San Diego mod | The Che Underground

There to Here: Paul Kaufman,
University of Massachusetts Medical School

July 2, 2012July 1, 2012 by Mmrothenberg

(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.

Mod photos from the Murray Collection

March 30, 2019February 1, 2011 by Mmrothenberg

Important new additions to the visual record of San Diego’s mod movement, turn of the ’80s!

“Dean Curtis e-mailed me to inform me that you would like to use some of my mod pics that I have posted on Flickr,” writes San Diego mod pioneer Kirk Murray. “I am not sure how to upload them onto the Che Underground site, which, by the way, is very cool.

Check out the Kirk Murray Mod Collection!

Che Games memories from Mathias Kuo

January 1, 2011August 7, 2009 by Mmrothenberg

(A long-time reader puts out the call for then-and-now matchups!)

With the advent and conclusion of the Che Games this May, we are reminded of our youth and the path that brought us to the world we exist in today.

Some are still active in the scene and lifestyle; others, such as myself, have taken the experiences and philosophies of that time and melded them into the child-rearing, career-focused, mortgage- and bill-paying reality of the new millennium and the harsh realization that I am a 40-something now and “damn old.”

I discovered the Che Underground last summer, and it has been on my browser ever since. The articles and especially the pictures have allowed me to connect with old friends as well as reminisce about “the formative years” and how that small slice of time has helped me to cope with the world we live in today.

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.