The Last Pogo Jumps Again

As our title — The Last Pogo Jumps Again:  A Biased & Incomplete History Of Toronto Punk Rock Circa September 24 1976 To December 1 1978 — suggests, we’re focusing our film on a very specific time and space.   September 24 1976 was the day that The Ramones first played Toronto at The Garys’ New Yorker Theatre, and December 1 1978 was the date of The Last Pogo, what we’re saying was the End of Days of the original punk scene in Toronto.   And of course we’ll try to fill in all the news that fits in between those dates.  Here’s some stuff that happened on other December 1sts in that period.

December 1, 1976 in Toronto:  Ernest Borgnine rocks, Ray Charles rolls, Robin Trower plays Maple Leaf Gardens, and Mendelson Joe was Joe Mendelson.

December 1, 1977:  The freshly dead Elvis Presley is named Male Musical Artist of The Year by something called The Academy of Variety and Cabaret Artists.  Juliet Prowse was named Female Musical Artist Of The Year.

December 1, 1978:  Folk-singer Valdy “hots up his image,” Shirley MacLaine smokes and isn’t New Age yet;  The Moody Blues play Maple Leaf Gardens, ChumCharts still exist, and cable tv was one channel.   Down at The Horseshoe Tavern the cops shut down The Last Pogo.

Photo copyright and courtesy Edie Steiner, 1978.

Today The Last Pogo Jumps Again:  A Biased & Incomplete History Of Toronto Punk Rock Circa September 24 1976 To December 1 1978‘s left coast director Tristan Orchard sat down for a couple of hours with Joey Keithley, a.k.a. Joey Shithead of D.O.A. and Sudden Death Records fame.

The Skulls’ 1977 fanzine Drones;  courtesy D.O.A., from Imants Krumins’ archives.

The focus of the interview was Joey’s pre D.O.A. band The Skulls, and the time they spent in Toronto in late ’77, early ’78.   A few more days in the puzzle of The Last Pogo Jumps Again:  A Biased & Incomplete History Of Toronto Punk Rock Circa September 24 1976 To December 1 1978.

Click on the Sudden Death Records link on the right and buy this very cool DVD.

The first gig they got was playing to a completely unappreciative audience at the Yonge Street shit-hole The Gasworks, the gig got by Goddo’s Greg Godovitz.  The played the Bill “The Count” Cork’s Shock Theatre, and David’s on St. Nicholas Lane.   After a few months in Toronto, they headed back to B.C., broke up, and soon after D.O.A. was born.

Joey walks the walk and talks the talk.   He didn’t come out of art school or off the streets;  he went to university aiming to be a civil rights lawyer, but got seduced and sidetracked by music and took another course.

Sigh.  It turns out the Paul Cook we met on Facebook isn’t the Paul Cook who drummed for the Sex Pistols, and to avoid any further rumours,  Toronto Paul Cook photoshopped the above nifty graphic, clearly stating his case.   The Last Pogo Jumps Again Due Diligence Department will now launch a full-scale investigation confirming or denying other supposed Facebook pals such as King Kong, Martin Luther King Jr., and Viletone Freddy Pompeii.

King Kong atop the New Yorker Theatre, 1976.  Photo, mural and sculpture by David Andoff. If you look closely, there are ads for The Ramones concerts just behind the hippie selling trinkets.

And if you look really closely, you’ll spot The New Yorker box office, September 1976.  Photo by Brad Foster.

The men’s can at the Horseshoe Tavern after The Last Pogo, December 1, 1978.  Screen shot from The Last Pogo.

Have we reminded you recently that there are still Last Pogo DVDs available? And they’re only $12 a pop!   Just in time for Black Friday, Christmas, Kwanza, Hannukuh, or whatever other kinda thing you might celebrate in the next month or so. Just click on the “store” button to the left, or if you’re in Toronto, head down to Rotate This, Hits ‘n’ Misses, Soundscapes, This Ain’t the Rosedale Library, Criminal Records, Frantic City, Wild East, Circus Books, or Tuneology.

Courtesy the punkpaper.free.fr

Lucasta Ross plays with Steven Leckie & The Solutions! at the Last Pogo 30th bash December 2008; photo by Edie Steiner

Lucasta and the rest of the B-Girls in 1977;  photo by Rodney Bowes

The Last Pogo Jumps Again co-director Kire Paputts is busying himself prepping his short film, but still has time to track down and interview more of the folks we need for our sprawling documentary.  Last week it was ex-B-Girl Lucasta Ross, the interview taking place in her amazing goth abode.

Meanwhile, down in L.A., filmmaker and Last Pogo Jumps Again contributor Amy Belling spent a few hours with original Viletones manager Tibor Takacs.  Tibor (with partner Stephen Zoller) broke off his arrangement with The Viletones when he decided enough was enough, and split for L.A. to pursue his film career.   He’s worked steadily ever since.

Mickey Skin of The Curse dangerously stands up on an arcade ride; photo by the ever amazing Rodney Bowes.

Kire also managed to sneak in an interview with…drumroll, please…the parents of Mickey Skin from The Curse.   The only thing cooler than that is the fact that Mickey’s mother often went to shows by The Curse back in 1977.  Yo, mama.

Photo of Paul Cook by S. Fitzstephens

We thrilled to find out that Sex Pistol drummer Paul Cook had recently discovered our blog,  and had forwarded one to Viletone Freddy Pompeii.   It was a taste of the collection of newspaper clippings we’ve filed away since starting this project back in June 2006.  And we know it’s the real Paul Cook, because he was on Facebook.   Make friends with him as well as other Facebookers like Albert Einstein and Elvis Presley.   F’real.

Land suitable to build a house on in Florida that you can purchase from us.  Plus you get a free Last Pogo DVD!

September 24 1976.   The Toronto Star’s Peter Goddard looks forward to the “undistinguished band from the Queen’s area in New York…”

September 26, 1976.  Peter Goddard likes the Ramones.

Someone takes out an ad in the Toronto Star, November 1 1976.

The Sex Pistols swear on TV, December 10, 1976.

Steven Leckie takes out an ad in the Toronto Star classifieds, December 11 1976.

Patti Smith plays Toronto;  local media are not impressed.  December 20, 1976

EMI fires the Sex Pistols;  January 10 1977

Keith Richards is busted for heroin in Toronto;  March 8, 1977.   Days before the trial, Mick Jagger would visit Freddy Pompeii and Margarita Passions’ New Rose store to buy all of the “Free Keith” tee-shirts that they created.   Influenced by a heart-warming tale of a blind Rolling Stones fan that Keith cared for in Toronto during their shows, the law in Ontario decrees that The Rolling Stones will play a concert at a school for the blind in Ontario.  Keith Richards later credits his Toronto bust as one of the best things that ever happened to him.  He gets off the junk.

Toronto’s Globe & Mail takes notice of CBGB’s;   April 23, 1977

July 16, 1977:  The Viletones, Teenage Head, The Curse, The Diodes and The Dents go to CBGB’s in NYC.

August 1977:  Elvis is Dead, and “Disco Beat” announces that the gay club David’s will now host punk

Davids opens, and Polanski changes his plea;  August 6, 1977.

Toronto, October 1977

Poster created by John Pearson, 1974.

Back in the period we’re covering in The Last Pogo Jumps Again:  A Biased & Incomplete History Of Toronto Punk Rock Circa September 24 1976 To December 1 1978 was the start of homemade handbills in Toronto.   After The Ramones hit the stage of The New Yorker (September 24, 1976) posters of quickly-formed bands started littering the lamposts and construction sites of downtown Toronto.

The Viletones warn us of their arrival.   1976.

Prior to that date DIY was scarce;  if someone promoted a rock show, they’d hire a graphic artist.

One of the first shows Gary Topp promoted in Toronto.  1974. The good Captain hated his band, and they hated him.

Handbill designed by David Andoff, 1977.

The John Cale handbill above was created by David Andoff, who amongst other things (artistic director of McKenna Mendleson Mainline; font creator) also created the huge King Kong sculpture that sat on the New Yorker Theatre’s marquee.   All of it, including the fonts, were hand-drawn.

John Pearson hunched over the New Yorker snack bar, whipped out a Sharpie, and knocked off this Ramones handbill in all of fifteen minutes.  1976.

When we interviewed Punk Founding Father Tommy Ramone a few years ago, he said “It seemed like whenever we played a town, once we left, bands and artists would start up.  And not just bands, but artists and writers, all sorts of people.  We were liberating.  Because we couldn’t really play, we seemed to give permission for all sorts of people to do their thing, have fun.”   

The three-piece Talking Heads come to Toronto. 1977. It was rare to see a handbill with colour.

One person who took a stab at it was Last Pogo director Colin Brunton.  Letraset, a Xerox machine, no ruler.

The debut of The Concordes.  1977.

There were no computers back in the late seventies.  If you wanted to make a handbill, it was either hand-drawn like the above Battered Wives/Dents/Concordes, but it usually involved cutting and pasting.   With glue and knives and trips to the printer.  It wasn’t as fast or as clean as working on a computer, but what’s so cool about fast and clean anyways?   A handbill might take a half a dozen hours to make (including trips to the printer and stapling them up afterwards.)

Here’s how you make a handbill:

This is how the handbills were made for the Horseshoe Tavern in 1978.  Get a sheet of paper, a pot of rubber cement, a sharp X-Acto knife, and a pile of Letraset, vinyl letters, letters you cut out of a magazine (a la Sex Pistols,) and photos.

He cut out the heading and the guy holding the wreath and pasted them onto a black piece of paper.

He used Letraset for the date “June 19 & 20″, then took his X-Acto knife and scraped it up a bit.   For “Troggs” and “The Scenics” he used vinyl letters, and attacked them with his trusty X-Acto knife.    Then he’d hop on his bike, and ride up to a printing place in Yorkville called Midtown Reproductions.   Eyeballing the originals, he’d ask them to increase the size of “June 19 & 20″ and “The” by 200%, and ask them to increase the size of “Troggs” and “The Scenics” by 40%.   Then he’d ride home and come back a few hours or a day later and hope that his resizing estimates were correct.   Midtown would charge maybe fifteen bucks or so.   Then Brunton would sit down at his kitchen table, and assemble it all.  Once done, it was off to a printing place to get a couple of hundred made.   Picking them up still later in the day, and ridehis bike around Queen West and other areas, and staple them up on telephone poles and construction sites.

Back then there were unwritten rules about postering, the main one –the only one — being that you never covered up someone else’s handbill.  Confronted by a busy-looking construction site,  you’d check the dates on other shows to make sure that you weren’t covering up a current show that someone else was putting on.

Miss Manners sez: “It’s just not polite to cover up someone else’s handbill, dickhead!”

Legendary Toronto film promoter Reg Hartt (who probably still makes his handbills without a computer, btw) strictly adhered to that and tried to enforce it, as did most others.   But kids these days, eh?

Kevin Quain may be looking for a new home soon.  The Cameron Tavern is up for sale.

Guess who’s gonna be turning in their grave soon?

In a depressing week that informed us that the Cameron Tavern was up for sale (anyone got two point nine mill they wanna blow?)  we were startled to find an article detailing the impending death of Reg Hartt’s Cineforum.  Prematurely posting this on Facebook, we were corrected by Gregory Bennett who pointed out that the article we’d read was published in 2008, so hopefully, Toronto will still have crazy lock-the-doors-and-keep-the-audience-hostages, handbills, lectures on LSD, and porno-cartoons and Nazi propanganda films.   Mea culpa!

Reg Hartt;  courtesy The National Post.

The Original 99 Cent Roxy is gutted and soon to be a gas station and convenience store.  The Horseshoe is half the club it used to be, but holds the fort on Queen West with the Peter Pan restaurant;  The Beverly is a pricey lunch joint and the Crash ‘n’ Burn is a basement of legal files.  The New Yorker is the Panasonic, with a shiny aluminum front and mainstream kitcsh, and Club David’s is another bland condo at the corner of two lanes.   The Turning Point is a McDonalds, the Colonial Underground absorbed into the evolving corp-vibe of Yonge Street (way to bring the sleaziness to a new level, yo!,) the ghost of Emmanuel Jacks hovering somewhere between a Starbucks and another fitness club.

It was fun making the original Horseshoe posters.   Each time a new one was created, the guy holding the wreath (suspected to be a high-school photo of Gary Topp) would be slightly altered depending on who was advertised.  In the above handbill, “the guy” is all about The Heartbreakers:  crying tears and holding a gigantic human heart.

A top hat and shades, props to Nash The Slash.

Eyes are blacked out and blood, a Suicide.

One of the first Teenage Head handbills.  1978.

The Secrets didn’t shy from heroin, but their handbills didn’t suffer.  1978.

Bit thanks to Imants Krumins, Molten Core and Margarita Passion for permission to reproduce these handbills.

Kire Paputts gets set to shoot Steven Leckie.

“The myriad choices of his fate
Set themselves out upon a plate
For him to choose
What had he to lose.”  — The Black Angel’s Death Song (Cale/Reed)

“I’ll be dead by the time you watch this film.”  

That’s what Steven Leckie said directly to the camera when The Last Pogo Jumps Again sat down on a park bench in the west end to do our third interview with him.   Despite the remark, made with no tongue in any cheek, the interview was fairly upbeat.

Regrets?  A few.   But not the dismantling of the original Viletones nor the blood-letting nor the violence nor the non-camaraderie.  Steven’s only professed regrets were how he’d treated his ex-girlfriends and wives.  That, and not having the courage to stay in New York City.  Dapper (black beret, black pea-coat, clean jeans, cane with a gold plated skull) relaxed (nice day, a few beers) and focused, Leckie was thoughtful and reflective, open to any and all questions.

Steven Leckie with The Viletones at The Last Pogo, 1978;  photo courtesy Edie Stiener.

Challenged by MS, Parkinson’s, a bum knee and lingering bitterness, Steven will go under the knife in the spring.   Prior to that he’ll be joined by ex-Raving Mojo Blair Richard Martin and ex-Major Grey keyboard player Alex Topp (who played with Steven at the Last Pogo 30th last December) to perform a half-hour version of the Velvet Underground‘s The Black Angel’s Death Song at the Cameron Tavern on December 15th.  Stay tuned.

Alex Topp with Steven Leckie & The Solutions! 2008

Blair Richard Martin in the yard at Joyceville Penitentiary with “Mandatory Blues.”

The Black Angel’s Death Song (by Lou Reed and John Cale)

The myriad choices of his fate
Set themselves out upon a plate
For him to choose
What had he to lose

Not a ghost bloodied country
All covered with sleep
Where the black angel did weep
Not an old city street in the east
Gone to choose

Courtesy Imants Krumins.

And wandering’s brother
Walked on through the night
With his hair in his face
On a long splintered cut from the knife of G.T.

Steven Leckie, 1978;  photo Rodney Bowes

The rally man’s patter ran on through the dawn
Until we said so long
To his skull-shrill yell

Shining brightly red-rimmed and
Red-lined with the time
Infused with the choice of the mind
On ice skates scraping chunks
From the bells

Cut mouth bleeding razor’s
Forgetting the pain
Antiseptic remains cool goodbye
So you fly
To the cozy brown snow of the east
Gone to choose, choose again

Photo of NYC West Village by Pamela Skillings.

Sacrificials remains make it hard to forget
Where you come from
The stools of your eyes
Serve to realize fame, choose again

And roverman’s refrain of the sacrilege recluse
For the loss of a horse
Went the bowels and a tail of a rat
Come again, choose to go

And if Epiphany’s terror reduced you to shame
Have your head bobbed and weaved
Choose a side to be on

If the stone glances off
Split didactics in two
Leave the colors of the mouse trail
Don’t scream, try between
If you choose, if you choose, try to lose
For the loss of remain come and start

Start the game I che che che che I
Che che ka tak koh
Choose to choose
Choose to choose, choose to go

The bulk of The Original 99 Cent Roxy at Greenwood and Danforth has been demolished.   The front lobby remains, as does a stripped-to-the-girders marquee out front.   They’re going to turn it into a convenience store that will adjoin a gas station.   This is the back of the building.  Someone’s spray-painted “Bye Bye Roxy” on the wall.

Nash the Slash used to live in the apartment above the lobby.   He was supposed to jam with Teenage Head during The Last Pogo, but when he knocked his mandolin on the floor and broke it, he punched a wall and broke his hand.   The first live appearance by Nash was at the Roxy.  With tape-decks humming, electric mandolin in hand, and a candelabra beside him, he performed a live soundtrack to the Bunuel/Dali short film Un Chien Andalou.  And jaws dropped.

After initiating midnight screenings at Cinecity on Yonge Street, Gary Topp (later of The Garys) started The Original 99 Cent Roxy in the early seventies.  Many of who would later be called Toronto’s punks got their first taste of Roxy Music, Velvet Underground, Little Feat;  Russ Meyers, John Waters, Fellini (and much more) there.   The Last Pogo director Colin Brunton got interested in film while working there as an usher.  Filmmaker/Raving Mojos Blair Richard Martin and Viletones’ Steven Leckie were regulars, and cite the Roxy as one of the biggest influences on the Toronto punk rock scene.  Handbill courtesy of Gary Topp.

After Gary began showing Reefer Madness to stoned midnight crowds, the joint was jumpin’, pun intended.  When a severely edited version of John Waters’ Pink Flamingos played, he complained that the Ontario Censor Board “Cut out the sex, and kept in the shit.”  Photo of poster in lobby courtesy Cheryl Daniels.

The lobby in the mid-forties, courtesy of Toronto Archives.  (Please do not reprint.)   The art deco display window and doors in this photo remained the same up to the seventies, but the walls were plastered with posters and photos.

The Original 99 Cent Roxy played the best music in between shows.  Gary Topp used to offer to let people in for free if they could identify Roxy Music’s Bryan Ferry from a photo, but not many could.  When Roxy Music came to Toronto for the first time, in 1975, Gary Topp got artist John Pearson to create hand-made invitations to the show for the entire Roxy staff.  (John would later design the titles for The Last Pogo.)  We had fifth row centre seats;  it was awesome.  After the show Gary Topp said:  “All the girls wanted to be in his pants and all the guys wanted to be in his shoes.”

The Roxy matchbooks that were given away.   Plans to hand out Roxy rolling papers never panned out.  On weekends there was a cloud of weed and cigarette smoke in the theatre.  Jpg courtesy Gary Topp.

In 1976, Gary’s last year at the Roxy, he and partner Jeff Silverman opened up The New Yorker Theatre on Yonge Street.  Needing to get their snack-bar redesigned, artist David Andoff introduced Gary Topp to carpenter and ex-music promoter Gary Cormier.  They immediatly hit it off and became known as The Garys.   The first band they booked into the New Yorker was The Ramones.  David Andoff painted the outside of the theatre, and built a huge paper-mache King Kong.  Photo courtesy David Andoff.

Listen to Gary Topp‘s radio show Dat Dere on CKLN.FM.   This week “Otis Redding, John Martyn, Albert Ayler, Sarah Jane Morris, Shirley Horn, Chris Bottomley, Lounge Lizards, Lollipop People, Baby Face Willette, Alice Coltrane and 150 minutes more, or less.”   Tune in worldwide by cutting and pasting this:  http://www.ckln.fm/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=150&Itemid=205t

Xenia at The Last Pogo 30th Anniversary Bash in 2008;  photo Edie Steiner

The Last Pogo Jumps Again co-director Kire Paputts interviewed ex-B-Girl Xenia last week, and discovered that besides somehow still looking nowhere near her real age, she’s a Yoga instructor, and maybe that’s a clue.  Over the next few weeks we’ll be chatting with original Diode and Johnny & The G-Rays drummer Bent Rasmussen, back in town after some time in Thailand teaching English and diving;  Bollocks co-director Elizabeth Aikenhead and The Awesome Nora Currie;  ex-Battered Wives’ John Gibbs;  and one more stab at ex-Viletone Steve Leckie.

On Hallowe’en, Freddy Pompeii reminded us that Shock Theatre o/o Bill Cork liked to sleep in a coffin behind the New Rose Hotel

On the West Coast, co-director Tristan Orchard chats up legendary D.O.A.’s Joe “Joey Shithead” Keithley (who can confirm once again that drummer extraordinaire Chuck Bisquits is alive, frenzied Internet rumours to the contrary) and new-to-the-party, Amy Belling drops in on Tibor Takacs (to talk about managing The Viletones, semi-creating Club Davids, and making films with Cardboard Brains’ John Paul Young) and she’ll also be interviewing Rodney Bowes down in L.A., to talk about all the great photos he took in Toronto back in the day.

Art by Suicide’s Alan Vega.  Suicide played an awesome gig at Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern in 1978.  Image from mathieucopeland.net

And then we’re pretty much done with the interviews (although we said that about a year and a half ago.)  Still holding out hope for William Gibson, John Cale, Alan Vega, David Byrne and more — but we’ve definitely got the gist of it.

Chicagoan Dan Clyne’s 1971 comic book;  check out zippythepinhead.com

The trick now is getting our hands on some filthy lucre.  With no interest at all from Telefilm Canada or CBC (gee, that sorta brings you right back to 1977, no?  I mean, it’s not even ironic;  they weren’t interested back then and they’re not interested now) we’re going to have to scheme up something a bit more clever, but we’re not quite sure what just yet.

Best. Magazine. Cover. Ever.

We’re loath to put one of those tacky “Donate!” buttons on our site, and it’s become tired to offer up cutesy “Executive Producer” credits for folks willing to fork over a few thousand bucks (although, cough cough, if you are keen on getting a fancy title on a cool movie, and you do happen to have several grand lying around with nothin’ to do, call us. We like you!)

Shit we need.  Even the bottom layer would go a long way.

The Pogo I.T. Department is doing a quick and subtle revamp of the site where we’ll rebrand ourselves as  The Last Pogo Jumps Again:  A Biased & Incomplete History of Toronto Punk Rock Circa September 24 1976 to December 1 1978, Parts One and Two, (not that we’re going to ignore Hamilton or London, mind you) and as we hone in on just how to complete this monster, we’re pretty sure it’s going to be around five hours long, we shit you not.

Andy Warhol’s Empire was eight hours, five minutes.   Five hours is nothin’! Nothin’ I tells ya!

Of course there’ll be a shorter hour and a half version for the timid, and for those with an insatiable lust for two minute clips — two minute clips on our site and certain to be downloaded and pasted on YouTube, etc., of some of the babies we’ll have to kill (industry term for editing out great little bits that don’t somehow fit into the Grand Scheme of Things.)

Yea, easy for you to say Al,  you’re a fucking genius.