Reviving San Diego's Rock Renaissance
We’re overdue to devote a post to the recent work of one of the Che Underground’s most protean talents: Jeffrey Luck Lucas, veteran of San Diego’s Morlocks, Mirrors and Answers and a prolific Bay area solo artist.
I was privileged to play with Jeff for a few years in San Francisco — a longtime aspiration of mine — and I can testify to the intensity of his artistic vision through many incarnations.
Ava points out that it was exactly one year ago that Che Underground: The Blog hosted its first-ever reunion gig (a k a “Che Games for May”) at San Diego’s Casbah.
The two-night blowout included eight great San Diego bands (nine, if you count the unannounced, sizzling first-night mini-set by Lemons Are Yellow), most of whom hadn’t played together in a quarter-century. It marked the first time most of us had been together since the mid-’80s — and the opportunity to meet a few new friends who’d met through the site and their shared San Diego musical history.
This anniversary thus represents an interesting object lesson in the recursive nature of memory: This event itself has now passed into its realm and hence deserves its own commemorative post!
Read moreForever changes: Che Games for May
and the the perpetual nostalgia machine
Che Underground archivists are frankly embarrassed by the riches rendered from the Che Games for May festival May 29-30 at San Diego’s Casbah. Twenty-five years or more later, the shows offered a great opportunity to showcase beloved material — and capture it with 21st-century technology.
While few early-’80s performances have survived, this event was immortalized from every angle with digital audio, video and photography; our biggest challenge now is to collate and edit this wealth of material.
In other words: I hardly know where to start!
I’m proud to get the photographic ball rolling with the camera work of Unknowns bassist/ photographic powerhouse Dave Doyle, who took some beautiful shots of the Mirrors, the original San Diego Wallflowers, Noise 292 and Hair Theatre on the second evening of the show. (Stay tuned for a gallery of Friday night’s superstars: Everybody Violet, Manual Scan, the Gay Dennys and the Answers!)
A quick one, while he’s away: I’m tying up some loose ends before my flight back from San Diego to New Jersey after Day Two of the Che Underground’s Che Games for May reunion event at the Casbah Club.
Thanks to a crack team of documentarians, we’ve got audio, video and photos to share and enjoy — and those will be making their way onto the site in the coming weeks.
But for now, a simple “Thank you!” and an open invitation to talk about what our quarter-century reunion did to or for you.
You’re all very, very important to me, and easily my biggest regret is that I couldn’t be everywhere at once to talk to you and share time. But please: Let’s come together here and swap a few stories for each other and for our friends who couldn’t be with us this time out.
What’s an iconic concert without an iconic poster? In honor of Che Games for May, the 25th anniversary tribal gathering slated for May 29-30 at San Diego’s Casbah, Ray Brandes and artist Kevin Diamond have created this handsome memento so participants near and far can own a piece of music history.
Enjoy this commemorative gift, and we hope to see you there!
(Tell-Tale Heart/Town Crier Ray Brandes lays the table for May’s audio feast.)
The Che Underground Weekend Showcase:
Celebrating more than 25 years of San Diego’s underground music history
An incredible opportunity to reconnect, reminisce and rediscover will unfold as 25 years and thousands of miles of distance disappear in a single weekend — May 29 and 30 at the Casbah in San Diego.
The lineups have been set, the bands are rehearsing, and the drinks are on ice. Here’s what to expect:
(Answers and Mirrors co-founder Dave Fleminger talks transitions.)
Blue: The Mirrors live at the Che Cafe, Spring 1984
“This one’s called ‘Blue,’ and we’re gonna make it up … ”
Sometime in late May 1984 the Mirrors played our last performance in San Diego at UCSD’s Che Cafe. The band had formed in late ’83 after the fall of the Answers and in March recorded an as-yet-unreleased album of songs entitled “Have No Mercy.” In June I moved to NYC, but we would continue to record sporadically over the next couple years.
Set the controls for the heart of the sun: The Che Underground’s quarter-century reunion looms ever larger — so large, in fact, that one night just couldn’t contain it.
Now scheduled for May 29 and 30 at Tim Mays’ legendary Casbah Club in San Diego, the event will comprise:
Believe the hype: May 29-31, 2009, is the time and San Diego is the place for the Che Underground’s 25-year reunion and performance showcase.
A crack team of musical geniuses, party planners and cranky old hipsters is hashing out the details, which will be forthcoming in this space. But go ahead and book your E-tickets now for a long weekend in America’s Finest City!
Among the bands on track for the show, Che Games for May will feature:
When I met them in March 1983, the Answers took the top of my head off, scraped out all the crud and set it on straight … The combined musicianship of guitarist Dave Fleminger, bassist Jeff Lowe and drummer Dave Anderson was on a level I’d never experienced from a local band playing the kind of music I cared about. And the songwriting! Transcendent.
I’d spent a year somewhat isolated from my peers, not getting out so much from Encinitas but listening to a lot of records and imagining the sort of co-conspirators who could synthesize the energy of punk with the emotional complexities of earlier eras. When I met the Answers, it all lined up for me — anything was possible.