UCSD | The Che Underground

The Mirrors: “Blue”

May 9, 2015April 22, 2009 by Mmrothenberg

(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.

Noise 292: “Never Come Near”

January 1, 2011February 27, 2009 by Mmrothenberg

(Dave Fleminger recalls this performance from Noise 292’s April 25, 1984, appearance at UCSD’s Center for Music Experiment.)

I strongly remember this show, and especially this song. It was one of the last shows I saw before I left San Diego. Noise 292’s set was solid and focused, and unrelenting. This song, the last one in the set, struck me especially in its cold and alienating embrace.

The vocals and the high melody lock together into a single statement that shatters by the end into a mass of confusion and disjointed thought. Like so many great songs, it was easy to relate to it as a manifestation of my own mixed feelings — in this case about leaving home, my friends, this amazing music scene, everything familiar.

Read moreNoise 292: “Never Come Near”

Noise 292: “Eyesight”

January 1, 2011October 10, 2008 by Mmrothenberg

Noise 292 fan turned rock ‘n’ roll anthropologist Stefan Helmreich joins our ranks with a collection of tracks, including this late live performance of the band performing my early composition “Eyesight.”

“I recently stumbled across your Ché Underground site and was delighted to read such loving accounts of those long-ago days and nights,” Stefan writes. “I was still in high school — a year behind [Noise 292 percussionist] Wendell [Kling], then a senior at at San Dieguito — when I went to to the Nov. 17, 1983, Noise show, which stunned my then 17-year-old sensibilities and tracked me toward discovering Joy Division; the Velvets; and, soon enough, prompted me to start my own band.