the Wallflowers | The Che Underground

Mark your calendars for ‘A Che Underground Midwinter Masque’!

February 15, 2022November 12, 2021 by Mmrothenberg

Mark ye well: A neat two years since “A Che Underground Leap Night Showcase,” the tribes will gather again in February 2022 for an effervescent weekend of mirth and music.

“A Che Underground Midwinter Masque,” Feb. 18 and Feb. 19 at The Casbah San Diego, will feature legends of the San Diego scene and beyond.

Fancy dress is highly encouraged but not required. (Stay tuned for costume contest details.)

And check out this boffo lineup (with more names to come)!

P-Touch All Stars: ‘Cry Baby Cry’

October 9, 2020October 4, 2020 by Mmrothenberg

The challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic have spawned a thousand new flowers of socially distanced creativity — and the artists of the Che Underground are tending their mind gardens for your delectation.

Case in point: This latest effort from P-Touch All Stars, which gives an old favorite a new cinematic treatment (with a little help from the Library of Congress’ film archives).

Ready for ‘A Che Underground Leap Night Showcase’?

February 13, 2020 by Mmrothenberg

Most rock-‘n’-roll historians know San Diego’s Che Underground scene as a mad scientist’s lab for musical experiments at the top of the ’80s.

Named for notable shows they staged at UC San Diego’s Che Café — but active across the region — the bands of the Che Underground brought together artists steeped in punk, psychedelia, garage and more. Throwing their influences into a high-speed blender, bands like The Answers, Hair Theatre, Noise 292, The Rockin’ Dogs, The Tell-Tale Hearts and the original SD Wallflowers provided a soundtrack for Southern California youth culture.

Four decades later, those musicians and artists continue to kick out the collective jams — and on Feb. 29, some of the best minds of that generation will stage a family reunion at the Riviera Supper Club & Turquoise Lounge for “A Che Underground Leap Night Showcase.” The night’s lineup of Che Underground supergroups will feature two stars of the scene who haven’t performed in San Diego for more than three decades: Jeremiah Cornelius and Tom Clarke.

Crawdaddys/Unknowns reunion flyers
from Kristen Tobiason

December 11, 2017August 26, 2011 by Mmrothenberg

(To celebrate Labor Day weekend’s 30-year reunions of the Crawdaddys and the Unknowns at San Diego’s Casbah, longtime graphic artist and Che Underground blog contributor Kristen Tobiason has prepared a striking pair of flyers to feature each night’s lineup. Here’s the story behind the art and a glimpse of the sociology of music flyering.)

It seems like yesterday I was drawing a flyer for the Wallflowers’ first gig with a black Sharpie.

Twenty years later, here I am putting together a poster for the Unknowns, while listening to one of their songs on YouTube.
I still sketch my preliminary ideas on paper, but my medium has evolved, becoming less primitive and infinitely more digitized.

Buy your tickets now for the Crawdaddys and the Unknowns at San Diego’s Casbah, Sept. 2-3!

Some girls love shoes, I love color and typography. I was never patient enough to learn guitar, but drawing came naturally. I loved record albums as a kid, and some of my earliest memories are of studying the covers from my dad’s collection. As a teenager in the San Diego music scene, flyering was a way that I could contribute to the music without having to actually be in a band. When I was 16 I got my first box of rapidograph inking pens, which I had seen Jerry Cornelius use for his illustrations. Jerry’s art was intimidating, but inspiring too. I learned by emulating his style, and used to sit and copy Tennielle’s drawings from “Alice in Wonderland,” or the covers of H.P. Lovecraft, to learn how to do the crosshatching/shading.

Steve Epeneter at Studio 517

September 30, 2011July 25, 2011 by Mmrothenberg

San Diego music veteran Harold Gee continues the painstaking process of developing precious negatives from the glory days of the San Diego underground scene, then digitizing them for his Flickr set.

Here’s a new one that captures the essence of a larger-than-life figure from that era: the late Steve Epeneter on stage at Studio 517, the club he managed and the inspiration for the Wallflowers’ classic “Paradise on 4th Avenue.”

Introducing Sceneroller

September 4, 2011March 11, 2011 by Mmrothenberg

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.

Cardiac Kidz reloaded

July 3, 2011October 20, 2010 by Mmrothenberg

(The Cardiac Kidz’s Jim Ryan announces an eclectic night of musical merriment Nov. 4 at Lestat’s Coffee House in San Diego.)

The Cardiac Kidz are winding down their 2010 San Diego “Performance Blitz” tour with the end of the year finally in sight. The band has played an unheard of 10 shows in less than six months.

From what started as a onetime reunion show to an expanded booking schedule, The Kidz have even gone so far as to add the talents of David Rinck (frontman for San Diego’s Wallflowers) to the band.

Che echoes from the Alps

December 14, 2017September 15, 2010 by Mmrothenberg

(Rolf “Ray” Rieben of Feathered Apple Records describes how the San Diego underground reached Basel, Switzerland, and shares his cache of memorabilia from the Che Cafe and other points southwest. Stay tuned for much more of Ray’s trove from the Tell-Tale Hearts, Crawdaddys, Howling Men and more!)

I was working as a record salesman in Switzerland when the first Crawdaddys LP (“Crawdaddy Express”) on the German Line label had hit the market. Most of the Bomp! catalog was licensed to Line Records from Germany. Line Records had the best possible distribution, since because they were connected to a major label. They’ve helped to make The Crawdaddys and some of the other bands from Greg Shaw’s Bomp label famous over here in Europe.

“Crawdaddy Express” rates as the first modern ’60s garage LP ever made (after probably The Flamin’ Groovies). It was first advertised on the back cover of the July 1979 issue of Goldmine magazine. The sound was very British: wild raving rnb like the early Kinks, Downliners Sect, or the The Pretty Things, but undoubtedly influenced by Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and the likes. There’s even a few cool northern soul ballads featured on both of their LPs, too. These four fine young lads from San Diego knew what they were doing, they had the right spirits, and they could deliver in authentic ca. ’64 – ’65 style, too. It was exactly the type of brand-new LP that I was hoping for.

The Wallflowers: ‘Walldrugs’ at Che Games

January 6, 2011June 6, 2010 by Mmrothenberg

One year later, we’re finally on deck to start releasing performance footage shot by Eric Rife at May 2009’s Che Games for May reunion, synchronized to Jason Brownell’s high-fi audio courtesy of resident polymath Dave Fleminger.

First up, the first live performance of the original San Diego Wallflowers’ signature “Walldrugs” since 1985. Lead singer David Rinck reflects on resurrecting the song:

“When we were putting together the Wallflowers set list for the Che Games last year, we had to listen closely to the old recordings to figure out how we played those tunes, in order to get us all on the same page on the arrangements and all, since with me in Africa and the rest of the band spread out all over California, we were basically working via the Internet.”

Forever changes: Che Games for May
and the the perpetual nostalgia machine

January 6, 2011May 29, 2010 by Mmrothenberg

Detail: Dave Fleminger, the Mirrors; May 30, 2009 (photo by Dave Doyle) 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!