What was the very first bona-fide rock-‘n’-roll gig you ever played? Mine was with future Noise 292 guitarist David Rives and Hannes Kling (big brother of Noise 292 percussionist Wendell) in early 1980 — at a chili cook-off in the University of San Diego gym.
We played at the end of the bill; the school administrator/MC stopped us after two songs to announce the cook-off winners (compelling drummer Chris Gessel to play rolls throughout the awards); and then everybody packed up their chili and fled the building. By the time we finished our set (with “Twist and Shout”!), kids were playing basketball in the empty gym.
How rockin’ were your formative gigs?
The International Blend was still just that. Peter Verbrugge was booking the place, but hadn’t taken over as the King’s Road, yet.
The Crawdaddys were playing Ray Charles “Tell The Truth”, and dancing near the front, I start shouting out the whole “who was that man you’re with last night” part that Ray did to wind the record out. He grabs me, sticks a Sure SM58 microphone in front of me, and I belt the whole thing out again.
He said later that night that he couldn’t believe anyone 16 years old knew that song. Wheee. Pretty fun.
They were all parties. The first time I ever played in front of an audience I was 15…it was me, Sam and our drummer Skip. Skip was lucky enough to live in a guest house that was attached to his parents house…it was seperated from the main house by the garage. We used to practice there, and once had a party where we played. Skip had just covered one wall with one of those outdoor mural wallpaper things. People were slam dancing and one guy fell into the wall ass first and put a giant hole in it.
When I was 16 I had a band with John Marshall (later a resident of Greenwich Village West) on guitar and John Mullen on drums. There were a lot of really fun parties at both their houses we played at. John Mullen was the very first Rockin’ Dogs drummer.
Ooooh! I forgot another degree of separation between our little San Dieguito High School crowd and the doin’s downtown: When we started the band in ’78, our original bassist was Dave Gardner, who was quite lackadaisical about playing with us. His real gig, he told us (many times), was with a couple of guys in La Jolla playing first under the name Starjammer, then as the Pedestrians. (One day Dave Rives took the wind out of Dave Gardner’s sails by showing him an ad the Pedestrians had taken out a newspaper ad for a new bassist!) The La Jolla duo of course was Bart Mendoza and Kevin Ring; I presume the new bassist they ultimately found was Dave Fleminger; and with Paul Kaufman, the rest was Manual Scan.
Oh, man!
I never knew the Starjammer connection! Their keyboard player was a kid named Larry at Gompers, with me. Had the same math teacher! That is in 80. Weirder and wierder.
Yup, that was me. My first real gig was as the drummer with the nascent Manual Scan, playing their first gig at the London Tavern, at 2nd and Beech Streets if I recall downtown. This must have been mid…1981? Opening for the Roosters! It was the first time I had seen scooter-riding mods. I couldn’t buy a beer, I just had to settle for a Cornish Pasty before the show-I figured that was the most British thing I could get. People were actually dancing during the show, which was quite a trip. I remember the skin pealing off my hands after the show. It was my first trip to Sheldon’s afterwards, with the Roosters, talking about life on the road.
Dave Gardner! I went to Junior High with that guy. I recall that he thought that the comic strip “Crock” was pure hilarity, something I never understood. He was heavily into playing along with Zeppelin albums.
When I knew Dave Gardner, he was trying to convince us that Van Halen was the perfect embodiment of modern rock — also, that his father was in the Mafia.
My first “gig” was at a party down the street from my house in 1979, playing bass for ‘Ned Lynch and the Invaders’. The lead guitarist was the younger brother of the guitarist in Ratt, then known as Mickey Ratt.
Played a couple parties and a talent show with Adolescent Behavior (me, Dave Doyle, Laurie Mooney) in 1980, and my first actual club gig would have been that Summer with Social Spit.
More details than neccesary, but here goes:
Kevin and I have been friends since 1975 when I was 13 or thereabouts, he was a friend of a friend, and I think we met at a beach party at La Jolla Shores, probably late that year and we started trying to put a band together almost immediately. A bit younger than the rest of us, he was in sixth grade to our seventh.
Besides “entertaining” at parties, our first public performance was July 23 1977 (thank you wikipedia 🙂 we entered the San Diego Comic-Con Masquerade as KISS and won first place “best performance,” largely due to then KGB-FM DJ Gabriel Wisdom, joining us onstage dressed as Thor, god of thunder, playing air guitar…I was 15, so that was during our Muirlands Jr. High days. The show was broadcast on CC-TV and still exists in the Comic-Con’s Archive.
My first proper gig would have been at friends parties around La Jolla with Starjammer, though we may have played a song or two at a party earlier than that with Jeff Bloom, when we were just “the group.” The core of people in that circle hung out at the La Jolla HS music rooms and played every lunch time.
I’ve got to admit it’s kind of a blur now, but the two earliest Starjammer shows I can remember probably were in late 1978 (?) at a church in La Jolla, Mary Star of the Sea. I don’t recall the occasion, but we only played 4 or 5 songs. There was also a show at Christ the King Church in Southeast San Diego that was extremely early on. Though I dont have many of them, there are lots and lots of recordings, somewhere, from both Starjammer and The Pedestrians. Ron Feinberg and Ron Archibald ran off reels of stuff in Kevin’s garage.
More directly to Paul Kaufman, the last Pedestrians gig I can find is January 2 1981. The first Manual Scan gig was at the London Tavern July 4 1981 with the Roosters. We played there again on July 11 1981. If I’m getting my chronology right, former Pedestrians drummer Paul Brewin replaced you in Manual Scan that fall? Peter English became our manager soon after, we did the Hit Single demos and then the E.P. the following year. Paul stayed until just before the E.P. was released (the last ever through Faulty Products distro), which is why his picture isn’t on the back of the E.P. Paul did later play drums on a few songs on the Manual Scan album, recorded 1985-86.
According to the very extensive and useful gig chronology on the Web site of the Shambles (Bart and Kevin’s current joint), they met Dave Fleminger on December 29, 1980, when playing at Wizard with Color TV and the Endz. A date and location to rival July 6, 1957, at the Woolton Parish Church Garden Fete!
BTW, I don’t recall this Wizard venue … Can anyone assign it a place and time?
I think it was called Wizard Emporium and it was previously Abbey Road… University Ave. in North Park. I’m sure I’ve got the Reader ad clipping packratted somewhere..
I Spy in Sherry Gross’s backyard Mid June 1982. It was her graduation party. Met Dave Flem there, and Ed Moore. First sightings of Pat Works, Jeff Lucas, Jerry C. and second viewings of the Hedgehog’s Cavern/Mach Shau madness. Soon followed by gigs at Int. blend and the first Answers version with David Anderson and me. THere were attempts at public performance (lots of rehearsals with other bands in the two years prior).
David is right it was the same guy that had a shortlived club called The Wizard Emporium which was, as I recall, where Horton Plaza Circle is now. This, however, was “The New Wizard.” The space was a fish market for years after it’s brief time as a club. A flyer for the show is posted at:
http://www.theshambles.net/posters__flyers1.htm
there’s also a Headquarters flyer and a Chula Vista Lions Club Ticket amongst other memorabilia found there…
Toby: Seems like everybody has a Distillery East story! Dave Ellison told a similar tale in the “Gigs of our lives” thread, and Jerry Cornelius famously busted a mirror in a dispute about pay for the Tell-Tale Hearts. Our old high-school band played there a coupla times … I remember our drummer got propositioned by what we’d call a cougar nowadays. Hot times in Escondido!
Oh god Escondido was such a shit kicking town at that time. I mean- San Diego was no walk in the park- there was always some idiot wanting to prove how right they were and how incorrect we were for not coloring within the lines. But Escondido! Yee-haw! I missed a transfer riding the bus in Escondido and had to wait and hour in broad daylight. I was threatened not once but twice, and the second time a cop pulled up and threatened to arrest me.
Punks there must have been really thick skinned. I’ll take downtown or North Park any day- usually up there I’d just get yelled at from passing cars or propositioned.
Four Eyes is still going with mostly original members, including Bob Sale and Lee Knight (Joey Harris & The Speedsters) -- Mark DeCerbo and I have been co-writing and he and I recorded a few backing tracks for a Japanese Rachael Gordon album awhile back. His album on Zip is great in a Squeeze/Wings/Nick Lowe way 🙂 Joyce Rooks not only sang with the Penetrators (she was scheduled for, but missed the reunion in 2006) and Manual Scan, she was indeed part of the punk band the Dinettes early on and today performs with David J -- she was on the recent Bauhaus tour. Funny enough, we both ended up working for Capitol Records at the same time.
David Rives recruited me to play trash percussion in Noise 292 – spur of the moment thing, I was 16. It was my Senior year at San Dieguito, after which I left for Humboldt and Wendell took over that role (more capably I’m sure) in the summer of 83. I was at the Rives house often as I was heavy in to his little sister Malia. David provided the metal trash objects for my instruments. Che might have been my first show with an audience, sometime late 82 or early 83? I also recall the outdoor night show at UCSD (Revelle) and others. Matthew do you remember playing Bodies? I remember stealing the yellow 292 oil drum from an Escondido construction site, not far from the Distillery East. I don’t recall who spray painted stuff on it (wasn’t me) but I do recall thinking that paint job was kinda weak.
Hobie! Welcome!!
Yeah, Bodie’s was a ridiculous venue for us — it had the smallest, most rickety stage in San Diego, as I recall, and the oil drum alone took up most of it.