WILD WKND #3: A Year in the Hardcore Punk Underground of San Diego
Back in ‘97 I hoodwinked some dude from Solana Beach on AOL to give me money to put out my band’s 7” and San Diego has been a special place to me ever since. All he wanted was half the records and his label’s logo on it. Alright, let’s go. He got us on a show at the old SOMA side stage where we played to him and maybe 10 other folks. It ruled. A few months later we came back down with Stand Your Ground to play another SD show out on Coronado with The Setup. This one ruled even more.
California Hardcore was kinda grim in this era if you weren’t into metalcore or emo. A group of us would go see Ignite whenever we could, same with Oakland’s Powerhouse. Another big one for us as Built To Last from San Diego. We’d drive six or seven hours roundtrip just to see that band. When their time wrapped, Over My Dead Body waved the flag for San Diego for a few years, with Spence and the Che Cafe crew being at the heart. Then Chula Vista took over, booking epic shows down there with a whole new crop of kids, coinciding with the rise of Take Offense. When TO went full time and couldn’t carry the scene anymore, things shifted over to Lemon Grove where the PSO dudes took the baton and ran with it, booking epic shows and exposing Hardcore Punk to a new generation. You get the point…there’s a lineage to this thing. Key moments, bands, clubs, or whatever can make things pop off at different moments and what remains from those moments feeds into the next thing.
We all know there has been a post-COVID boom in Hardcore and San Diego has been no different. The national bands that roll through are killing it, and the local shows are on more stable footing that I’ve seen in my 25+ years of coming to shows here. 2023 was particularly inspirational with the Zoned In dudes doing massive shows in Logan and the Slow Death dudes doing in National City what Chula Vista and Lemon Grove had done in generations prior. So I decided that I’d do my best to document the San Diego scene in 2024. The final result is WILD WKND #3: A Year In The Hardcore Punk Underground of San Diego.
You can pre-order it here. It will ship by the end of January 2025.
