August 2006
August 5, 2006. Journeyed to the depths of Mississauga for an interview with Gary Pig Gold. Hunkered down in the basement where as a young lad he dreamed and schemed up the infamous Pig Paper, we were treated to a great interview, and a peak at Gary’s massive collection of memorabilia, dating back to the early seventies. Amongst the highlights was an invoice from the YMCA for…are ya ready?…”damage to vegetables”, from a Simply Saucer gig gone awry. We also saw his fake Elvis Costello interview (questions and answers originally “suggested” by MCA Records; his fake Who tour guide, written in reponse to shoddy treatment on the part of the promoters; and literally, hundreds of pounds of flyers, photos, ticket stubs and more. He rated each band from The Last Pogo according to their flyer designs (big votes to The Scenics and The Cardboard Brains). Plus, he gave Jim a Batmobile. The perks, baby, it’s all about the perks.
Punk veteran, ex-Viletone, guitar player for The Screwed, and all-round nice fella Steve Koch sent us a ticket stub from the Toronto Canadian World premiere of The Last Pogo movie. It opened for The Viletones, The Gang of Four, and The Buzzcocks a year after it was shot. All director Colin Brunton remembers of the gig is smoking at least five cigarettes during the 26 minute screening, and then having to hop back in his cab to make some cash after it was over.
Opening for bands of that class was, well, pretty classy, but it wasn’t the only gig The Last Pogo movie had. Soon after it was booked at the original Cineplex at the Eaton’s Centre. The Cineplex people said that it was the first time they’d ever booked a short that was so long. The gig paid $100 a week (which, if you break down the number of screenings a day and multiply by seven days, worked out to a head-spinning $2 a show) but it felt legit, and there is a certain buzz seeing your film on “the big screen”. Director Colin Brunton asked how long it would play for, and was told that it’d play for as long as the main feature did. Cool. If it played for a few months, that’s starting to be serious coin, or at least a bit more serious than cab-driving coin, which was more on the darkly humourous side. The kicker was asking exactly what film it would be booked with. “Oh, another concert film! It’s a great fit!”, they enthused. Then they told Brunton that it would be playing with … “Richard Pryor Live In Concert”. Uh, really? They reassured him that never in the history of Cineplex had an opening film been cancelled. But The Last Pogo broke new ground: after one week of, quote, “violent and negative reactions” from the audience, The Last Pogo plug was pulled prematurely. Brunton took perverse pride, and was later told that the film was at least a big hit with the ushers and candy-counter people.
August 4, 2006. Ah, back from the rented cottage, black-out and all, just to have a dentist inject five or six gi-normous needles into my mouth. Despite the freezing, I could feel the scalpel slicing open my gums to insert a couple of screws, and then…ratcheting the screws in place. Yes, that’s right — “ratcheting”, just like your car mechanic does. After that, pulling out my last wisdom tooth didn’t seem so bad. Until of course, the freezing wore off a few hours later and I realized that even a good dose of Tylenol 3′s were just not going to do the trick.
Hope I feel better tomorrow, ’cause it’ll be time to interview Gary Pig, in his parent’s basement in Mississauga, and tape miles and miles of memorabilia from ’73 on.
And today we got a nice note from Keith Elshaw, the producing genius who mixed both the album and the film THE LAST POGO. Alive and well in Montreal, Keith has gone from pogoing to tangoing. (I’ll get a link up soon, if these effin Tylenols ever kick in!).
Had to take down the automatic contact form, ’cause I’m getting dozens and dozens of spam from gambling sites. Punks.
July 23, 2006. Well, we thought we were going on location, and I guess we did, but we sure didn’t shoot anybody. On our way to interview a couple of firefighters, we spent most of an hour and a half on the 400 staring at Wonderland, and pestering people in cars beside us for sandwiches. We never got any, and soon pulled around and headed back to the city. Where we got stuck again, on the DVP.
Edited some footage of Mickey DeSadest, so check it out. And now the production shuts down for a couple of weeks so we can search out punks in Haliburton. Or at least, lie on a dock and veg out, and think about punks in Haliburton. Or maybe just veg out. See ya in August.
July 22, 2006. Whoo-eee! We’re going on location today, to the wilds of Creemore, Ontario to interview a couple of firefighters: audience member James Green and ex-Mod Scott Marks. Added a teaser regarding the soon-to-be-posted excerpt from ex-Cardboard Brain Vince Carlucci’s memoir, “I Was A Cardboard Brain”.
July 21, 2006. The production team lost a third of it’s crew as Ollie Brunton went off for some r & r at a friend’s cottage, so it was left up to Colin and Jim to hold the fort. (These three hour days are gruelling!) We interviewed Don Pyle (Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet; Crash Kills Nine; and other bands), and we realized just how out to lunch we were without the whole team: ran out of tape, no release forms, couldn’t get the ball-thingy to center on the tripod, etc. Don kindly came up with a tape so…uh…we could tape him, and was very articulate and eloquent and funny in his accounting of the period, and the night. And he was only 15 when he attended The Last Pogo. Did we ever check i.d.?
We’ve got some interesting emails in the last two days as well: heard from Chris, son of Freddy Pompeii and Margarita Passion, and got a note from London from John Paul Young of The Cardboard Brains. So just forget all those rumours, okay? We also got a note from a long lost uncle in Nigeria, and we’re in for a lot of money apparently, so maybe this thing will get financed after all.
Re-edted the second Evan Siegel clip.
July 20, 2006. Caught up with Evan “Mel Torment/Rusty Chambers/Rusty Longtrucks” Siegel and his identical eight-year-old twin daughters Arielle and Keilan. Evan gave us a ride in his prized Unimog tractor/truck/thing, and his daughters failed miserably in our Last Pogo quiz. See the evidence on the “2006 Film Clips” page.
July 19, 2006. Went to a restaurant to go over some fancy techy computer stuff with our ace editors Trevor Ambrose and Steve Bedernjak, and then watched in amazement as a bird shat on Steve’s forehead, no lie, and it was perfectly centred, like an East Indian bidini. We assumed that this was a good sign, as we were sure most people would if a bird had shit on their head.
We added an edited clip of some of the footage of Vince Carlucci from the Cardboard Brains, and neither asked for or were granted permission to use “Friggin’ in the Riggin’” by the Rotten-less version of the Sex Pistols as part of the track.
July 18, 2006. Ahoy, mateys! While all you landlubbers were pillaging and plundering on dry land, we were aboard the majestic Luna Sea, the sailboat manned by ex-Cardboard Brain Vince Carlucci. Complete with Jolly Roger flag and treasure chest, we sailed the mighty Lake Ontario and quizzed Vince on his memories of The Last Pogo. Argh, it was great! Apart from his work with “an international organization” during the day, Vince continues to make music, and is deep into his memoir “I Was A Cardboard Brain”, his account of the 77/78 period in Toronto.
July 15, 2006. Added an edited clip of us trying to corner Evan Siegel into answering the hard questions (see a few boxes below).
July 14, 2006. Visited and interviewed Richard Citroen, ex-Diode, ex-The Loved Ones, ex-Simply Saucer, and ex-Forgotten Rebels (if only for a minute or two). More good stories, and it ended with a version of Blitzkrieg Bop. On ukelele. (Which we can’t use because the rights are owned by greedy record behemoth Warner-Chappel). Have to do LOTS of interviews next week, because a paying gig may be on the horizon.
July 13, 2006. Added another clip from The Last Pogo to the “Film Clips” section: Margarita Passion of the store New Rose explains what The Last Pogo was. Margarita moved to Philadelphia with Freddy Pompeii, ran a restaurant, and is now a succesful real estate agent. Apart from owning and operating New Rose back in 77/78, Margarita was one of the emcees (along with Johnny Garbagecan) at The Last Pogo.
July 11, 2006. Interviewed ex-CFNY FM disc jockey Ivar Hamilton in his extremely messy office in the extremely slick corp headquarters of Universal Music. Ivar was a teenager when he attended The Last Pogo and was apprenticing at CFNY at the time. He had some great stories of punks gone by, and confirmed in part the conspiracy theory that Mickey floated. Don Pyle (ex-Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, amongst others) indentified one of the mystery people in one of the clips from The Last Pogo we posted. Now we’ve just got to get to Vancouver. And Jace from Phillie found Freddy Pompeii, and is getting Freddy to call in. Like Don said, it’s like espionage, tracking down all these people with different identities.
July 10, 2006. Went to Hamilton and Mickey de Sadist of The Forgotten Rebels gave us a great interview, including a bona-fide conspiracy theory about the riot at The Last Pogo. The only difficulty in the interview was trying not to laugh out loud at some of Mickey’s stories. Not to mention the fabulous poses he treated us to. And in true rock star form, Mickey did the entire interview stark naked, with his strategically placed pink “girly” guitar covering up his twigs ‘n’ berries.
July 9, 2006. We’ve added a few clips from The Last Pogo movie in the new “Film Clips” section.