The Last Pogo Jumps Again

In January we got some great photos of The Government (Flat Tire, Hemingway Hated Disco Music);  add Bobbe Besold as yet another of the terrific photographers there were in Toronto back in the mid-seventies.   Our total count so far is 612 photos spread over our four hour movie.

We discovered http://chuckmanothercollection.blogspot.com/ and John Chuckman’s awesome collection of postcards.  Unfortunately, not enough dpi to show on the big screen.

How cool was Yonge Street back in the mid-seventies?!  Note that this was even before the “famous” neon record that Sam the Record Man erected in the late seventies.   As with much of what made Toronto cool, virtually none of the stores in this picture still exist.

The Last Pogo Jumps Again co-filmmaker (along with Kire Paputts) Colin Brunton sketched out this rough map as a guide for Montreal artist (and ex-punker from the band American Devices) Rick Trembles in order to create a slicker full-colour map.

We tried (and failed) to get permission to feature a few seconds of the Bunuel/Dali short masterpiece Un Chien Andalou.  Too bad.  Many people will recall Nash the Slash performing for the first time at Gary Topp’s Original 99 Cent Roxy Theatre his musical accompaniment to the film.  Jaws dropped.  Five years later, Pogo filmmaker Colin Brunton would copy the famous eye-slitting scene for his first film, a short called Bollocks that he made with Liz Aikenhead.   Bollocks was in part shot at Club Davids, the infamous gay bar by night, punk bar by later in the night, and featured performances by The Viletones and The Ugly, and appearances by scene notables Wayne Brown and Mr. Shit.    Brunton purchased a sheep’s eye for the scene, just like Lou and Sal did;  a safety pin was used instead of a razor.  Good times.

A fascination with the 1976 – 1980 punk/new-wave scene in Toronto continued as (excellent) photographer Don Pyle’s photo album Trouble in the Camera Club was released in April 2011.

We got our first draft of the map of Toronto circa 1977 from Montreal artist Rick Trembles.   He also drew up maps of Southern Ontario, the U.S., and Canada, pointing out some of the punk hotspots, i.e. CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City in NYC, The Smiling Buddha in Vancouver and the cities Toronto, Hamilton and London in Southern Ontario.

In April 2011, co-filmmaker Kire Paputts packed up the equipment and took the bus down to Philadelphia (that’s just how we roll, people) to re-interview Toronto scenesters Freddy Pompeii, guitarist for the original line-up of The Viletones, and later lead singer of The Secrets;  and Margarita Passion, who used to own New Rose, the cool clothing and record store hang-out on Queen Street East back in the day.

Rick Trembles continued to awe us with his comic-strip rendition of the day back in 1977 when Joey Shithead and his band The Skulls (who would soon later morph into D.O.A.) borrowed the stage at the infamous Gasworks Tavern (the name “Gasworks Tavern” now copyright Mike Myers if you can believe it) from the power pop trio Goddo.  Needless to say, neither was impressed with the other.

Shock Theatre impresario, artist, filmmaker, LSD and music fan William “The Count” Cork showed filmmakers Brunton and Paputts the crypt at Mt. Pleasant Cemetary that he and Ugly singer Mike Nightmare slept in for a six month period back in 1978 or so.  Bill told us that a Vietnamese colonel told him that because they slept under the surface of the ground at a cemetary, they were able to become invisible.   Brunton and Paputts then think:  “Intervew of the year.”

In May, sad news:  super fan and collector Imants Krumins passed away.   Later in the year, the Forgotten Rebels would dedicate their live CD to him.  Much beloved in Hamilton and Toronto, we managed to snag an interview with him when we started this project in 2006;  Imants supplied us with tons of handbills and info.  He’s credited as “Lead Archivist” in the credits to our film.

In June 2011 one of the last band interviews was conducted when Brunton and Paputts drove down to the Beaches area of Toronto to speak with Michaele Jordana and Doug Pringle of The Poles.  Noteworthy for the anthemic single C.N. Tower, The Poles were always slightly controversial, but not how they’d like:  there were quite a few punkers in Toronto that didn’t feel that, somehow, they were as genuine, say, as The Viletones, Teenage Head, The Ugly, Scenics, Martha and the Muffins, The Secrets, The Mods, etc. were.   So — the question of validity was asked, feelings were hurt, and months later, after not being able to come to terms for a music license for C.N.Tower (ridiculous, by the way!) the whole segment and any mention of the band whatsoever was dropped from the film.

We found a photographer in NYC with the uber-NYC moniker Nicky L who licensed us some Super-8 footage of The Ramones at the New Yorker, September 1976.  With bootleg audio of the same show from Randy Johnston and Gail Wetton (who also gave us the ticket stub above), we pieced together the exact moment they hit the stage and changed Toronto music oh those three decades ago.  We’re currently trying to negotiate a deal for the music and are actually 3/4 of the way there.  But that last quarter is a bitch.  More on that later.  Ugh.

Cardboard Brains copyright Vince Carlucci.

After several somewhat unsettling emails from Cardboard Brains‘ lead singer and co-founder (along with guitarist Vince Carlucci) John Paul Young, we gave up hope of ever getting permission to use an original Brains song in the movie.  Boo!  We’re currently scratching our heads on how to solve that one, but hey — out of the 50 songs we wanted to license for the movie, we’ve only lost about four (and we’re still continuing to fight for three of those) so if our movie were, like,  The Toronto Blue Jays, and the filmmakers were the fourth and fifth batters?  We’d be knocking it out of the park!

Our very first Skype interview and our very last band interview, was with the lovely and talented Sally Cato, live from her apartment in NYC.  Former lead singer of The Concordes, The Androids, and later, post-Toronto, Smashed Gladys, Sally gave us a great intervew, and some Super-8 footage of The Androids to boot.  Hey-o!

Picked up a remastered live track of Drastic Measures from ex-Measures and ex-Dishes Tony Malone;  found some hilarious Super-8 footage of the Forgotten Rebels.  And in a thrilling coup, received permission to use an old SCTV clip of the Agoraphobic Cowboy, Rick Moranis.  Thanks, SCTV!  Thanks Mr. Moranis!

Nash the Slash, copyright Paul Till.

Photographer Paul Till sent us a few more pictures of Nash the Slash, for the ‘before and after’ style we’ve been using throughout the film with people we’ve interviewd.  Of course with Nash, he looks eerily similar in photos from 1977 as he does in the interview we did with him in 2007.  Nash was actually scheduled to play The Last Pogo in 1978, as, like the rest of the bands that evening (Scenics, Secrets, Cardboard Brains, Mods, Ugly, Viletones, Teenage Head) he was one of promoters The Garys’ favourites, but punched a wall in his loft above The Original 99 Cent Roxy Theatre and broke his hand.  

We had our third interview with Dishes and Drastic Measures songster Tony Malone in September, visiting him and his pit-bull Bella in Toronto’s west end.  We needed to clarify a point about The Dishes, arguably the first band in Toronto who felt New-Wavish, and who clearned a lot of decks on Queen West for OCA bands and others.

In October we recalled the death three years earlier of Teenage Head singer Frankie Venom.   Around the same time, we finally finalized the Teenage Head songs (seven versions of six songs;  hey, we don’t fuck around!) and completed the deal with Gordie Lewis.  In December we found some more footage (beautiful 16mm black and white) of The Original 99 Cent Roxy Theatre through Facebook pal Talis Briedis which we hope to incorporate.

And now we’re just waiting for a handful of release forms to come back to Pogo H.Q.  Once done, we start the sound edit and mix, and then scheme up the release pattern and festival plans.  Our near six year task is almost done.  Which is bittersweet.

Cheers

Illustration by Rick Trembles.

What’s long and hard on a Pogo staff member? Making The Last Pogo Jumps Again:  A Biased And Incomplete History Of Toronto, Hamilton and London Ontario Punk Rock And New Wave Music Circa September 24 1976 To December 1 1978, Parts One And Two.   We started back in June 2006, but we’re now in post-production, albeit with one or two more interviews we’d like to do.   While we’ve dug up tons of archival footage and photos and other bits of evidence, sometimes we’ve needed to illustrate stories, like the one above:   Joey Shithead and his pre-D.O.A. band The Skulls borrow Goddo’s equipment and take the stage at The Gasworks to show ‘em how its done.  Greg Godowitz stares daggers at Joey.  Good times.  (Other stories to come include Long John Baldry’s bouncers beating on the brats at the Colonial Underground;  The Ugly throwing a flaming guitar at The Viletones at the Outrage concert, and The Demics first appearance at The Horseshoe Tavern.)

When former Viletone Steven Leckie took to the stage at The Last Pogo 30th Anniversary Bash at the Horseshoe Tavern back in 2008, he told the audience (to paraphrase via shoddy memory) that he could “…quote more lines from A Clockwork Orange than things my father told me.”

In one of the three interviews we did with Leckie for our soon-to-be-completed project The Last Pogo Jumps Again, he also said that the short-lived 1977 club Crash ‘n’ Burn was “…like our own little Milk Bar.”

Leckie likely had witnessed this cinematic ultra-violence at the New Yorker and Original 99 Cent Roxy Theatres. (Hey, American friends — that’s how we spell “theaters.”)

Nash the Slash‘s first appearance was at Gary Topp‘s rep movie theatre The Original 99 Cent Roxy around 1973 when he performed a live soundtrack to the Dali/Bunuel film Un Chien Andalou.   A few years later, in 1977, Roxy usher Colin Brunton would mimic the infamous razor-across-the-eye gag in his short film Bollocks, (which also featured The Viletones and The Ugly), substituting a safety pin and a cow’s eyeball for a razor blade and a sheep’s eyeball.

Around the same time Nash the Slash would move into the flat above the Roxy, becoming a sort of Phantom of the Roxy.

Poster for an unfinished Dali film that was to be the third in a trilogy started by Un Chien Andalou and L’age D’or.

After Bollocks Brunton made The Last Pogo and has now been working on The Last Pogo Jumps Again:  A Biased And Incomplete History Of Toronto, Hamilton, and London Ontario Punk Rock And New Wave Music Circa September 24 1976 to December 1 1978 for the past five years.  Pristine dubs of The Last Pogo and Bollocks have been struck for use in the new film.   (For film nerds out there, fancy-ass and pricey Technicolor Labs didn’t know what “A” and “B” rolls were;  kids these days, huh?)

Smoking a joint and watching Amos Poe and Ivan Kral‘s film Blank Generation at his New Yorker Theatre in 1976 inspired Gary Topp to build a stage and start booking bands.   A little more than three months later the stage was set for an amazing string of shows.

Wow, spell much?

One of the staples of both The Original 99 Cent Roxy and The New Yorker, Performance was the film that included (supposedly) real sex and drug use, and which also famously fucked up actor James Fox for years.

This handmade (i.e. hand-lettered and drawn, no computers, no Letraset) poster from 1972 was made by artist John Pearson, and courtesy of Gary Topp.

Comic strip review, copyright Rick Trembles.

The absolutely coolest review our project The Last Pogo (1978) got was Rick Trembles‘ comic strip review that appeared in the Montreal Mirror as part of Rick’s weekly Motion Picture Purgatory series upon the release of the DVD in 2008.   (And hey — there’s still copies to be had for the low low price of $12.00;  visit the store.)

Detail from same review, and still copyright Rick Trembles.

We’re now talking to Rick about contributing some work for our epic feature 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.   We’d like to get Rick to create some cool maps, so people know we’re talking about London, Ontario instead of London, England, etc., but much more fun will be his interpretations of some of the stories people tell.  It won’t be old-school cell animation (too Disney, too expensive) nor will it be Toy Storyish computer animation (too eerie, too common) but rather comic strips that we’ll simply pan across and zoom in and out of (tres punk, just right.)   Dude is perfect for the job, too, because not only is he a keen artist with a sharp wit, but he’s a founding member of Montreal‘s longest-lasting post-punk band (est 1980) American Devices, so there’s that.

Self portrait by R. Crumb, copyright R. Crumb.

Iconic American device and legendary artist R. Crumb said about Rick:  “…even more twisted and weird than me.”  So there’s that, too.

We’re all only a few degrees away from Tim Horton

One of the last images in the epic five hour punkumentary-in-progress, The Last Pogo Jumps Again is of The Forgotten Rebels’ Chris Houston and Mickey DeSadist revisiting a favourite Tim Horton’s donut shop they used to frequent in the late seventies in The Hammer.

Many people who would end up being part of the Toronto punk rock scene used to hang out and watch movies at The Original 99 Cent Roxy Theatre, when it was programmed by Gary “The Garys” Topp.   When it was built in the ’40′s, it was called The Allenby.   After Gary Topp left it in the late seventies for the New Yorker, it went through a variety of owners, and then packed it in for good a number of years ago.   This year, however, the art deco facade was saved and the auditorium razed;  Tim Hortons have meticulously brought it back to life.

The newly renovated and cleaned up bricks that comprise the Roxy/Allenby could have been from the old Toronto Brickworks.   Nowadays, the Brickworks is called the Evergreen Brickworks, and is setting itself up to be some sort of eco presentation place.  It was one of the spots we’d use to do interviews for our film:  KC Carlisle (who was a fourteen year old fanboy back in the late seventies) talked to us there, as did William Cork, who waxed poetic on the late, great Mike Nightmare from The Ugly.

Before the Brickworks got all gussied up (ponds and streams created after the clay ran out) The Last Pogo Jumps Again co-director Colin Brunton used it as the moon for his mockumentary The Mysterious Moon Men of Canada (two Canadians fly to the moon in 1959, but because they’re Canadian, are too modest to tell anyone about it.)   Soundtrack to the short film (which won a Genie Award, no biggie) was supplied by Don Pyle‘s band, Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet.   On April 1, 2011, Don’s photo book of the late seventies + punk scene in Toronto — Trouble in the Camera Club — will be released.

Okay, so mark you calendars ’cause in a couple of weeks Greg Dick — hairstylist, ex-Dream Date, current lead singer of the 2010 version of The Ugly, and radio host on Equalizing Distort will be celebrating his 50th birthday.

From the April issue of Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll

This months Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll has a six-page transcription of an interview Last Pogo director Colin Brunton did with Greg Dick at CIUT-FM in 2009, after The Last Pogo was released on DVD (and still available for only $12.00!)   It’s distributed in sixty countries so lots of folks overseas will get a small taste of the kind of action we had here in 1976 – 1979.   There’s lots more pics in the article (big thanks for Stephe Perry of CIUT for gathering up the jpgs, and for Molten Core and Imants Krumins for originally digging them up.)

For those keeping score at home, from top left:  ad for The Last Pogo from The Big Takeover;  July ’78 handbill from the Horseshoe Tavern; another July handbill from the Horseshoe.  Second row:  David Andoff ad for The John Cale Band at the New Yorker February 1977 (handdrawn gun and custom lettering, btw);  Jun ’78 Horseshoe handbill;  Music Hall concert in 1979, featuring the premiere of The Last Pogo.  Bottom row:  June handbill from the Horseshoe;  another June handbill from the Horseshoe;  insert from The Last Pogo album.

After almost four years of shooting for The Last Pogo Jumps Again, here’s a list of all the local bands from the specific era September 24 1976 to December 1 1978 that we’ve represented in the film:    The Androids,  Arson, The Battered Wives, The B-Girls, The Cads, Cardboard Brains, Crash Kills Five, The Curse, The Dents, The Demics, The Diodes, Drastic Measures, The Existers, The Fits, Forgotten Rebels, The Government, Johnny & The G-Rays, Lance Charles Syndrome, Martha & The Muffins, The Mods, Nash the Slash, Oh Those Pants!, Rough Trade, The Scenics, The Secrets, Simply Saucer, The Skulls, Swollen Members, Teenage Head, The Toys, Tyranna, The Ugly, and The Viletones.   We’re still trying to interview someone from The Dishes, The Poles, The Everglades and a few others.  Who have we forgotten?

In addition to those local bands, we’ve also spoken to members of The Police, The Dead Boys, Goddo, The Heartbreakers, Fucked Up, The Ramones, and The Stranglers and several dozen fans, critics, photographers, managers, hangers-on etc.  We’ve dug up rare, and in some cases “never before seen” footage of Teenage Head, Viletones, Ugly, Mods, Government, Secrets, Scenics, Cardboard Brains, Johnny & The G-Rays;  the Original 99 Cent Roxy Theatre, the New Yorker Theatre, Yonge Street in the mid-seventies, and more.

We’re trying to nail down the very last of the interviews in the next few weeks so we can meet our deadline of having this sucker packaged up and ready to ship out by the end of the summer this year.  So if you can think of anyone we’ve missed, dissed or pissed off, please let us know.