The Last Pogo Jumps Again

They got booed and heckled at their first Toronto gig, opening for Talking Heads in September 1977.    But first-wavers The Scenics are taking another kick at the can after thirty years as they hit the stage of the El Mocambo Tuesday, October 13 to kick off a five date tour in synch with the release of their new CD, Sunshine World.    Seven measly bucks gets you in the door, and you get a copy of the CD as well, and you know that they’re going to play their hearts out, and of course lots of beer and old friends.

Sunshine World was culled from 300 hours of tapes The Scenics made during their run from 76 – 82, and features studio-recorded tunes from ’77 and ’78.    Friends of The Last Pogo Jumps Again still scratch our heads at the lack of recognition The Scenics got back in the day (sentiments shared by, amongst others, Scenic pals Talking Heads drum/bass combo Tina Weymouth and Chris Franz.  A few years after the Scenics infamously opened for The Talking Heads at The Garys’ New Yorker Theatere, Tina and Chris said to Ken and Andy after hearing about their woes:  “What? I thought you guys would’ve made it by now.”

Ironically, most people point to the opening gig for Talking Heads at the New Yorker as the first and final straw in their relationship with the other scenesters and musicians.

September 16, 1977;  courtesy Molten Core.

Everyone wanted that gig, and promoters The Garys — who would later manage The Scenics — thought it would be a great surprise to have this great band come out of nowhere (y’know, as opposed to ones that might’ve been around for two months, lol) and be the opening act.  A special treat for the loyal fans of this new thing called New Wave and Punk.   But…not so much.  There were rude catcalls from the audience — “Boring!” — and The Scenics lost potential friends and fans as soon as the handbill promoting the show was stapled around town.

The show itself was great, but there was real resentment, and The Scenics became outsiders in a group of outsiders.  It wasn’t like they were pelted with eggs, mind you, but apart from fast friends like The Demics and some others, The Scenics somehow didn’t fit follow the cryptically infused rulebook on emerging new-wave/punk rock bands.  But sticks ‘n’ stones and fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.  The Scenics just wanted to make music.  They didn’t dress the part, go to the right parties, or even do the right drugs.  It was all about creating music. They would rehearse and jam for hours upon hours week after week and play in every bar in Toronto, only to break it up in the early eighties, defeated by geography (Ken Badger lived in the country, and had a family and everything) and partially due to a pronounced lack of recognition, apart from their loyal yet tiny fan base. (Hi Gary!  Hi Blair!)

Courtesy Molten Core

Flash forward a few decades, and songwriting/frontman partner Ken Badger (he of the auto-asphyxiated singing style) sends songwriting/frontman partner Andy Ramesh Meyers a shoebox of tapes.  (The Scenics recorded everything.)  Andy starts to listen to them.  Obsessively.  Ken and Andy  put together an audacious collection of live Velvet Underground covers called How Does it Feel to Be Loved, and it gets critical kudos from colleges and newspapers, and a vote for the Best CD of 2008 for The Village Voices Pazz & Jop Poll from respected critic and ex-Creem Magazine staffer Jeffrey Morgan (author of the just-released official bio of Iggy Pop) who just drools over it, and it charts at colleges in Canada and the U.S.

Getting a taste of the kind of respect ‘n’ recognition that so ably avoided them during their initial run, The Scenics are inspired.   Andy and Ken call up former members Mark Perkell and Mike Young and start to make plans.  First up is the release of the Velvet’s cover CD, then a few gigs in Toronto (including The Last Pogo’s 30th Anniversary Bash.)   Apart from the new tour and the CD, The Scenics are also going to start podcasting Punk Haiku, Andy’s memoirs from the late seventies punk days, and will be putting together a new CD of new material soon.

Ken Badger in 2008;  photo by Edie Stiener

Andy Meyers in 2008;  photo Kevin Lamb

The staff at The Last Pogo Jumps Again had a chance to have a sneak read of the first one, and it’s great;  you’re right there.  One of our favourite stories is of their quest for the perfect drummer.   After going through a couple that didn’t work out, they get a new guy, and start to rehearse.  In the middle of a song, the drummer has an epileptic seizure, Ken later remarking “Gee.  I thought he finally got it.”  Check out their site in our list on the right hand side.

If you miss them in Toronto (don’t!) they’ll be in Ottawa, Montreal, London, and Hamilton in the next week.

For a much more thorough write-up of The Scenics, check out Steve McLean’s excellent blog.  Cut and paste this http://stevemclean.blogspot.com/2009/10/scenics-i-have-to-review-gaslight.html

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.

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.