Mike Stax | The Che Underground

It’s 1985: Do you know
where your bell-bottoms are?

December 17, 2017December 8, 2010 by Mmrothenberg

(Ray Brandes reopens the case of People vs. the Che Underground.)

Thursday morning, during the last week of August, 1985, I arrived at work at 4:00 a.m. to begin my shift collecting and baling the cardboard boxes left scattered on the floor of the Food Basket on Washington Street. As I donned my apron, the hoots and catcalls began. “Hey, Hollywood!” shouted one of the night-crew guys as he leaned back in the seat of the forklift, a smug look on his face. In one hand he held a can of New Coke; in the other was the latest copy of People, emblazoned with the headline, “Madonna Weds Sean.”

A few weeks earlier, my bandmates and I had made the trek to Los Angeles and endured a several hours-long photo shoot at the Cavern, music maven and cult impresario Greg Shaw’s modest live-music club located in an alley off Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood. The article, we had been told, would put Bomp! Records on the map and catapult the Tell-Tale Hearts to stardom. This would be my ticket to fame and fortune, I believed. I would quit my job bagging groceries and baling cardboard, take a few semesters off from college, and enjoy the good life.

Che echoes from the Alps

December 14, 2017September 15, 2010 by Mmrothenberg

(Rolf “Ray” Rieben of Feathered Apple Records describes how the San Diego underground reached Basel, Switzerland, and shares his cache of memorabilia from the Che Cafe and other points southwest. Stay tuned for much more of Ray’s trove from the Tell-Tale Hearts, Crawdaddys, Howling Men and more!)

I was working as a record salesman in Switzerland when the first Crawdaddys LP (“Crawdaddy Express”) on the German Line label had hit the market. Most of the Bomp! catalog was licensed to Line Records from Germany. Line Records had the best possible distribution, since because they were connected to a major label. They’ve helped to make The Crawdaddys and some of the other bands from Greg Shaw’s Bomp label famous over here in Europe.

“Crawdaddy Express” rates as the first modern ’60s garage LP ever made (after probably The Flamin’ Groovies). It was first advertised on the back cover of the July 1979 issue of Goldmine magazine. The sound was very British: wild raving rnb like the early Kinks, Downliners Sect, or the The Pretty Things, but undoubtedly influenced by Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and the likes. There’s even a few cool northern soul ballads featured on both of their LPs, too. These four fine young lads from San Diego knew what they were doing, they had the right spirits, and they could deliver in authentic ca. ’64 – ’65 style, too. It was exactly the type of brand-new LP that I was hoping for.

‘I was a Shambles drummer’

January 1, 2011May 22, 2009 by Mmrothenberg

(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 Mmrothenberg

(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).

You Never Give Me Your Money: IOUs and the Ché Underground

March 27, 2019April 30, 2009 by Mmrothenberg

(Tell-Tale Heart/Town Crier Ray Brandes takes up a karmic collection with 25 years’ interest.)

In the cafés of Madrid, in the outdoor flea markets of Barcelona, and along the beaches of the southern coast of Spain, everyone is talking about “La Crisis.” The Spanish economy is now faltering badly, on the edge of a recession brought on by the collapse of a building boom; an average household debt 120 percent above the gross domestic product; and an unemployment rate of over 10 percent, the highest in Europe.

One company, however, which employs a curious and uniquely Spanish trade, has seen its business surge in this environment of unpaid bills. El Cobrador del Frac, the “debt collector in top hat and tails,” exists to humiliate debtors, playing on their sense of public shame. For a percentage of the collection, you can have your debtor’s footsteps dogged by a man conspicuously dressed like Fred Astaire and carrying a briefcase emblazoned with his trade. It is a shrewd and imaginative premise: that people are quick to repay the money they owe when their indebtedness is paraded in public.

This We Dug: Laurie Partridge

March 29, 2019January 9, 2009 by Mmrothenberg

(Editor’s note: When asked whether guest columnist Patrick Works could add this submission to the “This We Dug” franchise, series founder Dave Rinck wrote, “Of course! Anything Pat says is automatically cool.” And so it is.)

Or were you secretly in love with Keith? Or perhaps you were a wannabe Reuben Kincaid just like me?

For some strange reason amidst the caca-phone of 60s/70s TV the Monkees begat all kinds of media attempts at duplicating pop super-stardom, and the rest is of course TV history.

The Morlocks in flyers

January 1, 2011September 28, 2008 by Mmrothenberg

Tom Goddard’s trove of flyers continues to bear dividends for Che Underground: The Blog. Today’s bequest from the Goddard Collection features show pieces from the Morlocks’ 1984 and 1985 performances in San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco, created by artists including Jerry Cornelius and Kristen Tobiason.

“For more information, call [Tell-Tale Hearts bassist] Mike [Stax],” reads the Tobiason flyer in the lead spot of this post. “If he ain’t home, call [Morlocks guitarist] Ted [Friedman] … If he ain’t home, call [Morlocks bassist] Jeff [Lucas] … ,” providing phone numbers for each. Now that’s customer service!

The Tell-Tale Hearts: Go east, young men!

January 1, 2011September 6, 2008 by Mmrothenberg

(Ray Brandes’ account of their Midwest tour, undertaken in January of 1985, originally appeared on the liner notes to the Tell-Tale Hearts’ “Live Volume II: Later That Same Night in Springfield” album, released with Volume I in 1997 on Corduroy Records, Australia.)

“Mad” Jon McKinney, tour promoter extraordinaire and proprietor of the Primitive A–Go-Go, Springfield, Missouri’s, first- and last-ever sixties garage-punk nightclub, had a dream: to turn Downtown Springfield into Swinging London. He called, and we answered.

Though I had long ago learned the secret of keeping my expectations low in order to always be pleasantly surprised, I must admit that my first real journey beyond the confines of California (which began ominously with the rear-view mirror vision of my sleeping bag flying away from the luggage rack somewhere near Gila Bend, Arizona), tested the limits of the depths to which those expectations could sink. In January of 1985, in the midst of one of the worst winter storms on record, a rented Dodge Caravan containing little more than two guitars, a Vox Continental organ, several harmonicas, a few broken maracas, a tambourine and five young travelers made its way east towards its destination: the mythical Midwestern city of Springfield, Missouri.

The rise and fall of the Town Criers

March 27, 2019August 9, 2008 by Mmrothenberg

(Excerpts from the story of the pioneering late-’80s alt-country band by founder Ray Brandes. Read the full version in our Related Bands section!)

The Town Criers was a country-rock band that featured many of San Diego’s Che Underground musicians, including myself and Dave Klowden of the Tell-Tale Hearts, Peter Miesner and Mark Zadarnowski of the Crawdaddys, Tom Ward of the Gravedigger V, and Dave Ellison of the Rockin’ Dogs. The group predated the alt-country movement of the 1990s by several years.

The last few months of the Tell-Tale Hearts’ existence were contentious times. Eric Bacher had quit the band in 1986, and many of the original San Diego scenesters had either left town or simply moved on. By the time guitarist Peter Miesner of the Crawdaddys arrived to save the day, the rest of the band members had begun to feel the effects of nearly four years together, and relationships were further strained by meddling outsiders and substance abuse.

Many familiar faces (a few missing names)

January 1, 2011June 30, 2008 by Mmrothenberg

The Cyndie Jaynes Collection continues to generate a kaleidescope of images from the early-’80s San Diego underground … This batch features a shot I overlooked from the Tell-Tale Hearts’ performance at Dave Fest 3 as well as a variety of portraits.

Here’s a selection of Cyndie’s photos, followed by a list matching names to these well-loved faces. Note the gaps in the historical record; help us out here!