The Last Pogo Jumps Again

Cardboard Brains;  photo by Vince Carlucci

Former Cardboard Brains guitar-slinger Vince Carlucci‘s got stuff in a gallery!  “Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell” is a collection of pretty pics he took from 1977 to 1980.   Artists include Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Deborah Harry, Patti Smith, John Cale, The Viletones, Teenage Head, The Ugly, Cardboard Brains, The Ramones, Frank Zappa, and The Diodes.  Opening night is Thursday, June 10, from seven ’til eleven, and it runs to June 24.  Oz Studios, 134 Ossington, curated by photographer Joe Fuda.

Classic!

Once you’ve taken a look at some of Vince’s pics, you should not miss Andy (Adny) Shernoff, ex-Dictator and ex-cellent songwriter as he spins tales and plays acoustic guitar at Mitzi’s Sister in Toronto, starts at ten.   Teenage Head’s Gord Lewis opens.  If you can’t catch Adny in Toronto, he’s also doing “When Giants Walked The Earth — A Musical Memoir By Andy Shernoff” at Call the Office in London on June 11th, and  This Ain’t Hollywood in Hamilton on June 12.  Were The Dictators one of the best bands to come out of the U.S. of A?  Absolutely.  Did their roadie turned lead singer name himself after the province and/or state that most resembled a penis?  Sure did.  (Sorry, Florida, you just don’t cut it next to studly Manitoba.)  And did Andy write some of the funniest lyrics ever?  You bet:

“Oh Weekend
Bobby is a local punk
Cuttin’ school and getting drunk
Eating at Mcdonald’s for lunch

Oh Weekend
Soon he threw up in the store
But if he does it anymore
I’ll make him eat it off the floor.

The Horseshoe Tavern, June 1978.  So far we’re batting .500 on interviews from this poster.

We’re trying to work out an interview, and dying to ask the question that has been on many a Dictators’ fan’s mind:  Just wtf is a two tub man?  Check out The Andy Shernoff Appreciation Society on Facebook for dates in the States.

Meanwhile, while you’re all out there looking at pictures and listening to stories about growing up with Johnny Thunders and stuff, we’re working people!  Tomorrow night co-director Kire Paputts tracks down The Diodes.  News at eleven.

Last week the Pogomobile tooled over and visited with The Existers’ George Higton, who was also the founding publisher/editor of the late seventies local fanzine Shades.  Prior to that, George wrote for the seminal NYC paper The New York Rocker.  And once we upload the tape (into our third terrabyte of footage for all you geeks out there) we’ll let you know what was going on in George’s head.

Handbill from the collection of Gail Wetton.  Eight days at the Horsehoe Tavern in 1978.

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.

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.

After being M.I.A. for almost thirty years, The Last Pogo will finally be in record stores (and on-line here) October 14th. While it woulda been cute to sell it retail for $19.78, that’s a bit much for a half-hour film, so it’ll probably cost about twelve bucks or so. Twelve bucks! That’s nothin’! Nothin’, I tells ya!

If you’re a first-time visitor/long-time listener, here’s a brief synopsis of what it is, cribbed from the NXNE 2008 notes Flip Publicity’s Liz Armstrong:

Grab some safety pins, practice your sneer and get ready to revisit Toronto’s thriving punk scene. THE LAST POGO documents the raucous 1978 punk concert held in Toronto’s legendary Horseshoe Tavern—a night of unhinged music and unbridled mayhem.

On December 1, 1978, legendary Toronto concert promoters Gary Topp and Gary Cormier—better known as The Garys—presented The Last Pogo, a rollicking, riotous concert at the venerable Horseshoe Tavern. On the bill were seminal bands from Toronto’s punk rock scene: The Scenics, The Cardboard Brains, The Secrets, The Mods, The Ugly, The Viletones and Hamilton’s Teenage Head. During the concert, the frenetic energy of 500+ thrashing fans in the club boiled over and a near-riot ensued. Filmmaker Colin Brunton was there with a camera crew to capture it all, from the irreverent punk musicians and the slam-dancing audience to the police who tried to stop the show and the firefighters called in to escort people from the premises.

——————-

Meanwhile, The Last Pogo Jumps Again is chugging along. Kire Paputts is busy uploading all two years of footage after the external hard drive that everything was stored in took a disastrous leap off of a coffee table a week and a half ago, and 100+ hours of footage turned into so much land-fill. The monster project is scheduled to be completed in March, 2009.

Director Brunton is heading off to Saskatchewan for a couple of months to work, and is looking forward to holing up in his hotel room and carving out a feature-length documentary out of the material gathered to date.

Some of you might be interested to note that we’re also working on a quirky DVD project called A Trip Around David McFadden. For those of you not in the know, David McFadden is a Canadian poet and author who if you didn’t know better, would think let popular American author Bill Bryson borrow his style. Almost determined to remain under the radar, we hope to blow McFadden’s cover late this winter with a triple-bill of short films based on works by him. The DVD will contain short films A Trip Around Lake Ontario, featuring an original score by Nash the Slash; The Mysterious Moon Men of Canada, winner of the Genie Award for Best Live Action Short, and featuring a score by Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, and The Cow That Swam Lake Ontario, still to be completed, with another original score by Nash the Slash.

And if all that ain’t enough to keep a fella happy and busy, we were gifted today with an awesome present: a ratty and torn poster of “The Anarchy in the U.K. Tour”, featuring The Sex Pistols, The Damned, Johnny Thunders’ Heartbreakers, and some band that opened the tour called The Clash. Dated December 4, 1976 at King’s Hall, Derby. Nicely framed, it now is the center of attention in Pogo H.Q.’s living quarters. Big big thanks to Paulo Perin and Chris Toudy.

Keep checking in to find out about the 30th anniversary of The Last Pogo to be held this winter at the Horseshoe Tavern. We’ve been sworn to secrecy about who’s on the bill, but the cat shall be out of the bag soon.

And keep those cards and letters coming, folks!