The Last Pogo Jumps Again

This Friday at Sneaky Dee’s in Toronto;  The Hammer on Saturday.

When Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan quit the New York Dolls in 1975, they started The Heartbreakers, inviting Richard Hell and Walter Lure to join in on the fun.  Richard didn’t stick around too long — he started his own band Richard Hell & The Voidoids — Billy Wrath joins up, and they all have a blast in England in ’76, hanging with the likes of Sex Pistols, Damned, Buzzcocks, et al., and release their first album The Heartbreakers LAMF.

Punk Rock legend (and elder-master of the New York tribe) Walter Lure‘s coming to town, and we’re itching to interview him and fill in a few more days of our three-years-and-counting feature, tentatively entitled The Last Pogo Jumps Again:  A Biased and Incomplete History of Toronto/Hamilton/London, Ontario Punk Rock from September 24, 1976 to December 1, 1978.

Walter Lure, 2007;  photo copyright John Nikolai (check site on the right)

The band he’ll be playing with this week are punk rock royalty themselves.   Teenage Head’s Gordie Lewis and Steve Mahon, along with drumkit-meister Battered Screwed and Blue Rodeo’d Cleave Anderson will be backing him up on Heartbreakers and Waldo stuff, and, we’re sure lots more.  (Unfortunately, no Teenage Head tunes;  speaking of which, wow — it’s been almost a year now…)

Frankie Venom, R.I.P., photo Ross Taylor

And if that ain’t enough, Toronto’s own darling, the legendary B-Girl Cynthia Ross will be killing the bass for her new band New York Junk, check them out on the link on the right.   Turning the Wayback Machine to 1978, here’s Cynthia with former main squeeze Stiv Bators along with Sex Pistols’ Sid Vicious and his main squeeze, the allegedly schizophrenic  Nancy Spungeon, not long before her murder and Stiv’s O.D., the inevitable Altamont (or at least a striking puncuation mark) of that first big wave.

Sam Ferrara with Cynthia Ross, B-Girl, New York Junk, ex-Stiv Bators’ main squeeze; photo Kevin Lamb

Click right around, then wait forever to download a YouTube video of  Sid Vicious, Nancy Spungeon, Stiv Bators and  Cynthia Ross.

Haitian Voodoo priest;  photo by Frank Polyak

From Webster’s Dictionary.

A rep from The Last Pogo Jumps Again had the honour of spending an evening at hunter & collector Billy Jamieson’s loft last week, surrounded by human skulls, shrunken heads, a shrunken body,  a stuffed monkey, whale cock, serial killer memorabilia and tribal artifacts.   (For a look at some of what Billy’s done in the past couple of decades, check out the link on the right.)

The Viletones’ Steven Leckie, 1978; photo Rodney Bowes

Here’s some stuff about and Shuars and Punks.

The Shuars were a sub-tribe of the fierce Jivaros;  the Punks were a sub-tribe of the fierce Punk Godfathers (Velvets, Dolls, Iggy).

The Shuar would shrink the decapitated heads of their enemies;  prog-rocker Peter Gabriel walked out of the first Toronto Ramones show (September 24, 1976) after fifteen minutes (almost the whole set!) muttering “This is bullshit.” The  Shuar would then sew up the lips and eyes of their dead enemies.  The Punks punched people in the lips and eyes, and often sewed their own clothes.    The Shuar were terrifying, shocking, and primal;  you could get beat up for putting a Ramones album on at a party in 1976.

This from indian-cultures.com:  The Shuar are a very artistic tribe. One art form that they are very adept at is the making of  jewelry from seeds, nuts, teeth, bone and other natural objects. They are also musical and perform many traditional dances and rituals. They  make dance belts which are hand woven. From the woven part of the belt they hang beads, from the beads they continue down with the shells of nuts and/or sea shells which rattle when they dance.

Just substitute Punks for Shuar, and we rest our case.   Safety pins and chains, much?

The Slits, 1977;  photo Anton Corbijn

Shuar warriors, 1961;  photo by Rolf Blomberg

If you wanna read more about the Shuar and Jivaros, go to Billy Jamieson‘s excellent site.   And just in case you’re wondering how to make a shrunken head:

“The process of preparing a tsantsa [shrunken head] has a number of steps. With the aid of a machete or a steel knife, Peter Gabriel’s skin is peeled back from the uppermost part of his chest, shoulders and back, and the head and neck are cut off as close as possible to the collarbone… here he makes a slit up the rear of the head and carefully cuts the skin from the skull and throws the latter into the river as a gift to the anaconda. The skin is boiled for half an hour. It is then dried. Then the skin is again scraped… the slit in the rear is sewn… Heated stones or sand then is rolled around in the head… Three pins are put through the lips and lashed with string. The skin is rubbed daily with charcoal so it will become blackened…”  From Eric Schniter’s Shuar of Ecuador web site.

Huh.  Sounds like a Ramones show in 1976.

Iggy, 1972.  Photo by the legendary Mick Rock.

Andy Ramesh Meyers of The Scenics jumps for joy;  photo copyright Kevin Lamb

Besides prepping for The Scenics‘ five-date mini-tour this October, timed to the release of their new CD Sunshine World, co-leader (aside other frontman Ken Badger), Andy Ramesh Meyers is going to inflict an eclectic collection of tunes Saturday evenings, starting this week.   Dubbed Allowed Sound, the show will be kinda like what FM radio used to be in the early seventies, before the Global Industrial Military Complex took it all over, and fed us unlucky radio listeners a milque-toasty blend of pablumy mush, almost always served by either “wacky, off-the-wall” hosts, self-important nerds, or — and usually during the morning shows for some reason — testosterone-addled dickwads who have adopted the worst aspects of Howard Stern, and pretend to love whatever drivel the Corporate Lackey Puppet Masters tell them to love.  Sum-41 much?

Photo courtesy of hearingvoices.com

But all is not lost.  There’s some great channels on Sirius Radio (i.e. Little Steven’s Underground Garage, Handsome Dick Manitoba‘s show) and if you’re patient enough you can scour through programmes of university and college stations to find little slots of time devoted to whatever kind of music you’re into.   And if you’re like us here at Pogo H.Q., you kinda like a little of everything.  So if you fondly recall those days back in the early seventies when you could hear John Lee Hooker segue to the Allman Brothers then on to Ornette Coleman with a trick ending by way of Tommy James & The Shondells (okay, so maybe it wasn’t that eclectic) then you gotta tune in to Andy’s show Allowed Sound.

Here’s some of the artists that Andy Ramesh has allowed:  Talking Heads, Bill Frisell,  Sid Barrett, Rokia Trore, Bang on a Can, the Go Team,  Howlin Wolf, Papa Haydn, the New Pornagraphers, the Stones,  Chic, Hank Williams, Pere Ubu, Von Bingen, Lee Scratch Perry, Eno, Lenny Breau and much much more

It all be streamin’ at http://www.cfsi-fm.com/

Saturdays, 7 – 9 pm, specifically Pacific time.  Hey-o!

There’s a whole pile of vets blowing through town in the next month, and it’s back to school time.   So grab your notebooks and some fake i.d. and get ready to watch some punk pioneers throw it down.  Sit down, shut up and learn.  Or stay home and shave the baby.

Cheetah Chrome, ex-Dead Boy and Rocket from the Tombs, will be playing with Toronto’s premiere punk cover band (originals too, yo) The Screwed (and hopefully continuing to entertain and enlighten his Facebook friends with his steady rotation of vintage band videos, and rants against TV mental case Glen Beck.)

They’ll be playing This Ain’t Hollywood, the new bar in the Hammer (named with a tip o’ the hate to Mickey de Sadist who lent them the Forgotten Rebels‘ title) run by DJ and all-round dude Lou Molinaro) on Friday, September 25th.   The next night the distinguished gang drives down the Gardner to Toronto to play some more at The Cadillac Lounge.   Need lunch, much?

On October 2nd at Sneaky Dees in Toronto, New York Junk (with home-grown gal Cynthia Ross of the B-Girls) share the bill with Walter Lure (ex-Heartbreakers) jamming (are we allowed to say that yet?) with Teenage Head’s Gord Lewis and Steve Mahon.  Walter wrote and sang half of the Heartbreakers’ tunes with the late and legendary Johnny Thunders, and formed the band Waldo (who at least a couple of bloggers likening it to what The Heartbreakers could’ve sounded like had they been able to continue) with a revolving door of players, an uncanny amount of whom died along the way  “…but of natural causes these days….though…what’s natural about death anyway?” mused Walter in an interview last year.

And not only did Walter survive the Heartbreakers and continue on with this own band The Waldos — their excellent first album produced by The Dictators Adny Shernoff (we’re not worthy!) — but he also went on to a comfortable day job as a Wall Street stockfuckingbroker!    Which, when you think about it, isn’t such a leap.  We assume the awesome Walter wears his trademark yellow tie (and maybe the jacket with the dollar signs) at both jobs.  Walter Lure, Gordie Lewis, Steve Mahon, you gotta go.    It’ll be guitarded!

September 78 at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto

Gord Lewis of Teenage Head has kept busy since the (apparent) break-up of Teenage Head following singer Frankie Venom‘s untimely death last October.   This Ain’t Hollywood features regular Gord Lewis Songbook nights at the club, and Gord’s played a few gigs with Blue Coupe, the super-group kinda thing featuring Blue Oyster Cult‘s Joe and Albert Bouchard and Alice Cooper‘s Dennis Dunaway.   We’re hoping to catch an interview with Teenage Head road manager Rob Gronfors this fall.

Handbill courtesy Imants Krumins

The Scenics hit the road in October, timed to the release of Sunshine World, their remastered collection of tunes originally recorded in 1977/1978.   While they’re revamping their website (listed on the right) you can check out a half-dozen songs at their MySpace place at http://www.myspace.com/scenicsmusic.   They’ll play a number of gigs equal to one beer short of a six-pack, at the Toronto’s El Mocambo on October 13th;  Ottawa, the 14th, Montreal the 15th,  Call the Office in London on the 17th, and then finishing it at This Ain’t Hollywood in Hamilton, October 18th.

Meanwhile The Scenics singer/writer Ramesh Andy Meyers will premiere his new radio show Allowed Sound on Saturday, September 26, 7 – 9pm,  doing a show like FM radio used to be, eclectic:  Talking Heads, Bill Frisell, Hank Williams, Pere Ubu, etc.  Don’t touch that dial.

Ramesh Andy Meyers with assistant Noah Webster in their studios on Salt Spring Island.

Pogo H.Q. got a text message from management company Invisible Hands‘ Charlie, letting us know that ex-Strangler Hugh Cornwell was in the midst of a North American tour, and would be playing Hamilton’s This Ain’t Hollywood tonight (September 15th) and Toronto’s Mod Club tomorrow night (September 16th.)

The palm tree lined streets of Hamilton, Ontario; photo by Michael Hrysko

We had the pleasure of interview Hugh last summer during SXSW, and manager Charlie attended the screening of The Last Pogo (“You know who I really liked?  The first band that was on…” (The Scenics.)   Hugh was affable and candid about life with The Guildford Stranglers, his former drug addiction, and his new high, endorphins.

Hugh and Charlie have embraced the Brave New World of digi-this-and-that — click on the link to the right and get a free download of Hugh’s latest album Hooverdam.  And Charlie’s into this “texting” thing the kids love so much.  And sad to say, even though we can blog away sitting in the luxurious lounge of Pogo H.Q...uh…we didn’t know how to text him back.

Pogo H.Q. staff ooh and ahh over Charlie’s text message.

Suffice to say, these are definitely shows worth checking out.   And for anyone who reads this blog, but aren’t in the vicinity, here’s some other dates:

How most people react to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame

Friday, September 18th — Cleveland, The Beachland Ballroom

Saturday, September 19th — Milwaukee, Shank Hall

Chicago, 1930

Sunday, September 20th — Chicago, The Abbey

Tuesday, September 22nd – Minneapolis,  The 400 Bar

Wednesday, September 23rd — Winnipeg, The Pyramid

Patients and staff  from Manitoba’s Gimli Hospital are hoping to see Hugh live in Winnipeg.

Punk icon/living legend/proud pappy Cheetah Chrome, ex of  The Dead Boys and Rocket From The Tombs, distinguished gentleman, punk pioneer  and nothing at all to do with the woman who has taken his finely crafted pseudonym and dot com space web site will be performing a couple of shows around town next weekend.

Catch Cheetah playing with his pals The Screwed at This Ain’t Hollywood, in the deep dark depths of The Hammer (Hamilton, Ontario) on September 25th, and then the next night in the tony ‘hood of Parkdale in Toronto at the Cadillac Lounge.   (Warning:  There will likely be no Michael Jackson tributes at either of these shows.)

Patti Smith and Jim Carroll;  courtesy “ifcharlieparkerwasagunslinger”.

Rest in peace, Jim Carroll.

In Ron Mann’s feature Listen to the City, Jim Carroll played the lead.  He had to be taken to the Addiction Research Foundation every morning in Toronto to get his glass of tang ‘n’ methadone, and then it would be off to film.   The Last Pogo director Colin Brunton was an Associate Producer on the movie.  He’d take Jim for his morning courage, and then often drive him to set, Colin sipping coffee, Jim taking a few heaves off of a joint.

In the music room in the high-school they were shooting in, the kids (thirteen years old, grade eight) had their term projects, mounted on bristleboard, hanging on the walls.  Brunton checked them out and was delighted to find one on The Rolling Stones by some future teengenerate.  It wasn’t that loving the Stones was so interesting, it was that there was a picture of Keith Richards posing with – in the grade eight kid’s own words – “New York poet/rocker Jim Carroll.” Cool!   The fact that a 13-year-old kid in North York knew who Jim Carroll was, was amazing, unexpected, somehow slightly hopeful.     The teacher had given the project a “C+.”

Jim arrived on set, and with time to kill before the scene his first scene was shot, the project was pointed out to him.   Jim borrowed a Sharpie, changed the “C+” to an “A-“, and and then posed for a Polaroid in front of the project, pointing to the new “A-.”

I want the angel
Whose dreams are fatal
They cause the snake’s milk to run and curdle

I want the angel
Whose darkness doubles
It absorbs the brilliance of all my troubles

I want the angel
That will not shatter
Every time I whisper, “Girl it does not matter”

I want the angel
Who’s got the proof
She signals her devotion from the rails on the roof

I want the angel
That comes to stay
She don’t let lawyers and ambition lead her away

I want the angel
Whose eyes are raving
Who takes what I’m giving and not what I’m saving

I want the angel
Whose bones are so sharp
That they can break through their own excuses

Well, to be a blind man,
Hey, that would be a fine thing
Then I could dream at night of total strangers
And all the music would be so spaceless
And all the women would be so faceless,
They’d be so faceless they’d be like old film
Just like old film I never did process

I want the angel
That knows the sky
She got virtue, she got the parallel light in her eye

I want the angel
That’s partly lame
She filters clarity from her desperate shame

I want the angel
That knows rejection
Who’s like a whore in love with her own reflection

I want the angel
Whose touch don’t miss
When the blood comes through the dropper like a thick red kiss

If I could break through I could be certain
But this obsession is like some fiery curtain
All the numbers reduced to zero
And those who died young, they are my heroes
They are my heroes, they took the walk
Where the heart made sense and the mind can’t talk

I want the angel
Whose child don’t weep
She’s got dreams designed for eternal sleep

I want the angel
That will not change
Into a four-legged monster in love with the strange

I want the angel
That never chooses
And don’t come running back every time she loses

But I want the angel that never loses

Photo copyright David Shankbone.

Author of the novel The Basketball Diaries as well as the tune People Who Died, NYC poet Jim Carroll passed away of a heart-attack on Friday September 11th.

In the early eighties, when Last Pogo director Colin Brunton was doing anything to get his foot in the door of the film business, he worked as a production assistant on a rock video for the band Toronto, with SFX courtesy of a dry-ice machine and starring a cat (one of Brunton’s duties was to go to one of those suspect meat stores down by Regent Park that opened at six in the morning to buy cuts of beef filet and liver to treat the cat, who by the way, the entire crew wanted to strangle by the time the shoot was over.)  The video, like most “rock videos” was forgettable, but with one exception:  working with director Tibor Takacs.

Toronto;  courtesy canadianbands.com.

You see, this was fun because Tibor was doing what Brunton wanted to do:  make films and shoot stuff.   Not coddle kitty cats or fetch coffee or drive cab.  This was The Dream.   And somehow in some mysterious way Tibor was doing it — and still is.   Sure, you can smirk at the artistic short-comings of making a rock video, let alone one for a band called Toronto, but you gotta know that back in the early eighties, there wasn’t much of a film/TV industry in Toronto period.   It wasn’t all government handouts and tax credits.   You had to be a bit more clever than that.   And going out and make a  feature film?! That bordered on heroic.   Boners up!

Still from Metal Messiah:  courtesy/copyright Tibor Takacs

And Tibor Takacs and Stephen Zoller had done just that with their debut feature film Metal Messiah.  Shot in 1975 and finally completed in 1978, Metal Messiah featured future Cardboard Brains lead singer John-Paul Young and would’ve starred The Viletones’ Steven Leckie, but things didn’t work out.

“Did you know that in 1975 Steven Leckie was  cast as the lead in our play Metal Messiah?  Regrettably after several weeks things did not work out and we had to move on.  It was this initial contact with Steven that prompted his invitation for us to manage the Viletones several years later.”

Now in L.A., Takacs has continued to work rock steady for the past thirty years, helming TV movies with awesome titles like Mansquito and Megasnake and Ice Spiders, as well as the box-office hit The Gate, and tons of episodic TV.

We got in contact with Tibor a couple of days ago, and it’s clear that our list of last-minute interviews for the feature just grew by another body or two.

Toronto 1977:  soft core porn, Star Wars, and The Viletones.  Image courtesy Tibor Takacs.

Soon after Metal Messiah Tibor and Stephen formed MM Productions, and began the unenviable task of trying to manage Last Pogo alumni The Viletones and The Cardboard Brains.  And another penny dropped:

“…a big scene in Metal Messiah was shot there (Club Davids) a year or two before we introduced punk to the gay club. While shooting the film we made friends with Sandy the owner and when the Viletones were basically banned or kicked out of every venue in Toronto we had to set up our own.  Zoller and I convinced David’s to let us have the Club on slow nights, we get the door they get the bar. At first it was just for the Viletones but then we invited other bands and it grew from there till we staged a big New Years bash and the place burned down. I remember spending the whole night stomping on burning cigarette butts that people just threw on the hardwood dance floor.  I guess I missed one, “ wrote Tibor in an email to us.

Toronto Star newspaper clipping courtesy Vince Carlucci (and the Toronto Star.)

Happy Birthday, Tibor.

Sunshine World by The Scenics gets released October 13th, on Scratch/Sonic Unyon.    Just like the cover artwork sez, this is a compilation of remastered studio recordings from 1977 – 1978.

“It wasn’t so much that The Scenics were ahead of their time in 1977, it’s more that almost everybody else didn’t even know what time it was.  The Scenics were on top of it though, grabbing the freedom promised by punk’s first blush, and incorporating their own smarts…New York has Talking Heads, and England was blessed with XTC, but here was their equal in Toronto and they never got the neccessary push and support.  It’s fabulous we finally have the evidence, but it’s a drag we haven’t been able to enjoy it for the past 30 years.”  This from Bob Mersereau, author of “The Top 100 Canadian Albums.”

Back at Pogo H.Q. the interviews continue:   This week trusty director Kire Paputts visits with ex B-Girl and current yoga master (mistress?) Anandashakti Xenia, and later this week he pops in to chat with John McLeod and Harri Palm of original new-wavey/punk band Johnny & The G-Rays.

Xenia at The Last Pogo 30th;  photo copyright/courtesy Edie Stiener

The G-Rays were as hard to categorize as The Scenics were.   Some in NYC called them Toronto’s version of Television;  some in Toronto called Television NYC’s version of Johnny and the G-Rays.   Solid songwriting skills from Johnny Mac distinguished them as yet another true original of the wildly varied, pardon my French,  ouevre (wha?!) that was the scene in Toronto.

Meanwhile, back at Pogo Post Production, the editing continues:  our four-hour version is sure to expand before it contracts to a feisty couple of hours (we need shrinkage),  and we still haven’t gotten into the miles of footage that co-director Aldo Erdic has.   Hey, the dude’s busy:  this fall look for his DVD of some of the literally dozens of 21st century punk bands Aldo has documented over the past several years.   Of all the stuff we’ve seen that Aldo’s shot for The Last Pogo Jumps Again, the way-coolest is an editing tour-de-force that takes The Mods’ footage from The Last Pogo movie and cuts it with the 2008 performance by The Mods at The Last Pogo 30th Anniversay Bash — and yes, The Mods are still so tight that it cut flawlessly, and the fact that they’re wearing the same clothes as 1978, and maniacal singer Greg Trinier is making the same spasmodic moves makes it just darn delightful and fun.

In other news…

This Beat Goes On’s Nicholas Jennings is giving us a hand by dropping a few clues and hints on some of the Punk Era goodies he managed to dig up for his TV special.    And we’ve sent out emails to various and sundry ex-scenesters for further interviews.  Hey, we’re only doing this once, so we gotta do it right.