Have your Razorcake, and eat it too.
The Mods at The Edge, ’79 or ’80; courtesy Cindy Holmes
Not a heck of a lot of shooting happening lately, but we’re starting to get the word out that we need more stuff. Stuff as in high-res photos and handbills, and of course hints, leads and clues. Co-director Kire Paputts has been hard at it the last month, organizing and editing the footage, and that’s no mean feat: we’ve got about a hundred hours of new material; a pile ‘o’ archival footage; and we haven’t begun to touch the couple of hundred hours of stuff that co-director Aldo Erdic has been shooting the past few years.
Thanks to Cindy Holmes for the shot of The Mods above, taken at the Edge in ’79 or ’80. For those of you new to the site or the city, The Edge was the club infamous promoters The Garys started after they were given the boot from the Horseshoe; the last show at the Horseshoe, of course, was The Last Pogo — available here on DVD !
Fanzine Razorcakes gave us a nice coupla thumbs up in their May 14th blog, likening The Last Pogo movie to…well…here’s the review: “As much as a fan that I am of Canadian punk rock, I have to admit that my knowledge and collection are lacking in bands and information from the Eastern part of our country. I can tell you anything you need to know about The Subhumans, DOA, SNFU, Nomeansno, or Dayglo Abortions, but other than Teenage Head, The Viletones, and Forgotten Rebels, I really have no sense of history as to what was happening out there at the dawn of punk.
Well, I wonder no more, as The Last Pogo has been released on DVD to fill in some blanks for me. Originally filmed in 1978 at the Horseshoe Tavern on the last night of punk bands after being kicked out, the movie showcases just what was going on in Toronto back then. Of course, Teenage Head and The Viletones are here, which is to be expected, but I was truly taken aback by how much I dug the other bands on here, especially The Scenics.
Visually, the film is a sight to behold: classic grainy, ‘70s film at its finest featuring a bunch of weirdoes in a really smoky bar playing strange music. I love it! It really reminds me of a live Stompin’ Tom Connors movie from the same era. Something about the vibe of this film is distinctly Canadian and I like that. I’d like to think that in any city across this country that a riot would break out if you cut Teenage Head off after one song. This is a great little history lesson that I would recommend to anyone.”
Hmmm, what else? Make sure to catch the original line-up of The Mods, and the newly reformed The Ugly, featuring Tony Torture, Sam Ferrara, Steve Koch and frontman Greg Dick; The Scenics are busy mastering their next cd-thingy, featuring tracks from their demo tape in 1976; Blair Richard Martin is putting the finishing touches on his short history of the original Toronto punk scene, and should be available free of charge somewhere in cyberspace very soon; and how about them Jays, eh?!
