(Just in time for Che Underground: The Blog’s fourth birthday, Gary Heffern shares an international collaboration featuring some of San Diego’s finest!)

Here is a new song by Gary Heffern & Beautiful People with lyrics written by myself, music by Rustman, and arrangement by Beautiful People: Selinda Shirley, Oulujoe, Mad Mulligan and Rustman.

It also features Ray Brandes, Joe Piper and Dave Fleminger on backup vocals and Ray doing some great harmonica as well. I thought if you would want to feature it on Che, you can do so and have first grabs at featuring the song.

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It may be a new band on the block, but the Sidewalk Scene represents a veritable Murderer’s Row of San Diego musical talent. (Don’t miss your chance to see the band open for the Unknowns along with the Comeuppance on Sept. 3 at the Casbah — Day Two of a Labor Day weekend blowout that also features an evening comprising the Crawdaddys, the Amandas and the Baja Bugs.)

Buy your tickets now for the Crawdaddys and the Unknowns at San Diego’s Casbah, Sept. 2-3!

This video clip (accompanied by photos shot by Unknowns bassist Dave Doyle) portrays the Sidewalk Scene tearing into Paul Simon’s “Richard Cory” at Lestat’s July 30, when they headlined “Che Underground present Sounds of the Sunset Strip.” A great band with hundreds of years of San Diego history among them, delivering with the passion we’ve come to expect from these consummate musicians!

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(Crawdaddys Redux: Joe Piper channels his inner Andrew Loog Oldham to write this eyewitness account of the Crawdaddys’ long-awaited return to the stage last Sunday.)

What was originally intended to be a “low-key warmup gig” for the reunited ’81-model Crawdaddys prior to their jetting off to Spain for a prestigious appearance alongside The Nashville Ramblers at a bullfight or somesuch (actually “Go Sinner Go!! 2011″), quickly turned into The Event Of The Summer one whole day before summer even officially kicked off.

A capacity crowd crammed into the Rhino Records pop-up store on Santa Monica Blvd. last Sunday evening to raise money for a most worthy cause (MusiCares, providing a safety net for music people in times of need — feel free to contribute any time) and get their Rave Up R&B groove thangs righteously refurbed.

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(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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(On April 6, a group of San Diego music veterans backed local hero Gary Heffern when he returned from Finland to play the Casbah. Joe Piper recounts the 34 years leading up to his own part in the gig.)

Life’s funny…

When Gary Heffern’s Blood On Fire took to the Casbah stage earlier this month it was, for me, more than just an opportunity to play with some truly outstanding musicians who just also happen to be a group of the greatest guys you could ever hope to meet. It was more than a chance to take part in what is possibly the most enjoyable project I’ve ever worked on. It was all that and more —  it was a chance to take care of unfinished business.

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(Ray Brandes shares photos and sounds from a short-lived San Diego phenomenon.)

The Tokyos (1978-1979)

Marc DiCarlo (vocals); Tim Hurley (drums); Bruce Stevenson (guitar); Jeffrey Mitzo (bass)

They were exciting times. Bands seemed to be springing up all over San Diego, influenced by the flurry of new British and American punk bands and taking advantage of the infrastructure that had been created by bands like the Zeros, Hitmakers, Penetrators and Injections. According to Joe Piper, San Diego guitarist and archivist extraordinaire, “The Tokyos were the ‘Fresh Young Face’ of 1978. They were the epitome of snotty, DIY aesthetic. Fun and photogenic, they wore their influences on their skinny sleeves with flair and a fair amount of punk attitude.”

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(Ray Brandes’ exclusive account of a San Diego underground supergroup. Read the full version in Che Underground’s Related Bands section.)

Part impresario, part cheerleader and all entertainer, Beat Farmer, Penetrator and Crawdaddy Dan McLain had such an impact upon the San Diego music scene in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s that it is difficult to imagine how it might have developed without him. Those who knew him well speak of him reverentially — as a forefather, a catalyst and revolutionary. But it was his personality that endeared him to everyone he met.

Joe Piper, guitarist for the Crawdaddys, Decagents and Bogtrotters, remembers McLain fondly: “Easygoing, friendly, funny and personable, he had charisma out the ass. Dan really was one of the most decent, good-natured guys I’ve ever had the pleasure to know. He was an old school kind of guy. He was a gentleman and a scholar, a man’s man. Possibly he’d heard that old saw that a true gentleman will engage in an occupation that risks his life. Would that explain those precarious traverses across beer-slick bar tables like so many ice floes?”

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(Excerpts from Ray Brandes’ definitive history of a band that shaped San Diego music. Read the full version in Che Underground’s Related Bands section.)

On October 8, 1977, Santana and Journey played to a sold-out crowd at the San Diego Sports Arena. That same night, across town at the Adams Avenue Theater, a decrepit former cinema, the Zeros, Dils and Hitmakers were making history by playing what has since come to be considered a milestone San Diego concert: the first big punk show.

The audience was full of artists, musicians and poets, future movers and shakers who would go on to form bands, create fanzines, open independent record stores, and promote shows and galleries for decades to come. Among those in attendance were several young misfits who were drawn together by their love for early rock and roll and beat music and who would eventually change the local musical landscape as the Penetrators.

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(Excerpts from Tell-Tale Heart/Town Crier Ray Brandes’ groundbreaking history of San Diego’s original retro-visionaries. Read the full version in Che Underground’s Related Bands section.)

The Crawdaddys have been called one of the most influential bands ever to come out of San Diego. When one looks at the groups its members have spawned, as well as the recurring popularity of ‘60s-style punk and rhythm and blues over the past 30 years, it’s hard to dispute that assertion. Armed with an encyclopedic knowledge of music history, an uncompromising commitment to artistic integrity, and a roster of musicians with unparalleled talents and distinct individual styles, the Crawdaddys single-handedly gave birth to the revival of garage music in the late 1970s in the United States. The reverberations of the first few chords they played are still being felt today.

The Crawdaddys’ story begins and ends with lifelong Beatles fanatic Ron Silva, who grew up on Del Monte Avenue in Point Loma. He and his neighbor Steve Potterf started listening to records together in the ninth grade, and while Silva would barely tolerate Potterf’s love for Kiss, Aerosmith, Jethro Tull and Led Zeppelin, he gradually convinced his friend to appreciate his own tastes. “After a while Steve started getting into the music I liked — Beatles, early Stones. I remember sitting in his room playing guitars along to my dad’s Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley 45s,” says Silva.

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