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pogo2posterFINAL2The Last Pogo Jumps Again studies the evolution of Toronto from small town to big city and it’s pop/counter-culture lifestyle during the early and mid-70s.  It centers around the first wave of Toronto punk rock and new-wave music, from the Ramones playing the New Yorker Theatre in ’76 through the police shutting down Teenage Head and causing a riot at the Horseshoe Tavern’s infamous “The Last Pogo” concert in December 1978.

London had the Sex Pistols, New York had the Ramones, but Toronto had a punk movement all it’s own.  The Toronto landscape by the late ’70s was forever changed with the infusion of the DIY/Punk/Alternative Culture(s) movement.  Six years in the making, The Last Pogo Jumps Again successfully explores the whys and wherefores of what was arguably one of the most exciting but misunderstood movements in Toronto’s history.

The DVD contains the 204 minute documentary, plus over a 100 minutes of added material, and a snazzy 24-page booklet.  Check the Shop for details on where you can purchase it.

The Last Pogo (1978) is the documentary that chronicled the last punk rock show at the Horseshoe Tavern when it was run by legendary Toronto promoters The Garys (Topp and Cormier) featuring The Scenics, Cardboard Brains, The Secrets, The Mods, The Ugly, The Viletones and Teenage Head. The Last Pogo was released on DVD in 2008 to great reviews.  Available at the Shop.

Horseshoe Tavern

The Horseshoe Tavern 1978
November 7th, 2015
The Horseshoe 1978. In May, 1978, after they left the New Yorker Theatre, partners Topp, Cormier and Silverman took over management of the Horseshoe Tavern, a dive bar that featured country and western music that was at the down-on-its-luck corner of Spadina and Queen. Opened in the 1940’s by Jack Starr, the Horseshoe had a massive main room that could hold five hundred people, and was a favourite hangout ...
Cinema and Punk
October 22nd, 2013
The opening shot of the title sequence for our film The Last Pogo Jumps Again is a photo of an empty movie theatre, The Allenby, opened in 1936.  It would become The Original 99 Cent Roxy Theatre (just 243 steps from the Greenwood subway station!) in 1972, run by Gary Topp.   As Stephen Perry of the radio show Equalizing X Distort (on the University of Toronto’s radio ...
Edie Steiner Pix
October 17th, 2013
We had a lot of support from the community putting together our film The Last Pogo Jumps Again.  One of our pals, photographer Edie Steiner, gave us a bunch of shots she did at the original Last Pogo concert from December 1 1978.  (There are about 600 photos in the film;  here’s some of them.)  This first shot is the aftermath of the concert, when the ...
Happy Anniversary, Last Pogo
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December 1st, 2011
Yea, so it was 33 years ago that The Garys presented The Last Pogo at Toronto’s venerable Horseshoe Tavern.  Beauty first, safety last was the rule of the night as 800 sweating kids crammed into a bar with a capacity of 500. A fat drunk detective waddled up from the bar around midnight to slur to Teenage Head as they took the stage that they could only ...
Remake/Remodel
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November 6th, 2009
The bulk of The Original 99 Cent Roxy at Greenwood and Danforth has been demolished.   The front lobby remains, as does a stripped-to-the-girders marquee out front.   They’re going to turn it into a convenience store that will adjoin a gas station.   This is the back of the building.  Someone’s spray-painted “Bye Bye Roxy” on the wall. Nash the Slash used to live in the apartment above the lobby.   He was ...
Lux Interior, R.I.P. The way he walked was just the way he walked.
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February 4th, 2009
It’s been a rotten few months in the world of old-skool punk.  In October, Teenage Head singer Frankie Venom died from throat cancer;  in January, Stooges’ guitarist Ron Asheton passed away from a heart attack, and today Lux Interior, frontman of ground-breaking psychobilly punk rockers The Cramps died in an L.A. hospital from a pre-exisiting heart problem.  His wife and original guitarist Poison Ivy issued a statement today. We here at ...
L’ultimo Pogo
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January 8th, 2009
Fast Eddie Smith, photographer and bon vivant, is fashionable in Rome.
Giving up the Ghost of ’78. Or not.
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September 29th, 2008
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 ...
Free beer and meatballs
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May 14th, 2008
Joey Ramone and Colin Brunton, 1989. Photo by Tim Sebert. We hit the NXNE press conference/launch last night, and ran into Last Pogoers Gordie Lewis from Teenage Head and Vince Carlucci from the Cardboard Brains. Fast Eddie Smith snapped shots as we were deluged by a constant flow of eats and beers, and it was all pretty crammed and jammed.
Hey, ho — let’s Pogo!
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April 28th, 2008
Colin Brunton and Tommy Ramone. Kire Paputts snapped this photo after Tommy autographed the bumper sticker. After a month of down-time, we’re back with a slightly slicked up and slimmed down website and all the stuff we’ve been doing since we last left you in March… While we gone, The Scenics snuck into town. With Andy Meyers on the left coast on Salt Spring Island and the other ...
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