L-A-Z-Y

The Tell-Tale Hearts- "Crawling Back To Me"

1980's San Diego 60's garage revival band. Pure hotness.
ms.com/telltaleheartsdude

No Way!

I really enjoy Che-Underground: The Blog. I like the history of all things. The history of sports teams, the history of food production in the Fertile Crescent, whatever. This blog is a look back to the 80's Che Cafe scene. Maybe in twenty years I'll blog about the resurgence of a rock scene now in San Diego. I doubt it though. But here is something that blew my mind. Their was a cool rock band that came out of Carlsbad California. For people who don't know, it's one of the biggest places to retire next to Arizona and Florida. We are 30 miles from San Diego with the largest Military base in America above us.

This band was called Hair Theatre and you can listen to "Meet Me Outside" right here.
Here is a excerpt from CU: The Blog:

The first time I heard Hair Theatre was a party at Margarat Nee’s house in Leucadia in the summer of 1983. They came out of nowhere (a k a Carlsbad, a few miles north of my sphere of activity), and I knew from Note 1 that we needed to invite them to join the scene coalescing around the Che Cafe. What an incredible band! What fantastic stage presence!

It's like a goth version of the Stooges
and it's pretty great. This gives Carlsbad at least a few cool points. Still have a lot of work to do.

DAV's

How about some blog love for the DAV in Oceanside! Even before I lived across the street from it, I thought it was a great building. The giant single hall, the walls with a great shade of blue, and the big letters and columns in the front. My old apartment was 95% furnished by this place. My closet is at 34% I believe. So I think the DAV is pretty swell.

Che Underground is a blog devoted to the 80's Che Cafe scene that is very well written and even gives you samples. A post about old thrift jaunts was highlighted with a picture of that big blue piece of Americana. Better yet that picture was linked through a US retro architecture page. Pretty fucking neato.

Fin.

No Likee

Troy Johnson (former music editor for SD City Beat), I owe you an apology. I always thought you were a little bit pretentious and sensed a great deal of self importance. I was also shocked at how tan you were when I saw you filming Fox Rox a few years ago (not that that has anything to do with your personality) But you know what, you ran a really great ship over at City Beat. I don't really know what's going on over there. I know the new music editor Nathan Dinsdale has only been on board for a few months now, but I don't like the direction the weekly is going. I've been reading City Beat regularly for 5 years now and it's a Wednesday highlight for me personally.

The great thing about City Beat is it's focus on local music. That's why I was troubled to read that SD Dialed In Rosey's column "Local Only" and "Notes from the Smoking Patio" is going the way of cassette tapes. Especially troubling is a email response to a complaint by Dave Rolland, head editor for City Beat:

We're actually working on a replacement feature that would incorporate some
of what Locals Only offers. Beauty, as always, is in the eye of the
beholder. Some people like to read about the same local bands every week;
others like to read about touring bands coming through town. We've begun to
tire of the Locals format. Over the last couple of years, it's come to feel
a little too much like public relations for local bands, and we'd like to make better use of the space. Sometimes you have to kill your babies and try something new to keep things fresh. Hopefully, you'll like the new feature.

Well I like hearing about our local bands every week, but I can see how it's many of the same bands. Public relations for local bands? Duh man. These bands don't have publicists or PR teams behind them. They have to use whatever exposure they can get. Their are plenty of sites to read about touring bands. City Beat has great pieces on touring bands already when their coming through town. I thought the music section was pretty darn good as is. It wasn't broken, so why fix it? I don't like to kill babies, thank you very much Dave Rolland. Does this spell the end for City Beat. No, it's still better than most things published in San Diego. But if the music section is going to turn into Pitchfork the weekly I don't want to read it.

You can read a lot more about this (better written too!) here, here, here, and especially here.

Fin.

Vena Cava, who knew? Not me obviously.

I drove down to the Casbah a few nights ago after work. I made it just in time to catch The Bloody Hollies (who were great as usual) I figured I stay around to see the last band because I had only been there and hour and didn't want to spend seven bucks for just one band. The last band was Vena Cava. Now I've been into the San Diego music scene for about two years and I'm not saying I'm some expert, but I like to think that I have seen many of San Diego's best bands. Turns our Vena Cava has been around for a bit and live in our fair city. From the first song on it was a straight up 90's alt-rock greatness. Aside from having somegreat stage banter ever, they were having a blast up there even though most people had already left. Oh by the way, ask me about "light show joe" it's a great story. Ask Vena Cava if you ever meet them. So check out their Myspace. I'm a fan now, I will be at their next SD gig.

My past in a box....

It's amazing how much has changed in just the past 6 years. Life and history seem to move much faster now. It's odd to have the "New York Scene" from 2001 seem like such a long long time ago. I guess others might argue that 5 years is a pretty long time. Reading the article and thinking about that time (especially The Strokes) brought back some good memories.

While the San Diego scene is nothing like New York, it's nice to see the same sort of thing happening. Bands that are close and play shows with each other setting up some sort of community feeling.

On that note, I'm digging The Sess as we speak.

Fin.