The Last Pogo Jumps Again

The Scenics, photo by Rodney Bowes

Diodes, photo by Ralph Alfonso

Viletones

No, no no — not the 9th Configuration, the 4th Terrabyte.

As post-production ramps up at Pogo H.Q., the hard-drive holding 300+ hours of interviews and archival footage started humming a not so happy tune, and so we instantly despatched a beleaguered p.a. to pick up a massive 4 terrabyte external drive for some back-up.  Safety first, beauty last, financial responsibility a distant third.

No, no no — not men wearing hats…

It might take a village to raise a child, but it takes the whole world to raise the red-haired bastard stepchild known as 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.

The teletype machine in the musty garret of Pogo H.Q. fired off a note to Florence Italy to ask NYC No-Wave filmmaker Amos Poe who exactly handles the leasing of stock shots for his seminal B & W & Nasty film Blank Generation, the film that inspired promoter Gary Topp (later to be one half of infamous Toronto promoters The Garys) to start booking punk and new-wave bands at the New Yorker on Yonge Street (whooo-eeeeee!) in Toronto.

Detail of Rick Trembles’ Toronto map circa 1976.

Meanwhile, Montreal’s Rick Trembles (who’s been doing our maps and is putting together a font for us to use for subtitles and tail credits) informed us that two guys who would, a year later, become part of the first lineup of Montreal’s Men Without Hats, had bombed down from McGill University in Montreal one weekend in 1977, armed with a Super-8 camera, to attend the Outrage concert at Toronto’s spooky Masonic Temple.   David Hill did the sound and John Gurrin did the shooting (and we suspect that both of them did the partying).   We got in touch with David, now in New Yawk, and with a slight discount urged on by Amos Poe, had the Super-8 footage of part of the Viletones set transferred to mini-dv;  just waiting for it to arrive.

Speaking of terrabytes, the day The Scenics opened for Talking Heads at the New Yorker (September 16, 1977), and the day before the Outrage concert T. Rex’s Marc Bolan died in a car crash in England.

Ticket courtesy of Molten Core

Eighth-billed actress Mary Nash is the grandmother of Toronto’s Nash the Slash.

This weekend co-director Kire Paputts takes the bus down to the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia, to clear up a couple of points with Margarita Passion, hopefully track down her ex and ex-Viletones and Secrets, Freddy Pompeii, and, natch, eat cream cheese and get stupid at sporting events.

Just a couple more questions, m’am.

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.

The lead character in John Barth’s first novel (written in 1954, when he was 24) spends an ungodly amount of time writing an essay about the death of his father entitled:  “An Inquiry Into The Circumstances Surrounding The Self-Destruction Of Thomas T. Andrews Of Cambridge Maryland on Ground Hog Day, 1930 (More Especially into the Causes Therefore).”

Having lost a fortune in the stock market, his father hanged himself. Todd Andrews, his son, himself susceptible to the suicide gene, starts to write about the reasons behind his father’s suicide, thinking of each and every reason, every tangent he can think of  — the infinity of the past — of how this could have happened, but it’s endless.  He no sooner concludes one theory than another pops up that demands his attention; every detail seems worthy of investigation.   It becomes an unwieldy project that might possibly never end; in an office crowded with peach baskets jammed with notes after years and years of work with no apparent end in sight and…whoa, whoa, WHOA, back up the truck a sec!

Huge boner had we wrapped this two years ago.   (From yesbutnobutyes.com.)

It was only a couple of years ago that we called it a wrap. But then we realized there were a few more folks we should chat with, and they lead to a few more, and then we found some great, lost footage of Demics and Scenics and Secrets and Viletones and Teenage Head and more and that lead onto other stuff, and so on and so forth and here we are, in our fifth (and final) year of production.

Time traveling back to ’78 for more deets. Wheeeeee! (Hollywoodlostandfound.net)

Like the peach baskets full of scribblings in Todd’s office, the offices at Pogo H.Q. have boxes full of tapes of the approximately 250 people we’ve interviewed, along with piles of photos that still need to be jpg-ed, and stacks of old handbills that have;  all of it threads in the seemingly unending production of 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.

Anywhere, Saskatchewan.

Co-director Colin Brunton is holed up for a month in an hotel in Regina, Saskatchewan meticulously grinding through the current six-hour cut (!) of 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, while counterpart and co-director Kire Paputts is living large in lurid Las Vegas with lady friend Liz Worth. (Wow! So many ells!)

Drunk photography, Las Vegas, Nevada.

While Kire takes a breather from what seems to be a never-ending quest to interview everybody who was part of the Toronto/Hamilton/London, Ontario punk/new-wave/alternate music scene slash this slash that, Brunton is alternately guzzling tap water and ordering room service, determined not to glimpse the light of day this weekend, scheming up plans for a couple of hired-gun TV series this fall, catching up on some reading (Jack Reacher rules!) and trying to stick to his Toronto body clock, which means hitting the sack at ten and getting up at six.  It almost makes him feel like he should go jogging or something, but that ain’t gonna happen.   And frankly, the sight of a 55 year old man with a Viletones t-shirt huffing down past the endless big box stores of Regina is not something you’d want engrained in your memory.   With fourteen fourteen hour days of location shooting on a TV series looming, quick evenings are devoted to making notes on the edit, and whittling down the list of Those Who Still Need To Be Interviewed.  Yes, there’s still a few more.   Hey — we want this to be complete, okay?!

Last week Kire hit London Ontario and chatted with NFG frontman Scott “Steve R Stunning” Bentley, who talked about forming NFG in late ’78 (therefore fitting into to our strict timeline) and getting a couple of opening gigs for that other band in London, The Demics.   During the shoot, they ran into Mike Niderman (sp?), who pretty much got The Demics started by convincing them to play their first gig at his loft in 1977.

Torme, not Torment.

That evening Kire set up shop at the apartment of Joey Hardin, former spiritual advisor to The Swollen Members, where he interviewed Joey and SM lead-singer Evan Siegel, a.k.a. Mel Torment, a pseudonym we’ve just discovered that John Lennon used once.   Joey slipped on his thirty-year-plus old leisure suit and demonstrated a few dance moves, and he and Evan cracked wise for a couple of hours.  In a way, The Swollen Members are a big part of why we’re taking so fucking long to make this movie.  Yea, there’s the thing about doing this on weekends, and agonizing over people’s schedules, and convincing others that they are Completely Worthy and are necessary to tell this story.  And this all costs money, yo, so some of us have to work to buy tapes and gas and transfer grainy footage and rent cars and buy lunches and all the other things that go into making a feature film project.  But what has always bugged us here at Pogo H.Q. is that when people think of “Toronto Punk”, they immediately think Viletones Curse Diodes Teenage Head Mods Poles Dents, and you fill in your personal blanks.  There was so much more.  And bands like Swollen Members just seem to be forgotten.   And they shouldn’t be.  They were audacious and awesome and alarming and always, always antertaining (wow! so many ays!)

And speaking of alarming and audacious and awesome, more respect yo, for The Scenics.  For those of you who are into porn, but are scared to buy real porn, and instead buy those “Man’s Magazines” that are, well, mostly soft-core porn — check out the latest issue of UMM (Urban Male Magazine — sorry guys in rural areas, you can’t relate apparently), and you’ll see a tasty review of The Scenics’ 2010 release Sunshine World.  They said this:  “One of Canada’s unsung heroes of first-gen punk, The Scenics reacted to slinky art-rock made popular by New York acts such as Television, The Velvet Underground, and other Warhol-esque colleagues. However, with their sublime understanding of pushing boundaries without sacrificing grooves, their low-fidelity creations are exercises in tight, post-garage accomplishments.
Celebrated on this first ever compilation of their studio works, Sunshine World provides another case in point as to why The Scenics deserve merit for being as innovative as they were- (and now are, given their reunion)- impressive.” Whoo-eee!

Monday, Kire was back in London to talk to Dan Hamilton and get some more insight into the scene in London, Ontario, and will be back again to chat with Mr. Niderman.  Okay, gotta run.

“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…

Raggedy handbill, 1976;  courtesy of Robert Malyon.

Smoking a joint in the back row of his movie theatre The New Yorker, watching the out-of-synch Blank Generation, promoter Gary Topp twigged on the idea of bringing some of the bands from Amos Poe’s movie into town.  It was 1976.  When he tried to track down The Ramones, few people in the business knew who they were.

Photo by David Andoff.

A concrete stage was built in a few 18 hour shifts over the course of a weekend;  artist David Andoff sculpted a King Kong and painted a NYC nightscape above the marquee –  and “punk rock” officially arrived in Toronto on September 24, 1976 with Johnny Lovesin & His Invisible Band opening for New York City’s The Ramones.

Two years later, Gary would be long gone from the New Yorker, having had moved to the beer-soaked Horseshoe Tavern with partner Gary Cormier;  together they were known as The Garys.   On December 1, 1978, The Garys promoted The Last Pogo, the going-away party for their favourite local bands;  they were being kicked out, and the bar would revert to it’s country ‘n’ western roots for a spell.  The Scenics, The Cardboard Brains, The Ugly, The Secrets, Teenage Head, and The Mods were set to play the historic gig.

Steven Leckie at The Last Pogo.  Photo by Edie Stiener.

Reluctant to join in at first, Steven Leckie ended up crashing the party with his latest version of his ground-breaking Viletones.   And all hell broke loose.   It was captured on film, recorded for an album — and then forgotten for years.   This is the specific time period we’re zeroing in on for our sprawling documentary The Last Pogo Jumps Again:  A Biased & Incomplete History Of Toronto Punk Rock Circa September 24 1976 To December 1 1978.

Everyone’s getting busy with the Kwanza/Hannukuh/Christmas (pick-your-own-pagan-holiday) season getting started, so we won’t be posting very often over the next few weeks.   But it’s not like we’re not doing anything.  Far from it, dear blog readers.  Far fucking from it.

Left Coast Second Unit Director (L.A. Division) Amy Bellings is on the case, getting ready to chat with graphic artist/photographer Rodney Bowes on the beach in Los Angeles, and find out all about Rodney’s take on the original punk scene in Toronto for our epically titled multi-platform feature film extravaganza The Last Pogo Jumps Again:  A Biased & Incomplete History Of Toronto Punk Rock Circa September 24 1976 To December 1 1978.

The Last Pogo Jumps Again Christmas party, 2009

Co-director Aldo Erdic is putting the finishing touches on his nifty half-hour Diodes documentary circa 1977:  The Diodes, and needs to put that to bed before diving back into the 900+ minutes of footage from 2008′s Last Pogo 30th Anniversary show, certain to be one of the many DVD extras on our project, the tortuously tongue-tied project titled The Last Pogo Jumps Again:  A Biased & Incomplete History Of Toronto Punk Rock Circa September 24 1976 To December 1 1978, scheduled for release next year.

We love the fact that Santa gave up undressing halfway through taking his right sock off.  That and the nutsack peeking out.

Producer/co-director Colin Brunton is busy working on a kids TV show and killing time between shots and meetings collecting more jpgs (thanks Imants, Gail, Robert, Patrick, etc.) and pondering ways to release the cumbersomely yet very accurately titled multi-media monster The Last Pogo Jumps Again:  A Biased & Incomplete History Of Toronto Punk Rock Circa September 24 1976 To December 1 1978 and reminding people that the DVD of The Last Pogo is still available, and it’s only twelve bucks.  $12.00! The Last Pogo Jumps Again Shipping & Receiving Department awaits your orders.  Just click on the “Store” link on the left.

Co-director/editor Kire Paputts continues to upload the interview footage of late (Tibor Takacs, Lucasta Ross, Joe Keithley) and tinker with our four and a half-hour cut, and is excitedly getting prepped to shoot his new half-hour short film — working title Roadkill (WTF?!) — with local talents Julian Richings, David Huband and Amy Rutherford.

Julian Richings, actor.   Really, who else would you cast to play John Cale in a movie?  One of Canada’s best.

Cue the creepy music sting as Julian’s silent and sullen lead character cuts open and prepares to exact his taxidermy skills on a dead animal.   Then get your hankies out for the ending (and not in a Pee-Wee Herman type way, if you know what I mean, and I think that you do. )

John Cale, musician.  Really, who else would you cast to play Julian Richings in a movie?  One of Wales’ best.

Wheeee!

But maybe most exciting music-wise over the next while is the show next Tuesday the 15th at the Cameron Tavern.

Steven Leckie at the Last Pogo 30th party;  photo by Edie Stiener.

Original Toronto punk/artist/provocateur Steven Leckie will hit the stage with new band Fleur de Mal, featuring keyboardist Alex Topp and guitarist/percussionist Blair Richard Martin (late of 80′s band The Raving Mojos) at a show at the soon-to-be-missing, never-to-be-forgetting Queen Street West landmark Cameron Tavern.

Alex Topp with Steven Leckie & The Solutions! at The Last Pogo 30th, 2008; photo Edie Stiener.

With arrangements by the talented Ms. Topp, the eight-piece band Alex has assembled (WTF?!) for this one-time-only show will be performing crazily inventive covers of two Velvet Undergound songs.   And we’re guessing that this is a show That Should Not Be Missed.

L – R: Somebody’s arm, Alex Topp, somebody, Andrew Haughton (Major Grey) and Gary Topp.

Also playing that night are catchy tunesters Major Grey and Lorraine Leckie, (who amongst other things happens to be Steven Leckie’s ex.)  A winter’s evening of history in a building doomed to a duller fate.  $10.  Be there, and dress nice ’cause we’ll probably shoot it.

And speaking of the soon-to-be potentially Disney-fied version of it’s former self Cameron Tavern, veteran punk, killer bass player and infamous coxman Sam Ferrara is displaying his metal sculpture wares there at his annual holiday show.  Opening night is Thursday, December 9th.  Get there fast and stick a red dot on something, ’cause Sam’s stuff goes fast.

Google artist Teppo Manninen for more neat drawings like this.

Sigh.  It turns out the Paul Cook we met on Facebook isn’t the Paul Cook who drummed for the Sex Pistols, and to avoid any further rumours,  Toronto Paul Cook photoshopped the above nifty graphic, clearly stating his case.   The Last Pogo Jumps Again Due Diligence Department will now launch a full-scale investigation confirming or denying other supposed Facebook pals such as King Kong, Martin Luther King Jr., and Viletone Freddy Pompeii.

King Kong atop the New Yorker Theatre, 1976.  Photo, mural and sculpture by David Andoff. If you look closely, there are ads for The Ramones concerts just behind the hippie selling trinkets.

And if you look really closely, you’ll spot The New Yorker box office, September 1976.  Photo by Brad Foster.

The men’s can at the Horseshoe Tavern after The Last Pogo, December 1, 1978.  Screen shot from The Last Pogo.

Have we reminded you recently that there are still Last Pogo DVDs available? And they’re only $12 a pop!   Just in time for Black Friday, Christmas, Kwanza, Hannukuh, or whatever other kinda thing you might celebrate in the next month or so. Just click on the “store” button to the left, or if you’re in Toronto, head down to Rotate This, Hits ‘n’ Misses, Soundscapes, This Ain’t the Rosedale Library, Criminal Records, Frantic City, Wild East, Circus Books, or Tuneology.