the Cramps | The Che Underground

Lux Interior, RIP

December 11, 2017February 5, 2009 by Mmrothenberg

(Dylan Rogers commemorates another painful loss to the rock-‘n’-roll underground and recognizes the Cramps’ California connection.)

“Lux Interior, lead singer of The Cramps, passed away yesterday due to an existing heart condition at Glendale Memorial Hospital.”

Holy shit! Not again!

The Cramps are one of my fave bands. I have seen them more than any other band. They really got me through some lean musical times (late ’80s -mid ’90s); for a while, they were the only decent bands you could go see with ties to early punk.

Yes The Cramps are associated with New York, but the true beginnings of the band started in the early- to mid-1970s in Sacramento, Calif., in a small apartment on the corner of 21st and H, where Lux and Ivy first lived together. (Rumor has it Lux picked up Ivy hitchhiking, and they had been together ever since.)

Punk flyer blow out from the Seibert Collection

January 1, 2011January 4, 2009 by Mmrothenberg

You asked for it, we’ve got it: The recent success of the PDF set of mod-themed flyers from the Ken Fugate Collection prompts a 31-page volume of punk classics from early ’80s San Diego, courtesy of our beloved Jason Seibert.

The Seibert flyers reference a variety of venues, including Fairmount Hall, North Park Lions Club and the Adams Avenue Theater (many of them organized by Marc Rude’s Dead or Alive). San Diego acts include Personal Conflict, Men of Clay, No Age Limit, the Skullbusters, Social Spit, Manifest Destiny, Catch-22, Moral Majority, V-5, 5051, the Nutrons, the Middle Class, Battalion of Saints, District Tradition, the Front, Sacred Lies, the Injections and Black Tango.

Read morePunk flyer blow out from the Seibert Collection

Then and now: Adams Avenue Theater

April 14, 2012August 21, 2008 by Mmrothenberg

(Roving correspondent/ photographer Kristen Tobiason revisits and documents the scenes of our youth. Today, the Adams Avenue Theater meets “Project Runway”!)

No one could have imagined that this hallmark of our glory days, the Adams Avenue Theater (3325 Adams Ave.), would metamorphose into something so random as Discount Fabrics. I don’t think it’s as humiliating as it is simply bizarre.

The humiliation occurred in the late ’80s, during the venue’s brief reincarnation as the Purple Rain Club. The transforming of a theater into a fabric store has a thread of irony that keeps San Diego “weird.” Frankly, I prefer it to the gentrification that has sucked the charm out of other neighborhoods.

Discount Fabrics never remodeled. Outside of the merchandise, everything looks the same as it did. A quarter-century later, there is still a reflection of the building’s punk-rock roots. Shadows still linger, and I can imagine an entryway streaked with the scuff of Doc Martens and cigarette butts; blood, sweat and spit in the hall; the pit, a cluster of motion, like hornets, swinging fists and bodies, a stage bomb, a swan dive from the balcony …

Headliners we’ve known

March 27, 2019July 29, 2008 by Mmrothenberg

Here’s a potential source of mirth and mayhem: Most of us who played regularly in San Diego had opportunities to open for bigger acts passing through town on tour. David Klowden recounted two chances to open for the Cramps; Ray Brandes and I shared a laugh over the excesses of Specimen when the Tell-Tale Hearts and 3 Guys Called Jesus opened for them at North Park Lions’ Club.

Who were your favorite headliners to open for/hang out with/mock/pilfer from? Who, not so much?

Based on ability; etiquette; prima-donnahood; and general entertainment value (intentional or otherwise), let’s sort out the keepers from the discards! No brown M&Ms!