The Last Pogo Jumps Again

A reminder to our pals in San Francisco who are still into those old-fashioned things called “books.”

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.

“The Courier” from Magical Mystery Tour.

A steady rain and overcast sky seemed somehow fitting for a tour of punk/new-wave/alternate sites in Hamilton today, lead by original Forgotten Rebels’ Chris Houston and Mickey DeSadist.  We met up with them at Picks and Sticks, where Chris (along with Teenage Head’s Gordie Lewis) teaches Heartbreakers, Viletones, and Ramones tunes to fresh-faced ten-year-olds;  Teenage Head drummer Jack Pedlar was fiddling with a drum set before starting his lesson with an eager young Hamiltonian, who we’re sure will grow up to say that he learned how to play from Jack Fuckin’ Pedlar, dude! (or whatever kids will be saying in the future.)   While Mickey DeSadist, still recovering from his bicycle accident, sat around the front of the store, Chris showed us his workspace, plastered with posters and guitars, and in a half-hour told us enough stories for, well, his own half-hour film.   More later…

Today we talked with one half of Rough Trade, guitarist/writer Kevan Staples.  Kevan is one of many from the punk/new-wave scene in Toronto who ended up with careers in film and TV, currently a partner at Toronto post-sound house Rhythm Division, and composing scores for films and TV series.  In April we catch up with the Auntie Diva herself, Carole Pope.   (Yea, yea, yea, we know –  Rough Trade weren’t punks or new-wave, but they were a thread of the fabric of the new mood in the air back then, and they were good.  Carole’s lyrics, Kevin’s licks, the image, their audience…    And if we only stuck to what people perceive as punk, it’d be a slim sampling.  There’s a reason our film’s currently running 300 minutes, long story.)    The Last Pogo Jumps Again:  A Biased & Incomplete History Of Toronto Punk Rock, New Wave and Alternate Music Circa September 24 1976 To December 1 1978.

Two weeks at the Horseshoe Tavern, October 1978.

Rough Trade played in the send off concert the night after The Last Pogo, The Last Bound Up, on December 2, 1978.   They were the last band The Garys presented at The Horseshoe Tavern on a bill that also featured Drastic Measures, The Everglades, and The Ishan Band.   When The Garys brought John Cale to Toronto for the first time, in February 1977, Cale’s camp insisted that the only band they wanted opening for them was Rough Trade.  Respect, yo.

Last Pogo director Colin Brunton would’ve shot The Last Bound-Up that evening as well as The Last Pogo the night before , but when he went around getting permission from he bands, he was turned down by Carole Pope of Rough Trade and figured if he couldn’t get all the bands, he may as well only shoot The Last Pogo.

Wayne Brown of The Fits and Paul Ecknes of The Wads, 2008.  (Damn, we didn’t make a note who took this photo!  Please forgive.)  We interviewed Paul yesterday who, for the occasion, dressed in his late seventies finery and regaled us with tales of drunkeness and cruelty.  (Actually, he didn’t speak of much cruelty, but a Kinks song was playing in Pogo H.Q. as we wrote this, so we just slipped it in.)

And speaking of finery, Wayne Brown has put together a DVD of his old band The Fits and others from 1977 – 2007, featuring tons of stills and rare footage.  What Makes Ya Think You’re So Amazing, Baby? was cobbled together by Henry Martinuk.  Available at HITS AND MISSES RECORDS on Bloor Street and ROTATE THIS on Queen Street

What is Punk Haiku?   Straight off of The Scenics official site:

Ken Badger and I started the Scenics in 1976. The band lasted till 1982, and after that, Ken and I only talked every few years- a phone call, a letter…

In 2004, Ken mailed me a box of a dozen live Scenics tapes. We had recorded them from 1976-82 in a bunch of Toronto punk dives, and he said “Please, put these on CD before they fall apart.” I put them on a shelf in my studio and they sat there for three years.

Eventually I hauled them out. I had a weekend free and was playing catch up on a lot of old business. I grabbed a tape marked “Scenics live at the Beverley 1977″.

The Scenics meant everything to me when they were happening, but I hadn’t heard them for a long time. All sorts of wonderful (and not so) things had happened since, and I wasn’t expecting to hear anything in particular when I pressed play. But…

The Scenics knocked me out. Their songs, their intensity. How wild they played. It was a trip to hear the 19 year old me cracking wise from the stage. So familiar, yet, where had he gone?

As the tape played, I literally sat down and began writing about those days, not knowing where it was going. Over time I talked to Ken, and other friends from back then, and got some facts straight.

That writing became “Punk Haiku”, a memoir of what is was like to be in the Scenics, to be part of an intensely creative band that kind of travelled alone through the Toronto Punk scene. “Punk Haiku” also remembers the larger story of the punk DIY revolution, 1976 to 1982- hearing Talking Heads as a trio for the first time in a tiny art gallery. Hearing the 1st Ramones LP in 1976, and Television and Pere Ubu’s first independent 45′s, and the impact they made. How all these sounds and experiences affected the Scenics, and where it all led.

Hearing those tapes in late 2005 led to getting back in touch with all the Scenics. To begin listening to the 300 plus hours of punk era Scenics we have on tape. To releasing “How Does it Feel to be Loved”  and again playing live together. To releasing the Last Pogo DVD and, in Nov 2008, to going back into the studio, and recording new material. To releasing “Sunshine World in October 2009.

But all that is a different story.  This is “Punk Haiku”, the story of the Scenics, the sounds and the scene, 1976 to 1982.

Collage from thewritingspider.wordpress.com

I don’t want to hype Punk Haiku beyond the facts:  Punk Haiku is a bi-weekly posting of my fly-on-the-wall memoir of those first-wave punk days (PUNK HAIKU). It is the story of that moment in our culture- My jaw dropping as I heard the Ramones for the first time, seeing Talking Heads as a trio, etc. As well, it’s the story of the day-to-day of being in a band that was always exploring, and always travelling outside of the crowd.

As part of Punk Haiku, every two weeks i am pulling 2-3 songs from our archive of 300 hours of Scenics recorded live 76-82.  I am pulling the very best stuff, arranged chronologically (mostly) to parallel the story. These songs are available for streaming, and are downloadable  on a free/donation basis.

This is a truly unique project.  The Scenics have been recognized by some of North America’s finest critics as a band of substance. We are still unknown to the vast majority of proto-punk and exploratory music fans. We are unspooling an in-the-moment replay of those impactful, liberating years in our culture.  Backbeating  it with a full soundtrack of the best music the Scenics ever played, intimately recorded in basements and bars, and offering it all for free- a multi media portal to year zero/1976. Based on the length of the memoir, Punk Haiku will run for  over 2 years.

Our crazy push for a fresh batch of interviews continues, and we’re just too busy to switch up the music, or think of interesting blogs to write.

We spent a few hours with Andy Paterson at his residence at the storied Cameron Tavern during The Big Hockey Game.  Andy was as fascinating and interesting as usual, and before we left gave us a pile of original video of The Government from the late seventies.   Last night we captured Tyranna’s Johnny Bubblegum, a.k.a. Gerry Smith, and after taking off his gag and blindfold, we grilled him relentlessly for an hour and a half or so.   After making contact last night, on Friday we spend some time with Chris Houston, late of Middle Class Noise and The Forgotten Rebels (and much more.)   We just got confirmation from Rough Trade‘s Kevan Staples that he’s down for a talk, and we’re going to take one more crack at William Cork showing us the crypt in Mt. Pleasant Cemetary that he and The Ugly’s Mike Nightmare lived in for a few months.   Good times.  More to come.

An absolutely rollicking week at Pogo H.Q.:

We topped off last week by chatting with fangirl Erika Larner, who’s lineage goes from  Gary Topp’s Original 99 Cent Roxy Theatre, where many seeds of punkish suberversion were planted,  to the Ontario College of Art when it was directed by avante-garde administrator Roy Ascott to helping and hanging out with OCA-based bands like The Cads, and Oh Those Pants, and selling beer at the Diodes‘ six weekend hangout The Crash ‘n’ Burn.

An interview with 75% of the original Cads included an attempt at an a cappella version of “Sex Is The Only Way Out.” A brainstorming dinner with ex-Mod and legal mind David Steinberg and Gary Topp, arguably the most import person in Toronto as regards alternative culture, and The Last Pogo’s Colin Brunton, who was awed by the bootleg of John Cale at the New Yorker Theatre in 1977 Gary gave him.

Shades Magazine publisher Sheila Wawanash held court a few days later on what it meant to put out a magazine in the late seventies, and showed us a nice picture of The Garys posing with The Police and a gold record.  The Police’s Andy Summer (about whom a whole series of docs could be made) cheerfully agreed to hook up with our director in L.A., Amy Belling, fresh off a two hour chat with photographer and graphic artist Rodney Bowes.  Today co-director Kire Paputts is journeying to Stouffville to talk about The Battered Wives with guitar-player John Gibbs.  On Sunday Kire and Colin look forward to a long-overdue interview with the fascinating Andy Paterson to talk about his band The Government, punk in general, music, art, and donuts.

The teletype machine at Pogo H.Q. has been burning overtime as well, sending out requests for Skype interviews with director John Waters, godfather John Cale, Richard Hell, Alan Vega of Suicide, Tina Weymouth from Talking Heads, Guns ‘n’ Roses’ Slash, ex-Nirvana’s Dave Grohl — and if you know your history of Toronto music between ’76 and ’78 you know why there were all important.  If you don’t know whey they were important, then watch out for the release of our movie later this year.  Buckle up;  it’ll be around five hours long.

The B-movie Caged Heat was shown often at Gary Topp’s The Original 99 Cent Roxy Theatre in Toronto in the mid-seventies.  Written and directed by Jonathon Demme, with an original score by John Cale.   Demme would go on to direct (among many films), The Talking Heads‘ concert film Stop Making Sense.

John Cale would play the New Yorker (Gary Topp‘s new venue) theatre in February of 1977, fanning the flames that the Ramones had sparked four months earlier when they kick-started the “punk” scene in Toronto on September 24, 1976 on the very same stage.   Cale was (and still is) a living legend, and did not disappoint.   He ended his blistering set on his hands and knees, gathering up mike and amp chords in his mouth, crawling off the stage, hundreds of pounds of amps and mikes falling and trailing behind him, pure anarchic and hilarious theatrics, feedback humming and screeching, until finally hiding behind the curtain stage right.   The Wizard of Fucking Oz.    And the packed house might have collectively thought:  “Whoa.  We’re definitely not in Kansas anymore.”

The first encore was Cable Hogue, and then This Heart of Mine.   The Ballad of Cable Hogue was a 1970 movie directed by bad-ass genius Sam Peckinpah that was also shown often at The Original 99 Cent Roxy.   Cale would later write Honi Soit (qui mal y pense), which could be translated, more or less, as “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you,”  the cut-line of the movie.  Or more accurately, “Evil be to him who thinks Evil.”

The Talking Heads would play their first gig in Toronto at A Space, artistic home of agit-prop theatrical group The Hummer Sisters and soon-to-be band The Government, fronted by the enigmatic talent Andrew Paterson.  Their second gig was at OCA, home of emerging bands like The Cads, Oh Those Pants, The Dishes, The Doncasters, The Eels (soon to evolve into The Diodes) the seeds of Johnny & The G-Rays and more.   The third gig Talking Heads in Toronto, and the first that including keyboardist Jerry Harrison, was at The New Yorker.  Upstart unknowns The Scenics would get the coveted opening slot, much to the disgust of other bands who felt that they deserved it.   The Scenics made as many fans as enemies that night.

The New Yorker Theatre, before the stage was built, courtesy Toronto Archives.

To be continued…