Marc Rude | The Che Underground

Then and now: Tim Mays, SD impresario magnífico

October 13, 2020 by Mmrothenberg

Those of us who came up in the San Diego scene at the turn of the ’80s were privileged to witness Tim Mays’ emergence as a promoter and club owner. Over the ensuing decades, it’s hard to think of anyone who’s done more to keep San Diego on the musical map.

To reboot our Then and Now feature, Tim has provided Che Underground: The Blog with an exclusive history of his career — and his insights about the future of live music in San Diego as we all contend with the challenges of the current COVID-19 pandemic.

From there to here

I put on my first show in Barstow, the town I grew up in, in 1979. It featured a hard rock band from Orange County and a friend’s band from Barstow — smashing success.

After that, a friend and I decided to put on a show in East Hollywood at Baces Hall, which, unbeknownst to us, had been the site of a show a couple years earlier that ended in a riot. This show was Weirdos, the Plugz, Suburban Lawns, and San Diego’s Penetrators.

We turned away people at the door, and the next thing I know, I’m getting a call from Laura Fraser asking if I would be interested in becoming her partner in the Skeleton Club. This was early 1980. I gave her a check for $1,000 and became her partner. This was the second incarnation of the Skeleton Club and was located at the corner of Market Street and 2nd Ave, two blocks from the police station at the time. We got hassled constantly by SDPD and had to close down in May 1980 over permit issues.

Gary Heffern + the Town Criers
+ benefit raffle = Jan. 30 fun!

December 14, 2017January 25, 2010 by Mmrothenberg

Attention, San Diego scenesters: To cap the run of special guests at at the Casbah’s Che Underground showcase Jan. 30, Penetrators vocalist Gary Heffern is coming in from Finland to join the festivities!

Heff will be singing with the Town Criers (while his Penetrators bandmates Chris Sullivan and Chris Davies join Manual Scan onstage). He’s also helping Che Underground: the Blog jump-start a San Diego underground retrospective exhibit and raise money on behalf of Unknowns vocalist Bruce Joyner.

War Games

December 31, 2010September 24, 2009 by Mmrothenberg

(Wallflower/Blues Gangster/BeatHog Dave Rinck recounts a major skirmish in San Diego punk history.)

I wanna say it was the summer of ’80 or ’81 …

In those days, punk rock in San Diego was pretty much like a club that met at a mutually determined location every weekend. A secret underground planning system worked out the details of the meetings and spread them with military precision through a highly effective communications network.

The system functioned like this: A secret cabal of “Organizers,” consisting of the highest ranking punk rockers (like Marc Rude and any member of F.O.N.O.), would determine the event from a menu of options that included:

Punk flyer blow out from the Seibert Collection

January 1, 2011January 4, 2009 by Mmrothenberg

You asked for it, we’ve got it: The recent success of the PDF set of mod-themed flyers from the Ken Fugate Collection prompts a 31-page volume of punk classics from early ’80s San Diego, courtesy of our beloved Jason Seibert.

The Seibert flyers reference a variety of venues, including Fairmount Hall, North Park Lions Club and the Adams Avenue Theater (many of them organized by Marc Rude’s Dead or Alive). San Diego acts include Personal Conflict, Men of Clay, No Age Limit, the Skullbusters, Social Spit, Manifest Destiny, Catch-22, Moral Majority, V-5, 5051, the Nutrons, the Middle Class, Battalion of Saints, District Tradition, the Front, Sacred Lies, the Injections and Black Tango.

Read morePunk flyer blow out from the Seibert Collection

Have you ‘zine me? San Diego’s indy music mags

December 18, 2017August 11, 2008 by Mmrothenberg

Detail: Quasi-Substitute #2, 1980 (collection Dean Curtis) Another pillar of SD punk’s plastic arts (along with music, tattoos and flyers) were ‘zines, the samizdat publications created by luminaries such as Marc Rude, Harold Gee, Terry Marine and Clayton Colgin.

Over in the Che Underground forum (separate registration required), Dean Curtis and Toby Gibson, among others, have been bringing these treasures to light. One of Dean’s first contributions was Issue 2 of Quasi-Substitute, dating from 1980 and featuring the Crawdaddys on the cover.

Detail: Snare #1 (collection Dean Curtis) Its reappearance prompted this wonderful response from David Klowden: “Seeing this issue of Q-Sub triggered an intense emotional stew of white hot longing for that place and time, deep black terror at the passage of the years & a kind of fatherly love for my younger self that is beyond description.

Our family tree

December 18, 2017August 4, 2008 by Mmrothenberg

The Che Underground site was first conceived to capture an interesting and undocumented moment in San Diego music history — but our scene was one significant limb among several in a tree with healthy roots and many branches.

To understand this fluorescence better, we’re undertaking something ambitious: a mapping project to lay out the history of San Diego’s rock-‘n’-roll underground. Step One is to solicit some general ideas about the shape of this family tree.

Here’s my first take, which is completely skewed by my age, my location and my own tastes. For me, the San Diego underground sprang in the late ’70s from three large, intertwined roots: the first wave of SD punks (Marc Rude et al.); great New Wave bands like the Penetrators and Unknowns; and a unique SD brand of retrovisionary cool, starting with Ron Silva and the Crawdaddys.