The Last Pogo Jumps Again

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Tofu.

Sarah Palin

H-bomb

Best movie ever

On-line memorabilia traders Molten Core gave us a bootleg of the first Ramones show in Toronto — the precise moment the time-line our project The Last Pogo Jumps Again:  A Biased & Incompleat History of Toronto Hamilton London Ontario Punk Rock Circa September 24 1976 to December 1 1978, Part One — starts.

Randy Johnston had had the incredible foresight to interview people in the audience that night (September 24, 1976) at the New Yorker Theatre and ask them what they thought of The Ramones.

Peter Gabriel didn’t like the Ramones?!  Whaaa?!

Randy didn’t catch Peter Gabriel (he’d walked out ten minutes into the show, muttering “Bullshit,”) but he did manage to catch glam-rock band Goddo‘s own Greg Godovitz.   After wondering how “…a lead-singer from New Yawk could have such a good English accent…” he summed up his impressions with a simple “They’re no Goddo.”

So today we called Greg on it (yo, bitch!) — and to talk about how he got Joey Shithead‘s pre-D.O.A. band The Skulls their first gig in Toronto’s beloved shit-hole The Gasworks.   Greg had a million stories.   Sex, Drugs & Rock ‘n’ Roll, much?

Hey, the Holidays are coming!  What better way, etc.  $12.00!  Cheap!

“Greg has stories that would make Caligula blush,” said Toronto legend Rompin’ Ronnie Hawkins and you can read them in Greg’s self-penned memoir and awesomely titled Travels With My Amp (which you can be sure kicks Anvil‘s Steven Spielberg-financed book’s ass.)  Now in it’s third printing — buy it at This Ain’t The Rosedale Library.

Our favourite stories were of Greg’s best trick:  climbing out the back door window of a car going a 150 klicks on the 401, then crawling across the roof of the car, and slipping into the window on the other side.  At 150 klicks an hour.  Really.  Read the book.

Goddo slipped out of the skin-tight silver pants of glam-rock pop band Fludd in 1975 when the core gang of punks in Toronto were fretting about where to buy black jeans and wising up to Patti Smith, The Dictators, The Ramones, et al.

But like Max Webster and F.M. (w/Nash the Slash), while they might not have fit perfectly with the trends and rules, they fit into the scene — especially with Hamilton’s Teenage Head.

Roxy matchbook cover courtesy of Gary Topp.  Greg was a  Roxy regular.

Goddo and Max Webster have both toured with them, and Nash the Slash was supposed to join them at The Last Pogo, but he broke his hand and couldn’t make it.

Nash’s electric mandolin repaired faster than his hand.

Photo by the amazing Rodney Bowes that warrants more than an italicized sub-title

Now, that’s what I call a fucking photograph: The Curse’s Mickey Skin sporting her lobotomy scar;  Dr. Bourque cosying up to Sam Ferrara;  Trixie Danger;  Deborah “Blondie” Harry, The Diodes’ Paul Robinson;  to the right of Blondie, Patsy Poison and The Diodes’/Secrets‘ John Hamilton.

Highaperture.com

Today the Pogomobile loaded up co-directors Kire Paputts and Aldo Erdic and descended on a home just east of the Don River to visit with The Curse, Toronto’s first all-girl punk band (the B-Girls following soon after.)

Patsy Poison, Teenage Head’s Steve Mahon, Trixie Danger;  photo by Rodney Bowes.

Infamous for crazy live shows, provocative lyrics, and totally embracing the Ramones-inspired ethos that you didn’t have to know how to play an instrument to be a musician, Patsy Poison, Dr. Bourque, Trixie Danger and lead-singer Mickey Skin were Toronto’s  The Curse, one of the world’s first-wave all girl punk bands.

Teenage Heads Steve Mahon, Patsy Poison, Trixie Danger.. and Mike Dent pissing;  photo Rodney Bowes

Their first gig was opening for The Viletones at the Crash ‘n’ Burn in 1977; a month later they shared the stage of NYC’s CBGB’s with The Viletones, Diodes and Dents;  and their last gig was headlining Max’s Kansas City in NYC.

They had balls.

According to the blog Model Citizen…Zero Discipline:  In December of that year (1977), The Curse accompany a group of members from CEAC to a Detroit art gallery, as guest performers.  In a bizarre post-show piece, the girls are asked to line up against a wall while being shot at with a pistol by a performance artist, while she sings “Happiness Is Warm Gun”, by The Beatles.

The Curse were one of the most overlooked bands from back in the day as evidenced by the lack of information on them on the Internet.  So we were pleasantly surprised to find out that a Trent University student wrote a discourse called (excuse me while we slip on our tweed jacket and adjust our bifocals):  “Local Scenes and Dangerous Crossroads:  Punk and Theories of Cultural Hybridity.”

Heavy company.   This was published by The Cambridge Press, which puts the “old” in old-skool (this joints been around since 1584.)  The article starts off with a zinger:  “Against theories of cultural hybridity and disembodied flows of recorded media…” and goes on from there.   In the paper, author Alan O’Connor notes that “Many of The Curse’s songs deal with sex and exploitation.   Writing in the Globe and Mail, Kay Armitage said: ‘Their sound, with its high pitched screeching vocals, is entirely different from that of the male punk bands, and that’s clearly part of their appeal. Through their lyrics, appearance and performance style,  The Curse present themselves as tough, strong, aggressive young women working  in an idiom that’s new and open enough to accommodate them’. However, an  article in The Varsity in October 1977 said that in spite of their macho put-on, the Curse would like it known that they are not dykes.

Andre Breton

The Voodoo Punk Smackdown happens Tuesday night, October 20 at Jackman Hall at the A.G.O. (Art Gallery of Ontario) in Toronto with a screening of filmmaker (and ex-junkie) John L’ecuyer’s Curtis Charm and our very own The Last Pogo.   Tix are ten bucks and change (or $5.90 if you’re a member, student, or senior);  it starts at nine.   The screening is part of the Ontario Cinematheque’s (French for film archive) Toronto on Film series.

This squirrel could kill you.

Callum Keith Rennie screams at Maurice Dean Wint in Curtis’ Charm

“It’s time to shine your shoes, it’s time to comb your hair,” ’cause there’s a double-bill (described by Eye Magazine as “scrappy“) at the Art Gallery of Ontario tonight, Tuesday October 20: John L’ecuyer’s Curtis’ Charm and our very own The Last Pogo will be screened at Jackman Hall, presented by TIFF CInematheque in a program called Toronto on Film.   $10.14 for non-members
members/students/seniors are $5.90

Not the real cover of the heroin memoir Use Once And Destroy, by John L’ecuyer

Curtis’ Charm is a tight seventy-five minute adaptation of the late great Jim Carroll‘s short story of the same name.  Blending fantasy and reality, and shot in glorious black & white, Curtis’ Charm is about the low-living high-life of heroin addict Curtis (played by Maurice Dean Wint from Hedwig & The Angry Inch) and ex-junkie Jim (Callum Keith Rennie from Hard Core Logo, natch) who tries to help Curtis ward off a voodoo curse inflicted upon him by his mother-in-law, no shit.  Ex-Headstone and current Movie & TV Star Hugh Dillon plays a White Trash Thug, and a gritty Toronto plays itself.

Real Haitian voodoo priest;  photo by Frank Polyak

Getting the opening gig that night is The Last Pogo, and they’ll be using a nice clean 16mm print (remember 16mm kids?) that’s only been used once at the NXNE screening in 2008.  Prior to that, The Last Pogo had been screened at local legend Reg Hartt’s Cineforum, and in a hilarious blunder of epic profuckingportions, booked to open for – wait for it — Richard Pryor:  Live in Concert at the original Cineplex at the Eaton’s Centre (it was pulled after two weeks because of “violent, negative reaction.”)

Handbill for Reg Hartt’s Cineforum in 1979.  If you look closely, you’ll see that the punk in the picture has a hard-on.  Reg was convinced that this detail would subconsciously attract women to the screening.

The idea was that…uh…they were both concert films, right?  So like, buses full of African-Americans tourists from Buffalo and Detroit would dig the musical stylings of  White Punks on Dope, right?  Not so much!   Brunton remembers going to a screening of it and sitting in the packed audience behind a couple of ladies, eavesdropping on this gem:  “What the hell is this shit?!  They otta pay us five bucks to watch this shit!  Fuck this, I’m goin’ for popcorn!”

The Last Pogo had only been on for about, oh, five minutes; the appearance of Viletone Freddy Pompeii was the last straw.  Little did they know the film went on for another twenty minutes.  For the remainder of the screening Brunton and his pal pretty much had the auditorium to themselves; everyone else was at the snack bar.  Gabba gabba hey-o!

The original flyer by John Pearson.

Filmmakers John L’Ecuyer and Colin Brunton will be in attendance to introduce the films and sell some swag.   Immediately prior to the screening, they’ll be hanging out at the side door smoking butts and glad-handing suits in a pathetically blatant attempt to engage deep-pockets in conversations about money (and how to get it!) for a variety of totally interesting and culturally important yet not-so-mainstream projects they’re individually working on.

The fun starts at nine.  Jackman Hall is in the AGO, 317 Dundas Street West;  use the McCaul Street entrance.    

The original press release written by Gary Topp, badly rewritten by Colin Brunton