, Che Underground: The Blog talks to the original drummer of Manual Scan and co-founder of Lemons Are Yellow about his memories of the San Diego scene and his far-ranging career in biochemistry. If you’d like your story told, e-mail cheunderground@gmail.com!)
We actually met right after you’d left San Diego to study at UC Berkeley, then for your doctorate at MIT. But you stayed in close touch with all of us who were still in America’s Finest City. What was it like coming back for short visits and seeing the scene change?
I have very vivid memories coming back during quarter breaks and other holidays during my first year away, 1982-3. The most shocking thing was that every time I came back, the Answers song list was totally different, even within a couple of months! At the same time, the Mod scene became incredibly huge, and the punk scene seemed to go from an artistic, underground scene to a place laced with way too much testosterone. So I did feel like I was missing a lot, a lot was indeed happening, and not being there day-to-day probably accentuated that feeling. I stayed in San Diego during that amazing summer of ’83, so I did get to see some of the best parts first hand. (cue “Nowhere”).
And then when I came back summer of ’84, so much more had changed. No more Answers. No more Noise 292. I think that summer, the Morlocks emerged (pun intended) at a party at Paul Allen’s house. I remember I had to stand back, they were so loud, and I was accustomed to some pretty loud stuff back then! They played “Voices Green and Purple,” it was intense. And before long, everyone was up in San Francisco, just across from me in Berkeley, so I got to see a bit of that era before I left for Boston in late ‘86.
Read moreThere to Here: Paul Kaufman,
University of Massachusetts Medical School
San Diego music legend and former Penetrators front man Gary Heffern has met with misadventure, and he needs our financial help to set things straight.
Heffern, now living in Finland, in May suffered a burst appendix that forced him to cancel a July Penetrators reunion in San Diego and postponed his work on a new CD, not to mention his day job. With bills coming due, Gary is reaching out to his network for support.
Here are a couple of opportunities to help this San Diego legend in his hour of need:
(Paul Kaufman solicits support for a new project by Che Underground’s own.)
San Diego has embraced its prodigal musicians as they return after decades. Consider the Comeuppance, a “chamber pop” combo led by David Fleminger (guitar, vocals) and Heather Vorwerck (cello).
This ensemble has a distinctive sound influenced by diverse jazz, country and classical traditions, all the while staying true to the high standards of songwriting that Che Underground readers know to expect from all of Dave’s endeavors.
Readers of this blog will recall that the Comeuppance relocated last spring to San Diego. The move marked a homecoming for David after 25 years in San Francisco; it’s a return to the city where he created so many memories as the creative force of bands like the Answers and the Mirrors as well as a founding member of a wide array of musical notables from Social Spit to Manual Scan.
(Dave Fleminger revisits the sights and sounds of this cornerstone of the early-’80s San Diego scene.)
2012 still sounds to me like a year from the future (or perhaps a Rush album). But here it is, and here we are, and 2012 will contain the 30th anniversaries of many happenings already chronicled on this blog. In the spring of 1982 the North Park venue known as the International Blend was re-named The Kings Road Cafe.
Within an unassuming building on 30th St., an incredible stew of various musics were served up to an all-ages crowd. There were even after-school shows that felt like a continuation of some grand afternoon dance-party tradition.
Whether it was the Iblend or the Kings Rd., the decor inside of the club was pretty much the same: bare-bones and all about the music. The stage was immediately on your left as you walked in the door and in the back of the room was a pinball machine that would shout “The … Black … Knight …
