The Last Pogo Jumps Again

On Wednesday afternoon producer/director Colin Brunton hooked up with ex-Mod, ex-Dead Boy, and current musician/legal beagle David Quinton-Steinberg, braved the freaks on Yonge Street, and dropped into CFNY-FM to have a chat with Dave “Bookie” Bookman for this week’s “Indie Hour”. It was weird to be back on Yonge Street.

For those of you who don’t know Toronto, Yonge Street (at 1896 kilometers, the longest street in the world, yo!) has a secret trail of blood that marks some moments for fans of that original first-wave of punk in 1976.

The New Yorker Theatre up by Bloor Street was where Garys Cormier and Topp formed their now-legendary promotion team The Garys; Nash the Slash was the manager; Last Pogo director/producer Colin Brunton was his assistant. The Garys famously brought the likes of The Ramones, Talking Heads, John Cale, Jayne County and many more to Toronto and kick-started an awesome few years. First blood was spilled at the New Yorker when Brunton got stabbed in the leg throwing out an unruly patron from a Marx Brothers double-bill (the knife only managed to go in a quarter of an inch, but it’s the thought that counts). He later went to Kingston jail for a few months.

Up the street from the New Yorker was the Masonic Temple, home of the infamous “Restricted” concert (now the home of Canadian Idol, lol) in and abouts March/April 1978 (thanks for the fact-checking, Steve Travis!) where ex-lead singer of The Wads, Paul Eknes, singing for the first time in front of an audience, got nailed in the head with a full bottle of Red Cap. Bloodied, bowed, but then unbowed, he’s still got the scar to prove it, and of course he finished the song, stupid! His trip to the hospital after was right after the one for the guy who dove from the top balcony to the floor, hoping the crowd would catch him, and then being seriously disappointed.

Across and down the street from CFNY is the site of now-demolished (why must we always hurt the ones we love?) Colonial Tavern. Apart from being arguably the best jazz club in Toronto, the basement room was dubbed “The Underground” in 1977, which is where we all watched the debut of The Viletones: everyone stoned on poppers watching Steven “Nazi Dog” Leckie mutilate himself with a broken beer bottle. A few weeks after that, Teenage Head tested the new punk waters by playing there, but Long John Baldry was playing upstairs and didn’t take kindly to the “noise” coming from the basement. He promptly dispatched roadies armed with pool cues and they opened a six-pack of whoop-ass: we’ve got a copy of the Toronto Sun that shows an unconscious Paul Kobak (then manager of Teenage Head) bleeding on the floor of the club. Later at the cop shop, Paul Eknes and a few others got freezing cold feet when asked to i.d. the roadies in a line-up.

Sadly the bloody history of punk on Yonge Street doesn’t end there: in 1977 shoe-shine boy Emmanual Jacks was the victim of a sordid murder on the top floor of a building a few doors down, prompting the clean up of Yonge Street and the closing down of the massage parlours and the Times Square Junior vibe, and putting to bed the notion of Toronto as an innocent. Local all-girl punk band The Curse (one of the top ten we’ve still got to interview) later wrote and recorded a single (one of the best recordings from that era) about this black mark in Toronto’s history called “Shoeshine Boy”. The six-degrees-of-separation twist is that director Brunton had an encounter with 12-year-old Emmanuel Jacks the summer before. Waiting to sneak into the club (down the alley, up the fire-escape) to watch jazz-man Rahsaan Roland Kirk play two saxes at once, he was approached by Jacks who asked him: “I’ll bet you a dollar I can tell you where you got your shoes”. Brunton told him to go for it, and paid for the one-dollar punchline: “You got your shoes on your feet, mister!”.

Just down the road from CFNY was where Brunton, driving taxi in the eighties, spotted the unmistakable silhouette of one Joey Ramone, McDonalds bag in hand, trying to hail a cab fifty yards away. Brunton quickly talked his fares out of the cab, put the pedal to the metal and snatched up Joey, his brother Johnny, and a girlfriend up to their hotel in Scarborough after a gig at the El Mocambo. Stopping for mix at a 7-11 at Coxwell and Gerrard, Johnny and Joey freaked out the local youths hanging out in the lot, and obligingly signed autographs for them all.

But we digress! In the studio Bookie raved about The Last Pogo and gave it a number of plugs in his rapid-fire patter (it’s closing NXNE on June 15th, 5:30, 150 John Street). We played some Mods and Teenage Head and then it was adios amigo, and on to his chat with David Quinton-Steinberg and an associate from his law firm handing out free legal advise for indie musicians. We were lucky enough to her some of the new recordings of old tunes by The Mods, coming soon, and it sounds great.

For more on this years’s NXNE, go to nxne.com. For more on The Last Pogo or The Last Pogo Jumps Again, keep checking in.

The Last Pogo Jumps Again director on the left coast — Tristan Orchard — spent some time Saturday interviewing Nardwuar the Human Serviette. Good pal of Snoop Dog and The White Stripes and others, and a pest to some (Beck, Alice Cooper), Nardwuar’s talent is his well-researched and quirky interviews with Pop Culture types. Not to diminish his thing as singer/songwriter for venerable B.C. band The Evaporaters, you’ve got to watch some of Nardwuar’s interviews to get it: go to YouTube, punch in “Nardwuar”, and be entertained and impressed for a couple of hours.

Nardwuar was only a little feller in grade school when last pogo’ed in 1978, but he had to be in the new film for a few reasons: he’s a punk rock historian (as a JFK assassination scholar); he looks cool; his band The Evaporaters wrote a song inspired by Last Pogo band The Cardboard Brains; he’s interviewed Teenage Head. And he’s funny and a nice guy.

We’d already gotten some footage of The Evaporaters doing the Cardboard Brains song a year ago, and yesterday we finally synched up our schedules and did the interview proper. Dressed in his Canada suit, Nardwuar gave us his take on all things punk — and then ran around an art gallery reciting verses from said Cardboard Brains song to various people.

In the photo above, from left to right: NOW Magazine’s Michael Hollett, Teenage Head’s Gordie Lewis, The Last Pogo’s Colin Brunton, and Cardboard Brain Vince Carlucci drink free beer at the NXNE Press Conference.

The Last Pogo team piled into a couple of vehicles and made the long trip down the QEW to interview the legendary Gord Lewis of the equally legendary Teenage Head. Why “legendary?” Well, they’ve been putting on great shows since 1974; have never broken up, give or take a couple of bouts of rehab, and have 3/4 of the original members. They give lie to the notion that there should be a “best-before date” for rock ‘n’ roll. They’re not a nostalgia act. Ask anyone who’s seen them play lately.

With fire and brimstone belching out of the factories of working-class Hamilton (and the Pogo Crew freezing their nuts off), we carded Gordie, asked him a question, then it was raining a too much. Droplets of rain on a lens can be really arty and everything, we weren’t doing art, buster, so we took refuge on the stoop of the Fisherman’s Pier, a bait and tackle shack, and finished our chat there. Ahoy, mateys!

Gord told us about Teenage Head’s first gig at the Colonial Underground: a rotting wood stage two feet off the ground, singer Frankie Venom climbing under the stage and punching his way through, finally popping his head while the band played on. That’s when Gordie knew that they could do this punk scene in Toronto. He had thoughtful, funny, and wise replies to our queries, and recounted Teenage Head’s worst gig ever: booked for a week to play a pub on an armed forces base in New Brunswick, they were ordered after their first set to “STOP! And don’t play again!”. Then show up for the rest of the week, sit around and not play, and earn their fee.

Our exit strategy was devoid of the skills of Al McNeil (”Cool, thanks Al! No, you don’t have to stick around, we can get finish up on our own!”) and left to our devices, and failed miserably. First, just as the gas warning light went on, we quickly concluded that we were lost, and at least two of the three of us had to pee really bad. We’re getting nervous that we might not be able to hit the beer store by five and if Kire doesn’t get to his day-job in Toronto by five-thirty he’s fired. We finally get our bearings, we get on the right road — and then have to wait fifteen minutes at an effin drawbridge (!) (Who the eff has drawbridges!?) , as not one, but two big-ass ships pass us by. Kind of neat, except we’re anxious. The bridge finally goes down; we peel away; hit a gas station for just enough; line up to pee; hit the beer and LCBO simultaneously; tease the Toyota to 140, and make it back to Toronto with minutes to spare.

And that is rock ‘n’ roll.

This was only part one of interviews with Teenage Head, so there’ll be more war-stories and tales from the trenches, but meanwhile — catch them on their current tour. Frankie may not climb rafters or punch his way through stages anymore, but he ain’t near gone , and they put on an awesome live show that’s pure fun, 100% unadulterated rock ‘n’ roll. They can still feel it.

Out west in a couple of weeks for a couple of weeks, pushing their latest CD “Teenage Head with Marky Ramone” and having fun. For more deets, glance up and to the right, and click on the link to their page. A signal will be bounced off of a satellite in outer space (!) and then you’ll be at their page.

At Pogo Headquaraters (Pogo H.Q.) in the borough formerly known as East York, the staff of The Last Pogo were delightfully surprised to discover that the final touches on the office were being artistically rendered by none other than Paul Eknes, former lead-singer of The Wads, and later The Gunslingers. Making a tentative date to meet up later for a formal Q & A, Paul talked about seeing The Ramones for the first time when they broke Toronto’s punk virginity back in September 1976, and went on in hilarious detail about his first ever gig as a singer, fronting The Wads at a concert in Toronto. Mid-way into singing the apropo song “Brain Damage”, some lout in the audience hurled a full beer bottle at Paul, nailing him squarely on the head. Paul’s got the scar to prove it, and when we catch up with him again is going to show us the beer bottle cap that ripped his forehead (a Red Cap, by the way). (Paul’s doing awesome work on the office; singing away to himself, breaking only a couple of times for smokes, he’s meticulously painting the floor with a rubber stencil; looks waaaaaay cool).

We hit the NXNE press conference/launch last night, and ran into Last Pogoers Gordie Lewis from Teenage Head and Vince Carlucci from the Cardboard Brains. Fast Eddie Smith snapped shots as we were deluged by a constant flow of eats and beers, and it was all pretty crammed and jammed. Kudos to Liz Anderson of Flip for doing such a decent job of promotion. Apart from hearing the low-down on the run-down of all the bands ‘n’ stuff, we ran into a few more ghosts from the past including Virginia Kelly of VK and Associates, and filmmaker Bruce McDonald.

We caught word that Hugh Cornwell of The Stranglers is going to be at NXNE to show off his new movie, and so we’re gonna have to try and track him down during the frenzy of the fest; one of the most memorable of the relentlessly awesome shows at the Horseshoe in 1978 was The Stranglers blowing the roof off the joint to an overflow crowd of 500+.

Meanwhile, back at Pogo HQ, co-director Kire Paputts is busily transferring the 150 hours of footage we’ve compiled since we started shooting The Last Pogo Jumps Again back in June 2006. On top of this footage, we’ve got miles (er…kilometres) of archival footage, some never-before-seen footage of The Last Pogo, and a growing pile of photos and handbills. Finally, in sad news, all-round helper-dude Ollie Brunton confessed that he skipped history at his high-school yesterday. We’ll have to see if his grounding affects the shooting we have planned for this weekend. Because no one loads a camera and fiddles with a tripod quite like Ollie.

And just for shits ‘n’ giggles, we dug up the above photo from a cardboard box deep in the catacombs (i.e. basement) of Pogo HQ. For those of you who didn’t have the pleasure of meeting Mr. Ramone he was the proverbial nicest guy you’ll ever meet.

Okay, so if you haven’t visited before, here’s the deal. In 1978 we made a short film called The Last Pogo, about a very cool concert presented by legendary promoters (winners of a Toronto Arts Award) The Garys.   They pulled together some of their favourite Toronto/Hamilton bands:  Teenage Head, The Viletones, The Ugly, The Mods, The Secrets, The Cardboard Brains and The Scenics played, and by the end of the show, there was a near-riot.   Now it’s thirty years later, and we’re making a sequel-of-sorts, The Last Pogo Jumps Again, a documentary about ghosts from the past;  a cross between Michael Apted’s Seven-Up series and Christopher Guest’s This is Spinal Tap.   We’ve been shooting stuff since June 2006.   All the original bands from the show are on board, and then some, including Tommy Ramone and Cheetah Chrome. We’re trying to nail down what this punk rock thing was and is, aiming our sights on the specific period from September 76 to December 78, if you’re keeping track.

On June 15th, we’re going to show the original movie, The Last Pogo, in Toronto at the NXNE Festival; it’ll close the festival out at the National Film Board.   This will be the first time it’s been played in public in almost thirty years.  There’s more NXNE news: our buddy Chester LeBeaux is going to show his awesome “rock video” of The Scenics, one of the bands from The Last Pogo, on opening night. And on same said night, The Scenics themselves will be playing at Rancho Relaxo. So be there, be square, and all that stuff.