San Diego Reader

“The San Diego sound of old was a working-class and slightly-depressed sound,” says documentary filmmaker Jensen Rufe, who from 1991 to 1996 played around town with Puddletown Tom. “It featured a sonic assault of guitars, often with that ‘Ditch Digger’ chord John Reis [Rocket from the Crypt] used, a weird, dissonant, diminished, grungy D chord.” He says a similar diminished chord characterized the playing of Pinback’s Rob Crow (then of Heavy Vegetable and Thingy). “We were friends back in the day. We once carpooled together to a job we had for Greenpeace, gathering petitions outside grocery stores, but we both quit after the first day.”

The native San Diegan spent the last few years living in Eureka -- in Humboldt County -- and his new hour-long documentary Rural Rock & Roll looks at that town’s “very isolated but self-contained -- and unbelievably varied and vibrant -- music scene.” The film’s San Diego debut was July 29, 2006 at the Whistle Stop, where one of the bands featured in the movie, the Ian Fays, performed.

Rufe says Puddletown Tom might have survived had it formed in Eureka. “We fell victim to not really fitting in with that ‘San Diego Sound,’ not that anybody ever told us what we were supposed to sound like. Audiences -- and other musicians -- just didn’t really respond to the weirder Beefheart-type stuff we were doing, because it didn’t fit the local mold. The difference in Eureka is that they’d come out and support your band irregardless. Even if you were a 12-piece accordion polka orchestra.”