The Last Pogo Jumps Again

Steve Koch with The Ugly at The Last Pogo 30th;  photo Ross Taylor.

In the late seventies, being the only punk in Calgary (although he’d find out later there was this other guy called Warren Kinsella skulking around the south side) made Steve Koch feel as though people thought he was either (a) dangerous, (b) developmentally challenged, or, most likely (c) a little bit of both.

He sent a fan letter to New Rose in Toronto, the punk music and clothing store run by Margarita Passion and (original Viletones guitarist) Freddy Pompeii, and asked for a copy of the single by this new Toronto band called The Viletones.

Punk records were hard to find in Calgary, but if they did surface, were usually found in the “delete” section, so as far and few between as they were, they were at least cheap.  But there just weren’t enough for Calgary’s Only Punk, and Calgary was…well…Calgary, and hence the letter.   Don Pyle, all of fifteen or so, wrote him back.  (Don, of course, besides being a great photographer and cool dude, would later form Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet and continues to make music, art, and produce for other people.  He spent a lot of his formative years hanging out at New Rose.)   Don mistakenly addressed the letter to one John Koch, who didn’t exist at the Calgary Koch residence, and so the letter sat on the stoop for a few weeks until a curious Steve held it up to a light, saw that it contained… a paper airplane, and decided to open it up.  And that was the start of a friendship that continues to this day.

So it was that in ’78 that Steve Koch decided to get the fuck out of Dodge, and after a non-stop seventy-hour drive, he and a couple of buds arrived on the doorstep of Don Pyle, who, with parents conveniently out for the night, let them crash on the couch and floor.   The next thing ya know, Steve and Don form Crash Kills Nine, and after giving that name to the late Reid Diamond (on the condition the number changed;  it did, and became Crash Kills Five) Steve auditioned as the new guitar-slinger for The Viletones, and won them over with his take on the Dead Boys’ classic Sonic Reducer.   Quickly earning a rep as one of Toronto’s better players, Steve would later play with Handsome Ned, The Demics and lots more, and has continued to bang out music on a regular basis, currently as a member of both The Screwed and the 2009 version of The Ugly.

Any last words on punk rock?

“Buy the CD.”

And parting advise for any aspiring punks?

“Don’t buy the CD.”  BAM!

The Last Pogo Jumps Again shoots Steve Koch;  photo Ross Taylor

We got to hear (and record) all these stories over a couple of hours on a sunny Saturday afternoon, with Tea and Sympathy (coffee and an ashtray) provided by Steve’s wife Max (no, she’s not a dude, dude, she’s all woman, as in va va va voom) — and a half-dozen scrapbooks dating back to ’76 provided by photographer Ross Taylor, who’s continued to photograph all things punk for over thirty years now.  (Awesome collection, Ross;  good work!)

Back in the seventies Ross was a member of Cheap Thrills, the ticket subscription thingy that for a yearly fee gave him fifth row centre seats at the old cavernous and smoky Maple Leaf Gardens, and so Ross went to everything.   As Steve turned the scrapbook pages on prog-rockers and sixties relics that frankly are too embarrassing to mention (although Pogo director Brunton owned up to once being a fan of Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd — did anyone not go to see that show in Hamilton in ’75? — and Yes) you could see on the yellowed brittle pages how it all changed around ’76, the pages getting jammed with the likes of Ramones, Dead Boys, Iggy Pop, New York Dolls, Dictators, Lou Reed — and loads on Toronto’s own nasty darlings, The Viletones.

You can catch Steve playing with The Screwed every other week or so, and on June 6th head down to Sneaky Dee’s in Toronto where he’ll by playing as a member of The Ugly, with original members Sam Ferrara and Tony Torture, and Greg Dick filling in for the late great Mike Nightmare.   Get a sneak preview of what these guys sound like by tuning into CIUT-FM on Sunday, May 31 at 10:00 where they’ll play a couple of tunes, and then sit down for a chat.

Greg Trinier of The Mods, The Last Pogo 30th, December 2008;  photo Ross Taylor

Sharing the bill at Sneaky Dee’s will be another of the original Toronto punkers, The Mods, sporting the same line-up, same tunes, and same sharp sartorial stylings as they did thirty years ago.  And if that ain’t enough, a new band (who Dick says are great) called The Superstitions open the show.   And if you’re still not convinced, in between bands and beers be treated to old-skool tunes spun by D.J. O.P.P., a.k.a. Peter Genest, the legally beleagured owner of Hits ‘n’ Misses.

Peter Genest by Peter Bock, Torstar

Hey, wanna help ruin a small business?  Be a city inspector, drop by a cool record/cd store, and then scare the owner by telling him that he’s gotta fork over some hard-earned dough to get a new kind of license that may or may not be needed.  Then titter as you find out how much time said owner has to spend going downtown and trying to fight city hall, possibly hiring a lawyer, and generally wasting his time.  That’s what’s happened to Hits ‘n’ Misses owner Peter Genest.  And the punchline is, is that no one at city hall can sorta kinda give him a straight answer.   Here’s the story as told in Metronews.ca:

The City of Toronto thinks you need to be protected from the likes of Peter Genest.

His trade: Dealing mostly in new records, with a few second-hand CDs, out of a shop on Bloor Street West near Ossington Avenue.

The city’s demand: Cough up $555 for a special licence to sell second-hand goods.

For Genest, who has been scraping a living from his small shop for the past two years, it’s a sudden and unexpected demand for cash he can’t readily afford.

And neither he, nor politicians who make the city’s bylaws, can think of a reason why he should have to.

When asked whether he could think of any reason why a shop selling used CDs should need a special licence from the city, Councillor Howard Moscoe, who chairs the city’s licensing and standards committee, replied in a single word:

“No.”

Maybe in these tough times you could show Pete a little love and drop by his store (HITS ‘N’ MISSES 860 Bloor Street West Toronto, ON M6G 1M2, Canada (416) 535-7817) and buy something.  Like, I dunno…a copy of The Last Pogo!

Always one of the best shows in town…

Unidentified reveler, David Quinton, Greg Dick;  photo by Edie Steiner.

And lines should be forming for a couple of way-cool shows coming your way soon.  This Thursday, April 16th there is going to be a pretty awesome line-up at the old Silver Dollar in Toronto: Blue Coupe in their first Toronto gig.  Who, might you ask, are Blue Coupe?  Who aren’t they?!   The Blue part is Joe and Albert Bouchard from Blue Oyster Cult and the Coupe part is Dennis Dunaway from Alice Cooper (!).  If that ain’t enough, the band is also featuring Teenage Head’s Gord Lewis.  Doors open at nine; the band starts around eleven.  Don’t miss it!

Mark you calendars for June 6, when The Ugly and The Mods team up for a show at Sneaky Dee’s.  If you don’t have a programme, the current line up for The Ugly is Sam Ferrara, Steve Koch, Tony Torture, with Greg Dick on vocals, and the Mods are the exact same line-up from thirty-odd years ago.  So — dont’t miss that either!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, The Last Pogo Jumps Again co-director Kire Paputts is organizing the hundreds of hours of footage we’ve shot since June 2006.

Okay, we’re not really under construction — we’re just busy.   We haven’t dropped the ball on our beloved project The Last Pogo Jumps Again, but when people are paying your wage to work on other projects, it would just be downright rude to ignore call-times, melt-downs, and shooting schedules on some other TV/Film project, and secretly edit the new project.   So it’s all about time.  And money.  Which we don’t have any of, by the way (the powers that be in Canada that usually have no qualms about supporting unusual, niche projects have made it glaringly clear that they want no part of this Punk Rock thing;  what else is new!).  The hard-drive containing hundreds of hours of footage has been transported to — drum roll, please — a “real” editors suite, and we’re excited to start seeing some sequences put together.  Just not excited enough to blog any details yet though apparently.

So, while all eight of our regular readers are eagerly awaiting the next installment of which interview we’ve done over the weekend, which hard-drive dropped to it’s death or whatever…here’s a couple of other sites on the Internet Machine that are terrific diversion and way more entertaining than, say, blogs about which interview we’ve done over the weekend, which hard-drive dropped to it’s death or whatever.

Drunk Jays Fans.  Write that, add a dot com at the end, and you’ll find a refreshingly obscene and right-on daily blog for fans of the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team.   Even if you’re not a fan, it’s always a fun read.  And if happen to be a fan of either baseball or they Jays, you’ve hit the jackpot.  http://www.drunkjaysfans.com/

Martin Millar.  Do the dot com thing again, except like this:  http://martin-millar.blogspot.com/, and you’ll find the occasional blog by a crazily talented Scottish writer called — you guessed it! — Martin Millar.  He’s written a few novels about werewolves and fairies and Led Zeppelin (and a bunch of others using a pseudonym) and in his novels there are appearances by, amongst others, the ghost of Johnny Thunders, drunk magic-mushroom-eating Irish fairies who’d rather play Ramones than traditional fairie tunes, and a lonely werewolf girl (in a great novel called Lonely Werewolf Girl) who lives for the Runaways and wishes Joan Jett were her mother.  If we were forced to come up with four word description of it, it might be “Harry Potter for Adults.”  If we had eight words, “F%#ing awesome!  It’s like Harry Potter for adults.”   The Last Pogo Jumps Again press corps recently sent Mr. Millar a copy of The Last Pogo (still available for only $12!), and he was cool enough to answer our email, telling us that he wouldn’t have become a writer were it not for the big punk rock explosion back in the seventies.