Reviving San Diego's Rock Renaissance
(Ray Brandes provides a brief history of a new band with a long San Diego history.)
The Secret Squares: pleased to make your acquaintance!
The Secret Squares is a musical project that has its origins in Gary’s Kids, a band assembled to back Gary Heffern on a solo performance at the Casbah in January 2019, and The Wrecktangle, which performed once at the Che Underground’s Leap Year show at the Riviera Supper Club, mere days before the world went into quarantine in March 2020.
Che Underground: The Blog has written before about the legendary Skeleton Club, the backbone of San Diego punk that Laura Fraser and Tim Mays ran for a scant two weeks at 921 4th Ave. before reopening (always a half-step ahead of SD authorities) at 202 Market St.
Now Mikel Toombs enriches our store of Skeleton Club lore with a wealth of flyers, including announcements that accompanied the original venue’s opening and closing.
“The one about the Skeleton Club closing was handed out at the final show at the original Skeleton Club,” Mikel writes. “I don’t have any recollection of the other one.”
Thanks to the Cardiac Kidz’s Jim Ryan, Che Underground: The Blog has a fresh supply of artifacts from his band and other early participants in the San Diego punk scene.
Among Jim’s contributions is this chart from early 1980 composed by Dan McLain. It testifies to Dan’s role as underground historian and adds new fuel to the longstanding discussion of our family tree.
(Excerpts from Tell-Tale Heart/Town Crier Ray Brandes’ groundbreaking history of San Diego’s original retro-visionaries. Read the full version in Che Underground’s Related Bands section.)
The Crawdaddys have been called one of the most influential bands ever to come out of San Diego. When one looks at the groups its members have spawned, as well as the recurring popularity of ‘60s-style punk and rhythm and blues over the past 30 years, it’s hard to dispute that assertion. Armed with an encyclopedic knowledge of music history, an uncompromising commitment to artistic integrity, and a roster of musicians with unparalleled talents and distinct individual styles, the Crawdaddys single-handedly gave birth to the revival of garage music in the late 1970s in the United States. The reverberations of the first few chords they played are still being felt today.
The Crawdaddys’ story begins and ends with lifelong Beatles fanatic Ron Silva, who grew up on Del Monte Avenue in Point Loma. He and his neighbor Steve Potterf started listening to records together in the ninth grade, and while Silva would barely tolerate Potterf’s love for Kiss, Aerosmith, Jethro Tull and Led Zeppelin, he gradually convinced his friend to appreciate his own tastes. “After a while Steve started getting into the music I liked — Beatles, early Stones. I remember sitting in his room playing guitars along to my dad’s Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley 45s,” says Silva.
Read moreLet the Good Times Roll: The untold story of the Crawdaddys