The Last Pogo Jumps Again

Photo courtesy Cheryl Daniels

And the Lord of Rock ‘n Roll said unto them: Yea, though it would be another few years before one or six people claimed to coin the term “punk rock”, a lot of people who were at The Last Pogo or into the original punk scene in Toronto got a lot of their counter-culture edjamucation at The Original 99 Cent Roxy theatre courtesy of Gary Topp. After doing some programming for the original underground cinema in Toronto, Cinecity, and running his art-house film distribution company Topsoil, now-legendary promoter Gary Topp opened up the Roxy in 1972 with screenings of Hendrix at Berkeley; when he left in the mid-seventies he opened the New Yorker, where Toronto got its first taste of the Ramones, John Cale, Talking Heads, Dead Boys, Viletones and more; and then the Horseshoe in 1978, the last big party there being The Last Pogo.

Famed for an eclectic selection of films ranging from Antonioni, Fellinni, Truffaut, and Bunuel; B-films by Russ Meyers and Roger Corman; up-and-comers like Scorcese and Coppola; and obscure films by Kenneth Anger or Andy Warhol, the Roxy was infamous for it’s lax policy on pot-smoking and psychedelics, and there was often a thick cloud of weed hovering throughout the theatre. They didn’t tolerate dealers, they didn’t tolerate drinking, but it was a safe haven for anyone who wanted to settle down to a couple of good movies, grab some popcorn, and pass the joint.

The show would start from the moment you bought a ticket: often the people in line would be entertained by Lance Charles, doing his horrible and/or hilarious imitation of Groucho Marx, depending on your sense of irony and/or amount of illicit drugs in your system. There could be five hundred people lined up for a midnight show of Pink Flamingoes when someone from the theatre would run out and yell, “Sorry — you’re lined up the wrong way, you’ve gotta line up over there!”, and watch as 500 stoners scrambled laughing to regain their proper place in line.

When you handed over your ticket to get ripped (and thus allowing yourself into the theatre to get ripped), the person at the door might hand you a “laughing pill”, the better to enjoy the all-night comedy festival with (in reality a “milk-sugar” pill; placebos work); they might insist that you go down to the men’s washroom to check your coat (when such a thing didn’t exist), and then when you come back confused, threaten to throw you out if you didn’t find it and check your coat immediately; they might offer you a refund if you could identify then-unknown British rock star Bryan Ferry. Or handing over your ticket they might say “Please go right to your left, there’s no seats left on your right”, which for anyone who might have a head full of L.S.D., a Zen-like puzzle to rival that old “If you come to a fork in a road, and there’s two people there, and one of them always lies, and one of them always tells the truth, blah blah blah…” It was all in great fun, it was always entertaining, it was the best.

If you were taking a breather from being in the stifling 500 seat art-deco theatre, you could get lost in the posters, handbills, stickers, and photos that plastered the lobby (see photo above; check out the first quote on the poster), or be giggling and stoned sitting slumped on a couch or getting stuff at the snack bar from Jeannie the Popcorn Lady.   Once you got into the theatre proper, the show would really start: Gary would have the reel-to-reel tape recorder blasting out a mix-tape of music always in keeping with whatever theme the night held; or the tunes would be played over a half-hour or so of “Coming Attractions” while people filed in. As stoned as they mighta been, the ushers were excellent, politely getting people to move over to squeeze in others or luring patrons out of their seats if they heard the tinkle of a booze bottle hitting the floor. And often talking down someone having a bad acid trip.   And occasionally wrestling with them.

If you were a projectionist into your job (hey, Bob Cardwell! Hey, Les Popliak!) it was a demanding but fun gig and Gary would give very specific instructions: “Okay, so when you hear Do the Strand just start to fade, slowly dim the lights in time to the music, and as soon as the song ends, kill the lights, and then open the curtain and start the movie…”   A buzzer on the wall near the back of right-hand aisle sent signals to the projection booth for volume; the volume was always cranked to the max when the first chainsaw revved up in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. If you were a projectionist not so into your job, it was a nightmare. The good projectionists had snacks sent to them via a tray on a rope that would descend from the projection booth, right over the left aisle; and the ones that were game would enjoy the various joints that were being passed around the office.

Last Pogo director Colin Brunton worked as an usher there and got the film bug and met his future wife; masked musician Nash the Slash premiered there (performing a jaw-dropping live accompaniment to the Bunuel/Dali classic Un Chien Andalou and an appreciative and wasted packed house) and ended up living in the flat above, a modern-day Phantom of the Opera; regulars included the Viletones’ Steven Leckie (“Seeing Les Enfants du Paradise there changed my life…”, Raving Mojo and digital artist Blair Richard Martin; The Existers’ Barry Farrell; the Scenics’ Mike Young; Greg Godowitz; D.J. David Marsden; original Poles manager Bruce Appelby…and on and on and on.

There are way too many memories of the Roxy to jot down in a blog (and let’s hope Topp writes the book someday) but that’s the very place where many a creative seed was planted, nurtured, then rolled up and smoked.

(As with many of the old haunts in town, the shell of the Roxy still stands and will soon find a new life as a convenience store.)

Chris Haight at the screening of The Last Pogo at NXNE, June 2008.

We’re making plans to get The Last Pogo out on DVD by December 1 this year, the 30th anniversary. Since the original Pogo is but a scant (yet action-packed and aurally exciting) half-hour, we’re going to beef up the DVD to a full two hours with “extras” and a couple of “easter eggs”. We can’t tell you what the easter eggs are going to be (for the non-tech-savvy of you, an “easter egg” is a hidden extra usually found while clicking around the main menu) but one of the extras will be a commentary by original Viletones’ guitar-player Chris Haight. What’ll make this a bit different than most commentaries is that a tiny head of Chris will float in the corner of the screen while the rest of the screen is filled with The Last Pogo. Chris’ commentary is hilarious: at first he can’t remember that he was even there, but then proceeds to make some great comments on the bands and characters you see in the film, including himself in The Secrets, the band of ex-Viletones who on the night of the Pogo were also playing the Beverly Tavern, and literally had to run down Queen Street to hit the stage in time. And the adrenalin shows. Another extra will be some recooked studio footage of The Scenics, with the audio juiced up by Scenic Andy Meyers.

We’re aiming for a suggested retail price of … $19.78 (get it?!), which is also the new price for our snazzy retro Last Pogo t-shirts (once the webmaster gets the PayPal thing figure out). Stay tuned for more info on where you can get the DVD, and of course, all the news that’s fit to print on the progress of the sequel — and reason for this blog — THE LAST POGO JUMPS AGAIN.

In addition to all the people we promise to interview, but haven’t gotten around to yet (Steve Koch, Nora Currie, Patrick Lee, Anna Borque, Johnny Garbage Can, Isobel Harry, Gary Cormier, Stephen Davies, MIchael Jordana and more…it’s hard to keep track), we’ve recently been contacted by Evan Weber of The Wads who will wax poetic on all things Wad-ish at some point in the future, and we hope to make return trips to chat with Steven Leckie, Gary Topp and Gary Pig Gold.

We’ve also been contacted by an old buddy who might be able to unearth some old video of The Ugly from 1978, as well as recorded interviews with the likes of the Viletones and Teenage Head. He just has to convince the ex to let him in the door. Fingers and other things crossed.

And if that ain’t enough, kultural king Gary Topp has found a 32-year-old reel-to-reel recording of his band Corvettz, featuring drumming by Chris Massingham and “bass playing” by Pogo director Colin Brunton. Truly underground, they never made it out of the basement of the New Yorker theatre, where they were legends in their own minds with a hit song “Let’s Roam”, and a killer version of “Hava Nagila (sic?)”. The only way Topp could top that discovery was by coming up with a new “cut line” for The Last Pogo: “Just like The Last Waltz, but with different bands”.

L – R: Tony Torcher, Sam Ferrara, Steven Leckie, and Steve Koch; photo by Ross Taylor.

First, the good news. Dave “Tank” Roberts has put the worst behind him after a week-long stay at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Toronto. We spoke to him today, he sounded great, and he hopes to be home in a day or two. (Read post below for details on the whys, wherefores and what-the-effs).

The above photo is the version of The Viletones that were interviewed for The Last Pogo back in ’79.   Steve Koch wasn’t in the Viletones that played The Last Pogo, but by the time we did interviews to round out the film, he’d joined the band.

On Wednesday afternoon producer/director Colin Brunton hooked up with ex-Mod, ex-Dead Boy, and current musician/legal beagle David Quinton-Steinberg, braved the freaks on Yonge Street, and dropped into CFNY-FM to have a chat with Dave “Bookie” Bookman for this week’s “Indie Hour”. It was weird to be back on Yonge Street.

For those of you who don’t know Toronto, Yonge Street (at 1896 kilometers, the longest street in the world, yo!) has a secret trail of blood that marks some moments for fans of that original first-wave of punk in 1976.

The New Yorker Theatre up by Bloor Street was where Garys Cormier and Topp formed their now-legendary promotion team The Garys; Nash the Slash was the manager; Last Pogo director/producer Colin Brunton was his assistant. The Garys famously brought the likes of The Ramones, Talking Heads, John Cale, Jayne County and many more to Toronto and kick-started an awesome few years. First blood was spilled at the New Yorker when Brunton got stabbed in the leg throwing out an unruly patron from a Marx Brothers double-bill (the knife only managed to go in a quarter of an inch, but it’s the thought that counts). He later went to Kingston jail for a few months.

Up the street from the New Yorker was the Masonic Temple, home of the infamous “Restricted” concert (now the home of Canadian Idol, lol) in and abouts March/April 1978 (thanks for the fact-checking, Steve Travis!) where ex-lead singer of The Wads, Paul Eknes, singing for the first time in front of an audience, got nailed in the head with a full bottle of Red Cap. Bloodied, bowed, but then unbowed, he’s still got the scar to prove it, and of course he finished the song, stupid! His trip to the hospital after was right after the one for the guy who dove from the top balcony to the floor, hoping the crowd would catch him, and then being seriously disappointed.

Across and down the street from CFNY is the site of now-demolished (why must we always hurt the ones we love?) Colonial Tavern. Apart from being arguably the best jazz club in Toronto, the basement room was dubbed “The Underground” in 1977, which is where we all watched the debut of The Viletones: everyone stoned on poppers watching Steven “Nazi Dog” Leckie mutilate himself with a broken beer bottle. A few weeks after that, Teenage Head tested the new punk waters by playing there, but Long John Baldry was playing upstairs and didn’t take kindly to the “noise” coming from the basement. He promptly dispatched roadies armed with pool cues and they opened a six-pack of whoop-ass: we’ve got a copy of the Toronto Sun that shows an unconscious Paul Kobak (then manager of Teenage Head) bleeding on the floor of the club. Later at the cop shop, Paul Eknes and a few others got freezing cold feet when asked to i.d. the roadies in a line-up.

Sadly the bloody history of punk on Yonge Street doesn’t end there: in 1977 shoe-shine boy Emmanual Jacks was the victim of a sordid murder on the top floor of a building a few doors down, prompting the clean up of Yonge Street and the closing down of the massage parlours and the Times Square Junior vibe, and putting to bed the notion of Toronto as an innocent. Local all-girl punk band The Curse (one of the top ten we’ve still got to interview) later wrote and recorded a single (one of the best recordings from that era) about this black mark in Toronto’s history called “Shoeshine Boy”. The six-degrees-of-separation twist is that director Brunton had an encounter with 12-year-old Emmanuel Jacks the summer before. Waiting to sneak into the club (down the alley, up the fire-escape) to watch jazz-man Rahsaan Roland Kirk play two saxes at once, he was approached by Jacks who asked him: “I’ll bet you a dollar I can tell you where you got your shoes”. Brunton told him to go for it, and paid for the one-dollar punchline: “You got your shoes on your feet, mister!”.

Just down the road from CFNY was where Brunton, driving taxi in the eighties, spotted the unmistakable silhouette of one Joey Ramone, McDonalds bag in hand, trying to hail a cab fifty yards away. Brunton quickly talked his fares out of the cab, put the pedal to the metal and snatched up Joey, his brother Johnny, and a girlfriend up to their hotel in Scarborough after a gig at the El Mocambo. Stopping for mix at a 7-11 at Coxwell and Gerrard, Johnny and Joey freaked out the local youths hanging out in the lot, and obligingly signed autographs for them all.

But we digress! In the studio Bookie raved about The Last Pogo and gave it a number of plugs in his rapid-fire patter (it’s closing NXNE on June 15th, 5:30, 150 John Street). We played some Mods and Teenage Head and then it was adios amigo, and on to his chat with David Quinton-Steinberg and an associate from his law firm handing out free legal advise for indie musicians. We were lucky enough to her some of the new recordings of old tunes by The Mods, coming soon, and it sounds great.

For more on this years’s NXNE, go to nxne.com. For more on The Last Pogo or The Last Pogo Jumps Again, keep checking in.