Reviving San Diego's Rock Renaissance
A Che PSA: UCSD’s Che Cafe is the target of a fundraising campaign to continue its decades-long run of music and memories. I hope a few of our many readers can get behind this cause with their wallets and creativity.
Followers of this blog will recall that the Che (for which this blog is named) suffered the catastrophic theft in August 2009 of its sound equipment, and insurance costs for the venue bring the fundraising goal to $12,000, according to the site.
(Mikel Toombs takes inspiration from the late punk icon.)
Poly Styrene, who died Monday after battling breast cancer (she was 53), was the subject of the first interview feature I ever wrote. It appeared in the Triton Times, before it became the UCSD Guardian and moved in next door to the Ché Café, which you may have heard about.
And what would prompt a penniless college student to place a then-pricey phone call to London to talk to someone in a band, X-ray Spex, that had a single 1977 single (“Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” backed with “I’m a Cliché”) in a style (punk) that had yet to take hold in the US, which still wanted to get down tonight?
This: “Some people think little girls should be seen ‘n’ not heard, but I say,” Poly said, “oh bondage! Up yours!”
(A new perspective on our old stomping grounds. Any other readers from the Che collective want to chime in?)
So, I am flipping through the Reader, and I see the short article about your site and I go check it out because back in the day I belonged to several lefty campus organizations that put on benefit concerts at the Che.
I recognized the name of your band, Noise 292, because of all the shows we did. I had one flyer saved from back in the day, and it has your band’s name on it along with The Front and The Odds. It was for a Feb. 24, 1984, concert [to benefit draft resister Michael Marsh] sponsored by the UCSD Committee Against Registration and the Draft which was a part of the Progressive Student Organization at the Che.
I love learning about the origins of our old haunts — those rare places in the San Diego construction boom of the ’70s and ’80s that actually pre-dated us! Case in point: the Che Cafe itself, which is profiled starting on Page 16 of this virtual version of the latest UCSD alumni magazine.
N.b.: While I appreciate the attention, the article gives me disproportionate credit for bringing rock ‘n’ roll to this hippie haven. (Considering I first saw the Answers at the Che and Noise 292 made our debut there as the Answers’ guests, it’s hard to paint me or my band as lone pioneers!) And it doesn’t quote some people I hoped.
That said, I really enjoyed learning about how that rickety old place got its start: “The three wooden structures … that today house the Che Cafe were accumulating grunge long before UCSD was even founded.