San
Diego’s Underground
Article written by Nathan
Lindsay
So on Halloween night, after sixteen years of handing San Diego
some of the best ear-splitting, energized performances this
city has ever seen, Rocket From the Crypt will call it quits
with a blow out show at downtown’s Westin Hotel. For both
the city and the band, fronted by the ever busy and talented
John Reis (Hot Snakes, Drive Like Jehu, Pitchfork, the Sultans),
it’s a timely farewell. For me it’s the end of an
era of music that has been the backdrop for years of fond memories
and painful growth.
I spent my last year of high school in this city, Chula Vista
specifically, going to local punk shows at Wabash Hall, small
all-ages clubs, and back yards. Whatever loose association I
have with today’s popular San Diego music celebrities
formed during those years. Bands like Neighborhood Watch, Funeral
March, Pitchfork, and Dark Sarcasm helped define San Diego’s
punk/alternative sound, its members flourishing and later forming
bands like Pinback, the Black Heart Procession and the soon
defunct Rocket From the Crypt.
Somewhere in my dusty video collection I have an old clip of
the Jon Stewart Show, back when it aired on MTV. During the
early nineties spring break was held here in San Diego, in Mission
Bay’s Mariners Point. Rocket From the Crypt were the music
guests for an episode being taped there. I was there too. If
you strain your eyes just right, as if attempting to procure
some 3-D effect from a poster, you can see me on the bottom
of the screen donning a pony tale and a backpack…this
my only claim to television fame (unless you count a small roll
as an extra for an easily missed adaptation of the Scott Peterson
story that aired on the USA channel).
And
it’s but one of many memories I have of San Diego, laden
in the city’s underground music scene. I remember shows
at the Che Café, located on the UCSD campus, witnessing
bands like Three Mile Pilot, Drive Like Jehu, and Heavy Vegetable,
feeling some sense of pride at seeing my friends perform, underscoring
the impression that their talent would some day experience fruition.
Even
the venues have seen some adjustments over the years. The Che
Café has gone through some remodeling over the years,
perhaps due to its revolving student help. The Casbah has changed
location, moving from a spot down the street to its current
location on the corner of Kettner and Laurel. Brick by Brick
once possessed an entirely different name and I seem to remember
going to shows at Soma downtown, nowhere near the San Diego
Sports Arena. I can’t say I remember the Belly Up Tavern
back then but it’s definitely a night spot worth a look
these days. And I doubt the Whistle Stop was even a whisper
of an idea back then.
Thumbing through the San Diego Reader’s music section,
I can see that San Diego’s music scene has much to offer
in terms of live entertainment, but it always somehow seemed
the same – a stew of seemingly uninspired music; a sense
that one club was offering pretty much the same sounds as another
with a different face and look. Cover bands that, while talented,
simply regurgitate music that the original progenitors have
already so pristinely presented. But somewhere within those
pages, embedded among the hundreds of banal, minutia enriched
performers, are those gems that define San Diego’s underground.
Bands like the Jade Shader, featuring members of Boilermaker
and Tanner, or Beehive and the Barracudas, a band the features
members of both Rocket From the Crypt and Fishwife, shine somewhere
between those hundreds of local acts and full page adds of superstars.
It’s an ever-evolving scene, incestuous and blossoming,
spiraling inward and outward, pumping San Diego’s backbone
with some the most innovative, emotive, and creative music alive
in the independent music scene today. It’s a reactionary
movement, pushing itself forward from both the city’s
beauty and equal disenchantments.
With Rocket From the Crypt’s final hoopla (following the
recent exit of the Hot Snakes), I feel a sense of change ensuing.
It’s a mirror, perhaps. A reflection of changes in my
own life: a career change, an upcoming wedding, and a move to
another part of the city. Or perhaps it’s the realization
that every era possesses a beginning, middle, and an end. What
awaits San Diego’s underground is already on the rise
and I wonder, this night, what that future carries with it.
If you’re in to local, independent music, check out: Sleeping
People, Aleph Research, Bunky, and the Jade Shader (appearing
Saturday, October 29 at the Che Café).
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