(The Cardiac Kidz’s Jim Ryan recounts his band’s recent performance to support Gary Heffern’s return to San Diego, including new collaborators and material.)

After a Penetrators reunion show the Sunday before, Gary Heffern appeared once again at the Casbah for his CD release show to debut “Gary Heffern & Beautiful People” and his San Diego all-star band “Blood on Fire.” Those of us who came prepared were able to take not only the show home but the CD from this consummate artist, now living in Finland.

Sean McMullen’s words and images from the Penetrators reunion!

Here I am over 30 years later, remembering my last performance with Gary when the Penetrators, the Cardiac Kidz and the Standbys played the Spirit night club in 1980.

After getting the call from Gary that he would like the Cardiac Kidz to open the show, I was on the move. The boys digging the opportunity and me looking forward to seeing Gary again, I knew this show had to be special. Gary is a special guy.

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(Jay Allen Sanford tunes into San Diego music on the public airwaves.)

One of the many things we can either thank or curse the U.S. Congress for is public-access television. In the 1970s, as TV cable companies were growing into regional monopolies, Congress mandated that larger cable providers must put aside channels for public-produced community programming.

Today, there are over a thousand public access TV stations operating nationwide. When the city of San Diego grants charters to cable giants like Cox and Time-Warner, those companies guarantee this access to the airwaves, training (at no charge) interested community residents to run the equipment and to shoot and produce their own programs.

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(Jay Allen Sanford explores the fall and rise of a San Diego indie pioneer.)

“You don’t remember who I am, do you?” Gary Wilson asked me via e-mail. I’d been interviewing the indie-rock pioneer about his rediscovery since being name-checked in Beck’s “Where It’s At” ——

“Passin’ the dutchie from coast to coast/ like my man Gary Wilson rocks the most.”

When an e-mail from Wilson mentioned “Don’t you remember lending me that article you wrote about [TV show] Thriller?” I realized that I’d known and hung out with Gary Wilson for years.

Wilson was employed at the same local strip club where my housemate at the time (“Savannah”) worked. I used to hang around the place to talk with him about music and vintage TV shows we both loved, particularly the aforementioned Thriller series. He may have mentioned he used to be in a band.

But I didn’t know he was THE Gary Wilson, whose homemade ’70s records are being reissued to such acclaim.

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(How the other half lived: Jay Allen Sanford takes us briefly out of the underground to revisit a San Diego band’s dip into mainstream success.)

“Could you be the one I’m thinking of?
Could you be the girl I really love?
All the people tell me so,
but what do all the people know!”
(The Monroes, “What Do All The People Know”)

“To me, my whole life was just destiny,” says Eric Denton, one-time keyboardist for ’80s pop faves The Monroes. “I just felt I was destined to be a rock star, and there was just no doubt about it. And it all kind of came to a crushing end when The Monroes basically fell apart.”

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(Thanks to Jay Allen Sanford’s archives and Mikel Toombs‘ text conversion, here’s the second part of Steve Thorn’s epic history of SD rock ‘n’ roll. This installment first ran in Kicks #4 in December 1979. Read Part One here!)

April Fools Day, 1964, was the day KGB began its strategy to become the number one rock station. KCBQ and KDEO were the unsuspecting victims of the April Fools surprise — “Boss Radio” had come to town.

The brainchild behind the Boss Radio sound was programming wizard Bill Drake, who, prior to bringing the format to KGB, had a successful track record with radio stations in Northern California and a station in Atlanta.

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