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 ...
Commemorative poster courtesy Gord Lewis and Teenage head.
Three years ago today, Teenage Head lead-singer Frankie Venom passed away. Here’s the post we wrote that day. RIP Frank.
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“It is with great sadness that Gord Lewis of Teenage Head announces the tragic passing earlier today of Canadian icon Frank Kerr, a.k.a. Frankie Venom, of natural causes.” So said a spokesperson at Sonic Unyon Records today.
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 ...
A young Don Pyle photographed by Carm Ferrari
Ex Crash Kills Five and Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet Don Pyle kindly sent us some photos of Tyrrana and himself as a younger man, including the one above, by Carm Ferrari. Don wrote Pogo H.Q. a note to remind them that prior to the Ramones second show at the New Yorker, in the spring of ’77, he asked theatre ...
Cover of the book by Maria Raha
“Cinderella punks” is the phrase The Existers’ George Higton used to describe the recent resurgence of first-wave punks. We can only report what’s been going on in Toronto the past couple of years — new material by The Scenics and The Existers; rereleases by Simply Saucer and The Mods; old material redux by Teenage Head; live recordings from 1977 by The Viletones ...
Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain.”
The Dadaists in the 1920’s turned the artworld on its head by doing stuff like turning urinals on their end and calling it Art.
The Velvet Underground 1966; John Cale in the foreground.
“And there would go the secret plot, the piss had missed the hole in the pot, like that ancient teenage dream, from soul to poisoned soul to poisoned soul,” so sang John Cale post ...
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 ...
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 ...
On-line memorabilia traders Molten Core gave us a bootleg of the first Ramones show in Toronto — the precise moment the time-line our project The Last Pogo Jumps Again: A Biased & Incompleat History of Toronto Hamilton London Ontario Punk Rock Circa September 24 1976 to December 1 1978, Part One — starts.
Randy Johnston had had the incredible foresight to interview people in the audience that night (September 24, 1976) ...
Frankie Venom; photo copyright Ross Taylor
It was one year ago today that Teenage Head’s Frankie Venom died. Here’s a re-post of the blog we wrote that night.
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“It is with great sadness that Gord Lewis of Teenage Head announces the tragic passing earlier today of Canadian icon Frank Kerr, a.k.a. Frankie Venom, of natural causes.”
So said a spokesperson at Sonic Unyon Records today.
According to news reports Frankie found out he had ...
The 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.
