The Last Pogo Jumps Again

A busy week for us here in Pogo Headquarters. Artist John Pearson is putting the final touches on a mini-poster for the record stores that’ll be selling The Last Pogo DVD (release date October 14th); Andy Meyers of Allowed Sound Studio in B.C. has finished the “Duophonic” sound mix for the movie; publicist Woody Whelan is lining up a few more interviews — up this week is one with Alternate Press — and director Colin Brunton is starting the assembly on footage for the new film The Last Pogo Jumps Again, and scheming up a unique way to distribute the new film come 2009.

Brunton wore his Teenage Head t-shirt on Saturday, and being holed up in his tiny hotel room editing, didn’t come up for air much, but did venture out for a coffee at the local indie coffee house. The first comment on the shirt was from the “barista” who gave Brunton a salute and proudly said he was from The Hammer (and dissed Brunton for being from Toronto; some things never change); then two guys outside commented on it and started reminiscing about seeing Head in 1978, and then the lady at the bar of the Sask Hotel raved on and on about Teenage Head, wondering when they were gonna come out again. Of the many agendas for the new film, one of the primo ones is getting all of the awesome bands from the original scene a little bit of recognition, albeit it 30 years later.

It’s 6:30 in the morning out here in Saskatchewan, and so we’re off to Indian Head to shoot day six of the exteriors of Little Mosque on the Prairie. Fun!

The Screwed — Cleave Anderson, John Borra, Steve Koch and Steve Scarlett — continue their almost weekly assault on the senses as they hit Graffiti’s Bar and Grill for a late afternoon shin-dig and hullabaloo this Saturday at 4:00.

And if he couldn’t be busier, a couple of months ago Cleave handed over a song he’d written and recorded called The Last Pogo; we’re sure to squeeze it into the epic documentary The Last Pogo Jumps Again once completed early next year.

Out west, director Brunton has started picking away at an “assembly” of the film, i.e. a real big long version that will be eventually edited down to a slightly less big and less long version, his new hard-drive surrounded by sandbags and secured by bungee cords and 24/7 security (i.e. the sandbags) on his dwarf-like hotel desk. (If you hadn’t heard, the last hard-drive couldn’t take the heat, and to get out of the kitchen — fast — dove a deadly foot and a half to its untimely death.) A couple of hours or so of cutting a night, then up bright and early (okay, up early) for another day on the set of Little Mosque on the Prairie out in the charming small town of Indian Head, Saskatchewan (baseball fans take note: Satchell Paige pitched there in the ’40′s with barnstorming members of the Negro League, and how cool is that?! And they have an air-raid siren that reminds everyone at exactly noon each day that it’s time for lunch.)

Further out west, Andy Meyers works on the Scenics studio album (out in 2009), and starts to play with the soundtrack of the original Last Pogo movie, tweaking and adjusting and playing around — and that’s just his pants, BAM!

The guy who did the original handbill for the Last Pogo movie poster, John Pearson, corrects a half-dozen typos on the artwork of the DVD cover, adds a few more thingies here and there, and puts the finishing touches on the promo poster for the Last Pogo release this October; poster up on this site next week.

Woody Whelan, Minister of Propaganda, and head honcho of Mag Wheels Records, continues to drum up interest, and surprise surprise — there is interest. We here at Pogo H.Q. West are well chuffed to find out that Vice Magazine, Alternative Press, and Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll (amongst a bunch of others) are all going to take their first look at the movie and probably get their first small taste — an amuse douche, as it were — of Toronto/Hamilton punk that it offers up. Orders from Chicago, orders from L.A. and New York…here’s hoping that the world finally finds out just how hot our punk scene was.

Greg Dick and David Quinton are working on the deets to the big Last Pogo 30th bash this November; confirmed so far are The Scenics, The Mods, The Ugly — with Greg filling in for the late Mike Nightmare, and like we’ve said before, if you can’t have Mike, you’ve got Dick — and few others that are close to buying in on what should prove to be a fun evening.

Zero of ZRO4; photo Nathan Robinson

A blast from the past last Friday at the grungy old-skool watering hole The Silver Dollar in Toronto as first-wave punkers ZR04 and Tyranna hit the stage and played the hits. Camera operator/solar panel dude Dave Watts earned a camera operator credit for The Last Pogo Jumps Again by simultaneously shooting footage and consuming large amounts of suspect beer in “very low-light” (or was that you on the verge of passing out, Dave?); LPJA director and DIY Punk Videographer Aldo Erdic of 2BScene did duty with three-camera HD coverage, as well as help wrangle Zero for an interview by Dave and Zero’s pal Tracy Idon’tknowherlastname.

By all accounts, Zero was in fine form, aided by the constantly gigging Cleave Anderson on drums and old pal Dave Joudrey on guitar. With only a couple of rehearsals and playing for the first time in 20 years, the 20 minute set managed to include her groping someone in the audience, and kicking someone in the front row during “Attitude”;   we’re assuming not the same lucky audience member. Hair dude/radio interviewer/30th Anniversary of The Last Pogo organizer/new lead singer of The Ugly — whew! — Greg Dick was there, as well as scribe Liz Worth (getting set to release her book on all things punk, or at least, all things punk in Toronto, Hamilton and London, Treat Me Like Dirt) and Paul Ecknes and Margaret Catto and Giambi Bowker…and lots of other people, but this is all second hand ’cause we’re out here in Indian Head, Saskatchewan tracking emails and shooting bits of Little Mosque on the Prairie and we’re not quite sure what really went down, but we’ll take your word for it. And thanks to Nathan Robinson for the shot of Zero.

And tonight, live from a hotel room in Saskatchewan, the soundtrack of The Last Pogo shall be stripped out, boxed up, then signed sealed and delivered to Allowed Sound Studios in Salt Spring Island where producer Andy Meyers will fire up the bunsen burners, balance beakers, twiddle dials and do a smart “Duophonic” re-mix of the score, all in time for the general release on October 14th.   So far the response to the DVD from the few critics we’ve sent it to has been positive, and Little Mosque Sask crew member Donavon Fraser told us how impressed citizens of Regina (rhymes with China and angina!) have been with his Last Pogo t-shirt.

Drive-in in Indian Head, Saskatchewan.

With the Last Pogo crew scattered to the four winds (actually, just one wind — the westerly one breezing through Saskatchewan; everything else is blowing back in Toronto), The Last Pogo Jumps Again is in a bit of a holding pattern as director Kire Paputts continues to upload all the footage after the hard-drive took a dry dive to its death; director Colin Brunton reviews a pile of archival DVDs (various Viletones; the infamous Outrage concert; Teenage Head with guest Keith Whittaker of the Demics at the Horseshoe in 1992) in the comfort of his hotel room, and crew member Ollie Brunton sneaks downloads off of I-Tunes with daddy safely out of reach in another province.

Back in Toronto, as Kire struggles through more technical difficulties (mysterious “error” messages as he tries to upload the last of the tapes) The Screwed continue their now weekly assault on Toronto’s musical senses, David Quinton-Steinberg and Greg Dick scheme up The Last Pogo 30th reunion this winter, Tyranna gets back together for a gig, The Existers do the same, and three-quarters of The Scenics adjust their rally caps and plan for a new album and gigs in various and sundry places this fall.

With a hundred or so advance copies of The Last Pogo DVD being sent around by Mag Wheels chief Woody Whelan, feedback to date has been totally positive. Scheduled to be released this October 14th, the DVD’s got the original Last Pogo movie, an on-screen commentary by original Viletone and Secrets Chris Haight, and 20 minutes of The Scenics going all psychedelic in a Rogers TV studio in 1978. When you do the math, it’s gonna be hard to even break even on this venture, but we’re hoping that we can start to get the word out on just how awesome the Toronto/Hamilton punk scene was back in the old days (1976 – 1978), and whet appetites for the release of The Last Pogo Jumps Again in early 2009.

And please, folks, keep those cards and letters coming!   Each week we get a new jpg or a note or a reminder of a key player who we’ve missed on our now two-years plus journey, and welcome any and all suggestions, criticisms, kudos and sound effects.   And we still haven’t forgotten all of those who might feel forgotten, so hang tight, and we’ll get to ya.

Cheers

After being M.I.A. for almost thirty years, The Last Pogo will finally be in record stores (and on-line here) October 14th. While it woulda been cute to sell it retail for $19.78, that’s a bit much for a half-hour film, so it’ll probably cost about twelve bucks or so. Twelve bucks! That’s nothin’! Nothin’, I tells ya!

If you’re a first-time visitor/long-time listener, here’s a brief synopsis of what it is, cribbed from the NXNE 2008 notes Flip Publicity’s Liz Armstrong:

Grab some safety pins, practice your sneer and get ready to revisit Toronto’s thriving punk scene. THE LAST POGO documents the raucous 1978 punk concert held in Toronto’s legendary Horseshoe Tavern—a night of unhinged music and unbridled mayhem.

On December 1, 1978, legendary Toronto concert promoters Gary Topp and Gary Cormier—better known as The Garys—presented The Last Pogo, a rollicking, riotous concert at the venerable Horseshoe Tavern. On the bill were seminal bands from Toronto’s punk rock scene: The Scenics, The Cardboard Brains, The Secrets, The Mods, The Ugly, The Viletones and Hamilton’s Teenage Head. During the concert, the frenetic energy of 500+ thrashing fans in the club boiled over and a near-riot ensued. Filmmaker Colin Brunton was there with a camera crew to capture it all, from the irreverent punk musicians and the slam-dancing audience to the police who tried to stop the show and the firefighters called in to escort people from the premises.

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Meanwhile, The Last Pogo Jumps Again is chugging along. Kire Paputts is busy uploading all two years of footage after the external hard drive that everything was stored in took a disastrous leap off of a coffee table a week and a half ago, and 100+ hours of footage turned into so much land-fill. The monster project is scheduled to be completed in March, 2009.

Director Brunton is heading off to Saskatchewan for a couple of months to work, and is looking forward to holing up in his hotel room and carving out a feature-length documentary out of the material gathered to date.

Some of you might be interested to note that we’re also working on a quirky DVD project called A Trip Around David McFadden. For those of you not in the know, David McFadden is a Canadian poet and author who if you didn’t know better, would think let popular American author Bill Bryson borrow his style. Almost determined to remain under the radar, we hope to blow McFadden’s cover late this winter with a triple-bill of short films based on works by him. The DVD will contain short films A Trip Around Lake Ontario, featuring an original score by Nash the Slash; The Mysterious Moon Men of Canada, winner of the Genie Award for Best Live Action Short, and featuring a score by Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, and The Cow That Swam Lake Ontario, still to be completed, with another original score by Nash the Slash.

And if all that ain’t enough to keep a fella happy and busy, we were gifted today with an awesome present: a ratty and torn poster of “The Anarchy in the U.K. Tour”, featuring The Sex Pistols, The Damned, Johnny Thunders’ Heartbreakers, and some band that opened the tour called The Clash. Dated December 4, 1976 at King’s Hall, Derby. Nicely framed, it now is the center of attention in Pogo H.Q.’s living quarters. Big big thanks to Paulo Perin and Chris Toudy.

Keep checking in to find out about the 30th anniversary of The Last Pogo to be held this winter at the Horseshoe Tavern. We’ve been sworn to secrecy about who’s on the bill, but the cat shall be out of the bag soon.

And keep those cards and letters coming, folks!