Flyer - Wednesday, February 26th, 2014

Zine - EXD - Volume 13, Issue 01

The new issue of the zine is out. This issue features D'Arcy's on-air interview with the TV Freaks back a few years. there was some great stuff in their. TV Freaks have just released their second album so the release of this issue is somewhat timely. Tere is also lots of reviews to be find inside and a complete listing of Not Dead Yet on the back cover. Feel free to download the issue as a PDF.

Flyer - Friday, November 1st - Thursday November 7th, 2013

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 1st @ Big Picture Cinema, 7:30pm (1035 Gerard St East)
THE LAST POGO JUMPS AGAIN
***
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 2nd @ Big Picture Cinema, 7:30pm (1035 Gerard St East)
THE LAST POGO JUMPS AGAIN
***
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 3rd @ Big Picture Cinema, 3:30pm (1035 Gerard St East)
THE LAST POGO JUMPS AGAIN
***
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 3rd @ Big Picture Cinema, 7:30pm (1035 Gerard St East)
THE LAST POGO JUMPS AGAIN
***
MONDAY NOVEMBER 4th @ Big Picture Cinema, 7:30pm (1035 Gerard St East)
THE LAST POGO JUMPS AGAIN
***
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 5th @ Big Picture Cinema, 7:30pm (1035 Gerard St East)
THE LAST POGO JUMPS AGAIN
***
WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 6th @ Big Picture Cinema, 7:30pm (1035 Gerard St East)
THE LAST POGO JUMPS AGAIN
***
WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 7th @ Big Picture Cinema, 7:30pm (1035 Gerard St East)
THE LAST POGO JUMPS AGAIN

The Sound of your City drive

 

Tonight's EXD's portion of CIUT's funding drive. The theme is "The Sound of your City" and so as a way breathing life into the theme tonight's show will feature only Toronto bands. there are so many great bands in the city at the moment and so many from the past. Appreciate the sound of the scene that gets kicked around by the rest of the country. In addition we have a few pledge incentives that can only be gotten by calling in between 10:00pm and midnight on Sunday night. Those gifts include:

- 2 x Last Pogo prize packages (Thanks to Colin Brunton, which includes a DVD of the original film, a t-shirt, and that amazing poster designed by Rick Trembles)
- 2 x brand new Arson CD
- 2 x Sluts on 45 prize packs (which includes the ep, a CD, and a pass to their shows)
- 1 x Hassler prize pack (which includes a t-shirt and test pressings for both eps)
- a few copies of the first pressing of the Left for Dead / Acrid split buzzsaw LP without covers

You can call 416-946-7800 or 1-888-204-8976 or pledge on-line at http://www.ciut.fm/about/donate-today/.

We need the money for a new transmitter. We have been plagued by breakdowns on the production studio and as a result had to replace a new computer and we have had steady interruptions by construction crews around the station that have cut into our broadcast lines. This has happened a couple of times in the last few months. We could use your help.

Radio - Sunday, October 20th, 2013

Tonight's show featured Colin Brunton and Kire Paputts who are about to theatrically release their new film "The Last Pogo Jumps Again". The new film fills in the back story to the original film, The Last Pogo and tells in a more a comprehensive manner some of the stories stories of the early Toronto punk scene. Treat Me Like Dirt should be required reading before seeing this film, but you will still get a lot out of the film. The film will be screening at Toronto's oldest cinema, the Big Picture (1035 Gerard Street), on Friday November 1st for a week. Colin and Kire re-live the experience of putting the film together and tell us some of the stories behind this labour of love. Upon seeing the film in the theatre my reaction was this is a complete telling of the Toronto punk scene, this is an accurate telling as it captures some of the hard stories to tell and damn is there a lot of great music from this city. You should see it and you can hear the interview above or download an MP3 file here.

DEMICS - New York City (Ready)

Interview with Colin Brunton and Kire Paputts (CIUT)

FORGOTTEN REBELS - In Love with the System (Star)

Interview with Colin Brunton and Kire Paputts (CIUT)

THE DIODES - China Doll (CBS)

Interview with Colin Brunton and Kire Paputts (CIUT)

TEENAGE HEAD - Tearin' me Apart (Self-Released)

Flyer - Saturday, March 23rd, 2013

Colin Brunton in MRR

Click for download

This interview with Colin Brunton was done on our radio show initially. Colin Brunton is a filmaker who made the movie the Last Pogo. The Last Pogo captured the early Toronto punk scene as they were getting kicked out of their digs at the Horseshoe Tavern. Many from that era consider those shows at the death of punk in Toronto. It was a significant event nonetheless. the show featured performances by the Ugly, the Secrets, the Mods, the Viletones, the Ugly, and Teenage Head getting the plug pulled by the Fire Department. The interview was conducted by Greg Dick of the Dream Dates and was printed by Maximumrocknroll in the April 2010 edition. Copies of this issue are available and copies are available at http://maximumrocknroll.com/subscribe/.

VOLUME 9, ISSUE 1

This issue came out in February 2009 and featured an interview with Career Suicide. There was a tour diary of Imants Krumins annual pilgrammage to Japan. Johnny Bubblegum writes some thoughts on the Last Pogo reunion show. A review of Chris Walter's "Personality Crisis: Warm Beer and Wild Times". And there are reviews, show listings, and a flyer page.

Flyer - the Last Pogo DVD

Interview: Colin Brunton (Director of the Last Pogo)

The first wave of Toronto punk came to a crashing conclusion on December 2nd, 1978 at Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern with the Last Pogo. The Horseshoe grew uncomfortable with this new genre of music that were being booked by the promoters the Garys. As a result they gave the Garys and the punk scene their walking papers. They had a couple of gigs that presided over two nights, the first featuring the Toronto punk bands and the second featuring the scene’s artier bands. More of the OCA crowd on the second night. Anyways, we got an opportunity to talk to Colin Brunton who caught this event on film resulting in the incredible twenty six minute movie “The Last Pogo”, which has remained underground for the last thirty years. The film has been just released to the public for the first time on DVD. This interview was conducted by Greg Dick.

Where did you grow up?
Mostly around the Bathurst and St. Clair area.
So you’re a Toronto boy.
Yep I started off in the Beaches then I spent a couple of years in Scarborough and then the West end and when I was 13 I went out to the east end where I remained.
Did you go to high school out in the East end?
Yep. East York Collegiate.
Would that have been the same school that the Blake Street Boys and the UGLY would have went to?
I don’t think so. I think the Blake Street Boys probably would have been at eastern Commerce at Jones and Danforth, which to this day is one deadly high school. It’s a scary place to go to I think.
What kind of bands were you getting into in high school?
This would have been the early 70s so I still loved LED ZEPPELIN. I hate to admit it but I was into EDGAR WINTER. I also liked bands like HUMBLE PIE. My real secret shame is JETHRO TULL. Loved ALICE COOPER. I think the bands that I really liked, that I actually got into when I was twelve or thirteen. That was ALICE COOPER, the YARDBIRDS. It started off with the British invasion and opened up to the ANIMALS and the KINKS and all that stuff and when I got into high school it was more like getting into LED ZEP. The musical thing for me in high school was scoring this gig with the original 99 cent Roxy. Gary Topp hired me to work there. That’s when I got really turned on to tons of awesome music and film and culture and art and stuff. The best one there was finding out about ROXY MUSIC. Gary Topp and Cormier, even to this day when I talk to either of them their knowledge of music and their passion for music and really digging deep is just incredible. They have always had this passion. We will be talking about the Garys later on in this show.
So that could answer the next question I have for you is what was your first exposure to punk rock?
A lot of us saw pictures first before we saw bands. It depends on how far you want to bring punk rock back. I’m talking spiky hair, safety pins… I don’t think the spiky hair started until ’79 or ’80, but my first thing I guess was …discounting an IGGY or VELVET UNDERGROUND would have been the RAMONES. When they came in September of ’76. Obviously months before that we were all getting a taste of it. Gary used to show this movie called “Blank Generation” at midnight shows at the New Yorker. I worked at the New Yorker as well. It was a film by Amos Po and what it was this real kind of documentary on the New York punk scene so you get a little taste of the DEAD BOYS and the RAMONES, TALKING HEADS, TELEVISION. All that and you’d have to ask Gary himself this question but I think that’s what got him keenly interested and then the first couple of shows he brought were the RAMONES and JOHN CALE and then everything just kind of changed.

I started seeing pictures of a lot of the New York bands in Roxscene before they actually had records out. I know the movie “Blank Generation” was kind of interesting because the audio is not in actual sync with the footage but it was the only way to see these bands at the time unless you lived in New York which we didn’t. And if you were at the New Yorker at midnight watching “Blank Generation” and smoking weed or being on some other thing sometimes you couldn’t really tell if it was out of sync.
How did you meet the Garys?
I met Gary Topp. I was a high school kid. The 99 cent Roxy was the cool theatre to go to. Not just for awesome movies. There was double bills, different movies every night, and it was a fun place to go to. The Garys presentation was unparallel. As soon as you walked in the door the show started. When you got into the theatre itself the music he played. Playing trailers without sound but with rock music. It was a buzz. So I hung out there and what happened was it started getting really busy when Gary brought “Reefer Madness” and he offered to pay us twenty bucks a night to watch the doors and watch the back doors and make sure people weren’t sneaking in and it just kind of evolved from there. I continued to work with Gary there and then at the Horseshoe. To work at the Roxy theatre in high school was considered pretty awesome at the time. The other rep thing was that is was the movie theatre in Toronto where you could smoke dope. We experimented with marijuana there quite often.
We had a theatre similar to that one in Hamilton called the Delta Theatre, which was along the same lines as Roxy but not quite as cool because it didn’t involve the Garys. I never went to the Roxy. Where was the Roxy Theatre?
Greenwood and Danforth. It was a beautiful old art deco theatre on the south east corner of Greenwood and Danforth. After Gary left it went through a couple of management changes then it turned into a cokehead disco where one of my cab driver buddies got his throat slit one night. Then it turned into a multi-plex favouring East Indian movies. It has been dead for the last couple of years and I believe that now they are going to keep the facade and build a convenience store / gas station complex thing there. They are and there was a piece in the Globe and Mail about six months ago and there was a picture of Gary standing out front of it. The entrance of it looked really really cool. It was too much fun. The old theatres are just so beautiful. Now these things look like they are made out of lego. And your job there was taking tickets and It was pretty loose.
You were hanging out with the Garys making sure everything was running smooth.
Gary Cormier wasn’t in the picture at the Roxy so it was Gary Topp and a couple of other partners who didn’t stick around that long and then this guy named Jeff Silverman who was this guy from Brooklyn who came in and helped Gary run it. My job was great. It was taking tickets and then as soon as you took the tickets go in and watch the movie and just make sure you were out for the break or occasionally you would have to get people out of the theatre. We didn’t tolerate people who drank or dealt so they could smoke all the dope they wanted to but if we heard the clink of a bottle we would be down there figuring out who it was and casually ask them to leave the theatre and occasionally would have to talk down people that were having bad acid trips. Our failsafe was guys that hung out at the pool hall across the street so if we ever got in big trouble. I remember once I had to throw this guy out and he was on some nasty drug and I had to sit on his chest and he looked at me and he just started rising up and I thought “Fuck, I’m going to get killed here”. Then Ducky and Spike and the boys from the pool hall came across and saved us. It was quite the place. Sounds like there might have been guys from Happy Days there with names like that.
The crowd that you were seeing at the theatre, would you say that they might have been the foundation of the future punk scene?
A lot of the regulars ended up going to the New Yorker ended up going to the Horseshoe and it wasn’t so much a clique. It was a fantastic place to get this really wide taste of culture. It wasn’t necessarily punk. Gary would show Roger Corman movies one night and the next night a Bunuel double bill and always new music that was up to date. He would just hear about bands before anyone else did. The kind of creativity it encouraged may have planted a seed in certain people’s minds that continued on. You can’t measure how much influence Gary has had on the counter culture. Gary went on to spearhead the Toronto punk scene and I always found there was parallels between cinema, literature and the first generation punk scene. It was really stylish. There was a lot of intellect involved with so many of the artists. I found that there were parallels. I noticed in Hamilton the people at the Delta would pop up at Club David’s and the Crash ‘n Burn. Well they are all like minded people who are interested in lots of different types of culture. They are curious and they are looking for something a little cutting edge, which I think is what a lot of those rep theatre type places were.
Was there ever any gigs at the Roxy?
Probably one of the best shows I ever saw was the first gig I ever saw there by an awesome band called BREATHLESS, which featured a very young … he must have been maybe seventeen years old, NASH THE SLASH, playing his electric viola. Later on I remember was a ten minute concert by NASH THE SLASH where he sat down … I think it was his premier gig as the masked NASH THE SLASH and he did a live soundtrack to “A Chien in de la lo”. You have to know that when people went to any weekend show at the Roxy they were ripped out of their minds. I remember sitting watching NASH and watching the audience and everyone was leaning forward in their seats watching the movie and their jaws were all opened. They couldn’t believe this. It was unreal. He had a candelabra set up. It was fantastic.
Did the DISHES not play there? Was there a West Side story thing?
I don’t think so.
Why did the Theatre close?
I think it was the rent. They didn’t own the building. From what I can recall being a little stoned seventeen year old kid I think it was a matter of however successful Gary was there the landlords would up the rent and I don’t think they ever got a piece of the snack bar. That’s how you make money at a movie theatre. The tickets were 99 cents and the thing would sell out every weekend. After a while they just couldn’t make any money so they moved on to the New Yorker and leased the place off of ….

There is a lot to be said for charging twenty five bucks for a coke and a snickers bar. Where did the Garys re-locate to?

So after the Roxy they got the New Yorker theatre. Gary got the place all set up and stuff. It was kind of the same deal. Different movies every night, midnight shows stuff like that. NASH THE SLASH was the first manager and I was his assistant for about the first year and we would take turns going to the basement having a puff and then taking off to Funland to play pinball. Sorry Gary. We weren’t really on the ball all the time. I remember one day Gary and Jeff needed to get the snack bar fixed and they called in this carpenter and this long haired bearded guy came in and he did an excellent job and him and Gary just hit it off and that was Gary Cormier and he had some experience managing ROUGH TRADE, but had gotten out of the business and I think meeting Gary Topp they were kindred spirits and both got excited about doing this stuff and the next thing you know they started bringing in all these bands. It was very exciting. And the New Yorker was on Yonge Street. Yeah just south of Charles.

How did the New Yorker crowd differ from the Roxy crowd?

A lot of the same people would come there. On weekends we would let people smoke dope there. I remember when they made a smoking rule in Toronto that a certain amount of the theatre you couldn’t smoke in and Gary put up a sign that said “Smoking only in the first twenty rows”. You never knew if it was the first twenty when you walked in or the first twenty from the front of the theatre. It still had enough anarchy to keep it edgy. It was funny the ways those laws were back then. Really how would that save anyone from second hand smoke?

Would you say this is where the Garys started getting into booking more bands?

That’s where it happened. I am pretty certain the first one was the RAMONES although it could have been the ELLY AKBAR KHAN, a sitar player. It was one of those two and then JOHN CALE was probably the second or third person. It was all just mind blowing. The thing about the New Yorker that was awesome was that it was a small theatre with 500 seats and so any seat was a great seat. What made it more intimate was the fact that there was no back stage and so the bands would have to walk from the basement through the lobby and down the aisle. So often you would just hear this buzz starting because everyone in the back would say “Here comes John Cale” or whatever and you would hear the applause and then they would leave the same way. They would have to walk up the aisle at the end of the show. JOHN CALE played their when the album “Guts” came out or maybe it was the ep. The one with “Memphis” on it. The first time the RAMONES played was with JOHNNY LOVESIN. Tell us about that show. It was great. I don’t know if you can get a show much more exciting than the first RAMONES show. Gary booked JOHNNY LOVESIN and god bless the guy. He knew it was tacky and it was so tacky that it was hilarious and it kind of fit the evening. He did a great solo thing. It was JOHNNY LOVESIN AND HIS INVISIBLE BAND which means it was JOHNNY LOVESIN. The big theatrical high point of his set was this Jimmy Hendrix poster. I can’t even remember how it appeared but somehow this Jimmy Hendrix poster would appear on stage and that was his big deal. And he was great. What balls to go and open for this band that everybody was so excited about. I don’t know. When they first came out some people were excited. And as a kid I personally wanted not to like them. For some reason I thought they looked …..I just didn’t get it. If you read Circus Magazine or Cream magazine or Roxscene this is the best band of the year and the worst band of the year, but then when I heard it I couldn’t stop listening to it. I didn’t see the first show. I went the second time when they had the DEAD BOYS opening for them. We were into it. We were excited. They didn’t let us down. Three shows man. Five bucks a ticket. Three shows. The Garys probably never made a nickel off of it. They couldn’t sell out the three shows. I think they did a total of 1,300 tickets. Peter Gabriel walked out after the first ten minutes of the show complaining about how this was bullshit. We were thinking this is unbelievable. I am sure he regrets it now. It was such an assault and it was so different and fast and crazy than anything you had heard up until that point.

The second time they came the DEAD BOYS played with them. Was there more people the second time around?

I am pretty certain that that one was sold out. That was the DEAD BOYS, the POLES, and the RAMONES. The nasty DEAD BOYS were there. There was JOHN CALE, there was the ELECTRIC CHAIRS with WAYNE COUNTY, who I am pretty sure was still Wayne at that time. I didn’t see that show. What was that show like? Yep, he was Wayne. He hadn’t turned into Jayne yet. He was either a wonderful woman or a complete gentleman or a bit of both. It was a great show. I think actually the guy who opened for Wayne County oddly enough was MENDLESON JOE who came out dressed as a nurse. He was in the spirit of the whole thing. I had a great story about Wayne County that night. They couldn’t afford a hotel and ended up sleeping in the theatre.

The story I heard was they stayed in there and watched the Rocky Horror Picture Show and apparently it was the first time they had ever seen it, which I thought was pretty cool if the story was true because they were New York City and all.

I don’t know if that’s true. We might have shown the Rocky Horror Picture Show a couple of times and Gary got so sick of the audience and bored of showing the same movie that he didn’t show it that much. I think other people picked up on that. Other people ran the Roxy after they left. Yeah there was a lot of midnight shows and they did it all over the place. I don’t know if Wayne County slept in the theatre that night.

What about the VIBRATORS / GODDO show?

I probably was and I can’t remember it.

That is the one where everybody left the theatre when GODDO opened for the VIBRATORS and Greg Goddowitz came out to the lobby and says “Thanks a lot Toronto”.

He was very upset with the fact that no one stayed. Greg used to come to the Roxy. I met Greg when he used to stumble into the Roxy Theatre. And contrary to what a lot of people thought about GODDO he was actually a big supporter of the punk scene. He was really into it. I think secretly he wished he had a punk band instead of GODDO.

Well somehow I think GODDO and NASH THE SLASH and to a certain extent MAX WEBSTER for some people weren’t despised by the punk scene and I have a bootleg of the first RAMONES show and the person who recorded it interviewed a few people in the audience and they talked to Greg Goddowitz and first he said how can the singer from Brooklyn have such a great English accent and then he ended up by saying the RAMONES are god. He was right the second time. I believe the DEAD BOYS came and headlined their own show later.

Yeah. They came quite a few times. I interviewed Cheetah for this project that I have been working on for a couple of years a couple of summers ago at the cemetery at Winchester and Sackville and Gary and Jeff got me to clean up the dressing room and I would take this muriatic acid and splash it on the wall and then hide my nose away from it then scrub it with this brush and try and clean this whole brick wall. We tried to make this crappy basement into a dressing room and we got it looking okay and the DEAD BOY come and trashed it and I called Cheetah on it when I Interviewed him and it was funny because he was just so apologetic. “I’m so sorry did we really destroy it?” “Yeah you did.” “I’m so sorry man”. They were bad boys. They were pretty rowdy. They played in Toronto a lot. I was talking to somebody about that today. They were here all the time. I remember some of the Horseshoe gigs where they just had the two roadies on each side of the stage and if you spat on them they would point to the person in the audience that spat and that person would usually be pummeled.

Do you remember the CRAMPS New Years Eve show at the New Yorker? Were you at that?
I was probably working that. I remember seeing the CRAMPS a few times. I remember seeing them at the Horseshoe. I remember seeing them in New York at Max’s Kansas City. I can’t really remember them at the New Yorker. They played the same night that TEENAGE HEAD and THE UGLY were playing across the street at Club David’s and that was the night that Club David’s burned down. Right.

Why did the New Yorker close?

I think it was the same thing as the Roxy. The guy kept hiking the rent and I think at that point Gary had it with films and wanted to get more into the music thing so they discovered this place they could lease. During the time that the New Yorker was happening what other clubs or hang outs were going back then? It is hard to track it all chronologically. So in ’76 or ’77 I thin the first one that popped up was the Colonial Underground and there was the Turning Point, David’s and I believe that the Crash ‘n Burn didn’t start until the following summer. Then it seemed like every so often a new club would pop up over night. You would hear go to so and so Yonge Street and there would be a band playing there and bring your own beer or buy beer almost like a speak. They would last for maybe a weekend and then they would disappear. There was a lot of speakeasies that started to get rolling.

So who was the first Toronto punk band you ever saw?

I remember me and Gary and Gary after a shift at the New Yorker. It was come on let’s close it up and check out Steven Leckie’s new band at the Colonial Underground. We had known Steve. What was Steve’s band called? They were called the VILETONES. Not the dialtones. The VILETONES. It was something to behold. It was like nothing you had ever seen before.

Would it be safe to say that they were the first Toronto punk band?

I think so. I can’t really think of anyone else who came before them. I think Steve really was the first.

Did you see them before you saw TEENAGE HEAD?

Yeah. Definitely. They would be the local band to establish the punk scene in Toronto. Yeah. I mean I don’t know the exact date. Steve would tell you, but the RAMONES were September 24th, 1976 and it seemed like a week or two later this whole thing started and all of a sudden you started seeing handbills on telephone poles in the city which you had never seen before. All of a sudden there was this thing happening. I’m pretty certain Steve was the first. It was an awesome show. It was one of my favourite shows in my life. It was just so anarchic or chaotic.

Who did you see after that? How did the chain start going down the line? Did you see TEENAGE HEAD after that or the DISHES, the DIODES …??

I don’t know. First of all I work at the New Yorker and so our big nights for working was the weekend so for a lot of that first year I was contained to stuff that was happening at the New Yorker, which believe me was fine. Every so often if I had a night off I would go to the Turning Point or an after hours or check out the Crash n Burn or the Beverley. I hate to forget some of these awesome places. For my experience with the original bands that came through and all the locals that popped up I was pretty much contained to the New Yorker, just if only because it was my gig. I couldn’t take the night off sort of thing.

Were you more into the punk scene or the OCA scene?

It was a bit of both. I loved the RAMONES and DEAD BOYS sort of stuff, but I also had a real love for bands like TELEVISION and TALKING HEADS and stuff like that who all started out at the same time. I also like the so called New Wave as well as punk.

And during this time did you get down to New York?

Yeah. Some of it is a blur, but I did go down there a few times. The first time I went down with a couple of buddies. We went to see a New Years Eve show and it was TELEVISION, PATTI SMITH, and the JOHN CALE BAND and the thrill of that was having really shitty seats and then us thinking we are in New York, lets just bribe somebody. I slipped an usher twenty bucks and we got first row seats in the balcony and the thing that was awesome about that.

Where was that show?

The Palace maybe. There was a hotel called the Palace. The Palladium maybe. It looked like a two or three thousand seat place and we had these awesome front row seats in the balcony for twenty bucks extra. The coolest thing was at five to midnight these very smart and clever New Yorkers came to take their seats and the ushers wouldn’t let them get their seats back. I remember going another time and we crashed at someone’s apartment where there must have been fifteen people all from Toronto just crashing at this place. That’s when I really did the rounds of hitting CBGBs and Max’s and the Mud Club. That was on 77 White Street. Who knows? I always got lost when I went to New York. I got to see the CRAMPS at Max’s Kansas City was unbelievable.

A spectacle even to this day.

Yeah. Totally.

When did the idea hit you that you could become a filmmaker?

I think about one second before I said “Hey Gary. I want to make a film about this Last Pogo thing”. So that was a little later on from the time that we are talking about. I was fumbling around trying to figure out what I wanted to do and I wasn’t super ambitious or anything. I knew it was going to be art or something. I took a filmmaker’s weekend course at this place called the Toronto Filmmaker’s Co-op and made a little movie with Elizabeth Aiken in it called “Bollocks” It was a little five minute thing where we went to David’s and shot the VILETONES and then we just shot some goofy stuff. We re-created the front cover of the first STRANGLERS album with a rat and I made one of those giant safety pin that you could wear like an arrow through the head kind of gag and that kind of gave me a taste for it. I started driving cabs and one night I pulled up in front of the Horseshoe to pop in and say hi to Gary and I heard Andrew Paterson talking to the Garys saying “Hey this Last Pogo sounds like a great idea”.

And Andrew Paterson was a member of the GOVERNMENT.

Yeah. I just heard him muttering in his way and I was pretty certain that I may have been experimenting with marijuana in my cab that night and I grandly announced without really thinking about it “Hey that sounds like a really cool thing to make a film about.” And I left it at that. I finished my shift and the next morning I got up and it still sounded like a good idea and I pulled it together somehow.

THE GOVERNMENT didn’t play on the second night of the Last Pogo to my recollection.

No. I remember seeing them at places like the Turning Point and there was some place like a flat on Yonge Street. They played a lot of booze cans. I loved that band. I used to have all their material. In the short film “Bollocks” there were little shots of Mike Nightmare in there. I think his head pops in there for a split second. Yeah it could be and I only realized that …funnily enough Steve Leckie gave me this DVD of all his material that he has to date and I lots a copy of “Bollocks” and the last shot is a kid pretending to hang himself for the camera and it was Wayne Brown who has been into the scene and was in a band with Freddie Pompeii in New York called the IMMACULATE HEARTS. And Chris Hate and all the VILETONES are there. I remember when I first met Wayne he would always have a pile of records that he would bring with him to all the gigs and he would be the first guy to have all the latest British imports and that is usually where I had my first exposure to seeing any records that I didn’t already own.

Where did the Gary’s go after the New Yorker?

At that point Gary got more interested in booking bands instead of doing the movie thing. They found this bar called the Horseshoe Tavern and so they loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverley kind of deal.

Who played at the Horseshoe the first night?

That’s a good question. I have no idea. Obviously that didn’t stand out.

So you did work at the Horseshoe?

Gary was the most awesome guy to work for. When I started working for him I was seventeen and it was just a big influence on me. To this day the way I treat my crews on film and TV shows is much the way Gary treated me. Do your job and relax and get it done. It was very loose. By the time we got to the Horseshoe he asked me if I wanted to work here and I was “Of course. So what do I do Gary?” he was like “I don’t know. Whatever?” “Do you want me to take tickets?” “Oh no. We’ll have people for that”. “Do you want me to bus tables?” “No there is people that do that.” “So what do I do?” “I don’t know. Just hang out.” So I just kind of hung out and smoked lots of pot in the kitchen. Then I started making the handbills. The Horseshoe used to be almost twice as big. On the east side of the Horseshoe there was this whole other bar that was usually empty or we would go over there to get high and then come back. The way space is in Toronto these days you just don’t have that. Yeah the other half is where the restaurant was. It was a little Greek restaurant.

I think it is where the magazine store is now.

Yeah. So it was pretty cavernous. It was a huge place. I did occasionally take tickets and I made all the posters and then I went and stapled them up around town. Sometimes it would cost more to make the poster….back in those days when you made a handbill you had to cut with scissors and paste with glue and if I had white letraset I would scratch it to make it look distressed and then if I wanted to make it bigger or if I wanted to make it black instead I would have to get on my bike and go to this place called the stat house in Yorkville, drop it off, tell them what I wanted, come back either three hours or a day later, get the new artwork, spend ten bucks on that, and occasionally realize I made a really stupid typo. It would take forever. I think they pad me fifty bucks a handbill, which back ion those days was fairly generous and sometimes I would end up paying more to make the handbill.

So what were some of your favourite gigs at the Horseshoe?

One of my favourites was EDIE THE EGG LADY. I could not find a track or place to download a song. Edie was famous for being in pink flamingos. She was the obese elderly woman who sat in the crib and waiting for the egg man to come by. She came to town and she had some poetry and it was one of those spontaneous catch lightening in a bottle things. The Garys arranged for the VILETONES to back her up so it was Chris Hate, Motor Mike, and Freddie Pompeii and they met Edie that afternoon and she told them waited she wanted to do and it was awesome. She did her big hit “Hey Punks Get off the Grass” which I so tried to bring here tonight. Another one I really loved was SUICIDE.

Was that the night with DESTROY ALL MONSTERS and TEENAGE HEAD? The triple bill that went three nights.

I’m not sure. The SUICIDE show that stands out to me is the one that they may have done it by themselves. There was very few people at the Horseshoe. There was maybe only a couple of dozen people. Alan Vega is pretty intense and we were standing there and we had grins ear to ear watching him because the guy was just so entertaining and so different. Every so often you would get these stragglers that would wonder in. I remember there was this table of what you might perceive as University jocks sitting at this table having a few beer and yapping off to Alan Vega and at one point he just jumped off the stage and he walked up to the table and he put his face about one inch away from the loudest jocks face and keeping in tune with Martin Rev’s solo synthesizer screamed “I want to fucking kill you” and the guy never said another word that night. He was kind of transfixed. The CONTORTIONS were awesome. The CRAMPS were great. The STRANGLERS. The thing was that you look at the handbills from those days and there was nine months, seven nights a week. It is hard to believe.

I have never seen a scene as strong as that in my life and I am sure it was the same thing going on in London, New York, later on in L.A. and San Fran. I have yet to see anything as crazy and cool as that. And by the way Alan Vega just celebrated his seventieth birthday. Did you notice that the scene started changing during the Horseshoe days? Now that we are coming from the Roxy to the New Yorker now we are at the Horseshoe. Was the crowd changing? Was it still as special?
Yeah. I think it was. It was only a number of years and I can’t recall thinking that we had really different looking people coming in or people with a different attitude. I left the Horseshoe after the Last Pogo.
I thought it was the peak where it was still good. It was pretty consistent. Everybody that should have been there was there. It was busy. You had your curiosity seekers, but anyone who was there to be entertained got the crap kicked out of them by the Blake Street Boys. If they were there for genuine reasons I think everybody felt comfortable.
I noticed more of a change after the Horseshoe in 1980. The Pogo thing was in ’78 and ’79 - ’80 when they got to the Edge I started noticing, and someone can fact check this, but people were starting to get into harder drugs. The drug of choice back in the punk days was beer, uppers, and pot. Around the early 80’s it was getting into coke and heroin and stuff like that and that was getting a bit more nasty.
I remember when the HEARTBREAKERS played down there and I went to get JOHNNY THUNDERS’ autograph and he asked me if I had any dope and I was quickly looking around to se if any of my friends had a joint, but he made it clear that this wasn’t the kind of dope he was looking for.
Also in the 80s there was this odd period where the cops were very happy to bust dealers. I remember it happening and then all of a sudden the people who liked to get high by smoking pot found out that you couldn’t get pot anymore, but you could get coke really easily. I know a few people who did a switch right there and it messed them up.
What did Gary say about TEENAGE HEAD and SUICIDE?
Okay so what happened at that show was when TEENAGE HEAD were playing the place was jam packed and as soon as they were done everyone left and that’s why there was only a dozen or so people there when SUICIDE came on.
The Horseshoe obviously grew uncomfortable with the punk scene and the promoters the Garys with the scene that they had created there. Were there any signs of this or did it just come out of the blue that they wanted this punk stuff out of the Horseshoe?
I don’t know. I wasn’t involved with their business end of everything. I know there was always tension and I think a lot of it came down to money. I don’t know the details but I remember this guy who may have been the owner or the manager of the building but when Gary still worked with Jeff Silverman he drove a car that looked like an undercover cop car and one night this guy left the Horseshoe and we got in Jeff’s car and decided to tail this guy and we ended up going through laneways south of Queen off of Spadina and then he started trying to take off from us and we would whip around a corner and follow him some more. We finally let him go. I think it was Jeff just trying to make someone paranoid. But I don’t really know why.
I went there quite a bit. I lived in Hamilton but it just seemed to come out of the blue from my memory of things. I remember feeling “Wow. Where are we going to go now? And what’s gonna happen?” I was upset about that. So considering if this did or did not come out of the blue was there a lot of preparation went into organizing the Last Pogo weekend?
Well as far as the Garys did I am sure it was pretty massive. They had twelve to fourteen bands.
But did they have a lot of time or was this something they did in two days?
I can’t remember. That is a good Gary question.
How did the Garys choose the line ups for each night? Obviously they geared the first night as the punk night and the second night was more the artsy new wave night.
Again, I don’t know. It could have been some of there more favourite bands, but I am not really positive. And the bands that did play were really kind of like regulars at the club and so that could have been a part of it but I’m not positive.
By this time two of the bands had played on the punk night that were favourites of mine aside from TEENAGE HEAD obviously. The VILETONES and the UGLY. By the time the VILETONES, who weren’t even scheduled to play, they ended up pirating the stage, by the time the VILETONES played this was a different VILETONES. How did this version differ from the version that you saw at the Underground Colonial?
The night of the Last Pogo, the VILETONES, the UGLY, and the SECRETS were all kind of …. There was a bit if musical chairs. The SECREYS was Freddie Pompeii, Motor Mike, Chris Hate, and John Hamilton who was from the DIODES with Freddie fronting. Basically the band that I saw back up Steven Leckie at the Colonial except I don’t think Chris Hate was in the band. There was a guy named Jackie Hate maybe. But I feel like Chris was one of the true original VILETONES. The band that Leckie had was Screamin’ Sam, Tony Torcher, and I can’t remember who the guitar player was.
The guitar player was the guy from BRUTUS.
Cameron.
He was a temporary guy who was later replaced by Steve Koch.
So Steve and Tony Torcher and Screamin Sam really were more like the UGLY and the UGLY just had this band that they put together in the previous few weeks. I have to admit that they weren’t the best representations of each of those bands. I do think they put on a great show but it wasn’t the original line ups. In a way it wasn’t like the real thing although they were still great. It wasn’t if you were to peg the best UGLY or VILETONES performance. You wouldn’t pick that night. You would pick a different group of players.
Were there any bands wanting to play at the Last Pogo that were turned down?
The one I remember of course was Mickey de Sadist from the FORGOTTEN REBELS …
…who does a cameo in the film.
Yeah well we finished the shooting of the thing and we thought we should get a few interviews with people and we went down to New Rose which was the punk record / clothing store run by Freddie Pompeii and Margarita Passion. We interviewed the both of them and Mickey was there and Mickey was jokingly bitching about the fact that they didn’t get to play the Last Pogo and so we decided to interview him and he was great. He held up his FORGOTTEN REBELS album and told us to our face that the Last Pogo was one big farce and it was stupid and did a MODS impersonation and we thought we have to keep this guy in for sure now. He was just too funny. I’m sure there was other bands that wanted to play.
The VILETONES on that night they did pirate the stage and weren’t expected to play. They took TEENAGE HEAD’s gear. I know Sam was playing Steve Mann’s bass upside down which Sam had some trouble with, but they still pulled off a fantastic set.
Plus it’s always good when you do play a bass guitar to plug it in.
I saw them at the Colonial one night and I remember he couldn’t keep the bass plugged in. I’ll never forget that night. It didn’t hurt their performance that’s for sure. So the VILETONES pirated the stage, were you surprised that they came out of nowhere?
I don’t remember very much of that evening at all. I was trying to make this film with a few camera people and I was a little shell shocked. I don’t recall very many moments of that whole evening. I remember getting pushed outside. I remember talking my way past the fire chief or the cop or whoever it was that told us we had to leave and apart from that I am drawing a blank on the whole evening. I’m glad I made the film of it so I can remember it.
I was going in and out a lot that night. I found that there was so many people there that there were little cool corners and sections of the club where there were familiar faces and then there was tons of faces that I had never seen before. It seemed like there was some publicity for that. There was tons of people there who were definitely tourists. That was the impression I had.
Yeah. I think they are the ones that tore the place to bits.
So the VILETONES, were they originally offered to play and then turned it down and then surprised everybody?
I don’t know.
Did any other bands turn down the gig that were offered to play?
Yeah. The CARDBOARD BRAINS initially didn’t want to be lumped in with this so called punk / new wave scene and I think Gary had to sit down and chat with Vince Carlucci and John Paul Young and say “Are you guys crazy? We’re gonna record this. We’re gonna make a film of this.” They decided to come on board. I can’t think of anyone else that refused.
The place was way oversold. Did you expect that kind of a turn out?
I think everyone in the scene was pretty excited about the gig. Not that it was the last punk show, but it was a pretty decent line up. To see seven bands in a night for $5.00. I think we thought it was probably going to sell out we just didn’t expect that there was going to be an extra three hundred people that would make their way through the doors. It ended up being pretty chaotic but again I don’t even remember where I was standing that night nor what I was doing. I think I was behind the sound board and occasionally walking up to a camera person.
I was right in front of the bands that I really dug or I was socializing and hanging outside.
The only think I really remember is being out on the sidewalk and hearing the riot and thinking I can’t believe I am out here on the sidewalk with all the camera guys. And then I was thinking where is the sound guy. And someone said he was still inside recording.
Did the scene change much from the Last Pogo to the last RAMONES gigs at the New Yorker? Now there is a time span so you are seeing almost two years.
When the RAMONES came in ’76 I remember when the show was over me and a couple of buddies that worked there were thinking “Wow they had black jeans.” You couldn’t buy black jeans in Toronto. There was one place by the Beverley Tavern. There was a big concern about “Man we can’t be hippies. We can’t wear blue jeans. We gotta get black jeans from somewhere.” So one of the differences by the time the Pogo came out that people were getting a bit more into the whole fashion thing. For the first couple of years Toronto wasn’t as fashion conscious as New York or London were and I think after that it changed a bit more. But I think it was pretty much the same audience.
New Rose would get the odd thing but it would get scooped up pretty fast. My mom was a really good sewer so she could take all my bell bottoms in and make them straight legs.
Mickey de Sadist told me that around that time he had black dress pants and he had to sew them all up to make them straight legs. I think Mickey even used safety pins to tighten some of ankles up.
And with leathers, you know what? I couldn’t afford to buy a black leather jacket. I couldn’t afford one until I was forty.
And back then they were a little bit hard to find. I had to get mine at a Harley Davidson shop in Hamilton and it was expensive and they just weren’t around that much. If you had one it was pretty radical. Who do you think had the strongest performances that night?
The first night, as much as I loved certain bands there I think the best performance was the SECRETS. I interviewed Freddie about this. They were playing down the street at the Beverley. They literally ran from a gig at the Beverley down to the Horseshoe and just ran up on stage and did their show. And you can tell they were pumped with adrenalin when they did their bit. It was a bit odd because they did some acapella and it was more like an edgy rhythm and blues band. The VILETONES were always exciting no matter what. You never knew what Steven was going to do. The UGLY were good. I like the SCENICS, but they had the opening gig and they didn’t have a huge following and then it is pretty hard to beat a band coming on post riot. There were people standing on tables and playing with the lights when TEENAGE HEAD hit the stage.
A few people had an attitude about that show saying “We’re not going to the Horseshoe tonight. We’re hanging at the Beverley.” I think there was something going on at the Bev that night.
It was the SECRETS.
Yeah but I think there was some other stuff going on there too.
It’s funny. It’s thirty years now and as small as the scene was there was still these little cliques. If you did this drug you couldn’t hang out with that gang. If you liked that band you really shouldn’t go and see that band. It was kind of weird. It’s funny now with all these reunion things. Everyone’s buddies now whereas back in the day they didn’t like each other so much.
I understood the art band versus the punk band thing, but when I heard the punk bands going at each other I thought shouldn’t you guys be mad at the guys in ZON and WHITE FROST as opposed to punk band not liking punk band. I don’t want to mention any names. Did you go to the second night of the Last Pogo?
I couldn’t film the next night because I couldn’t get permission from all the bands.
Which bands wouldn’t give you permission?
There was only one person in one band that wouldn’t give us permission and that was Carole Pope from ROUGH TRADE. When I heard that I felt it doesn’t seem like I should film that evening. Maybe I will just film that first night and it turns out that it was best for me because I didn’t know what I was getting into. It was hard enough dealing with a half hour film let alone muscle my way through an hour film.
And you wouldn’t want to upset the anti-diva.
Yes.
I was going to ask you how the two nights compared. It might have been a little bit of a lunch bag let down after the place got trashed.
I was there and one of the big differences was they didn’t have any place to sit or put their beers on.
Were there a lot of people there?
I think it was pretty packed, but there was way less tables and chairs because they were all stacked up like lumber.
That was just incredible those last twenty minutes in the Horseshoe. I will never forget it. Walking through there with my buddy looking at piles of wood of these chairs that would have taken ten chainsaws to break apart but somehow all these skinny little kids just destroyed everything. It was just amazing. In the movie why is the sound for TEENAGE HEAD so muddy?
What happened was back in those days TEENAGE HEAD were managed by a guy named Jack Morrow who was overly protective of his band and wouldn’t allow Comfort Sound to record them so all we had to go off of for that moment was our tape recorder with our sound guy so we just couldn’t get good sound. And in fact at that point we couldn’t get much footage of them because we couldn’t get to the stage and so we ended up with not much footage of them and had to do our best to cut and paste what we had together.
Tell me about the interviews in the last Pogo. You already touched on the one with Mickey de Sadist. One of my favourites was the one you did with the VILETONES which included Steve Koch with the famous quote from Tony Torcher the drummer.
I knew Leckie and I thought how am I going to get a rise out of Steven Leckie. What is the stupidest question I could ask this guy? So I said “Are the people that come to the VILETONES shows laid back?” That just set him off and he said “No they are not laid back” and Tony came up with the line “People change. It’s like a hit of heroin.” Which really I think, not that I know heroin, but I think makes you laid back.
I think he said “The VILETONES are like a hit of junk.”. I loved that. But I think they were more like a hit of speed. Freddie Pompeii was talking about the SECRETS in it. Tell me about the TEENGE HEAD interview. They finish off the movie.
I asked them an honest question. I said “do you guys think you’ll be doing this five years from now?” They cracked a joke and it is kind if funny they had gone on and done it for another thirty years, which is pretty amazing.
The last show I saw of TEENAGE HEAD was at Dundas Square in the summer and they were absolutely on their game. I could hear every word that Frank was singing. For me personally that was just a great way to …. If I had a last show to see that is certainly the way I want to remember them. With the film is there any unreleased bonus footage from the original material.
Not really. I was on such a no budget. Literally I had scraps of film that we exchanged for brand new film at Patrick Lee’s film school. We shot about forty minutes worth of stuff to make a twenty six minute film. A lot of it is garbage stuff that we can’t use. There might be a couple of minutes of worth while stuff but I don’t really know.
What about additional audio?
The additional audio is kind of interesting. For this new thing that I am doing “The Last Pogo Jumps Again” I have found a couple of tapes of whole evening and I actually have Super 8 footage that someone sent to me from BC of most of the bands from that night and Super 8 footage looks fantastic. It looks like 16 mm.
Will you be authorized to use it?
Yeah I am totally authorized to use it.
I hope you release it in it’s raw form because that is something we all want to see. I hope you do. Will there ever be a soundtrack. We have been hearing for years. It was on the release sheets for EMI for the longest time that there was going to be a soundtrack with bonus tracks released and it still has not seen the light of day. I believe these recordings are still out there it is such a shame. I don’t know what has happened?
I don’t know what happened either. I don’t have the rights to release any of that music on a soundtrack. That wasn’t the deal I made with the bands. For me I am just going to leave the film the way it is and I will see what kind of stuff I can dig up for the new one.
And Bonus features on the new one are?
On the one that is out now I have a half hour of the SCENICS playing at Roger’s Community TV station and Andy Meyers from the SCENICS did a bit of a creative mixing a duo phonic from the 60’s, an old style re-mixing. It sounds fantastic. And then Chris Hate, one of my favourite VILETONES, does an on screen commentary of the Last Pogo which is very charming and very funny. There is also a couple of Easter eggs hidden, little bonuses, that you have to find for yourself.
I’ll be looking for them. It turned out that night that there was a couple of off duty undercover detectives that were drinking their all night. God only knows how drunk these cops were. They decided on coming up and preventing the show from going on any longer. TEENAGE HEAD, at this point were on the stage and talked them into letting them do one song. I hear you would like to interview that detective if you could ever find him. How is that going?
For one thing, in the new film it is not really a one man show. I have a lot of people helping me do stuff like Aldo Erdic shoots a lot of stuff. Chris Hate’s son, Kiera Papootts shots stuff. I got Wes. It is basically a one man show. Me and my son Ollie do a lot of the stuff and it is hard to find the time. A lot of it is just Sunday afternoons. But I want to find a Mr. Shit who was a real character on the scene and I want to find the detective and see if the guy is still alive and ask him.
There has got to be a way of going down to 52 division and just look that up. There has got to be some kind of records.
I’m sure there is. I just have to get around to it.
The Last Pogo was billed as the last punk show ever. Was it?
Truthfully it was the last punk show at the Horseshoe Tavern when it was run by the Garys. I really think that you can’t peg a day on when the punk scene started in Toronto. You can’t peg a day when it ended. For my purposes for the new project I am doing I am saying that the punk scene started when the RAMONES came in ’76 and I think the first real wave of the punk scene ended that night.
I fully agree with that. Do you feel that the Toronto scene was overlooked internationally?
Absolutely. There wasn’t enough clever people in the record industry. The press were kind of amused by it. Look at some of the CBC archival stuff of interviewing the VILETONES. They just thought …I mean it was much the same attitude as the American media when they got onto Elvis and the rock n roll thing started in the States. They just thought this was a passing fancy. The thing about London and New York is they got a lot more attention because there is a lot more people there. There was a lot more press and maybe they had smarter people. Toronto back then was still so provincial and small town that we just didn’t have the coverage. Luckily for me and this new thing that I am doing there was also a lot of really talented and creative people in the audience that night. I have so many fantastic photographs by people like Edie Steiner and Don Pyle and a couple of other people. There was a fantastic scene and no one paid attention to it.
I think that is changing now. The one thing I enjoy seeing with the Toronto scene is not just the enthusiasm within our own city, but I think the people around the world are starting to pay attention. The release of the movie is certainly going to help that. What did the promoters the Garys do after the Horseshoe?
They started the Edge. They took over an old pub. I think it was an old Ryerson student pub called Edgerton’s. Ryerson is now a University founded by Edgerton Ryerson and they renamed it the Edge and it was a much smaller room and they continued on bringing in their favourite bands.
Did you work there?
No I didn’t. I did the handbills. I was driving a cab. I had this vague notion that I was going to keep making films somehow.
That was another incredible place. You could see the ONLY ONES on Sunday and ULTRAVOX with the MODS on Monday. Seven nights a week. It was just incredible. The public debut was at the Danforth Music Hall a long time ago along with the Toronto debut of the BUZZCOCKS, the GANG OF FOUR and the VILETONES debut as a rockabilly band. How did that go?
It went great. What they did was Gary put a screen in front of the stage so when one band ended the movie started and you could kind of vaguely see the band behind the screen getting set. I was so nervous. In twenty six minutes I was pretty certain I smoked five cigarettes somehow. I just wanted to get the thing over with. I was in the projection room sweating up a storm, puffing away. It went over great. To the Toronto audience it wasn’t that much of a big deal. These were their bands they saw so the film got no attention when I finished it.
I remember the GANG OF FOUR were really great that night. The VILETONES were awesome too. I was blown away when they all walked out with their hair slicked back. It wasn’t really rockabilly but they had changed. It was still really super cool. “Don’t Mess with my ducktail” and “We all say Yeah” and songs like that. How were the reviews for the film. Were there any?
No there was not one. The only review I managed to get was and this was after a couple of letters that I wrote to Peter Goddard and finally Peter Goddard came through and wrote quite a nice article about the film in the Star. But I couldn’t sell it. No one wanted to show it. The New Music wanted it for nothing. When they couldn’t get it for nothing they picked up some British punk special. I just thought “Fuck You”.
Typical Toronto back then. It has changed a little now. Ignoring their own scene.
It hasn’t changed that much. Let’s face it.
Did the film get any international exposure?
Funnily enough it got picked up by New Line cinema who went on to distribute it. One of my trips down to New York I decided to pop in unannounced and ask them how the film was doing and Gary Topp had a friend in California who was an assistant camera guy who I admired because he had actually gotten into the business which was very romantic to me. He told Gary that he saw a film of this Last Pogo at a midnight show in San Francisco. So I went to New York and I walked into New Line’s office and I said I want to see the books on my film. I looked at the books and I said “What about the San Francisco gig?” and they hemmed and hawed and I sat in the lobby for about an hour and a half and I left that day with all my film prints, all the copies I had. They tore up the contract. It was over. I think I made $36 bucks from them.
Will there be international exposure for this re-release?
I hope so. I can’t pretend it is going to have this huge audience. I’m not doing it to have a wide release. I just want to get the thing done.
It has had rave reviews in Maximumrocknroll and the alternative press. I think that they way things are with the internet these days I have a feeling that the thing will get exposure.
There is some guy in Italy who just ordered a DVD. Guerillmo Morrow. Thank you.
There is actually a great book out of Italy that features a lot of the Toronto punk scene, but I have only heard about it. Getting back to the re-release of the DVD you are going to be celebrating this with the 30th Anniversary on November 29th, 2009 at the Horseshoe. It’s going to be quite the party. There is a whole pile of bands playing. I just had this sent to me today. This is from one of the bands that are going to be playing. This is a description of them. “Imagine a bar room brawl in one of NICK CAVE’s rowdiest, bloodiest songs “Gowan Drunk” or stumbling through a cabaret stage. PJ HARVIE is picking feathers from a moth eaten scarf while she peers over the shoulder of JOHNNY CASH who is about to bring a heavy game of poker with SCOTT WALKER to a climax. A host of lesser indie stars are ducking as empty whiskey bottles fly and there at the corner of the bar sits a band on the brink of turning their sexy gangster pop booze into a drunken remorse. That band is STEVEN LECKIE AND THE SOLUTIONS imbued with a dark and expressive somberness, a melodic richness, a weird lyrical wisdom and some of the prettiest mournful tunes that you could ever imagine. Every bruised ballad and contemplative croon here is deeply affecting. So that is going to describe one of your guests that night. Can you tell us who else is on the bill?
Yeah. The SCENICS who are one of my favourites from back in the day and I hope we have time to slip in one of their tunes. Mickey de Sadist. He gets a second shot at being at the Last Pogo.
A first shot.
A first shot. Mickey will be bringing the FORGOTTEN REBELS out for a bunch of songs. STEVEN LECKIE’s SOLUTIONS. The MODS, the UGLY with a new lead singer because Mike Nightmare is deceased. Their new lead singer is you. Greg Dick. I think it is going to be a lot of fun.
Can we expect any surprises? Any chance Freddie Pompeii might show up?
I don’t know if Freddie is allowed in the country. I would love to see Freddie up here. I have a feeling that it is going to be this awesome high school reunion that we have done a couple of times and hopefully we will get some new blood out there to see us old folks do our thing.
You started filming the bonus footage for the DVD that’s coming out. It turned into a whole other project. You just started meeting all these people that were involved in the scene back in the day and you found out that there was just so much and they were so interesting. Tell me about that.
It is kind of endless. The reason why I thought … well the rights for the Last Pogo were tied up for ten years and when I got them back I took a look at the film and thought “wow this really holds up.” So for sure I have got to get this out in DVD at some point. At the same time I had this awesome camera that I had managed to get and my son Ollie was thirteen and I thought maybe I should just take the summer off and we can go out with the camera and start tracking down some of the people from the Last Pogo and find out what they are up to and evolve from there and now I have created a monster because I have been shooting this since June 2006. I have to end this soon. I have to admit that I am getting kind of tired of it because I have a family and I have to work so I kind of sneak time in. It is really exciting
This is just a side project for you. You are working on “Little Mosque on the Prairie” and so many other things so
Yeah, so it has kind of turned into this monstrous hobby and it’s fun, but I just want to get it done. I think I have about 200 to 300 hundred hours of footage and there is still a couple of dozen people I feel like I really got to get that represent that period that I love. 1976 to ’78 in Toronto. That’s what the new film is going to be about. We are going to use the original “Last Pogo” as the spine and we will re-meet people that you saw in the Last Pogo and find out what they are doing now. Right now it goes off in too many tangents. I have to pull them together.
What is it going to be called?
It is going to be called cleverly enough “The Last Pogo Jumps Again”.
That’s a great name. Have the characters changed much in thirty years?
No. They haven’t. One thing I discovered from meeting all these people again was that people essentially don’t change. So however you are when you are twenty three you are probably going to be like that when you are 43 or 53. You can change habits. You can quit drugs or quit drinking or start taking drugs or start drinking you are the same. It is interesting to meet these people and go “Wow, I knew these people thirty years ago and they are kind of the same thing.”
I have found the same thing. Even with the bands, the ones who pulled in the crowds back in the day still pull in the crowds now. Now Colin there is a lot of interest in this scene all of sudden even though it remains anonymous for years. What do you attribute this to?
I have no idea. When I started it, it was really on a whim. I thought it was a fun way to hang out with my son. We got this cool camera. Lets go out and shoot stuff. Going digital is so DIY now. It is so simple to do which is a curse as well as a blessing. Then I discovered all these people starting to get their bands together at the same time. Andy Myers of the SCENICS had finally gotten around to listening to 300 hours of stuff they had recorded. So at the same time he is listening to thee old tapes and you know he is thinking “these still sound pretty good.” Lets start re-mastering them. Then you have a guy like Cleave Anderson who drums for everyone on earth and is fantastic and he has this enthusiasm for this old style music. Original old school punk. So I think the stars aligned a certain way
Yeah I think that too. A lot of the old bands have reformed. Are you enjoying this?
It is kind of weird. I’m not into nostalgia bands. I don’t listen to music as much as I did thirty years ago but I am always interested to see what Leckie is going to try and do next. The FORGOTTEN REBELS, you have to tip your hat to Mickey because he has never stopped. Again my favourites were the SCENICS and they are actually writing and recording new material and I am hoping they are going to blow the roof off the joint at the reunion. They are loosely serious about seeing if they can be a band now. And now that we have these opportunities with instant communication with the internet, instant graphics because everyone thinks they can get a free trail in Photoshop and make a handbill. Everything is so instant and fast now it is a lot easier to do then it was thirty years ago. It allows for this type of thing. To be frank I am going to be glad when I get the new film finished because I have other shit I want to do in my life, but I am totally enjoying meeting up with old friends, meeting people I saw on the periphery and getting to know them a lot better. People like you, Wayne Barrett, Roger Streets, Cleave Anderson. All these people I knew to say “Hi” to. It’s great. What do they say, it’s not the destination it’s the journey. I kind of don’t want the filming to end. On the other hand I want the filming to end quick. I have my list of stuff that I have to nail to make it a legitimate representation of that period.
What is going on now does seem like an extension of thirty years ago. Even this afternoon at Frankie Venom’s wake in Hamilton and we were all standing outside in this beautiful sunny afternoon having a beer and everyone is just chatting and having a genuinely great time. We are missing Frank of course. With all this stuff going on now, do you think it is a flash in the pan or will some of these bands continue in for a while?
It’s funny. Because of the instant access of the internet and the fact that digital allows you to pump stuff out, if it is in the hands of people who are creative and smart they can produce great stuff. I’m sure there is some kids in Scarborough who just recorded eight songs tonight that might sound like shit or great. Then on the other hand you have guys like you with the UGLY or STEVEN LECKIE or the MODS who have recorded their old stuff again or the SCENICS. Like I am excited by the fact that Andy and Ken want to write new songs and do new stuff as the SCENICS. Why not? From the beginning of rock n roll it has never ended.
There are no rules in rock n roll.
Right and there is no best before date. So why can’t some sixty year olds rock out?
If it rocks it rocks. Look at the stadium shows these days. It is a bunch of guys with dyed hair and when I was a kid we weren’t going to see anybody who was old but MADONNA played here last night and the STONES. Are the Garys going to be involved in this upcoming show?
I don’t think they are officially involved, but I know for sure that Gary Topp is going to be there. I haven’t talk to Cormier, but the Garys have to come there for sure or it is almost ludicrous.
Will it be filmed or recorded?
Yeah. Both. When I say filmed I have toyed with the notion that I can pull some 16mm together for this but I am not quite as stupid as I was when I was 23 when I made the Last Pogo. I am not that much smarter, but not quite as dumb. I don’t know if I want to jump into 40 grand in debt to film this.
Is there going to be merch or a “last Pogo Jumps Again t-shirt?
There is going to be a t-shirt and for $12 the original Last Pogo on DVD, which you can also get on thelastpogo.net.
When do you anticipate the release of the “Last Pogo Jumps Again”?
2009 for sure.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Click here for an MP3 download.

TEENAGE HEAD - Kissin’ theCarpet (Self-Released)
YARDBIRDS - The Train Kept-a-Rollin’
ALICE COOPER - Caught in a Dream
PAUL REVERE AND THE RAIDERS - Good thing
SUICIDE - Ghostriders
SEX PISTOLS - Submission (EMI)
THE VILETONES - Possibilities (CIUT)
THE SCENCS - I Heard Her Call My name

Interview: The Mods on EXD

The MODS were a four piece punk band from Toronto circa ’77-’78 with a unique look and sound. They added another inspiring dimension to the Toronto scene with the killer 7” 45 “Out of Step” and the ’95 CD release “Twenty 2 Months” both long out of print. There was also their inclusion on the extremely rare “Last Pogo” LP and appearance in the obscure Colin Brunton film of the same name. The following interview was conducted by Greg Dick, the singer of the DREAM DATES, and took place one week prior to their reunion gig, which coincidentally was the band’s first gig in 30 years. Scott Marks, the guitar player and David Quinton, the drummer, were interviewed on Equalizing Distort radio.

The MODS are going to be playing this coming Saturday for the first time in twenty five years at the Horseshoe, a place that was almost home base for you guys.
Scott (S): It’s been a short sabbatical.
Dave (D): You know the last time we played there was December 1st, 1978. We used to play there a lot before that, but that was the Last Pogo. That was the last time we played.
That was the last time you played the Horseshoe ?
D: Yeah.
How did the MODS form ?
S: Well the MODS formed - pre-David - was Greg Trinier, Mark Dixon and myself. We were all in close proximity in Scarborough and we really had similar tastes in music but more venturing towards the folk.
I don’t believe that.
S: Yeah we did. We used to go to Mariposa and the River Boat. Somewhere along the line we decided to start up a rock band and we were doing really bad covers of old WHO and STONES stuff. Well we met you in that phase David.
D: At the Philips Building. There were a whole bunch of bands that used to rehearse at this…I don’t even know how to describe it. It was almost like an abandoned warehouse and somebody picked it up and started renting rehearsal space and when the MODS were there and I first met them when they were doing these cover tunes and stuff I was in a band called the ANDROIDS. This was 1977 and right down the hall from us was the DIODES. Right next door to us was the UGLY. So it was the UGLY, the ANDROIDS, the DIODES, the MODS down the hall and some other bands. So I had actually met these guys just in the hallway hanging out and found them rather amusing and then because I was already fully into the punk thing …
So somebody was already playing drums for the MODS at that point.
D: Yeah.
S: But we were not …we were doing tingly little versions of songs. I don’t know how else to describe it and Mark our bass player was rhythm guitar. I was lead and we had another bass player and another drummer not knowing what we were trying to do. We were basically trying to be a cover band and break into the traditional bar circuit, but we really weren’t good enough for that.
What kind of covers were you doing ?
S: We did everything from old WHO to BUFFALO SPRINGFIELD to DYLAN songs to BYRDS to STONES. I mean we did basically everything. You know “Midnight Rambler” to “Hey Mr. Tambourine Man”. And they had long hair man.
And you had long hair and were calling yourselves the MODS at this point ?
S: We were calling ourselves the MODS.
So who was the drummer ?
S: That guy was Len Perry of Wexford Collegiate. And then … the metamorphosis of the band was we couldn’t stand our bass player so we …. At the same time we picked up …I remember buying “Anarchy” downtown on a 45 RPM and we went and saw the JAM at the Colonial and …
That was a great show.
S: Oh a phenomenal show. And we realized what the hell are we doing. We can do this or we can do what we are doing and that’s when we really started going out and checking out some Toronto bands. We saw the VILETONES, we saw the UGLY, we saw JOHNNY AND THE G-RAYS. It’s funny. The only bands that stood out the most for me back then was JOHNNY AND THE G-RAYS. Musically I loved them. We threw our bass player out. What we did was we had his equipment there at the rehearsal space so we had a rehearsal without him and Mark picked up the bass and we took our whole repertoire and paired it down to about 6 songs that we still liked and I remember us taking a version of Chuck Berry’s “Beautiful Delilah” and pumping it up. And we just did that with everything. “Substitute”, “Kids are Alright” we were doing all those songs, we just turned them on their heads and played them like we wanted to play them. The main problem was Len our drummer couldn’t handle them.
D: That was a real shock for me because I knew them from the Philips building and they had long hair and were doing these cover tunes and then one night I was at the Turning Point and they were playing. I was there and I saw this band the MODS and I thought well it can’t be the same group of guys. It’s got to be different. I walked in there and it was like this really aggressive punk power pop and it was these guys and they all had short hair and their singer – I didn’t know what kind of transformation had taken place, but it was like the most bizarre on-stage presence that I had seen.
Yeah Greg was a very unique performer. He had a lot of presence and he had a really interesting voice. Now the drummer at that point, was he a guy named Nick.
S: Oh yeah.
Didn’t he quit and join ARSON ?
S: Len who was our drummer in the old days never did play live with us as the new MODS. He bailed out on us. We actually auditioned a ton of drummers and we had almost settled on Vince who ended up going on to play with you in the QUTE and then Nicky came out the next day and Nicky had the biggest drum set I had ever seen in my life. It was so loud.
I heard Dave had one of those drum kits. I think Rodney Bowes told me this.
S: Not like Nick’s.
D: Nick had a 28” bass drum.
S: ….and he used baseball bats as sticks. He was as loud as …we used to joke. We would say ‘You go out to Pickering and count us in because we’ll still hear you.’ He was incredibly loud and a great guy. He had the greatest curly hair, but not right for us. He was a punk drummer and he wanted to be in a punk band. He wanted to end every song with ‘motherfucker’.
Were you guys still in high school at this point ?
S: I wasn’t.
D: We were.
S: Mark and Greg were.
And which high schools in Scarborough did they go to ?
S: We all went to Thompson.
Dave, what school did you go to ?
D: I grew up at Bathurst and Eglinton and my father was a music teacher at Forest Hill Collegiate and what happened was after Nick left and they were looking for a new drummer they asked me to join because I had friends with them. We used to hang out with them a lot. This is an interesting fact. I don’t even know if Scott knows this but they asked me to join the day before Keith Moon died and I accepted the day after Keith Moon died.
Who you were often compared to ?
D: Yeah you know it was flattering to be compared to him. I don’t know if anyone could be compared to him. It was really interesting because I was 17 at the time and it just seemed like the right thing to do and I really liked the guys and I liked what they were doing musically and I was really excited about it. We did our first gig September ’78 at the Hotel Isabella.
That was the first place the MODS played ?
D: Well with me. That was the first gig I played with the band.
S: I remember playing the Isabella. I had no idea that was the first one with you.
That was downstairs ?
D: Downstairs.
Yeah I loved it there.
D: I have incredible memories of that night because it was so bizarre. You know they had a waitress who would sort of do a strip tease act in the afternoon and then get her tray and go around and take drink orders, you know. This was before we played.
What were you doing there in the afternoon ?
D: Well you know just trying to get a feel for the place.
Dave. You were in the ANDROIDS originally as we said earlier with Bart and Sally who originally had a band called the CONCORDS. When you were in the ANDROIDS were you in the QUTE first and then you joined the ANDROIDS ?
D: No. Actually. It was the other way around. I was in the ANDROIDS and our first singer was Ruby T.
…who was on the cover of the Last Pogo record for all you kids trying to figure out who Ruby T is.
D: She was really a fun girl.
And quite beautiful too.
D: She was gorgeous. And she was Mike Nightmare’s girlfriend the singer for the UGLY and then when the CONCORDS broke up Sally, who’s real name was Karen, she joined us and the band was kind of weird and dark and strange. I didn’t love the experience if you know what I mean. And after the ANDROIDS broke up, that’s when I put together the QUTE. And the QUTE were together for three or four months during this time that I was hanging out pretty heavily with the MODS and getting to know these three crazy bastards from Scarborough.
S: That’s when I recall seeing you guys at the Bev and Vince was your drummer then.
D: I was singing.
Was the QUTE a punk band or ….
D: Power pop, punk band. You know what’s funny is when we talk about punk nowadays everybody thinks of Mohawks and pins and this hyper fast music. That’s not what it was when it started.
When that stuff came in it was already dead. That was the death of punk really.
D: For us in ’77 everything from ELVIS COSTELLO to the POLICE to TALKING HEADS to PATTI SMITH to TELEVISION to the DEAD BOYS was all considered punk. Basically any band that played simple raw punk music and wasn’t caught up in the corporate rock scene was considered a punk band and a new wave band. So it’s funny, even the ANDROIDS they had punk-ish leanings but it wasn’t punk in the sense that people think of it now.
How did you guys get turned on to punk ? What was your first … where did you hear about it ?
S: I think my first experience wasn’t going to see punk rock. I saw PATTI SMITH play Massey Hall on the “Horses” tour.
Her first gig ever.
S: I was interested in PATTI SMITH. Most of it was from reading Rolling Stone and they were talking about PATTI SMITH playing the Bottom Line and all these places in New York and everyone from the folk scene to every scene was thinking about PATTI SMITH. And that show was incredible at Massey Hall. I remember buying tickets and we ended up with floor seats half way back. We had great seats and no one knew who …I think we were the only two who knew who PATTI SMITH was. But I didn’t know what it was called at the time. To me they were just a great rock band. And then I remember reading the article in Rolling Stone about the PISTOLS. It was all about their secret tour, the SPOTS tour where the SEX PISTOLS were on tour secretly. That article just fascinated me. Talking to Greg and Mark at the time, it was before we had really gotten involved with David, it made sense that this is where we had to go. What we were doing was just not making any sense. It was a slow evolution. We started hanging out at Records on Wheels downtown. Seeing the JAM at the Colonial was definitely a turning point for all of us and we realized we can play this, we can do this. We could probably do it better than some of the people out there and we can write this stuff.
I think a lot of the Toronto bands could do it better than the other bands. A band I always thought was a lot like you guys too was the ROMANTICS. Did you guys ever do any gigs with them ?
D: I remember seeing them at the Turning Point. They actually came up and did a three song guest set one night and they were sort of similar to us. They were a lot more poppy maybe and we were a touch more aggressive. But when you talk about the first exposure to punk or what got us interested, you know you have defining moments in your life when you remember things especially from your teen years and I remember my first exposure to it like it was yesterday. I was watching a TV show and they had this segment on the DAMNED from England and they showed them doing their photo session and they were putting brown paper bags on their heads.
That was a single cover for “Neat Neat Neat”.
D: Yeah exactly and I had never seen anything so outrageous in my life. That was at a time when rock bands were supposed to look pretty and everything was ELTON JOHN and BOSTON and all that kind of crap and just to see these guys putting bags on their heads … it was outrageous for 1976 – ’77 and I got interested in it and the next thing I did was pick up a VILETONES single downtown – “Screaming Fist”. And then I just started buying 45’s of all these different bands. I think the first punk album I actually bought was the DEAD BOYS record, which was one of my favourite ones.
Yeah the DAMNED record came out … I think that was actually the first “Punk” record and back then especially in the earliest days there really wasn’t a lot to choose from. I mean if you bought compilation records and you had stuff like TOM PETTY AND THE HEARTBREAKERS
S: Or EDDIE AND THE HOT RODS.
Yeah EDDIE AND THE HOT RODS. Those guys were wearing bell bottoms. They did have some cool songs. “Do Anything you want to do” is a pretty cool track.
D: Well a lot of bands went through transformations just like them, but the amazing thing for me is that after having watched that television show and seeing the DAMNED who at this time was sitting at someone’s house babysitting as a teenager three years later I was playing in a band with Brian James from the DAMNED.
You were babysitting kids man ?
D: Well I won’t tell you what happened to them, but at any rate to think that three years later I was actually playing in a band with one of the guys, it was really strange.
S: I think the strangest thing about the ROMANTICS connection though, I think we had a bit of the same look.
You guys had sort of a mod-ish like a heavy pop thing. You both had killer drummers.
S: But do you recall playing at Bookies in Detroit. Bookies was the home base…
Yeah I was going to actually ask you about Bookies. Tell us about it now. What was Bookies like ?
S: Still the strangest club experience of my whole life. Bookies was located close to the university, but was also the local transvestite bar.
That always makes for a good mix.
S: So it was the university students into punk and new wave and transvestites. I know my ex-wife, my girlfriend at the time, went into the washroom and there was as many guys facing the toilets at the stalls with their mini skirts on, but Bookies and do you remember the women who ran the door that had a shotgun across her lap. I mean it was just the most bizarre experience playing at Bookies.
And Detroit has quite a few crazy characters running the streets so…
D: We had a very scary experience there because we had no money and we would stay in these …we would buy one hotel room and the whole band or whatever would stay in it. We had this motor hotel which is just a big window from the floor to the ceiling and we got into this weird wrestling match in the room, you know as young guys will sometimes do and Greg’s brother who was our roadie, our soundman threw him against this heavy drapery and behind the drapery was that big window and the thing popped out and smashed on the ground. It sounded like World War III and Greg and I being the tough guys in the band. We immediately ran to the washroom and shut the door and we were in there freaking out.
S: The guy came out with a gun and it was kind of like $25 and the glass man will be here. Either you pay us the money or I’m calling the cops and I just remember …
D: We wrote TEENAGE HEAD right.
S: Oh we were there with HEAD. We had to gather up enough money to pay this guy or he was going to call the police.
S: We were there for two or three nights and I just remember the one night, there was a bunch of people from the hotel or the bar that came over and drinking Wild Turkey straight and I just remember the one guy guzzling Wild Turkey and I was in awe.
D: That’s what you aspire to.
So you guys played Bookies three nights with TEENAGE HEAD. We did Bookies twice.
S: The first time we did Bookies we were on our own. The second time was in that summer of ’79. We did a number of dates in the States. We did Hurah’s in New York. Went on to Philly. I don’t remember the name..
D: Pirate’s Cove in Cleveland. The place we played in Philly was the Hot Club. The Hot Club was unbelievable. It was all cement. It was a cement floor, cement walls, in a really bad part of town and I played there a couple of times.
S: And then we went to Chicago. The first time we played Chicago was really weird. We played this Bourbon bar on the one night and the next night we played punk night at Mother’s. And then the next time when we played with TEENAGE HEAD…
Where was Mother’s ? Oh that was in New York. That was in Long Island I think.
D: Mother’s was a Chicago bar.
Oh there was one in New York I think.
D: See all I remember from that one was it was the first gig in Chicago and it was the first time I ever saw that guy Jim Skafish, who put out albums on IRS. That really weird looking dude with the big nose.
S: What I remember, I have a few memories of Chicago. I remember being very, very, very, very hungry in Chicago because we hadn’t eaten in three days and we had no money because we played Cleveland and I think there was six people there. Us and TEENAGE HEAD. Once you got out of Ontario TEENAGE HEAD, at that time were really breaking in Ontario. They were starting to fill traditional bars, but you got south of the border and … do you remember the Pirate’s Cove … I remember doing the sound check and the girl coming out and asking us …they were in line to get in and they wanted to know if we did any Bob Seger. They had no idea. And I think generally speaking any of the cities we went to in the States with the exception of New York were far behind the Toronto scene. The Toronto scene was really healthy at the time.
Well you guys were actually quoted as saying after playing New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, and Detroit that you realized how much further ahead the Toronto scene was and Toronto has always embraced, especially back then and even through the 80s with bands like the CURE and the SMITHS – the kind of bands that would always play in theatres like big stadiums in Toronto and then down in the States they would be playing to 50 or 60 people in bars.
D: I think that’s right. I remember when the RAMONES were here and playing at the New Yorker and the DEAD BOYS had come in and …I think Toronto has had periods in its history where its been ahead of the times and other times in history where it hasn’t been and it has been other cities in the US or whatever, but yeah. Let’s talk about the UGLY for a second because you brought up the UGLY before.
Yeah, they did. I remember seeing them one night at the Colonial when I remember Sam, he couldn’t keep his bass plugged in for some reason. It just kept on popping out. I think it was the DISHES, the UGLY, and the ROMANTICS. I am pretty sure that was the gig that I saw. They were just great. What other local bands did you guys find inspiring ?
S: Like I said, I was a big fan of the G-RAYS.
Where did you first see them play ?
S: The first time I saw the G-RAYS was at the Horseshoe and I guess what I really found refreshing about them was the fact that …. You know I had been to see the VILETONES, and the UGLY. I had seen a lot of the Toronto punk bands and I just found the G-RAYS were far more what I like in music. They were more musical number one. You could tell they had some background ….like Johnny wrote great lyrics. I mean phenomenal lyrics and he had such a great stage presence. I mean to me they were ore along the lines of TOM PETTY and that kind of ….They had that background of folk or country. That was there. It wasn’t necessarily at the front but you knew that these guys listened to something other than punk stuff.
I kind of think that the SECRETS were quite inspired by the G-RAYS the way they ended up going for a heavy R&B sound because that is what I recall the earliest version of the G-RAYS sounding like.
S: Yeah there was this song….
D: … “Susie Peroxide”…
No that’s the SECRETS.
D: “Trying to Chew My Head”.
S: No but the one that is kind of more basic rock n roll like “Here comes John” or….the one that’s got Johnny’s name in it. I really liked them. They were probably one of my favourite Toronto bands at the time. The DIODES I liked.
D: I think all the guys in our band really liked JOHNNY AND THE G-RAYS. I know Greg did a lot and Mark did a lot. Scott loved them. We used to play with them sometimes.
S: And when we split up I joined a band called POPULAR SPIES for a while, which ….
I remember seeing that name around.
S: And I will tell you….great guys. Graham Scares was the drummer. Great music historian. I have often wondered what happened to Graham. He was a dynamite guy. Roman Bishop the guitar player, another super guy. And Jeff Ralton the bass player, who went on to play with some more bands I know in the 80’s, but other than that I had had enough of playing. It was a great experience. They were really great guys.
D: There were an awful lot of eccentric Toronto bands in those days.
There was the first wave. I don’t know if you guys caught anything like OH THOSE PANTS, ZOOM, the CADS, …
D: I saw the CADS.
Where did you see them ?
S: I went to high school with Paul Eknes. He was the lead singer of the CADS.
Was Paul Eknes the lead singer of the CADS ?
D: No no you are thinking of the ….
He was in the WADS.
S: I’m sorry. You’re right.
And that’s a band…I think there is some tapes of the WADS out there.
D: No the CADS were “Sex was the Only Way Out”.
“Do the Crab Walk”.
S: I know who the CADS were. There was that Chick …
D: They used to play at the Bev sometimes. And you know who I really liked was the GOVERNMENT.
Yeah, I loved the GOVERNMENT.
D: I liked Andy Paterson. I thought he was a really interesting character. I liked their songs. I thought they were cool.
S: The SCENICS were an interesting band too but ….I mean not really accessible live but I liked their recorded stuff.
Yeah, they had a record out on Ready Records and actually I remember hearing a story about them recently. There was a concert promoter in Toronto who came up around the late 70’s named Louie Louie and I remember the SCENICS opened for a band called the NEW YORK NIGGERS at the Horseshoe and it was the same time that the Gary’s had the Edge and after that gig the Gary’s apparently wouldn’t book the SCENICS anymore. And I was actually going to ask you guys, I know you guys started playing Larry’s Hideaway.
D: ’79.
Yeah. Now I think that was the same time as the Edge. Did that run into any problems for you ? Were you guys getting gigs at the Edge ?
D: No the Gary’s were always really cool with us.
S: They were great with us. We got great shows with them. And I don’t think they minded that we played other places in town.
D: Larry’s is filled up with grass now.
S: I know I worked the fire there. The best Gary’s show that we opened was with the SPECIALS at the Palais Royale. That was just an awesome venue. It was a great night. It was steamy. It was hot. That’s the show to me that stands out of our big opening acts.
Yeah the floor in there is like a trampoline. Kind of like the Commodore in Vancouver. The MODS had a very unique sound. Unlike any of the other Toronto bands. How would you guys describe yourselves, as being a part of that scene ?
D: The description of our sound you mean.
Yeah.
D: I think we were a punky power pop band. I don’t think we were a punk band. We played pop music. We had harmonies, but we played very, very aggressively. And I think the punk overtones were in there. So by no stretch were we a pop band, but I don’t think we were a punk band either. We were somewhere in the middle.
S: Yeah we moved more towards the pop but there was some other influences as well. But I mean I think the studio stuff was never captured. In retrospect I still find the live stuff more interesting. A lot of the studio stuff that was recorded sounds kind of pale.
D: Yeah, I agree.
It was interesting, the FORGOTTEN REBELS. Mickey De Sadist was making fun of you guys in the Last Pogo film. I was wondering what your reaction to that was.
D: I was just going to say that the FORGOTTEN REBELS are shit. They’ve got no pretence or nothing. The FORGOTTEN REBELS weren’t good enough to play at the Last Pogo. That’s why they weren’t there.
S: After they magic markered my house on Main Street. That was the first time I had met the FORGOTTEN REBELS. We had done a gig downtown and I was renting a house on Main Street. Main and Lumsden with some other guys and a bunch of people came back there and there was this Johnny Rotten look a like who was Mickey of course and in the morning we woke up and there was all these FORGOTTEN REBELS things written in magic marker all over the house. So he didn’t really ingratiate himself.
But he did go and see the MODS a lot.
D: Yeah, we used to see Mickey at MODS gigs and I’ve always quite liked him. I think he is great and I think their band has always been good and done some good things and you know he has hung in there a really, really long time.
They have never broken up. They have continued to…they have constantly played and they have a fan base worldwide. He’s a great guy. He’s got a sense of humour in him.
D: It’s funny. I never….
He used to rub the Toronto people the wrong way. It seemed like it.
D: When he said that about us in the Last Pogo movie I never took offence to it at all.
S: I thought it was hilarious.
D: I always thought it was very funny and that he had a very sharp wit. I never took offence to it whatsoever.
He did a great Greg Trinier impersonation I thought in that.
D: He did.
S: That’s right he was in that.
D: And I saw Mick for the first time since the old days at the punk Horseshoe gig in July.
Yeah in July.
D: You took me up to him and he said some really nice things to me. I quite like the guy. I think he’s great.
Your first gig was at the Horseshoe with the JUMPERS and the VILETONES. How did the crowd react to you guys ?
S: June ’78. Actually the crowd … I think we literally came from nowhere and people were expecting nothing and I honestly think. We blew them away that night. That to me was still the …and to this day I have never been so scared. Nicky was on drums at the time. We had just revamped the band. We had been rehearsing for about a month. We had a set. The first song we opened with was “Substitute” and literally I remember us being up on stage and people had told us ‘You guys looked scared shitless’ and we were. We were scared. We didn’t know what was going to happen. And we did it and the place, literally you could see people stopping and turning and watching because we had been playing together for a year and a half. We could play. We were tight. Musically we were tight. We had vocal harmonies. I think people had just … we had come from nowhere so I think it was a great reaction we got an encore that night. And from there on Gary Cromier, I remember him coming up and saying ‘I want to book you guys again.’ It was immediate. And I remember we drank for two nights after that we were just so happy about it.
You guys built up a following pretty quickly it seemed like.
S: Within two months. I mean it was unheard of and it was weird. It was really weird.
Now there is a couple of things, you guys were talking about the Philips Building, an old warehouse where you guys practised. Where was that place ?
S: Right at Laird and Eglinton. Brentcliffe and Laird actually.
And the UGLY practised there and I know Dave you had told me a story about the UGLY, I think I am sure that some of the gear might have been found or borrowed and you told me a story about a few constables coming down looking for Mr. Nightmare.
D: Well it was really weird because the Philips Building was a little refuge for all these bands and nobody from the outside would ever really came in you know. One day these plain clothes policemen came and they were looking for guys from the UGLY and I remember them questioning Sam and asking whether he had receipts for equipment and Nightmare had sort of run outside and gotten onto the roof and taken off. Yeah it was one of my memories of that place because I hadn’t really seen that sort of thing before. At 17 years old I hadn’t been exposed to that kind of stuff. And I also remember the DIODES very distinctly rehearsing because they were doing rehearsals for their first album at the time with their Producer Bob Gallow and I used to go into the room once and a while and listen to them and kind of watch what a real record producer would or supposedly real record producer would do with the band and their music. The one thing that kind of freaked me out was I was in the room when he suggested they change lyrics for one of their songs. They used to have a song called “Jerry Hall” and Bob Gallow he was sort of this discovery guy you know with his shirt undone and a big medallion and stuff and he looks at them and goes ‘Who’s Jerry Hall ?’ and they kind of laughed and they said ‘It’s Bryan Ferry’s girlfriend’ and of course we all knew of her as Bryan Ferry’s girlfriend in those days and he said ‘Well, you know, nobody knows who Jerry Hall is so I think you guys should change the name to something like “China Doll”’ and of course they did change the name of the song to “China Doll”. That’s the way they recorded it, but to me it was always Jerry Hall.
And you know it’s funny considering how popular Jerry Hall is especially with her own reality TV show now they might have cashed in on that. They could always re-record it I suppose.
S: They were there the first night we played the Horseshoe too because I remember Cato coming down to the dressing room after and he kept looking at me and pointing at his Townsend button because I was playing a gold Les Paul with a Hiwatt amp which I didn’t do for any particular purpose other than I bought them together off a guy used. I’m going Yeah well…and of course it was Townsend’s signature thing.
It wasn’t Mike Nightmare was it ? (loads of laughter)
S: No it wasn’t. Thank goodness.
What Toronto clubs did the MODS play ?
S: We did the Horseshoe, we did the Turning Point, Larry’s….
D: The Edge
S: Isabella
I saw you guys play at the Edge with ULTRAVOX.
S: That was right after we got….the first time we went down to the States and literally we arrived back in Toronto at 8:00 in the morning driving all night and we got the call from the Garys and we went down and used their equipment. Actually that gig is recorded.
You’ve got recordings of that.
D: Yeah.
There is actually a photo of it in Mojo Magazine from last month. I think I still have my ticket stub. It was a $3.00 cover that night if I’m not mistaken.
D: I remember the gig very well because we drove all night, we were totally burned out and I remember one of the boys calling me in the afternoon waking me up like at 3:00 in the afternoon saying we’re going to go play with ULTRAVOX tonight and this was like the cool version of ULTRAVOX, when they had John Foxx as the singer.
It was the only good version of ULTRAVOX.
D: Yeah. And I remember because I was using the guys drums. It was the drummer Warren Can and he wanted to talk to me on the phone first and he asked me all these questions about whether I hit hard and all this stuff but he was very gracious and cool and we used their gear and did the gig and somehow managed to stay awake through it. I remember it quite well.
No one seems to mention the Cheetah Club much. I know you guys played there. Tell me about the Cheetah Club. Where was it ?
S: Cheetah was on Isabella almost at the corner of Isabella and Yonge on the south side and it had been a disco. In the heart of the disco era it had been a hardcore disco with the glass tables and these little loungey things. It was as far removed from a punk bar as you could get. You know going from the Horseshoe which was your typical beer swilling place to the Cheetah which opened up for some punk bands who immediately started to destroy it. That’s what I remember.
I don’t think it lasted very long.
S: No. It didn’t last long and we played there and the VILETONES showed up and I remember … I don’t know if we did two nights there or one but anyways I guess they got Mark or someone to agree to let them do a guest set and that was the biggest mistake. The VILETONES got on stage and they wouldn’t get off and that was the night that the P.A. toppled over and they had one of those big old juke boxes at the Cheetah and it crushed the juke box. It was a mess.
D: I remember Leckie getting thrown into that juke box.
S: I remember Leckie up on stage. He took his spike belt off and started just swinging it around.
I saw him do that a few times at various places. Either his belt or a chain.
D: There was a big, big fight. I think we did the two nights and there was a huge fight on the second night and that was the end of the Cheetah Club basically. The thing I remember about it is that was the first night I met Stiv Bators. The first night that I actually talked to him was at the Cheetah Club.
He was probably here with Cynthia from the B-GIRLS.
D: Yeah he was here with Cynthia. Cynthia was his girlfriend at the time. But I remember that fight. That was a massive ugly fight at the Cheetah Club. It was funny, in those days I remember in ’79 or early ’80 when all of a sudden there was a lot of violence at the end of gigs. Do you remember there were times at the end of every show where there was a fight.
S: Well that’s how you knew it was over.
D: Yeah they were ready to close the place.
S: In Ottawa we played the Roters Club and that was hilarious. We were right at the end of the gig and
You were playing with the BUREAUCRATS at that gig I think because they actually wrote about it.
S: Is that right ?
Yeah, yeah.
D: They probably opened for us.
S: And really there was no stage you just played at the end of a room in the corner and they were all pogoing in front of us and I remember the one guy leaning over and pouring beer on my guitar and then all of a sudden Mark fly off the stage put his bass down and attacked this guy and a brawl ensued.
Who was pouring beer on your guitar ? Was it a guy from another band ?
S: No a guy from the audience, but Mark was our fighter.
D: Scott is not telling the whole story here. The guy sort of sprayed beer on him first and Scott was warning him. You came to the front and you said ‘If you do that again blah blah blah’ and then the guy did it again and Mark lept on him and this huge fight ensued. Again me and Greg being the tough guys in the band we kind of went out the back door because it got really rough. That was a small little place.
When you guys were playing Ottawa was there much of a crowd there ?
S: Yeah it was packed. Stuart, I can’t remember Stuart’s last name, but he had … the scene up there was pretty good.
D: It was a good scene. It was very, very underground because Ottawa was Ottawa. It was a government town. A university town. But they had this really strong very underground scene. But we had a very strange set of experiences there. Not only that bad fight, but I got hit with a bottle at a club called the Black Swan. And it was a quart of beer that was full, you know.
Like those big ones that they had at the Gasworks.
D: Yeah. It was a guy from a motorcycle gang that had just walked in and picked it up and …
S: Well you used to go on the road and you had no idea. I mean at Cobourg you play for these people where they had LED ZEPPELIN cover bands and we would walk out playing our own stuff and that’s what the situation was. The Black Swan was not a punk club but they were trying out some punk bands and when they didn’t like you they just killed you.
D: Yeah they tried to kill me. I was knocked out cold. I had to go to the hospital. It was pretty bad. My other favourite memory. Well actually no I have another favourite memory in Ottawa that I don’t like to discuss, but my second favourite memory is of Scott at the Beacon Arms Hotel.
S: (laughter) And you want to discuss that one.
D: Well you might know that Hotel Detectives in the 30’s and 40’ were called Hotel Dicks right.
Yeah.
D: Scott was the Hotel Dick.
S: I had a tendency sometimes to get naked on the road and cruise the elevators at 2:00 in the morning with Mark. Cruise is probably the wrong choice of words.
D: Yeah, you weren’t cruising.
S: The joke was that the elevator opens up at 2:00 in the morning myself and Mark on it and this guy is walking by the elevator promptly turns around and gets in with us and I am thinking why would any guy in his right mind get into an elevator with a naked guy. Anyways it turns out that he is the house detective. So the elevator proceeds to the basement where we are both just pissing ourselves laughing and so we get off non-challantly walk away and that’s when he tried to stop us and we head for the stairs. I ran up nine flights of stairs ball assed naked and got into bed and the guy caught Mark on the second floor because he was smoking like a chimney and Mark was totally winded. He couldn’t get away.
D: It’s funny. Everytime the MODS went away and when I had been in other bands over the years, but I have to tell you everytime we went out of town it was some kind of adventure. It was very, very funny and I think it had something to do with the way we were as people but also our age because unlike a lot of the punk guys who were thirty years old and pretending to be twenty or pretending to be nineteen, we were young.
Well you were young.
D: And so was Mark and Greg and Scott was just a little bit older than us. We were young guys so when we went away out of town away from our families and our parents and whatever we would go crazy. To think that we never got in trouble, never got arrested or never got in accidents or whatever. We would pile into this little van with all of our equipment and Scott reminded me of a story the other day where we were driving in the winter after a gig in Montreal and the van starts swirving out of control and it is one of those moments where you can bite it if luck isn’t on your side and we went and checked the tires and there was no treads on ‘em. So here we are these guys driving around in this van in the middle of winter, no treads on the tires. I mean the fact that we came out of this stuff alive is amazing and the hotels we would stay in Chicago and Detroit and New York … it’s unbelievable we came out of it alive. We weren’t staying at the friggin’ Waldorf.
Now you guys were talking about …. Back to the Cheetah Club you were saying Stiv Bators came to see you play there. That must have made you feel pretty good to have somebody with that high of a profile would have come and seen you.
D: Well it’s funny because Bators and Leckie were at a MODS Turning Point gig that we did and they both came on stage and did “Tell Me”, the old STONES song with us.
With you guys ?
D: Yeah.
Three singers.
D: DEAD BOYS had done “Tell Me” and the MODS had done “Tell Me” so Greg and Stiv and Leckie sang it together. But I didn’t talk to Bators at all that night. I didn’t talk to him until the Cheetah Club gig and he came up to me afterwards and he was so drunk he could barely stand up and all I remember him saying is ‘You’ve got to play with me.’ And I was like ‘Uh huh.’ (hesitantly) And he was like ‘I’m going to call you. I’m doing this record and you’ll come and play on it.’ And I was like ‘whatever.’ Then I didn’t hear from him for five months.
Then you ended up playing in his solo band and on his album of which you contributed a song “Make up Your Mind.” Now did you write it for Stiv ?
D: I wrote it for Stiv. I wrote it when we were all living in Ohio and writing for his solo album and he recorded it and then when I did my solo record in 1980 I re-did it. Scotty came in and did the guitar work on it.
Beautiful. So you guys kept in touch. Now Stiv, he knew a lot of people in Toronto so he was close to Steve Leckie ?
D: I don’t know that he was close with him. I know he knew him. And Bators had a funny tendency of making fun of people that were very intense. So the more intense you were the more he made fun of you. He knew that I liked Leckie and I liked the VILETONES and stuff so he used to try and poke fun at me. He used to write letters to me and stuff saying ‘How is Nancy Dog and the V-TONES ?’ And used to tell me that I should start a band called DAVID AND THE QUINTONES. You know the funny thing is that Bators was much older than me. He was born in 1949 so he is a child of the 50’s and early 60’s so a lot of his humour was that kind of stuff. Like plays on words and making fun of you like ‘You were in a doo wop band.’ So I think when he would make fun of Leckie it was all like that. Like in good spirit. I think he liked Steve and I think he liked the VILETONES, but the more Bators liked something the more he made fun of it. That’s how he was.
You guys played a song by Lennon-McCartney called “From a Window” and a lot of punks really considered the BEATLES the enemy. Were you guys trying to make a statement ?
S: Yeah we were trying to take ‘em down (laughter).
D: It wasn’t that the BEATLES were the enemy, it was that BILLY JAY KRAMER AND THE DAKOTAS were the enemy.
S: Yeah JERRY AND THE PACEMAKERS.
I looked for that song on a BEATLES record and ….
S: No the BEATLES never recorded it. We did certainly choose the covers versions based on the obscurity factor like “She’s Still a Mystery” by the LOVIN’ SPOONFULS, which was a hit but not a big hit. And of course the funny thing about “From a Window” recorded by BILLY JAY KRAMER AND THE DAKOTAS is shortly after we start doing that song, Mark’s father worked for a publishing firm and they hire this guy for doing one of their magazines and he turns out to be the drummer from BILLY JAY KRAMER AND THE DAKOTAS.
D: Tony Bookbinder.
S: Tony Bookbinder. He was actually going to sit in and do it with us at the Edge and he came out for a few rehearsals and blew his arm out.
D: It was unbelievable. He was probably around our age now, but he came out and rehearsed for us and he must have messed up his wrist because he couldn’t play with us. But he came and regailed us with stories and stuff. “From a Window” is interesting because it is a Lennon-McCartney song written for BILLY JAY KRAMER AND THE DAKOTAS were managed by Brian Epstein and Produced by George Martin. So I guess that was a common occurrence. Lennon and McCartney would throw in songs for other bands to do and of course the version that Billy Jay Kramer does is very sweet and beautiful. What we do is very nasty and obnoxious, but it worked out really well for us.
What is the song “the Other Side” about ?
S: Greg wrote the lyrics for that and that was definitely a song about the hypocrisy of the downtown punkers. I mean the reality was …. Steve Leckie, the first time he came out to hear us in Greg’s basement we were driving out to Scarborough and Steve’s going ‘Wow man, like I am out in the country’ and of course Steve went to Midland Collegiate down the road from where we grew up. ‘I’m from the other side’. I can’t even remember the lyrics but it is basically you live downtown you talk like you’re a street person but the reality is your just like us. You’re from Scarborough. You’re from North York. You’re a poseur.
D: I think the more I came to realize over the years I concluded that it’s not where you come from and it’s not you’re education level and its not the community that you grew up in it’s a feeling that you have and if you have that same feeling you come together and enjoy the same kind of music and might enjoy the same kind of scenes together. It doesn’t matter where you come from. So people who were trying to say ‘I’m like this and your not so you can’t be a real punk or you can’t be a real this or a real that’ it’s really just a crock of bullshit because it all depends on … you know people come together because of what they like. People come together because of a commonality and a community of feeling. So Greg, I have known you all these years and some people might look at us and say that we don’t have a lot in common on the surface but we have so much in common because of things that we like. Over the years, you’ve kept me honest in the sense that I don’t have a lot of people that I can talk to about the scene and about music and you’re one of the few people that I can do that with and it’s because of you in many ways that we’re doing this show next week. Because you have constantly reminded me of my musical past and constantly reminded me of the responsibility I have to keep things alive.
Well that’s a very high compliment and if I have done that then I think I have done something good because I am really happy that the MODS are playing again. I know that there is a lot of people feeling the same way about seeing you guys play. Tell us about your 45.
S: The 45 was recorded in late November of ’78. A couple of nights at Comfort Sound up at Dufferin and Rogers Road ….
D: For $120.
S: We did a basic bed track with everyone playing. We did a guitar overdub then we threw the vocals on it. We pressed a 1,000 copies with the picture sleeve and they sold out very quickly. They were selling them at the Record Peddler at the time and Records on Wheels. They got around the country a little bit but it wasn’t the distribution you could get today. The first time it was ever played before it was released on vinyl was we had gone to see ELVIS COSTELLO play at the O’Keefe. BATTERED WIVES were opening the show and that would have been November and Mark and I and Greg went to the early show. He did two shows that night. From there we went over to the Horseshoe and got over there at about 10:00 and the POLICE were playing the Horseshoe. The first Toronto appearance by the POLICE.
I was at that gig.
S: Well there wasn’t many people there.
There was about….well its funny because the amount of people that said they were there …
S: It would have been packed.
I came into Toronto with my friend John Rudyk to buy a Bryan Ferry album which because records came out a week earlier in Toronto then they did in Hamilton and we had come in and we were in town that night and we went down to the Horseshoe and there was a little colour picture on the door and it said ‘Tonight from England the POLICE at the Horsehoe’ and we thought what the hell we’ll go in. I didn’t like them. I thought they sounded like STYX because he had such a high voice. There was no one in the place and he had this green jump suit on with zippers on it and stuff and it really wasn’t my bag.
S: What I recall about the Horseshoe was about half way back they had the drop in of the lower section and …
They used to have an old section along the side
S: Yeah. And I just remember the place wasn’t even full to that first section
The night I was there I remember there couldn’t have been more than 6 people there. It was really empty.
S: I would have said 50 to 60 but my recollection was….
There was two nights. You might have been there ..the night I was there ELVIS COSTELLO was playing the El Mo the same night. I know that. It was the second time he had played the El Mocambo.
S: Well he was playing the O’Keefe that night because that was the night he played with BATTERED WIVES.
He must have done the night before at the El Mo then or maybe I am getting it mixed up.
S: Or maybe I am getting it mixed up, but who was doing the sound for the POLICE that night was Nash the Slash and because I went over because I was standing beside the soundboard and he gets talking to me and he says to me ‘You’re in the MODS’ and I said ‘Yeah’ and we got talking and that’s when I first found out that …. You know maybe I did mix that up. Anyways, that night in the Horseshoe they Played “Step Out Tonight” on cassette in between the sets for the POLICE.
Well I left after the first set so I probably didn’t hear that.
D: I’m sure it was the highlight of the evening.
S: There were very few people there but you’re right so many people said they were there.
D: I remember when they came back and did the Edge. So after doing the Horseshoe the Garys were telling me that they called the record company A&M to say how many people were coming down and they said ‘Who’s playing ?’. ‘The Police.’ ‘Who’s that ?’ Even at the time after the first record was out it took a while but they just kept touring and touring. We opened for them in ’79 right ?
S: At the Music Hall.
D: So they had done the Shoe they had come back and done the Edge and later the Music Hall we opened for them for I think the second album. Those were big shows for us too.
Did they talk to you guys ?
S: Oh yeah. Sting was very … he came in and … it was a big show for us and it was the first time we did a theatre venue and we did two shows with them that night WAZMO NARIZ was coming up from Chicago and they got delayed and …
He was also on IRS Records too I think.
D: Yes he was.
S: But Sting came in after our set and sat down for a few minutes to talk to us and it was funny because you didn’t really … I mean we had seen them at the Edge … actually Mark’s brother opened up for them at the Edge.
D: Yeah that’s right.
What was his band ?
S: He used to do a solo act called the ROCKER. He opened up for us a few times too. He had just come out with an acoustic guitar playing old rock and roll songs and always got well received.
D: People loved him. You know it was funny because the POLICE … the one thing I remember about them in terms of their attitude was that they knew they were good. I think that is what set them apart. I remember that sort of vibe.
S: What I recall too was that this was our first true opening at a concert setting and we got no back lighting and we got about half the P.A. It was like why is theirs so much louder than ours was ? What happened to all those lights up there that weren’t being used. And it was funny because when we opened for SQUEEZE a year later we got everything. They just gave everyone everything.
D: We were simulcast on CFNY that night too.
S: That was our last show.
The MODS were ?
D: Yeah. Not the POLICE show.
S: The SQUEEZE show. That was the last show we played. Well not the last show but …
So there is recordings of that floating around out there.
D: Playing at the Music Hall we were simulcast.
Johnny McLoud of JOHNNY AND THE G RAYS mother passed away in the late 70’s. The day after she passed away the G RAYS were booked to play U of T with the MODS. Because the G RAYS needed the cash Johnny agreed to do the show. Within the first couple of songs beers flew past John’s head which prompted John’s brother and Harry Palm to enter the audience and lay a beating on the culprits. Do you guys remember this gig ?
S: I remember the gig but I don’t remember any of that.
D: I don’t remember that but the thing is that we were probably not around Scott because I do remember that they had a hard time. They weren’t happy about ….
S: …that gig. I remember that.
D: The crowd was pretty rough on them, but I don’t think we were there when that stuff happened.
You were probably getting drunk or something before the gig.
S: It was a university show.
I’m going to have to get Johnny on the show. I think he is going to have to be one of our future guests. Apparently the U of T newspaper wrote about it describing the unruly punk rock bands as the problem. You guys started playing universities a fair bit. What was the difference with playing universities as opposed to playing the usual venues ?
S: The money was better. And the beer was better. There was more free beer.
D: I just remember, you know it is really interesting the kind of things that stick out in your mind when you bring up an issue like that. One thing that I remember so distinctly is we were playing at Western and I remember doing a college radio show and whoever was interviewing us said so you guys are just in this for fun and to have a great time and you don’t care about money and for some reason it pissed me off. I don’t remember what it was, but I think it was the fact that a College kid was saying that to me. And I thought to myself ‘Why is it that we can’t care about money or success. Are we just there for people’s amusement ?’ So you’re here getting a College education and you are going to get a job and make money and have a family and am I supposed to die in a gutter ? And I remember sort of challenging the kid and saying that we have to live too. We have to survive also. You know the beautiful thing about this band is that we have also survived so nicely. Because to me this life was not about ending up in a gutter. It wasn’t about ending up dead. It was about infiltrating the regular world with our influence and the way we think about things. And I think that the four of us have been really successful in doing that. We’ve all sort of achieved success in other ways other than music but we have infiltrated the world with our attitude. In that way in that very tiny corner of the world in which you live you effect a little bit of change. And to me that’s what it was all about. It wasn’t about dying. It was about staying alive and surviving. I didn’t think Sid Vicious was such a wonderful character.
You just had one foot in the gutter.
D: Yeah. I mean once in a while it’s nice but you don’t have to give up your life and ruin it in order to have a great time and to be involved in rock and roll.
S: I thought we were totally in it for the money back then (loads of laughter).
I never believed anybody that said they didn’t want money. I remember Joe Strummer kind of going on about that and the next thing you knew he was riding in a limo opening for the WHO in football stadiums.
S: You know what though. In all honesty to me … and they got hand in hand but the fame I think….when your 18 to 21 the idea of being famous is more exhilarating than having a mansion in the south of France or something like that.
Absolutely.
D: It was all about that and when I say money it was not about money to be rich it was about money to survive. To have enough to go to on. Scott had money problems the whole time we were in the band because he was older then us and he lived on his own and you know I remember a lot of gigs where you would get more than us just to keep you going. He had to buy groceries and stuff.
You guys had a lot of A&R interest from major labels and then finally almost a recording contract. What happened ?
D: There was a local producer by the name of Keith Elshaw. He used to work at Q107 and did some demoes with us. He started his own record label to be distributed by CBS and we went in and we did some recordings with him. The problem was as Scott said earlier tonight was that we never really got the right approach in recording this band and if it were the 1990s there would have been no question that a really knowledgeable producer would have recorded us properly. We probably should have been recorded live. Instead we did this kind of airy fairy pop kind of treatment and it really was disappointing for us. At the end of the day CBS approached us directly and said, ‘We think that we should just sign you guys directly.’ And we thought that this was an okay idea and our independent label sued them. So there was a lawsuit that came up out of the whole thing and I think ultimately it got settled and the settlement was that CBS stayed away from us and then paid the studio bill to the independent label. So our album remained on the shelf until 1995 when a handful of those tracks ended up on our CD. But I think all the guys in the band agreed that the best stuff that we recorded was either live or demoes that hadn’t been released and I think our single is probably pretty representative of what we sounded like at the time.
S: Yeah the early phase of the band I think the vocals got a lot stronger and a lot more cleaned up. Yeah we were just badly produced. No one knew how to produce us. Everything was being produced like they produced QUEEN back then. They separated you moved you far into the studio and it was all about separation. It was just the absolute wrong approach for the type of band that we are. It took about 10 years before people figured out what they should be doing with bands like us.
So this recording is on “Twenty 2 Months” correct ?
D: Yeah some of the tracks.
But it is cleaned up ?
D: For “Twenty 2 Months” we chose a whole range of material from our demoes and some came from that album. It was never released.
S: Not a heck of a lot. There is three tracks on “Twenty 2 Months”. “Reactions”, “Coming in out of the Rain”, and “Change My Mind” that were recorded in 24 track but not in the album sessions.
D: Those were for Warner Brothers.
S: Warner Brothers wanted to do some demoes so we went in and they were done in a ten hour period over night from about 10:00 at night until 8:00 in the morning , we punched out the three songs from beginning to end and they partly stood the test of time because we didn’t dick around with them.
D: Yeah. And in fact they are more representative of what the band sounded like then and all the stuff that we did for the album, but you know Greg there are a lot of bands from that period that had similar complaints. The second DEAD BOYS record …
Yeah they hated Felix Pappalardi I think.
D: The same situation. They totally cleaned it up whereas the first album those were demoes done with Genya Ravan and they ended up being their first Sire Records album. It was the same thing. The demoes were more representative of these bands than the records that they eventually did because people were trying to clean them up and make them commercial and I guess that is the only way the music industry responded back then although the music industry is still horrible and always will be horrible.
Why did Chris Spedding play the lead guitar on “the Other Side” on the CD release ?
S: Because he wanted to (laughter).
D: You know what was funny was we had unmixed masters for some of our old demo recordings for 1979 and we were doing re-mixes on them and Chris was in the studio with us. There was a guitar there and he said ‘You know rather than having that kind of a section in the song a guitar solo would be really cool there and he picked up the guitar and he just started doing it. It’s kind of funny because he doesn’t play like Scott. He plays this sort of rockabilly Chuck Berry kind of thing, but he did it and we thought it was kind of interesting. It was a different kind of feel to the song and stuff.
I think I’d rather hear it without it as much as I love Chris Spedding.
D: Yeah it doesn’t really fit.
Christina Hunt of the Toronto Star wrote an article on April 26th 1979 saying that ‘violence hatred, and ugliness died when punk rock crashed out. In it’s place are new wave bands like Toronto’s the MODS aiming to put fun back into the music. Do you agree with that statement ?
S: That’s what we told her.
D: You know what ? I think that as much as punk was the beginning of a whole period of change, people were anxious with it to go away.
You guys seemed to because of your really unique style it seemed like when it was time for the crossover when a lot of bands starting going rockabilly and the new Romantic thing happened you guys didn’t really have to change. But one thing that did change around that time was that you guys changed your name to the NEWS. Why did you do that ?
S: Well the whole Mod thing was coming out of England. The kind of revival of mod-ism. Greg and Mark had gone over to England in that summer of ’79 and they had come back and everything was mod. It was like calling yourselves the rock and rolls. It didn’t make any sense anymore. In retrospect it was probably the right thing to do at the time but the wrong thing to do in retrospect. And the NEWS was an okay name until HUEY LEWIS took it.
Did the NEWS sound any different from the MODS ?
S: No it was a name change only. It had nothing to do with musically. I don’t think. It was strictly to do with the Mod revival that was happening in England. It was a name that wasn’t going to fly outside of here.
D: We were trying to distance ourselves from it but the problem was the name never really took. Like every time we were doing a gig the NEWS was always ‘formerly the Mods’.
I remember that. Times were changing. When do you think punk rock died ? What do you think ? Was there any one thing or …because it definitely ….
S: There were just more bands coming out that were doing things that were a little more complicated and interesting. I don’t think it was a question of it dying. I think when the VILETONES split up and the SECRETS formed and Leckie took all the UGLY and created the new VILETONES and it was just like they were shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. It was the same guys playing in different bands. But we … I still recall one of the funniest stories for me was driving in a taxi in ’78 just after we started playing out and we were going along the Danforth and we pick up these guys just outside of the Beer Store at Greenwood and Danforth and a bunch of young guys they get in and are going to Blake Street. So I am driving them to Blake Street and one guy looks at my ID and goes ‘Hey are you in a band ?’ And I said ‘Yeah.’ And these guys are pretty ….
Was it Allie ?
S: I don’t know who it was but it was the Blake Street Boys and the one guy says to me ‘You’re in the MODS. You’re the only band other than the VILETONES we like. You’re cool.’ That was it.
That’s definitely how they talked.
S: Oh yeah. They would just kick the shit out of you or anyone else.
I actually liked those guys as crazy as they were. In 1980 you guys started getting frustrated. What was starting to happen ?
D: I think the recording was very disappointing for us and the record company shenanigans was disappointing for us and I don’t think we had an appreciation at that age for how long it took for things to happen. We were very impatient and naive and you know it’s funny because the same naivete and innocence that made the MODS such an incredible experience for us and has left us with such good memories is the same naivete and innocence that caused us problems as kids because we couldn’t wait. We thought that things had to happen quickly. But you know what to be fair to us we saw bands like the POLICE where it did happen quickly. It was like every step that they took was boom boom boom and it was a period of months not years. You gotta remember man in those days there weren’t old grey haired fifty year old farts playing rock n roll music. You did not see that. So guys did have their success early. Guys did have their success young and they were on their third record or fourth record or whatever. So its easy for us to say now that we were impatient but the fact is that that is kind of the way it was back then. That was a big big part of the problem.
S: It was the first real turnover of rock n roll too. I mean it’s re-birthed a few times since then you know in the early 90’s with NIRVANA and all that, but I mean realistically …. And I think people see the cycle now I think they are more attuned to the fact that something new will come up it will kick in a whole new series of groups and there will be some new superstars out of it down the road. But I think the late 70s was the first time that it really happened. I mean finally the BEATLES of Lennon and McCartney were getting old. The KINKS were getting … all these guys were getting old and they were moving into different things and you had the new bands coming in like QUEEN and all these studio bands that no one could even hope to sound like so then you had … it was really what punk and all that always was the re-birth of giving the music back to the next generation, except no one realized it at the time. That’s my theory on it. No one realized it in the late 70’s. Now I think you look back and you see exactly what was happening is that we could not sit down and learn “Bohemian Rhapsody” and play that. We could not learn STEELY DAN songs you know. We just did not have the virtuoso to do it. And when you’re 18 and 19 you shouldn’t be playing that crap. You should be playing something that means something to you and that’s the first time it kind of happened.
You said that you guys started looking outside for hired guns for encouragement which you said was a mistake. Why was it a mistake ?
S: What we really lacked was some good grounded management. I think we got to a phase in the last six months where we were trying to write songs that pleased A&R people and pleased those kind of people. We were trying to get a record contract where the more we tried seemed to push us further away. We left what we had started which was lets sit down tonight and write three songs. Now it became lets sit down and write a single and it was foreign to what we should have been doing because we were no longer writing from our hearts. We were writing with a purpose in mind and we weren’t good enough song writers to do that. Either it fell out of you or you pushed it out of you and it is not the same.
D: What is so amazing is the stuff that we are playing on Saturday night is the original stuff from the first phase of the band where we were doing it for us.
And you said that you even found an old set list that I think you are going to replicate for Saturday night which I think is great.
D: Yeah I pulled a couple of our set lists from the old days because I kept diaries and we’ve looked at them. The order is different. We’ve come up with a new order but we are also approaching it the same way where we used to back then which is rapid fire delivery of the stuff because we were very RAMONES like in our delivery. There isn’t a lot of stage chatter. We’re not up their telling stories and stuff. We just let the music talk for itself and we bang it out real hard and fast.
Well you guys both look like you are in good shape and you better bang it out like you used to because those old gigs were pretty heavy duty. Your last gig of all places was at a private school. Where was the school and how did you get a gig at a private school ?
S: That was our last gig that no one really knew about. The last gig was opening for SQUEEZE what everyone thought and then we went and did this show at the private school. Where was it ? Bathurst and Bloor somewhere.
D: Yeah. I can’t remember the name of the school.
Like UCC ? Oh Bathurst and Bloor. There is one just sort of north of Bloor a little bit west of Bathurst. I’ve seen that school.
S: I don’t know how we got it. Greg got it somehow. Someone approached Greg at a show and they brought us in and we played there and that was it.
What finally broke the MODS up for good ?
S: Hmmmmm. I think it was Mark’s socks (laughter). I think Mark sort of had enough and you had the offer from Bators.
D: I had the offer from Bators.
S: Greg and I were not ready to pull the plug but ….
After the MODS broke up I saw a piece on the New Music where the NUMBERS were having a party in a basement and Greg was with them. I don’t know if he was actually a member of the NUMBERS.
S: Yeah he joined them.
And Scott, you went on to be in the POPULAR SPIES. What about Mark, was he in any other bands ?
D: No. You know it is funny that when we broke up it was kind of like me and Mark deciding to do it. Greg and Scott weren’t ready to do it. So it was like a marital couple kind of coming apart in a way. But there was always a strand of friendship that went through us and has been there all these years and that’s how we are able to reunite right now.
Which is evident by looking at your recording since then and seeing participation of album cover design and by Ralph Alfonso of Crash n Burn and the DIODES fame, Greg Trinier helping design your sleeve, and of course Scott playing guitar on “Make Up Your Mind” on your solo record Dave. Now you started with Stiv Bators and then you ended up in the DEAD BOYS. Is that correct ?
D: Yeah.
So you met Stiv at the Cheetah Club, you ended up playing on his record. Tell us what happened next ?
D: When I met him at the Cheetah Club with the MODS he really liked the MODS a lot and I went down first in the summer of 1979 to Los Angeles to record a couple of singles with him and one of the guys from BLUE ASH which is an Ohio band and I spent a month and a half down there. We recorded a bunch of material most of which came out on singles and has since been released over the years and then I came back to Toronto and re-joined the MODS and we played for several more months and the DEAD BOYS had gone back on the road. The original band had reformed and then they started to fall apart and when they started to fall apart BATORS called me and said would you like to come and replace John in the DEAD BOYS ? So after having done these solo singles with him that’s when I joined.
And how old were you then ?
D: When I joined Stiv I would have been nineteen years old.
So your parents were pretty liberal about letting you go to play with a bunch of guys called the DEAD BOYS.
D: Yeah.
Hanging out at the Tropicana with everybody from John Belushi to Dee Dee Ramone. I know I have heard a lot of crazy stories from you. You eventually went along and were in the original line up for LORDS OF THE NEW CHURCH with Brian James and Stiv Bators. What happened ?
D: Well at the end of the DEAD BOYS and after Bators solo record had come out Brain James came and joined the band. We didn’t have a name for the band at first. We actually played some gigs under the name PARTNERS IN CRIME and I quite liked playing with Brian. I thought he was a great guy and a really fabulous guitar player and we did a bunch of gigs together then this decision was made to re-locate to England where the band was going to be managed by Miles Copeland. So I kind of faced this dilemma whether to come back home to Toronto or whether to go to England with Stiv and Brian and I chose to come back home to Toronto.
Then you went solo. You released an album on Bomb Records which has a killer photo of you taken by Rodney Bowes. Listening to the album it is clear of your love for pop music. Did Stiv and the DEAD BOYS turn you onto pop ?
D: Yeah, I mean I always liked pop music anyway and I loved the sort of pop glam phase. I loved bands like SLADE and the SWEET and stuff but the DEAD BOYS and Jimmy Zero loved the RASPBERRIES and a lot of that sort of Ohio pop. Bands like BLUE ASH so that influenced me a lot. And in fact I think a lot of punk bands and guys in punk bands were closet pop music fans. And really it was a stones throw away. We thought the music was so dangerous at the time we go back and listen to the RAMONES now and it sounds like the BEACH BOYS.
Oh yeah. I always thought that. I know Stiv always spoke highly … I think he even liked the Eric Carmen solo records. I’m pretty sure. You almost signed a deal with EMI.
D: Yeah. Well what happened was after my solo record I got developed as a solo artist for a while at EMI, which just really consisted of doing a bunch of demoes and photo sessions and things like that carried on for some time and then at a certain point they put me in a band that was out of Vancouver called STRANGE ADVANCE. I played drums for them on tour.
Did you have shoulder pads when you played in that band ?
D: No shoulder pads. I fought that kind of retro version of the future as much as I could playing with those guys.
You said ‘the only really beauty in music is the people who make it and the people who listen to it. Everything else sucks.’ You kind of hinted at that earlier. I thought it was a very interesting statement. I couldn’t agree more. There is a lot of interest in the 70’s Toronto punk scene now. Film projects from Colin Brunton and Blair Martin, the “Punk til you Puke” exhibit by Will Munro, an upcoming book by Liz Worth, a photo documentary by Rodney Bowes. Scott what do you attribute this to ?
S: People are really bored (laughter). No Toronto had probably outside of London and New York had the best scene going. Maybe L.A. but I don’t even think L.A. had much going at the time. And it took a while before people realized it and there is some history here that kind of unearthed and people are going back to revisit it.
What is inspiring you guys to play this Saturday besides me trying to get you out there as you were saying earlier?
D: For me it was the fact that we have talked about it over the last few years but it never materialized because there wasn’t a proper venue or thing instigating, but for me personally was watching the documentary “New York Doll” about Arthur Kane. Watching that documentary film just made me feel like ‘You know what if we want to do this now is the time to do it.’ We really want to get now while the getting is good because the fact is as we get older and stuff like that it becomes more and more difficult to pull it off. And watching that film just gave me a sense of immediacy about all of this and thinking now is the time to do it. And Cleave Anderson it was him who first called me, the drummer from BATTERED WIVES and TYRANNA and a whole bunch of other bands and he is also in the SCREWED.
S: The WAY OUTS.
D: He had called me and said ‘Would the MODS ever consider doing something. ?’ And I said ‘You know what I think we will and as long as we don’t have to play three hours.’
Can we expect any more shows after this gig on Saturday ?
S: Just the Asian tour (laughter).