Reviving San Diego's Rock Renaissance
Thank you! September 2009 was Che Underground: The Blog’s biggest month ever for page views … And if it had 31 days like most self-respecting months, it would’ve handily beaten the record for the largest number of individual visitors. (Our audience did breeze past the 8,000 mark without the neighbors calling in a single noise complaint.)
You’ve been coming back month after month for almost two years, and we’re very proud and grateful. We’d also enjoy hearing from you!
Ray Brandes is not only a San Diego musical treasure in his own right; he’s also established himself as a remarkable curator of our musical history.
Ray’s recent biographies of the Penetrators, the Unknowns, the Crawdaddys and the Zeros, among others, are unprecedented for their depth, narrative clarity, and comprehensive work with the original musicians and other key sources.
Other contributors to Che Underground: The Blog have added more pieces to the puzzle, with posts on formative bands such as 5051, Claude Coma and the IVs, and the Injections.
(High time! Che Underground documentarian Kristen Tobiason revisits the spot that gave the blog its name.)
The first time I landed on the surface of the Che Café was at an early-evening soundcheck for the Wallflowers (not the Jakob Dylan pansy MTV sensation, but the raw & funky, OG Wallflowers), who were opening that night for Noise 292.
Arriving and styling in Paul Howland’s parents’ green station wagon, we unloaded a couple pieces of equipment, and then proceeded to hang out in the woodsy picnic areas surrounding the venue, creating a smoky haze amidst talk of music and the humor of Tom and Paul’s use of ordinary soap as an alternative to dime-store hair gel.
A recent comment by Kristen Tobiason has me puzzling over how best to focus conversation on the Gravedigger V, a youthful San Diego band whose brief existence in 1983-1984 has inspired a quarter-century of notoriety.
There are plenty of online references to the band and its album “All Black and Hairy,” but many pieces are of questionable accuracy. What can we do to set the record straight?
Group consciousness in action? In the weeks after so many of us got back together for May’s Che Games at the Casbah (and the lovely Graveyard Park picnic that followed), I was struck by the number of references to Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” dropped by attendees.
Never mind its post-“Trainspotting” ubiquity: “Perfect Day” remains a haunting paean to love and loss, as the narrator muses about a perfect day with a companion who made him feel like “someone else … Someone good.”
It’s also makes me think about the “perfect days” of our youth … And days that approach perfection now.
I’ve belatedly read “The Tipping Point,” Malcolm Gladwell’s marvelous little book on the critical mass required to create an epidemic — whether a literal, biological one or the adoption of ideas or products.
I’ve been comparing Gladwell’s ideas to the intense little scene we experienced in late ’70s/early ’80s San Diego. In particular, I’ve been thinking about the people that played the three key roles Gladwell describes as necessary for a movement to take off. Check out the definitions, and then think about the folks we hung around with back when we were young:
Carol Coleman (née Anderson), Encinitas Pannikin manager extraordinaire and all-around rockin’ scenester, recently digitized some photographs that include shots tracking paths we took from Hair Theatre and Noise 292.
These pictures include Hair Theatre vocalist Sergio, Noise 292 guitarist David Rives (and Answers guitarist Dave Fleminger) at one of the occasions when the former drummed for us at the Che Cafe; several shows by 3 Guys Called Jesus, the band I formed with bassist Steve Duke and drummer Robert Labbe in 1985; and 1995 photos of Joy Bomb, San Diego’s successor to Hair Theatre.
(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.
Between the band’s San Diego pedigree and Ray Brandes’ definitive biography, punk pioneers the Zeros have a special place on Che Underground: The Blog.
The reunited band’s recent string of West Coast gigs has rallied members of our community. And considering our own recent reunion, I’d like to learn more about how our forebears are faring.
Read about the birth of the Zeros!
Who’s been to the Zeros’ recent shows? How does now stack up to then?
(Bart Mendoza of Manual Scan and the Shambles contributes a selection of flyers from his capacious archives.)
1. One of my infamous paste-&-cut flyers, this one for Julie at 2581, when I helped promote a batch of shows in 1983 1988 — you can probably tell the numbers are from an old calendar.
I collected photos, and friends gave me old magazines to cannibalize into quick flyers, though this one is from my collection of vintage TV-show stills. That’s a pretty diverse calendar, from the Event to Claude Coma, with stops at the Nephews; Outriders (with Rick Wilkins); and Berkeley combo the Birminghams; as well as lots of others.