Reviving San Diego's Rock Renaissance
We’ve spent the past three years here on Che Underground: The Blog talking about the bands, people, places and shows that made our scene. Now here’s a way to connect them to each other — and to other scenes around the world.
San Diego is my musical home, and our musical history is precious to me … So this is the right place for the first real public launch of Sceneroller, a software platform that lets users connect bands, people, venues and gigs to write a shared history of local music scenes.
(Unknowns bassist Dave Doyle recounts the band’s 1990 reunion and transatlantic travels, complete with video!)
The video embedded in this post came as a complete surprise to me; I knew that some must exist out there, but having never seen any footage back in the day I didn’t know what had become of the record of our time in France.
So in short form this is how this video came to be: Mark Neill, Craig Packham and I had recently moved to Georgia and were struggling to get a foothold. We decided to make a record with Bruce Joyner as The Unknowns and tour France. So out of this “Southern Decay” was produced, and a tour was set up to support the record. Making the record was a blur, as was getting to France!
A well-earned honor for one of our own: Mark Neill, founder of San Diego’s Soil of the South Music Production, took Grammy honors this week for his production role on the Black Keys’ “Brothers,” which took a golden gramophone for best alternative album of 2010.
Dave Doyle, fellow member of San Diego’s Unknowns, shares some thoughts about Mark’s win and a few photos from the sessions at Muscle Shoals Sound Studios in Alabama.
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.”
Attention, San Diego scenesters: To cap the run of special guests at at the Casbah’s Che Underground showcase Jan. 30, Penetrators vocalist Gary Heffern is coming in from Finland to join the festivities!
Heff will be singing with the Town Criers (while his Penetrators bandmates Chris Sullivan and Chris Davies join Manual Scan onstage). He’s also helping Che Underground: the Blog jump-start a San Diego underground retrospective exhibit and raise money on behalf of Unknowns vocalist Bruce Joyner.
Read moreGary Heffern + the Town Criers
+ benefit raffle = Jan. 30 fun!
Next Saturday’s Che Underground showcase at San Diego’s Casbah continues to gain star power: Manual Scan announces a Penetrators-themed show-within-a-show featuring two members of that legendary band.
Manual Scan’s Kevin Donaker-Ring explains the circumstances that brought Penetrators bassist Chris Sullivan and guitarist Chris Davies to the Casbah show, which will also feature the Unknowns, the Town Criers and the Blues Gangsters.
Going into the final stretch before next Saturday’s Che Underground showcase at the Casbah, here’s a handsome commemorative flyer created by David Klowden, suitable for framing or Scotch taping!
The roster of special guests is growing, as San Diego music history is revisited and made on Saturday night.
To recap the lineup so far:
Cooler and cooler: As if the Town Criers, Manual Scan and the Blues Gangsters weren’t enough to fill out the next Che Underground showcase at the Casbah, San Diego’s legendary Unknowns have joined the bill as special guests!
Guitarist Mark Neill, bassist Dave Doyle and drummer Craig Packham will round out the evening with a short set, their first gig in more than five years. If I had any question about getting my plane ticket’s worth, this answers it definitively. Don’t miss it!
Read moreThe Unknowns join the show!
Jan. 30 at San Diego’s Casbah
Courtesy of Mikel Toombs, here’s a joint artifact of two hugely influential forces in San Diego music: an interview of the Unknowns that Dan McLain conducted for Issue III of his Hobogue ‘zine, dated February 1982.
“I interviewed the Unknowns 2 years ago for Snare magazine,” McLain writes. “In retrospect, I found our previous outing so incomplete that I simply had to do it over again.
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.