The Last Pogo Jumps Again

http://chuckmanothercollection.blogspot.com/

Sixties draft dodger-turned-chief economist-for-a-Canadian-big-ass-corporation and writer and postcard collector John Chuckman gave us these gems to share.  Four chickens on a skewer, coming up!

The very left edge shows a bit of the Empress Hotel, which sadly burned to the ground last week.  But hey  — how awesome was Yonge Street then?! Movie theatres alone there’s the Biltmore, the Downtown and the Imperial.   (This looks like a painting, no? Someone from the Group of Seven had they lived in Toronto in the seventies?)   A few years after this postcard was made — September 24 1976 to be exact — and about a mile north — about a kilometre and a bit north, to be exact –   the Ramones would play the New Yorker Theatre (at 651 Yonge Street,)  blow minds, and punctuate the beginning of the punk rock scene in Toronto as evidenced in our film The Last Pogo Jumps Again:  A Biased And Incomplete History Of Toronto Punk Rock And New Wave Music Circa September 24 1976 To December 1 1978.

Sam the Record Man before the gaudy gigantic neon turntable.   Filmmaker Ron Mann worked at Sam’s, and was a regular at Gary Topp’s The Original 99 Cent Roxy Theatre, as were a lot of people who ended up part of Toronto’s punk rock scene.

There is no justice.

Okay, we all know about the idiots who thought that Jimi Hendrix was singing “‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy” rather than the correct “‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky.”  Boneheads! Are you effing stupid?!  But…we humbly hung our heads in shame in a sad corner of Pogo H. Q. yesterday when we learned that we were just as guilty.   Being an instant and big fan of The Dictators hours after their 1975 classic album Go Girl Crazy hit Records on Wheels on Yonge Street, The Last Pogo Jumps Again co-director Colin Brunton thought that they were some of the best rock ‘n’ roll lyrics he’d ever heard.   But he thought it a bit weird when Handsome Dick Manitoba sang:  “I won’t be happy, ’til I’ve known foreign wine, with my face on the cover, of the TV Guide.”  This awesome, tough, street-level NYC punk who sings about smoking weed, watching TV, eating at McDonalds and sleeping with the TV on won’t be happy until he’s a wine connoisseur?  Wtf?!

Liner sleeve from Go Girl Crazy.

Earlier this week the teletype at Pogo H.Q. was buzzing with the news that none other Dictators songwriter/bass-player/keyboard player, the legendary Adny Shernoff was coming up to Ontario for a small tour, presenting a show called When Giants Walked The Earth – A Musical Memoir By Andy Shernoff.

Andy Shernoff coming to town, stop.

Our operators got on the Internet machine, and in a few hours Mr. Shernoff graciously agreed to be interviewed.  The Research Team delved into an intense eleven minute Google search and read potential half-truths and lies about the subject, and prepared questions.   They reported back that Adny had actually become a wine connoisseur.  Aha!  Now that old lyric made sense.  Thirty-five years ago Andy Shernoff must have had a tiny seed in the back of his mind that eventually sprouted into a love of wine;  from rock star to oenophile.  So after sending our initial list of questions to Andy (hey, we don’t need any “gotcha” moments in our interviews;  we like our friends to be prepped;  ‘spect, yo) we added one more:  “Andy, years ago you wrote that “I won’t be happy, ’til I’ve known foreign wine, with my face of the cover of the TV Guide.”  So Andy, are ya happy?”   Andy writes back, confirming our schedule and arrangement and adds “By the way, the lyric is actually “I won’t be happy, ’til I’m known far and wide…“   Oh.  35 year old mystery cleared up;  Pogo director feels like an idiot.

In any case, we urge everyone, idiots or not, to catch When Giants Walked The Earth (times and places below.)  At least thats what we think its called.

Okay, not quite yet, but here’s hoping.   Original Viletone Freddy Pompeii has been starting to lobby his Facebook pals to nominate The Viletones to Canada’s Walk of Fame.

Haven’t heard of it? Don’t worry, you ain’t missing much.   The Research & Development Division of The Last Pogo Jumps Again haven’t been too deep into any sort of investigation or anything, but something’s kind of rotten in Denmark when apart from usual suspects like Rush and Celine Dion, they’ve also managed to have American born actor Brendan Fraser‘s signature set in concrete for all of us Canadians to be … proud of?   Well, golly, sure thing, why not!?  After all, he played an uncredited role as “Placebo Patient” in fellow Walk of Famers’ Kids in the Hall‘s movie Brain Candy, and literally not taking credit for that, well that’s very Canadian.  He furthered an embarrassing stereotype by playing Dudley Do-Right in the film of the same name, and we’re pretty sure the mind-blowingly offensive Al Jolson‘s got a spot on the Hollywood walk, so that seems to fit.   And he went to the snot-filled halls of the fancy-pants Upper Canada College, so there.   Okay, okay, we’re sure Brendan’s a nice guy, but we think the jury’s a little out to lunch on this one.  I mean,  Talking Heads‘ singer David Byrne lived in Hamilton for a little bit when he was a kid — does he qualify?  And what about The Rolling Stones?  They live in Toronto for weeks at a time whenever they get set to tour.   Steppenwolf‘s lead singer, German-born John Kay fronted Toronto band The Sparrow, what about him?  (Oh, wait, he’s there too.)

So while we can off-hand think of a couple of dozen artists and such that we’d like to nominate (author David McFadden, Gary Topp, the guy who used to yell “Doggie Doggie” at the Ex) nominating such an iconic band as The Viletones would be somewhat fucking hilarious and well-deserved, and you just know the acceptance speech by Steve Leckie, Chris Haight, Motor X and Freddy (and second and third gen ‘tones like Sam Ferrara, Tony Torture, Steve Koch and on and on) would put a hearty eff you in the fun it would be.

The deal is, is that you can only nominate one person per year, and since this ball seems to be rolling along, why doncha take five minutes out of your day, cut and paste this link — http://www.canadaswalkoffame.com/nomination– and let’s see if we can stir things up in 2010.   Gabba gabba hey-o!

The New Yorker box-office, September 1976;  photo by Brad Foster (we think.)

Continuing to organize the archives at Pogo H.Q., the better to get set for some fancy footwork during post-production of The Last Pogo Jumps Again, we came across this photo of the New Yorker box-office.  Very top left you can see the handbill for the first Ramones show that artist John Pearson did with a sharpie in about fifteen minutes.  Beside that, a flyer for Ali Akbar Khan;  on the right side, a one-sheet for Paul Bartel’s Private Parts (awesome!);  below that the seating plan for the shows (not a bad seat in the house, yo);  centre bottom a great shot of Bryan Ferry from the first show Roxy Music did at Massey Hall, and placed in the window of the box-office for no other reason than the fact we loved Bryan.   And dead center, the double-bill that was currently playing — and an announcement of the Ramones gig that upcoming Saturday.

Johnny Garbagecan; photo courtesy Nora Currie

Oh, more on Johnny and Nora later.

Okay, we’re not really under construction — we’re just busy.   We haven’t dropped the ball on our beloved project The Last Pogo Jumps Again, but when people are paying your wage to work on other projects, it would just be downright rude to ignore call-times, melt-downs, and shooting schedules on some other TV/Film project, and secretly edit the new project.   So it’s all about time.  And money.  Which we don’t have any of, by the way (the powers that be in Canada that usually have no qualms about supporting unusual, niche projects have made it glaringly clear that they want no part of this Punk Rock thing;  what else is new!).  The hard-drive containing hundreds of hours of footage has been transported to — drum roll, please — a “real” editors suite, and we’re excited to start seeing some sequences put together.  Just not excited enough to blog any details yet though apparently.

So, while all eight of our regular readers are eagerly awaiting the next installment of which interview we’ve done over the weekend, which hard-drive dropped to it’s death or whatever…here’s a couple of other sites on the Internet Machine that are terrific diversion and way more entertaining than, say, blogs about which interview we’ve done over the weekend, which hard-drive dropped to it’s death or whatever.

Drunk Jays Fans.  Write that, add a dot com at the end, and you’ll find a refreshingly obscene and right-on daily blog for fans of the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team.   Even if you’re not a fan, it’s always a fun read.  And if happen to be a fan of either baseball or they Jays, you’ve hit the jackpot.  http://www.drunkjaysfans.com/

Martin Millar.  Do the dot com thing again, except like this:  http://martin-millar.blogspot.com/, and you’ll find the occasional blog by a crazily talented Scottish writer called — you guessed it! — Martin Millar.  He’s written a few novels about werewolves and fairies and Led Zeppelin (and a bunch of others using a pseudonym) and in his novels there are appearances by, amongst others, the ghost of Johnny Thunders, drunk magic-mushroom-eating Irish fairies who’d rather play Ramones than traditional fairie tunes, and a lonely werewolf girl (in a great novel called Lonely Werewolf Girl) who lives for the Runaways and wishes Joan Jett were her mother.  If we were forced to come up with four word description of it, it might be “Harry Potter for Adults.”  If we had eight words, “F%#ing awesome!  It’s like Harry Potter for adults.”   The Last Pogo Jumps Again press corps recently sent Mr. Millar a copy of The Last Pogo (still available for only $12!), and he was cool enough to answer our email, telling us that he wouldn’t have become a writer were it not for the big punk rock explosion back in the seventies.

Courtesy Gail Wetton and Molten Core — google ‘em!

Voodoo Priest (a hougan) with Last Pogo t-shirt in Haiti;  photo by Frank Polyak

On Monday two Pogo staffers ventured out to get a handful of transition shots of Toronto to use in The Last Pogo Jumps Again.   The first one up was a shot of the city skyline, and so they went to The Docks, and discovered that it was much warmer in the Pogomobile than it was on the edge of the frozen lakeshore in minus 20 degree weather. Their nostrils felt like Trisquits.  The shot was nice enough, but what we think nails it as worthy of inclusion is that the footage is accompanied by said staff members using every variation of the “F” word as they ponder incredulously how stupid they were not to wear gloves or hats.

It was slightly less freezing fucking cold on Queen Street as they shot the building that used to house punk rock hang-out, record store and clothing place New Rose, the legendary joint o/o by Margarita Passion and Freddy Pompeii.   In a neat twist, the Pogo crew were pleasantly surprised to see that it hadn’t been turned into either a Starbucks, fitness center, or condo.   They were a few weeks late to grab a shot of the old Canary Restaurant at Front and Something; when they got there it was all wrapped in plastic, ready for, we’re sure, either sand-blasting and gentrification-in’, or a new exhibit by conceptual artist Christo.  After getting some cool shots of a boarded-up Stem Restaurant on Queen West, they headed back to Pogo H.Q. to view the footage and chill.

The next day, a rep from the R&D division at Pogo H.Q. visited the Toronto Archives, and it was just like old times.  Photos of the original theaters that evolved into the Gary Topp-run Original 99 Cent Roxy and New Yorker were discovered, then scanned, put on disc, and charged a bag of loot for.  Big thanks to Pogoer Patrick Cummins who works there when he’s not shooting his pics for getting everyone rolling.   As soon as we clear the rights, we’ll show you what the old Roxy and New Yorker looked like in the dirty thirties (surprisingly clean!)

To top off the week the gang in R&D finally tracked down a copy of the 1978 film Love at First Sight, starring a young Dan Aykroyd and an aging Roxy Theatre.   The legal division of The Last Pogo Jumps Again are starting up the paperwork.

The Last Pogo Jumps Again co-director Kire Paputts in Venice, 2009.

The Horseshoe Tavern, circa 1981.  Photo by Hans Boldt.