The Last Pogo Jumps Again

Co-director Kire Paputts wears the colours in Athens.

Steven “Nazi Dog” Leckie of The Viletones points at food, circa ’78;  photo by Rodney Bowes.

THE LAST POGO (1978)  There’s a cool review of The Last Pogo in the current edition of the nifty webzine Tiny Mix Tapes.   They peg it a “masterful disaster-piece” and give us a sort of back-handed compliment with:   “…it’s the quick runtime that blocks The Last Pogo from reaching the pinnacle of the musical documentary form.”  Thanks for those kind words,  Jspicer.   It’s a fun site; you should check it out…glimpses of The Last Pogo were spotted in last weeks episode of Little Mosque on the Prairie, a brief cameo as the content on the TVs in a sports bar when a brawl breaks out.   It’s interesting to note that a lot of people who were connected to The Last Pogo concert and/or film found their way into the film business.  On Little Mosque alone, editor James Bredin was at the original show, as was Background Casting person Nancy Botting, and Hair Stylist Katrin Clark-Citroen, who is married to one Richard Citroen, ex of the mach-five version of The Diodes.   Mosque publicist Stephanie Keating used to munch burgers with Joey Ramone when she lived in NYC;  one of the producers is Last Pogo director Colin Brunton;  a partner in the law firm that reps some of the talent is Mods/Dead Boys/Lords of the New Church drummer David Quinton-Steinberg.

Paul Kobak unconscious on the floor of the Colonial Underground; courtesy Imants Krumins.

THE LAST POGO JUMPS AGAIN (2009)  A big huge hug to everyone that’s been showing the love lately:  Rodney Bowes is donating some of his sweet shots from back-in-the-day.  Rodney’s still a graphic designer and amongst that alarmingly generous pool of talented photographers who knocked around the punk scene in Toronto in the late seventies:  Edie Steiner, Don Pyle, Patrick Cummins, Peter Noble, Ralph Alfonso, Eddie Smith, Ross Taylor, and we’re forgetting a few more I’m sure (but it’s late, what can we say?)  Google Rodney and look at some of the cool stuff he’s been doing.

The Curse by Rodney Bowes

The Diodes with Bent Rasmussen; photo by Rodney Bowes

Writer/Director/Actor — he’s a triple threat, baby! –  Bruce Pirrie has offered up footage from his 1979 short film Ziggy: anyone who’s seen this 16mm York University film can’t forget the dialogue about “the best band on the worst album in history” (answer:  Jimmy Page, John Bonham, Jeff Beck, Noel Redding, and Nicky Hopkins on Screamin’ Lord Sutch’s Screamin’ Lord Sutch and his Heavy Friends).

Local Toronto photographer Les Yatabe has offered up some photos for us (thanks!), and we’re looking forward to meeting up with Ross Taylor who took a bazillion great shots from 76 on, and who promises to let us take a look at his soon-to-disintegrate scrapbook.   Hamiltonian Imants Krumins continues to perform beyond the call of duty, and has sent us even more handbills, and we now think we’ve got jpgs of every Horseshoe Tavern handbill from that great period when The Garys booked the bands.

Chris Haight of The Viletones, 1977;  photo by Les Yatabe

Keep an eye out for the latest gigs by the always dependable The Screwed, who seem to fit a show in every week or so, and in February the CIUT radio gig for ZR04, another of the original Toronto bands from 76 – 78.

Finally, great news for The Scenics:   music critic Jeffrey Morgan has included the Scenics’ cd of live Velvet Underground covers — How Does It Feel To Be Loved — in his official Top Ten of 2008 submitted to The Village Voice in NYC.  Heady praise indeed for a band that’s been working hard for the last year with the odd gig and their studio album, to be released sometime this year, just about 32 years after they first got together in a marijuana-clouded basement of a store on Bayview Avenue.   If you click on the link to The Scenics on the right hand menu, you’ll find out more about their upcoming podcasts, and the book that singer/guitar slinger Andy Meyers is working on, Punk Haiku.

This handbill for the punk music and clothing store New Rose was sent to us by Margarita Passion, who owned it with original Viletone Freddy Pompeii.   A favourite hang-out for all the young dudes.  This poster was designed by Freddy himself.   Both Margarita and Freddy are living in Phillie these days;  we’ve got interviews of the both of them for the new film, but Freddy’s was done in an extremely noisy bar, and while we’re usually all for smashing bottles and screaming profanity, Freddy’s chatter is hard to hear, so we may have to bring the Pogomobile down there this year to redo it.

THE LAST POGO (1978) is still in indie record stores around the world, and available on-line at our Store link for a mere $12.00.  There’s a new review in the way-cool blog from Holland, Here Comes The Flood (look it up!), and soon a review in Tiny Mix Tapes, one of the most entertaining sites we’ve come across since discovering The History of Staplers a few years ago.   Crossing our fingers that our movie gets picked to play SXSE;  we’ll know soon.

Mickey de Sadist of The Forgotten Rebels from The Last Pogo Jumps Again; photo by Edie Steiner.

THE LAST POGO JUMPS AGAIN (2009) is deep into editing, with just a few more interviews needed.   We’ve been getting tons of jpgs (and looking for more) from Imants Krumins and Gail Wetton;  co-director Aldo Erdic has sent us some old ticket-stubs (including that beauty above from 1974);  a couple of pieces from Gary Topp and Erella Ganon — and we’ve been enjoying some of the dvds sent to us by Steven Leckie and Suzanne Naughton.

Steven Leckie from The Last Pogo Jumps Again;  photo by Edie Steiner

Filmmaker Peter Vronsky has generously offered us footage from some of the stuff he shot in the late seventies, most notably the crowds outside and in the lobby of The New Yorker on September 24, 1976 when The Ramones hit town for the first time.

The Last Pogo Jumps Again co-director Kire Paputts sends us this note from Europe:  “I decided to take on the Gladiators. Next stop, Greek philosophers.”

Handbill courtesy Imants Krumins

R.I.P. Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton. When Ron’s band Destroy All Monsters played the Horseshoe in ’78 with Suicide and Teenage Head, the bands took turns headlining the three night gig.   After a packed audience rocked to Destroy All Monsters, then Teenage Head — they left, leaving a crowd of about 25 people to experience Suicide.    Singer Alan Vega leaped off the stage and terrified a table to drunken jocks, screaming in their faces “I wanna fuckin’ kill you!”.  Needless to say, they paid close attention the rest of the show.   The next night, The Ugly‘s lead-singer, the late Mike Nightmare relentlessly pestered Vega with a water-pistol.  Welcome to Toronto.

The Ramones hit town in 1976 and the rest is history, courtesy of Gail Wetton.

Here’s the poster from the first time The Ramones came to Toronto, courtesy of the archives of Gail Wetton of Molten Core (Google it for lots of goodies.)   Director Brunton recalls watching artist John Pearson pick up a sharpie and create this in about ten minutes, leaning on the snack bar of the New Yorker, a butt hanging from his mouth.    The snack bar was built by Gary Cormier, a long-haired and bearded carpenter who through a friend of a friend got the gig.  Having managed Rough Trade for a bit, grade-nine drop-out Cormier was as tired of the music business as Gary Topp was of the film business, and as he hammered away the snack bar, they got to talking, discovered they were kindred spirits, and together hammered out The Garys — a business partnership that would unleash a profound and exciting musical vision upon Toronto over the next few years, starting with The Ramones on September 24, 1976.  In early 1978, he built the stage at the Horseshoe Tavern.

The snack bar was then painted by local artist David Andoff, who amongst other accomplishments had done loads of artwork and such for the legendary Toronto blues band McKenna Mendleson Mainline — and who built the gigantic bust of King Kong that sat upon the overhanging marquee of the New Yorker.   A few months later, he designed the handbill for the first visit to the city by John Cale.

John Cale comes to town in early 1977;  courtesy of Gail Wetton.

Some time after that, Mendleson Joe (nee Joe Mendleson) ex of McKenna Mendleson Mainline would dress in nurse’s drag to open for Wayne County and the Backstreet Boys. After the gig, with neither The Garys nor Wayne County having enough cash to get decent hotel rooms, the band spent the night sleeping in the theatre, after watching (for the first time) The Rocky Horror Picture Show and a theatrical commercial for the Acu-jack (use your imagination;  it was an ad that played gay movie theatres in New York.)   Wayne County would come back to Toronto not long after as Jayne County.   To bring this full circle, a block down the street from the New Yorker was Records on Wheels, one of only a few hip record stores in Toronto at the time, where Randy Johnston worked, and Randy is the life partner of Gail Wetton and together they run memorabilia on-line store Molten Core and they sent us in the Ramones handbill in the first place.  Whew!

As Director Kire Paputts tramps around Europe, directors Aldo Erdic and Brunton continue to edit, and Brunton’s latest mission is to start seriously collecting jpgs of anything and everything — photos, handbills, poster, buttons — that is indicative of the Toronto punk scene circa 1976 – 1978.   While we’re focusing on events that occurred in that period, we can’t resist some of the other things we’ve found, including a ticket-stub of the Iggy and the Stooges show at the old Victory Burlesque vaudeville house that used to dominate the corner of Spadina and Dundas — and a circa 1962 full nudity/all cheesecake Victory Burlesque calendar, courtesy of Aldo and his part-time roommater (who’s name we can’t recall right now.)   A nice visual to accompany some of the interviews we’ve done where people talked about going to that show, including one by Bill “The Count” Cork, who claims that on the day of, two dealers sent by the Stooges sold him some fine LSD and convinced him to check out the show.

Imants Krumins forwarded us tons of poster and handbills fresh from The Hammer — he’s now got a credit as Senior Archivist for the feature.  We interviewed Imants a few years ago and were rightfully blown away by his awesome collection of punk memorabila, as we were with Gail Wetton and Randy Johnston and Gary Pig Gold.  Rivalling Imants in sheer volume (not to mention good taste and vibes) Gail Wetton continues to send us handbills of concerts we vaguely recall, and is being rewarded with not only a fancy credit like Imants, but a million brownie points as well!.

Courtesy Gary Topp;  original art by Marv Newland.

Gary Topp shot us a jpg of one of the old Original 99 Roxy Theatre matchbooks (so not PC!), where many a creative seed was planted in many of the folks who would go on to be part of the great Toronto punk scene.   We hope to hit Gary’s residence soon, armed with our trusty scanner, and see how many more dots we can fill in.

The Viletones first handbill/press release, weeks after the Ramones gig, big thanks to Imants Krumins.

We’ve also been reviewing the pile of DVDs that have been sent to us by the likes of Steven Leckie, Bruce Pirrie and Suzanne Naughton over the past few years.   Watching ZIGGY starring Bruce was loads of fun, and it’s pretty crazy to look back at our youth in Suzanne’s seminal short film AN AFTERNOON AT NEW ROSE.  We’ve also heard from Rodney Bowes, now hunkered in L.A., and he promises to send along some of his collection from way back when.  Gary Pig Gold has also invited us and our scanner into his parent’s basement in Port Credit to start copying the literally boxloads of memorabilia from the scene, and Mark Sanders is also sorting through his tupperware box of memories.   Thanks so much to everyone.

In a week or three we’ll have some new stuff on the site here, including a “Bragging Rights” section detailing all of the great press our publicist Woody Whelan has drummed up for the DVD.

Later gators.

Fast Eddie Smith, photographer and bon vivant, is fashionable in Rome.

Director Kire Paputts slacking in front of some tower in Paris.

Okay, so maybe our French translation isn’t correct, but it’s close enough for rock ‘n’ roll.

As most of us get back to work and school and such and gear ourselves up for 2009, The Last Pogo Jumps Again director Kire Paputts is taking some time off to tour Europe and photograph himself with his work uniform on in front of a variety of European sites.