YOUTH BRIGADE, STRETCH MARKS, SOLUCION MORTAL, MINISTRY OF TRUTH  SAN DIEGO 1984

A group of friends of mine and I started promoting shows in San Diego in 1984 under the name United Effort. The name of our group might be a little obscure and difficult to understand so let me explain: our collective was made up of people uniting together in an effort to put on shows, does that make any sense at all?

Yes, this was back before teenagers were so immersed in the art and technology of branding and graphic design that they were experts in field by the mere fact of their immersion in them. My artwork on these flyers also demonstrates a decidedly unstudied  and technologically crude approach to marketing common to most Punk flyers at the time. 

This show was cool, I think it might have been the one where I had to physically assault a scene troublemaker who was starting sh-t. I wasn’t a tough guy by any stretch but when you put your own money and time into putting on a show and you’re doing it for no other reason but to “support the scene” and some joker who does nothing but start fights decides to work his magic under your tent…well, that’s all the motivation I needed to toss that sucker out. 

It’s cool that all of North America was represented at this one little Punk show put on by a bunch of kids, held at a community hall in the hardscrabble City Heights neighborhood of San Diego. S.D. local faves Ministry of Truth opened the show. We had Solucion Mortal and T.J. punk king Luis Guerena up from Tijuana (It should be noted that they were added to the bill once enough of the band had snuck across the border that they were able to play!). Stretch Marks were down from Winnipeg, MB. and I believe were on tour at the time with our friends and headliners for the night Youth Brigade from L.A. 

I can’t remember who Michael Brennan was* and what he did in cooperation with us to put on the show. The people I remember being a part of the United Effort were myself of course, Martin Sprouse, Pat Weekend, Greg Lipman, maybe Chris Lyons or Mark Mullin?…and a bigger, older S.D. Punk from Coronado Island named John Dollard.

We’d gotten to know John after word got out he was going to kick Martin’s ass for a reason that had to do with us “stealing the scene” since our crew put out a zine called Leading Edge that had a posi-straight edge slant that he didn’t like. I guess as we talked his drunk ass out of beating Martin up something clicked in his head and he realized we were not only okay but that we were actually cool and probably shouldn’t be beaten just for doing stuff.  Like the old saying goes, only in this instance for John it went something like “If you decide not to beat’em, JOIN’em” 

I remember thinking it was weird and cool to see John Dollard sitting in my mom’s backyard drinking lemonade with us when we’d get together to talk about shows we wanted to do. It was also cool to have him on board if sh-t really got out of hand at one of the shows because unlike us he could actually fight.

A United Effort indeed.

R.I.P. Luis Guerena

(* Pat Weakland reminded me that Michael Brennan was the guy who booked The Cathay de Grande up in Hollywood. He put some money into the pot so we could do the show. I think maybe he was hoping to get a piece of Tim Mays’ lock on the SD scene…)

Youth Brigade, Stretch Marks, Solucion Mortal, Ministry of Truth flyer by me from my personal archives.

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