The Last Pogo Jumps Again

While we toil away at Pogo Post Production, assembling our footage, scanning documents and buttons, securing rights and correcting wrongs, puzzling through the piles of video tape and film — we continue to get press for the first movie we did, THE LAST POGO, out on DVD around the world.

The latest kudos come from Jack Rabid of The Big Takeover magazine, the densely packed twice-yearly publication out of NYC.   We managed to make Jack’s Top Forty (alas, we were number 39, but still…)  Here’s the entire review:

“Wow!  I’ve been hearing about this 25-minute movie for 29 years, and it’s amazing to view it now!  What a window to a time that was rarely documented:  the pre-hardcore, original punk era when it was astonishingly fresh, creative, rule-busting, and shot full of newborn energy/excitement.  It’s Toronto, December 1, 1978, a three-camera, good sounding film (not video) of seven bands (one song each) playing at a farewell concert of premier punk club The Horseshoe Tavern.  The stars are Teenage Head and The Viletones, known from collectible singles — but not footage.  Lesser know openers prove equally supercharged, fascinating, and varied.  The Scenics open like a Canadian Velvet Underground;  Cardboard Brains are more The Weirdos vein;  The Secrets add a taste of R&B/Skulls/Vibrators/U.K. Subs groove;  The Ugly ripsnort through a Dead Boys/Ramones dirty shockwave; and The Mods are Jam clones to a t (or a suit and skinny tie!), but they’re excellent, fierce, and tight;  Nazi Dog‘s Viletones make magically menacing three-chord rock, and, in the one song they were allowed before the cops stopped the show and punters rioted, Teenage Head cooks a classic rock ‘n’ roll infested chaos.   Beyond that, is how vivid this film is, of a scene and underground moment it captures.  It’s not just the dancing and pogoing creatively dressed, jazzed, skinny people — no idiot slam-dancing and sneers — or the notorious sweaty buzz the crowd gets from seven wired, wiry bands, or the pleasant sight of punk’s front row ringed with women — led by impossibly cute punkette co-host Margarita Passion.   It’s that this was an art-meets-music lightning flash the likes of which has never been replicated.  Short but absolutely essential history comes alive!

Stage manager Nip Kicks;  photo by Jean Trivett

After two and a half years of shooting, we finally finished principal photography on THE LAST POGO JUMPS AGAIN by taking our swat-team of a shooting crew down to our old haunt, The Horseshoe Tavern, and shooting The Last Pogo 30th Anniversary Bash.

We’ve still got some interviews we need to do — you know who you are! — but we’re finally moving into post-production on our feature film.   There’s so many people to thank for all their devotion and hard work, that we’d rather wait for another to day to thank them all, because we know some are going to slip our mind.   But this thing would never have happened without the support and encouragement of all the kids from back in the day, and we never would’ve gotten anything shot without the tireless devotion of co-directors Aldo Erdic and Kire Paputts;  the backbone and smarts and heart of David Quinton Steinberg and Gary Topp;  and the support of everyone who’ve given us jpgs and film-clips and interviews and shared thier stories;  who’ve connected the dots, dotted their i’s and croosed their t’s.   We’ll save the credits for the movie.

Photo by Katrin Clark-Citroen

The Last Pogo 30th Anniversary Bash was great fun and a non-stop party.  There’s not too many shows we can recall where you announce a nine o’clock start time — and there’s 450 people waiting in line at 9:00.   When the doors opened, the place was packed, and our 16mm camera caught the first couple of hundred faces, both familiar and fresh, as they filed into the old haunt.

Each band stuck to the strict twenty-minute set, and it was truly without flaws — except for Moog Audio on Queen West who completely dropped the ball by neglecting to drop off the turntables and mixer for D.J. OPP.   After some desperate phone calls to other, more reliable businesses, Gary Topp called daughter (and member of Steven Leckie and the Solutions!) Alex, and she dug around Garys home office and sent down some mix CDs that were used to fill the gaps between bands.  Mixes by Topp can’t be topped.

Gary Topp;  photo by Jack Skellington

Ever since the Original 99 Cent Roxy Theatre, Gary has created tapes specifically for each show, whether it be a night of movies or a line-up of bands.  At the The Original 99 Cent Roxy, and later the New Yorker Theatre, the music before movies was played at the right volume, which usually meant “loud” but not always cranked up to eleven.   On the rare occasion (a couple of times a month) someone complained about the volume, it was “Sorry, you can have your money back if you want, but we like to play our music loud.”   “But I can’t even have a conversation!” they’d protest.    “Well…maybe you should go to another movie theatre then.”    After spending the last week planning out his evening, and rounding up over a 100 vintage 45s, Hits ‘n’ Misses owner DJ OPP realized it just wasn’t gonna happen, so he cabbed it back to his store, stashed his prize 45s, and came back to the Horseshoe where he vented his frustration in an interview in the men’s room.

Kire Paputts;  Toronto Star

While the bands were playing, Directors Brunton and Paputts were either outside getting shots, or down around the dressing room, luring people into the Men’s Can (quiet, nice light, interesting ambience) for impromptu interviews.   Caught with their pants down were:  The Ugly’s Tony Torture, DJ OPP, The Mods’ Greg Trinier, The Cardboard Brains’ Vince Carlucci, The Screwed’s John Borra, The Scenics’ Mike Young, and the Forgotten Rebels’ Mickey de Sadist — who we coerced into apologizing to everyone he dissed on camera in the original Last Pogo movie — and various others, including an impromptu “Everyone get outa here!” rant by The Wads’ and Dick Duck and the Dorks’ Paul Ecknes.  And we shot the gradual evolution of the towel machine throughout the night (starts intact; then bunching up on floor;  then completely on floor, in pool of mystery fluid.)

Colin Brunton;  photo by Jack Skellington

The bulk of the shooting at Last Pogo Jumps Again was handled by director Aldo Erdic and his three other shooters, covering the bands’ performances.   A generation in-between co-directors Kire Paputts and Colin Brunton, Aldo’s company To Be Scene has shot literally hundreds of hours in the past few years for a ton of bands — and a truckload of goodies for The Last Pogo Jumps Again.

Aldo Erdic;  photo tobescene.com

For all you film/tv techno geeks out there, we had four small Sony HD cameras covering the bands’ performances; a sound guy hooked into the sound board;  ambient sound from audience cameras;  for old-times’ sake, a 16mm Bolex camera worth about twenty minutes of Kodak Vision 2 footage; the workhorse Panasonic DVX 100A  MiniDV; a Sennehauser Wireless mike;   125 Watt Pocket Par portable light, with a chimera, filters, and three commando-style battery belts.  Total cooperation and buckets of sweat.  Three people shooting interviews, four people shooting the bands (not to mention the footage we’ve already been offered by audience), and lots of friends in the audience who would’ve helped out if called upon for duty.  There’s a lot of punks in TV and film.

Vince Carlucci and Sandy MacFadyen of Cardboard Brains;  photo Kevin Lamb

Zero of ZR04 opened the show with an upbeat and “lets get to it” intro to the show by dedicating it to Teenage Head’s Frankie Venom, The Ugly’s Mike Nightmare, ZR0$’s Tony Brighton, and Ruby Teases and opening band Cardboard Brains.  Guitarist Vince Carlucci gave a shout-out to M.I.A. lead singer John Paul Young, and fill-in singer Sandy MacFadyen did just swell (and a 360 degree flip from his performance at the original Last Pogo where as an audience member he yelled good-natured obscenities at Cardboard Brains.  (Vince is back in the hunt searching for JP.)   Sandy was in ]the 1977 band Swollen Members who’s lead singer, Evan Siegel, is featured in one of the “hidden features” in The Last Pogo DVD.  (WhaaAAA?!  You didn’t know there were “Easter Eggs” in the Special Features menu?)

Wayne Brown and Paul Eckness;  photo by Jean Trivett

Around 9:30 the Gothic Cowboy, ex-Fifth Column and Thee Immaculate Hearts (and original Last Pogo attendee) singer Wayne Brown walked into the club with Paul Eckness from The Wads, who walked into the club at a unique, tilting east.   A bouncer went after him, bemoaning his task, but determined to obey strict liquor laws (the Man) and came back empty-handed;  Paul had given him the slip.  “Man, you can smell the weed in there already.”    His partner shook his head in disgust and sighed.  “Maybe we’ll get Paul later.”  It was going to be a long night.

The Garys, Topp and Cormier;  photo by Jack Skellington

Mickey de Sadist was dressed to the nines, and amongst other gems, told the audience:  “Some of you girls look familiar, but not too familiar.  I think i mighta f*#ked your mother thirty years ago.”   The Forgotten Rebels ended their tight twenty-minute set with their classic “Surfin’ on Heroin” just as original Rebel and Hate-Filled Man Chris Houston, co-writer of “Surfin’” showed up with a flair for synchronicity and did some biz for the camera out front with Rojer Moxie Streets aka Roger Dirtbag aka Roger Fucking Streets.

Roger asked:  “Is The Last Pogo Jumps Again going to be the Chinese Democracy of punk films?”    For the record, we’re aiming to have the movie completed in 2009.

Mickey de Sadist;  photo by Kevin Lamb

Trouble in the dressing room! For some reason everyone kept blaming Cardboard Brain Vince Carlucci for taking off with the key to the dressing room, and as the Scenics waited around to get in the room so they could get ready to go on the stage, Pogo director Brunton make a feeble attempt to pick the lock, and finally barkeep and ex BopCat Teddy Fury fished it out from under the bar, the Scenics got settled in, and a few minutes later took their turn on the stage, blasting through a tight set after spending a week in Toronto laying down tracks for a new album, and ending the set with their last-minute version of “I Heard Her Call My Name”.   Drummer Mark Perkells’ 82-year-old mother drank beer at the front of the stage and watched her son keep the beat, while Andy Meyers jumped for joy.

Andy Meyers of The Scenics;  photo by Kevin Lamb

2008 audience; photo by Jack Skellington;  1978 audience, The Last Pogo

Former B-Girl (and now bass-player for the punky NYC-based New York Junk) Cynthia Ross flew in from the Big Apple to introduce The Mods, and in the twenty minute break between the Scenics and The Mods, ran into a couple of other B-Girls in the basement:  Xenia, there just for kicks, and Lucasta, getting ready to introduce Steven Leckie and the Solutions!

Sam Ferrara lends Cynthia Ross a prized bass;  photo by Kevin Lamb

Meanwhile, original Viletone and The Best Commentary Reader Ever (watch his stuff on The Last Pogo DVD) Chris Haight forgot his ticket at home, and drummer and man-about-town Cleave Anderson had to open the back door of the Horseshoe to sneak him in.  Yes, security was that tight.  In a perfect world, of course, Chris would’ve been on the guest list or better, up on stage playing, but just having him there was pretty cool.   Cleave, under the influence of beers and perhaps something else, with no intention of doing anything but having a good time, was quickly snagged by the B-Girls as their plot developed, and Ugly guitar-player (and –okay, this is confusing — Viletone in an interview portion of The Last Pogo movie, but not on stage at the time, go figger) Steve Koch was lured into the surprise attack that they were planning.

Cynthia introduced The Mods, the only band there that night featuring all of the original members, and without saying word one performed a crowd-rousing, tight, fast set of hits.  Dressed exactly the same as they did thirty years ago.   “That drummer is a maniac!”, said audience member Casey Sebert.  Well, Casey, if ya didn’t know, he’s also a highly respected lawyer and the main guy for getting this whole show happening.  It was a little odd to see David at the end of the night, still dripping sweat, carefully doing the accounting for the bands’ payday.  In true punk fashion, the box-office was split equally amongts all musicians, and everyone walked away with a couple of hundred thousand dollars.  Whoops, I mean pennies.  Or tenths of pennies.  Hey — it wasn’t about the money anyways!

Steven Leckie;  photo by Kevin Lamb

With much anticipation, Steven Leckie and the Solutions! were up next, and Leckie surprised everyone by ignoring his classics from the era for a few cover tunes, including a great version of Lou Reed’s Caroline Says, then a spoken word piece that mostly extolled the talents and importance to Toronto’s culture of The Garys Cormier and Topp, and then a couple of more tunes.   “The Solutions!” were Jim Masyck, the late Handsome Ned’s brother, on guitar, and keyboards and programmes by Alex Topp.  It was a nice touch for Alex to use glitter letters to spell out “Solutions, The” on the front of her keyboards.

Alex Topp of Steven Leckie and the Solutions!; photo Edie Steiner

The surprise of the evening was a couple of tunes by The B-Girls, who shoulda been at the first Last Pogo, but were in NYC at the time.  Joined by Ugly guitar-slinger Steve Koch and a very loosened-up Cleave Anderson, the girls belted out a few tunes and looked great.

Xenia and Lucasta of The B-Girls; photo by Kevin Lamb

The show went out with The Ugly with ex-Dream Dates Greg Dick replacing the late Mike Nightmare (“He’s good,” said drummer Tony Torture, “But he can’t do 100 push-ups like Mike could.”  They squeezed in an encore, and ended the evening with bassist Sam Ferrara inviting some friends on stage to join them.

David Quinton of The Mods with Greg Dick of The Ugly; photo by Kevin Lamb

Greg Dick serenades an audience member, while another has an epileptic fit; photo Kevin Lamb

Okay, we’ve got the final line-up, so here ya go.   A couple of last minute fiddlings, and we’re now set.  We couldn’t get everyone out to the party (The Second Last Pogo?), but we’ve got a jam-packed evening lined up.  And who knows who else might drop in at the last minute.  Speaking of the last minute, as of Sunday, November 9 the show is either half sold out (if you’re an optimist) or half unsold (if you’re a pessimist).   If you do manage to snare a ticket, make yourself all perty ‘n’ everything, ’cause cameras will be watching and recording your every move.

The evening provides a neat book-end to the feature film The Last Pogo Jumps Again, and we’re hoping that all those elusive old punkers we’ve not found yet are there that night, ready for their close-up, and to tell us what they’ve been doing for the past thirty years.  Hear that, Mr. Shit?  Gonna be there, Blake Street Boys?

Tickets are available through Ticketmaster, or live and in person at the Horseshoe Tavern, Rotate This, Soundscapes, and Hit’s ‘n’ Misses.

Meanwhile, we continue to work the room peddling our dvds of The Last Pogo.  Our latest cool review comes courtesy of artist/musician Rick Trembles.  In his gig with the Montreal Mirror, Rick has created this little gem:

Okay, back to the anniversary show.  We’re still fiddling with the exact order, so we suppose the next suggestion is to get there on time, ’cause we’re not positive who’s going on first, second, etc.  As together as we’d like to be, there may very well be a good dose of anarchy that evening.   The show starts at 9:00 sharp, and we’ve enlisted the talents of martial arts expert Nip Kicks to help keep order.

A Brief History Lesson on the musicians playing that night:  Tony Torture and Sam Ferrara played with Steve Leckie and The Viletones at the original show, and both Tony and Sam were original Toronto punkers from Day One;  they’ve joined forces with Steve Koch and Greg Dick for this latest version of The Ugly.  During the original Last Pogo, Greg, the singer with Hamilton band The Dream Dates, was in the audience, as might have been Steve Koch.  Steve wasn’t playing with any of the bands that night, but joined The Viletones shortly after, and is seen in the Viletones interview in the film.  Steven Leckie is keeping the members of Steven Leckie and The Solutions! under wraps, unveiling a new band with new tunes the night of the party.  Steven of course was arguably Toronto’s first punk, and premiered the original band at the Colonial Underground in 1976.   The Mods come to the party with all of the original members.  In the past year they’ve re-recorded some of their old tunes, have done a number of gigs, and drummer David Quinton is involved with many international old-skool punkers in his position as one of Canada’s top entertainment lawyers.  Mickey DeSadist is playing at the show, but during the original Last Pogo, Mickey and his band of Forgotten Rebels were audience members, and bitching about the line-up in an interview in the film, it seemed like maybe Mickey should make an appearance this time and play some tunes.  Mickey has been playing shows and making albums since the original Last Pogo in 1978, with either The Forgotten Rebels or The Mickey Show.   The Scenics boast the two original members and song-writers Andy Meyers and Ken Badger, and are joined by Mike Young on bass, and Mark Perkell on drums.  Mike and Mark were members of the Scenics in the early eighties.  In the week preceeding the show at the Horseshoe, The Scenics will be cosied up in a swank recording studio in Toronto laying down new music for an album to be released in 2009.   They released How Does It Feel To Be Loved, their album of live Velvet Underground songs to critical acclaim earlier this year.   The Cardboard Brains’ Vince Carlucci and Patrick Gregory were in the band when they played the first Last Pogo, and this time ’round they’ll be joined by a new drummer and vocalist.  Original lead singer/song-writer John Paul Young is more or less missing in action.

Teenage Head/Last Pogo display at Dr. Disc’s in The Hammer

It’s been a busy week since the passing of iconic Teenage Head frontman Frank “Frankie Venom” Kerr.  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and now the dust is settling.   No word yet on any official tributes, but once we know, you’ll know.

Pogo H.Q. cut a cheque for Frankie’s children today (and we urge you to do the same;  details in the blog below), and sent along a few copies of The Last Pogo.   As mentioned in the previous blog, Frank’s immediate family hadn’t seen much of him in action, and in fact were somewhat surprised at the huge turnout for the three visitations last weekend.  At the least, our little DVD will give them a glimpse of what the fuss was all about.

Last Sunday, new Ugly frontman Greg Dick had Pogo director Colin Brunton on for a couple of hours, and it was fun.  Of course they started off the show –after the hilarious Mr. Rogers opening — with a Teenage Head song — Kissin’ the Carpet — and then got into the interview proper for a couple of hours.  Brunton played some favourites from his childhood (Good Thing by Paul Revere & The Raiders, Caught in a Dream by Alice Cooper) and even admitted that his guilty pleasures in high-school included the standard Led Zeppelin but also…uh…Jethro Tull and others too embarrasing to mention in print.  Greg asked about working at Gary Topp’s The Original 99 Cent Roxy back in the early seventies (there’s another blog in here somewhere with a story about that) and the through-line that went Roxy to the New Yorker and then The Horseshoe, and how much all of those places planted creative seeds into the brains and souls of many who would become part of the Toronto punk community.   Two things were apparent:  Brunton mentioned drugs and said “Y’know” a lot.  (Hey, he barely graduated high-school, whaddya want?).   Of course, two hours isn’t nearly enough time to lay out all the fun punk facts from back in the day, and after it was over, both Dick and Brunton realized they’d forget to mention tons of people, not the least being Stephen Davies, who both drummed for The Dishes and The Everglades, and had his fingers in many a creative pie.  And then there’s Tony Malone, and The Diodes, and The B-Girls, and The Curse, and…hey, you know the names.   Memories were a little rusty too, but not bad for a couple of middle-aged fellas.   A phone in fact check by Gary Topp clarified that yes, Wayne County and band had to sleep in the New Yorker Theatre after their gig there in 1977, and that was when they watched for the first time The Rocky Horror Picture Show.   Recounting one of his most memorable shows at the Horseshoe — Suicide — Topp also cleared that up:  Teenage Head opened, the joint was packed, and as soon as they left the stage, the audience left the building, leaving only about a dozen people to watch an intense and almost frightening show by Suicide.   They never got around to playing Edie the Egg Lady or Herb Alpert, but did manage to spin a few discs, and tell lots of tales out of school.

Initially uncomfortable with the timing of Frankie’s death and the long-planned release date of The Last Pogo DVD, we’ve kept ourselves busy popping off copies to various indie record stores, and today sent a couple of boxes to Dr. Disc in Hamilton.  Owner Mark Furukawa has set up a nice Teenage Head display, and is going to help promote the upcoming December Last Pogo screening at Lou Molinaro’s new digs, details to follow.   Mark has also generously promised to send one dollar from each DVD sold to Frankie’s family.  You can find out in a blog below just where you can buy the DVD, and we’ll add more stores as they come in.

It looks like we won’t be shooting any new material for The Last Pogo Jumps Again until the New Year, but we will of course have the cameras humming for the big Last Pogo 30th Anniversary Bash at the Horseshoe Tavern, on Saturday November 29th.  Ten lousy bucks gets you in, and it promises to be a great show.   The Scenics (the original line-up from 1979) start the show off around nine, fresh from a Hamilton gig the night before, and after a week of recording a new album of both new and old material.   Mickey DeSadist never got to play the original Last Pogo back in 1978, but he’s graciously agreed to pull together the Forgotten Rebels and take the stage.  Next up will be a screening of The Last Pogo, and then the second half of the show starts off with original Viletone (and Toronto’s first real punk rocker) Steven Leckie unveiling a new sound with a new band, Steven Leckie and The Solutions! (the exclamation mark is part of the name, not that we’re not excited anyways).  Steven promises a show like you’ve never seen before, but don’t think you’ll be hearing old chestnuts like Screamin Fist or Possibilities — this is all new stuff.   Following Leckie will be one or other of the original line-up of power-pop punkers The Mods, and Greg Dick replacing the late Mike Nightmare in The Ugly, featuring original members Steve Koch, Tony Torture and Screamin’ Sam.  In between the scheduled acts DJ O.P.P. of Toronto record store Hits ‘n’ Misses will be spinning vintage punk vinyl.  And while organizers David Quinton and Greg Dick have things planned out in detail, you know there’s always the good chance that a little anarchy will break out.   Watch out for some surprise guests and drop-ins;  it should be a great show.   Advance tickets at the Horseshoe, Rotate This, Soundscapes, Ticketmaster and Hits ‘n’ Misses.

The continued shooting and editing of The Last Pogo Jumps Again has been put on hold for a couple of weeks while we get ready for the DVD release of the original film, The Last Pogo.   We’ve never visited the post-office so much as we have in the last week, shipping orders to stores in San Diego, Glendale, and Chicago;  dropping samples off at local Toronto stores;  and grabbing the cell-phone for various interviews that ace Pogo Publicist (Pogolicist) Woody Whelan has been drumming up.

With a 30 day free trial of Photoshop, we’ve had to relearn how to use it in order to put together a couple of ads we’re taking out.   The ads are okay, but we’ve completely missed the mark on so-called “branding”.  Our ads look different from our DVD artwork which in turn looks different from our website.  I think we’ll be fine, but we don’t foresee Starbucks ordering stock, should they ever decide to take over the retail DVD business like they have the CD biz.  On the other hand, last week we went into a Starbucks, and the coffee dude was so impressed that we were wearing an old Teenage Head t-shirt that he gave us our two coffees for nothing.   Savvy business people that we are, in minutes a DVD and poster was hauled out of the Pogomobile, and said coffee dude was rewarded for his blatant disregard for Starbucks’ strict no-free-coffee-for-aging-dudes-wearing-punk-rock-t-shirts corporate policy.   So maybe there is hope.

Above is the ad we pulled together for The Big Takeover magazine, the NYC bi-yearly music ‘n’ arts glossy operated by Jack Rabid, ex original punk (who’s band used to take delight in covering The Viletones‘ Screaming Fist and Possibilities.)   We’re also taking out one in Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll, part in thanks to a nice review they did in the October issue (making the Top Ten DVD’s of the month no less), and part because it gets distributed to sixty countries around the world.   We’re still waiting for Vice to get back to us (“Dude, I totally forgot!”), and a few others.   And after some gentle badgering, it looks like the Toronto Sun might give us a plug as well.

Working the room, baby, working the room.  One interview type deal we’re looking forward to is chatting with new Ugly singer (and d.j. and haircutter) Greg Dick on CIUT-FM on or about October 18th.  Fun because director Brunton has been asked to come up with some tunes to play, and so he’s currently putting together a playlist spanning his first album bought — Paul Revere & The Raiders, Spirit of ’67 — right up through yearly favourites in the sixties and seventies (Alice Cooper’s Love it to Death;  The Velvet Underground) and on to his fave period, 1975 – 1980:  The Dictators, Ramones, Sex Pistols, Clash, Viletones, Scenics as well as some favourite oddities like Edie the Egg Lady’s Get off the Grass, The Masked Marauders, and what radio golden oldies gig on a college radio station would be complete with The Legendary Stardust Cowboy?!  I ask you:  what?!

So, needless to say, the external drive containing our years of footage is collecting dust and spider webs on the office floor, but we hope to pick up the slack after the DVD is released on October 14th, and tear into the new movie once again.

Webmeister Clayton Hamner’s revised the “Sell Out” page so we can sell some of the DVDs, and in a few weeks we’ll be doing a bit of an overhaul on the whole site, so as not to bore you, dear reader.

Stay tuned for more news on the Last Pogo 30th Bash at the Horseshoe in November, and start sniffing around for a Pogo bash at Lou Molinaro‘s new joint in Hamilton sometime in December.  After than, Santa comes.

Freddy Pompeii with The Secrets at The Last Pogo, December 1st, 1978.  Photo copyright Edie Stiener.

Rock-steady crew member Ollie Brunton partied away his 16th birthday at Pogo H.Q.,  and the monopolization of all TV, Internet, and munchies for the evening allowed director Colin Brunton to go through some of the DVDs and tapes he’s been given over the past few years.   Short films by Suzanne Naughton and Bruce Pirrie;   hours of tape of The Viletones;   super-8 footage of The Last Pogo;  two live recordings of the show;  a treasure trove of photos by the likes of Edie Steiner, Don Pyle, Patrick Cummins and more;  and on and on and on.

With the big 30th Anniversary show of The Last Pogo coming up in November (more on that later), we’re scheduling the last of the footage we need to get to complete principal photography (since June 2006), and getting deeper into the editing.   Oddly, it’s awesome how well Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass‘ Spanish Flea works under some scenes.    All in all, it’s terrifically encouraging, and we’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, etc.  And we’ve said this before, but all you people out there who we’ve said we’d interview, we’re still on it.

The Pogomobile got a call at 9:30 sharp this morning from a wide-awake and up-beat Steven Leckie, who is clearly excited about The 30th Anniversary show at the Horseshoe this November.   He’s closing the books on The Viletones finally and forever, a name that’s been around off and on since 1977, and is all set to unleash The Steven Leckie Solution.  “People are gonna remember this show the rest of their lives,” he enthused.   And Steven had other news too:  he’s been included in the recording of a tribute album to The Band, Steven joining ranks with fellow musicians like Leonard Cohen and Gordon Lightfoot.  He got a shot of Band keyboardist genius Garth Hudson holding up a Viletones album.

As we get set to release The Last Pogo DVD, we’re about to get some nice press from the U.S.:  Vice, Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll, Alternative Press,  Austin Chronicle.

And finally, word will get out soon about the big 30th Last Pogo Anniversary at the original scene of the crime, the Horseshoe Tavern, at the end of November.  We’ve already heard from people who’re coming in from London, England and at least one person from Italy (!)  It’s sure to be a great show, and everyone involved to date are made up of a bunch of people who’ve in their own way, never given up the ghost of 1978.   The Scenics, The Mods, the aforementioned Steven Leckie, and The Ugly, with Greg Dick replacing the late, great Mike Nightmare, rumours of possible appearances by The Forgotten Rebels‘ Mickey DeSadest and special guests TBA.

Brain full.  Must go.

Check out http://www.geocities.com/urotsukidoji_1/ugly.html for more Ugly stuff

And the hits just keep on comin’.   For anyone new to this site, you should know that for the past couple of years in Toronto there’s been a bit of a surge of musicians getting together to pound out old tunes from the 1976/77/78 punk era in Toronto and Hamilton.   Some, like The Forgotten Rebels and Teenage Head have been doing it since those times, and have never let up.   Others, like The Screwed, have been having a grand old time ripping it up in various juke joints around Toronto, playing the hits that never were, but shoulda been.  Others, like The Mods have been inspired sufficiently to reform, do a few gigs, and rerecord old material in a new way.  The Scenics, never really understood at all back in the day, seem to be on a mission from the Punk Rock Gods:  they’ve already released one new CD of Velvet Undergound covers to criticial acclaim, and in the spring will venture back into a studio to rerecord some of their old chestnuts, and lay down the tracks for new tunes.  Steven Leckie tried to pull a couple of different versions of the Viletones together in the last year or so, and the results were alternately chaotic, refreshing, weird, disappointing — but rarely boring.  Much like Leckie & Company were way back when.   The Existers have gigged, Kinetic Ideals are floating the idea of playing a bit, and one of the most notorious of the bands back in 1977, The Ugly, have reformed with Greg Dick filling in for the late, great, Mike Nightmare.   The balance of the line-up is Screamin’ Sam Ferrara (Ugly/Viletones), Steve Koch (Demics/Viletones) and Tony Torture (Ugly).

Which brings me to this post.  As you can tell by the poster, The Ugly weren’t exactly politically correct, and I can’t actually recall them calling themselves Hoodlum Rock — yet it’s fitting.  Mike Nightmare and manager/buddy Johnny Garbagecan made many a trip to the hoosegow up in Kingston, and carried guns, which was unheard of back then.   The new version of The Ugly have done a couple of gigs in the last year, and are currently saving up their energy and venom for what could be the aging hipster party of the year:  the 30th Anniversary Bash of The Last Pogo, to be held at Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern on November 29th.

It should be a great time.  We’ll be there with the cameras, of course, and will show (for only the second time in 30 years) The Last Pogo.  The Scenics, The Mods, The Forgotten Rebels, and Steve Leckie will round out the bill.  Be there.  And smile for the cameras.

The Screwed — Cleave Anderson, John Borra, Steve Koch and Steve Scarlett — continue their almost weekly assault on the senses as they hit Graffiti’s Bar and Grill for a late afternoon shin-dig and hullabaloo this Saturday at 4:00.

And if he couldn’t be busier, a couple of months ago Cleave handed over a song he’d written and recorded called The Last Pogo; we’re sure to squeeze it into the epic documentary The Last Pogo Jumps Again once completed early next year.

Out west, director Brunton has started picking away at an “assembly” of the film, i.e. a real big long version that will be eventually edited down to a slightly less big and less long version, his new hard-drive surrounded by sandbags and secured by bungee cords and 24/7 security (i.e. the sandbags) on his dwarf-like hotel desk. (If you hadn’t heard, the last hard-drive couldn’t take the heat, and to get out of the kitchen — fast — dove a deadly foot and a half to its untimely death.) A couple of hours or so of cutting a night, then up bright and early (okay, up early) for another day on the set of Little Mosque on the Prairie out in the charming small town of Indian Head, Saskatchewan (baseball fans take note: Satchell Paige pitched there in the ’40′s with barnstorming members of the Negro League, and how cool is that?! And they have an air-raid siren that reminds everyone at exactly noon each day that it’s time for lunch.)

Further out west, Andy Meyers works on the Scenics studio album (out in 2009), and starts to play with the soundtrack of the original Last Pogo movie, tweaking and adjusting and playing around — and that’s just his pants, BAM!

The guy who did the original handbill for the Last Pogo movie poster, John Pearson, corrects a half-dozen typos on the artwork of the DVD cover, adds a few more thingies here and there, and puts the finishing touches on the promo poster for the Last Pogo release this October; poster up on this site next week.

Woody Whelan, Minister of Propaganda, and head honcho of Mag Wheels Records, continues to drum up interest, and surprise surprise — there is interest. We here at Pogo H.Q. West are well chuffed to find out that Vice Magazine, Alternative Press, and Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll (amongst a bunch of others) are all going to take their first look at the movie and probably get their first small taste — an amuse douche, as it were — of Toronto/Hamilton punk that it offers up. Orders from Chicago, orders from L.A. and New York…here’s hoping that the world finally finds out just how hot our punk scene was.

Greg Dick and David Quinton are working on the deets to the big Last Pogo 30th bash this November; confirmed so far are The Scenics, The Mods, The Ugly — with Greg filling in for the late Mike Nightmare, and like we’ve said before, if you can’t have Mike, you’ve got Dick — and few others that are close to buying in on what should prove to be a fun evening.

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!

Gary Topp at NXNE 2008.  Photo by Albert Lee

The first public screening of The Last Pogo in 28 years closed out the 2008 NXNE Festival in Toronto to a rowdy sell-out crowd. Pogo director Brunton introduced members of the audience who were in bands that played the Last Pogo concert in 1978: Andy Meyers, Ken Badger and Mark Perkell of The Scenics; Vince Carlucci of The Cardboard Brains; David Quinton-Steinberg of The Mods; and Chris Haight of the Viletones and Secrets. Saving the best for last, the final introduction was of legendary Toronto promoter Gary Topp, one-half of The Garys, the guy who brought The Ramones, John Cale, Wayne County, Dead Boys, Talking Heads and way more way cool artists and films and events to Toronto during those heady punk days and beyond, and who has been the most vital, interesting, and eclectic promoter of the arts in Toronto, period. Seriously. If you did nothing else for cultural diversions than attend Gary Topp shows, you’d be doing just swell thank you.

It was awesome to watch The Last Pogo on a big screen; a DVD doesn’t do it justice, and the optical track is so much more richer than the sound that creeps out of a computer. As Brunton told the audience before the lights went down, the last time it was shown properly, on a big screen, was at a Cineplex movie theatre in 1980. Cleverly booking The Last Pogo with another concert film, it pulled in a $100 a week, was shown a dozen times a day — and was unceremoniously yanked from the theatre after two weeks when it continually received, quote “A violent and negative reaction…” unquote from the audience who were paying their five bucks to see the concert film it was opening for – Richard Pryor Live in Concert. Needless to say, the largly urban black audience didn’t take much of a shine to the lily-white/beyond the pale Toronto punk scene. On the other hand, it was apparently a big hit with the ushers and snack-bar kids.

The fact that the screening was literally across the street from the Much Music Video Awards seemed to strengthen the consensus that the music in the film stands up well to the test of time. (Was it because each of the bands in The Last Pogo had distinct unique sounds — or because most if not all of the bands at the MMVA sounded wearily similar? We’ll give it six of one, half-dozen of the other). Like a fine-wine aging for thirty years (or a solid Canadian beer that hasn’t turned skunky), you could imagine any of The Last Pogo bands making an impact these days. If they knew the right people. And kissed the right asses. And wore the right clothes with the right hair-cuts and were the right age and had the right politics and all the wrong right stuff that in 1978 we all properly rebelled againts. Kids these days.