For those who missed Che Games for May in San Diego May 29-30 or just want to relive the magic: Good news! Thanks to modern technology, the event was captured from every angle in photographs, audio and video.
Exhibit A: The original San Diego Wallflowers raise the roof of San Diego’s Casbah with “Funland,” the band’s hypnotic paean to the city’s seamy underbelly, now lost to gentrification. (For memories of the original Funland, check out Kristen Tobiason’s “Then and now” feature.)
The May 30 performance marks the Wallflowers debut of Rockin’ Dog Dave Ellison and features original Wallflowers David Rinck on vocals, Paul Howland on bass and Matt Johnson on drums. (Che Underground jack-of-all-trades Dave Fleminger added keyboard stylings to the set.)
Mr. Rinck provides insights on the “grinding wheel” imagery of “Funland”: “The grinding wheel was an enduring Wallflowers legend, a sort of evil Buddhist mandala of the homeless and crazy addicts and winos that lived down there on pre-gentrification Broadway.
“The search for it represents the compulsive inevitable quest to confront our own inner void, which we Wallflowers found ourselves engaged in. We always had the haunting awareness that we are really all just clinging to the conventions of this material world, one shaky step from the abyss of madness.
“Or maybe it just sounded cool to say, I dunno.”
Many thanks to Lori Stalnaker-Bevilacqua for providing this video … Higher-resolution videotape is en route, but I find this dark and atmospheric sequence captures the set to a T.
BTW, “I’m not 21, so I can’t buy no booze” may be the best first line any of us has ever written. 🙂
Oh my goose, 1 comment! I’m gonna get Dave Rinck a t-shirt (sleeves optional) that says “I traveled all the way from Africa, and all I got was this awesome Blues Gangsters CD”. Grinding wheel, indeed.
>>Oh my goose, 1 comment!
Matt: Don’t take it personally … Have you noticed that most of the musical performances on the site barely get comments, while everybody jumps in to talk about Mexican foods and ’70s sitcoms? 🙂
I think everybody gets a little shy … Maybe we should have some sort of emoticon for “applause”!
Matts,
I don’t think it counts if you comment on your own video, or if the webmaster tries to get things started. Let me help you out: Does anyone remember that episode of Chico and the Man when Freddie Prinze ordered those rolled tacos?
In all seriousness, that was a great performance and we are fortunate to have a recording of it!
Yeah it was fun playing this show. After the show though… we had great tacos at that place Lucha Libre. Good call Lou Damien!
>>we had great tacos at that place Lucha Libre.
Yeah, but they shut down the line on some of us, so we had to go back to La Posta.
I was all, “Don’t you know who we are? We’re the goddamn Wallflowers, and Jakob over there will be pissed if we don’t get our burritos!” But the lady still wouldn’t let us order. I guess she wasn’t listening to the radio that year.