While we’re all in a Wallflowers frame of mind, here’s another Phase One Wallflowers gem freshly excavated after a quarter-century beneath the Canadian permafrost. “Rubber Room” is essential Wallflowers material,” writes bassist Paul Howland. “This one and ‘Funland’ (along with any of the many Stooges cover tunes) encapsulate the Wallflowers sound nicely.
San Diego music
Cyndie Jaynes: An evening with the Wallflowers
Cyndie Jaynes’ amazing gift to Che Underground: The Blog continues giving with this wonderful series of photographs from a late-era Wallflowers concert featuring Todd Lahman on guitar and Matt Johnson on drums. As always, Paul Howland (pictured in these photos) and Dave Rinck loomed large in the lineup.
MC/guest vocalist Jerry Cornelius, Tony Sanchez, Kristi Maddocks, and Audrey Moorehead also make the scene. What was the venue? The little picket fence and trellis evokes a freaky ice-cream parlor vibe. Who can ID this magic moment?
Career opportunities
Another where-are-we-now topic to connect the dots between our past and present: While a select few of us indeed earn our adult living in the music business, most have found other sources of income.
Today’s question: What do you do nowadays to pay the bills? And what (if anything) did you learn from our salad days that helps you now?
This one’s pretty easy for me. I’ve worked in publishing (in SF and NY) for 20 years, more than 10 primarily online. I generally run large teams of creative, verbal, offbeat young people who’ve converged on the big city for aesthetic and social stimulation. Sound familiar yet?
Noise 292: “Stupid Future”
Today marks the 25th anniversary of Noise 292’s first performance: May 26, 1983, at the Che Cafe with the Answers and the Odds. I can think of no better way to celebrate that silver anniversary than with a powerful performance by the brilliant Kristin Martin.
“Stupid Future” showcases everything that was so special about Kristin’s songwriting and performing, even at 19: arresting hooks, great lyrics and fantastic vocals. She’s one of the most innovative creative forces I’ve ever had the privilege of collaborating with.
The Cyndie Jaynes Collection, Part One
What can we say about Cyndie Jaynes? Not only is she a published author and successful graduate of the San Diego underground, she’s also a marvelous documentarian with an unrivaled cache of photos and flyers from early-’80s SD.
Here’s a sampling of the great things she’s shared with me … I’m very grateful for the chance to bring these treasures to light. Stay tuned for more!
Enter P Man
(Where are we now? Wallflowers bassist Paul Howland describes his current musical adventures in the very cool cyberworld of Dubstep. Check out the links and the P Man’s own online radio show!)
I first encountered Dubstep when I downloaded a recording of a radio show on London Pirate station Rinse FM from barefiles.com. The show was the “DJ Youngsta” show with his longtime MC, Task. As I remember the first tune was one by an artist known as D1 entitled “Degrees.” I was immediately intrigued by the sound.
I started downloading more sets from Rinse, including “Stella Sessions” by Skream. One of the tunes Skream was playing a lot at the time was Conquest “Hard Food.” I looked around on barefiles and saw that Quest had a show, so I downloaded a bunch of his archived shows. I ended up purchasing “The Hard Food E.P.” from dubplate.net, along with D1 “Degrees” and a bunch of others.
Sheldon’s After Dark
(A sentimental epicurean journey by Manual Scan/Lemons Are Yellow veteran Paul Kaufman.)
Regardless of where the show was, chances are the night would end up at Sheldon’s, the Eisenhower-era styled, non-conglomerate “family” restaurant that once loomed large in the all-night dining Pantheon of San Diego. Most memorable for me were items with descriptions like “Large 24 oz. Malted Milkshake, Thick and Creamy, $1.25” and “Demi-loaf of home-baked bread, served here with butter, 75 cents.” Those Thick and Creamies became a significant part of my diet, and one of their original ashtrays still is on the mantle. Also iconic was their placemat, with postwar cartoon depiction of San Diego’s highlights.
My first time was after the first Manual Scan show at the London Tavern.
She gets confused … Flying over the dateline
Yesterday Kristi Maddocks, Tom Ward and I (Matt R.) had a reunion lunch (at the fabulous uptown Vynl restaurant on NY’s Columbus Ave.), and we were comparing notes on our respective migratory patterns since leaving San Diego.
The conversation turned to a subject I’d planned to raise here: While many of us used LA as an occasional or frequent playground in our youth, it seems most of the expats on this blog made a beeline to San Francisco once they’d decided to leave San Diego.
“Who’s the OLD dude?”
Time for a little topical palate-cleanser after all this rear-view mirror-gazing: I want to know if we really are the people our parents warned us about. (Well, not mine, considering some of their friends — but maybe yours. Maybe.)
Here’s the question: If you had the chance to spend half an hour chatting with yourself ca. 1983, what would the 1983 you have to say about the 2008 you? (Let’s say you couldn’t reveal your identity or tell yourself to buy Microsoft.)
Under the ‘hood
Let’s talk about how geography shaped the San Diego underground. Rockin’ Dog Dave Ellison cogently observed that San Diego “was big enough that you had enough like-minded, creative kids from different parts of the city coming together to start bands and play shows together … but small enough for musicians and bands to have a sense of community.” Our gatherings brought together eclectic pockets of North County, downtown and inland musicianship; every exit on the freeway seemed to point to a different little scene.
From my perch in Encinitas, Hair Theatre represented the underground’s Carlsbad-Oceanside bloc; the Rockin’ Dogs proved Poway was cooler than I knew; and each high school downtown seemed to have allotted a special smoking wall to a smart, edgy, aesthetically acute fringe element.
How do you map San Diego music ca. 1980-85? Where were the epicenters, and where were you?