San Diego has an amazingly vibrant music scene and there is no clearer indication than the annual San Diego Music Awards. Now in its 21st year, it’s the party of the year for music lovers, with all the area’s movers and shakers in attendance: television news people, Grammy Award-winning producers and everyone in between. The event has also served to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Taylor “Guitars for Schools” programs, putting music back in city schools. Taking place on Aug. 8 at one of the city’s most-scenic venues — Hum-phrey’s by the Bay — performers at this year’s event will include such indie favorites as Wavves, Dynamite Walls and The Silent Comedy, jazz trumpeter Gilbert Castellanos, alternative blues duo Little Hurricane, hip-hop combo Cuckoo Chaos, as well as jazz and blues icons Candye Kane and Sue Palmer. The lifetime achievement award will be presented to 1980s indie rockers The Penetrators. They join an incredible roster of past recipients, including other internationally known, but locally-based icons like Iron Butterfly, Frankie Laine and Jack Tempchin. Penetrators frontman Gary Heffern, now residing in Finland, started his career with the band in the late 1970s, scoring hits with songs like “Walk The Beat,” “I’m with the Guys” and “Sensitive Boy.” He considers the upcoming award to be a major honor. “I love this band and all the people around it,” he said. “(I) wish some of them were still around to be part of this. The song ‘We’re All Somebody’ has been going through my head a lot recently. You know, we were just a band. We wanted to be like The Clash, a ‘people’s’ band, so I also want to share this award with the people somehow.” Being one with his audience is key to making music in Heffern’s eyes. “I remember going to see The Clash at the Santa Monica Civic [Auditorium] with Dan (McLain, the Penetrators’ late drummer). The place was packed,” he recalled. “As we walked in the room, Darby Crash walked up to us and grabbed us by the arm and stated, “This is OUR band,’ and walked us up to the front of the crowd with all those early Los Angeles bands. That’s the feeling I wanted our audience to have about us. It was exciting, and affirmation that we were part of the scene. Mind you, this is years before hardcore came into the picture, and the bands and audiences were one and the same.” He notes there is poignancy to the timing of the next San Diego Music Awards. “The last time I was there, my father had been very ill,” Heffern said. “I am hoping that he can make it out to this, as it would mean a lot for me to have him feel that I have achieved something in my life.” Despite the passage of time, fans can expect the band to give its all during its two-song set. “We still do every show as if it is the last one we will ever do. It’s just something that can’t be helped,” he said. “However, the shows are so physically demanding nowadays, and it takes so long to recover from them as old aches and pains from the younger shows like a broken tailbone, foot, etc, and my car accident last year require daily medicine these days. But the heart is young, and yearning to play.” That said, the trophy itself may present a small problem for Heffern. “I hadn’t even thought of that,” he laughed. “I don’t even know if I can take it on a plane back, I can just imagine trying to go through customs with that. Holy moly!” San Diego Music Awards takes place at 7 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 8 at Humphrey’s by the Bay, 2241 Shelter Island Drive. $30. For more information, visit www.sandiegomusicawards.com.
