Anyone who knows me knows I've never been one to revel in the past. I'm the last one to cast a misty-eyed glance back at the "good old days". In my experience the people who take this angle are usually the ones who weren't there. Whatever mistakes, false starts and missed opportunities I've had the pleasure of having, I was wherever I was for better or worse.
This blog is not meant to romanticize any choices I made or any particular era. It's simply a place where I share stories and take stock of where I've been as a way to figure out where I might want to go next. I'll celebrate some people along the way, some of them you'll know or know of, others will be new to you. I'm glad to have known every one of them.
The posts are in no thematic or chronological order. The date at the end of the post's title refers to how the content of the post relates to me personally. I make no claim about the accuracy of my recollections I only promise that I'll be as honest and accurate as I can be. If you were there and you remember things differently than I do, or you find evidence that contradicts my memory (I wouldn't be surprised or upset) feel free to let me know.
Rather than editing the posts for historical accuracy, I'll put ( * ) next to any parts that have been challenged or updated for that reason.
MARTA, GAVIN, ME and RAW POWER AT THE BEACH SAN DIEGO 1984
Life’s a beach.
In 1984 there was a big international punk show held at The Olympic Auditorium in LA that featured headliners Dead Kennedys with BGK from Holland, Riistetyt from Finland, Italy’s Raw Power and Tijuana Punks Solucion Mortal rounding out the bill. The same line up, minus BGK I believe, played in San Diego the next weekend at the Adams Ave Theater.
I was a high school kid living in San Diego at the time and would’ve been way stoked for this bill even if I hadn’t been asked earlier in the month by Chris BCT to host one of the bands during their stay in SD. Chris was a big booster of the international hardcore scene and was involved somehow in putting these shows together. I asked my mom if she’d let a band stay with us a couple nights and, if you follow my blog at all you know how cool she is now and was then, she said yes.
My friends and I went up to the LA show, and went backstage with Chris to meet Riistetyt the band I’d agreed to host. They were complete douches. They were no longer a hardcore band, they were now a glam rock band in the Finnish tradition of Hanoi Rocks . Along with their now crappy music they brought a crappy dismissive, drunky, druggy, rockstar attitude. I wasn’t going to let these guys into my mom’s world. No way, no how.
The dressing room next door was a whole other scene, even though only one of them spoke English, the guys in Raw Power were as warm and down to earth a bunch of guys as you could hope to meet. They were not only super friendly, they also played a brand of anarcho-metallic hardcore that was blisteringly manic and totally intense. These were the dudes I wanted to hang with. Hang with them I did.
On a side note: I also met Jello Biafra, the man I’d work for four years later, in the Raw Power dressing room. It’s funny to recall being a little star-struck at the time considering how well I came to know the guy in future days!
To make a long story short, my mom, my brother and I ended up hosting Raw Power for over a week! The couple of days got stretched out to over a week because after the SD show a couple of the Italians went down to Tijuana to party with Luis and Solucion Mortal, which was a big mistake because some of their papers were still in NYC with a woman who’d helped get them to the states. Even though this was pre-9/11 America, the border was still the border and a couple shaggy mediterranean looking guys, with the wrong papers, who didn’t speak English weren’t getting back into SD unless they were ready to hop the fence…which the TJ punks offered to help them do by the way.
After discussing the options, they decided to wait for the papers to be sent express from the East Coast instead of trying to get across illegally and potentially be barred from the US forever. It turned out okay, mom and the guys made tons of spaghetti, we got to know the folks at the gelato place in the neighborhood, and we went to the beach almost everyday. This photo was taken at Pacific Beach I believe.
I remember when Fabiano and Davide finally got back from Mexico to mom’s house and the company of their tanned, well-fed and rested bandmates they were rough around the edges and suffering from some gastric distress. Davide clutched his stomach and said “San Diego…very good…Tijuana…not so nice!”
My mom and I were sad to learn ten years ago that guitarist Guiseppe Codeluppi had a heart attack and died. He was a nice guy.
…oh yeah, I’m sorry to say the guy in SD who ended up hosting Riistetyt after the show was stuck with a huge bill for a bunch of international phone calls they made while he was at work. I always felt bad about that, but hey, I got first pick what can I say?
R.I.P. Guiseppe Codeluppi
(Pictured L to R: Mauro Codeluppi, Guiseppe Codeluppi, Maurizio Dodi, Marta Brandes, myself, my brother Gavin Traeger. Polaroid from my personal archives)
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.
Battalion of Saints, Negative Approach Flyer I drew Mid 80’s. SanDiego, CA.
Wow, my apologies to the Battalion of Saints for this awful drawing of them. I guess it’s a little late to apologize to them because they’re mostly deceased. To the living Bats…so-rry!
I have no memory of Negative Approach playing in SD so I’m gonna say they must’ve cancelled because they were one of my faves and I most likely would’ve remembered seeing them. Solucion Mortal was (is?) a rad peace punk band from Tijuana who used to have to sneak over the border to play gigs in San Diego. I once asked them if it was hard and they told me they’d just start trying a few days before the show to make sure they’d get across. Ahhh, the days before 9/11.
