Saturday 27 January 2007

Faster Pussycat...Faster (Educating Stuartie Magaks)

"There's too much heat, out on the street, telling us to move along...its gonna be a long hot summer from now on!" TRB.

It snowed here today and soon melted. It reminded me of Canada and particularly when the snow goes. You can smell it on the breeze, a sweeter smell on warmer air, coming up from the South. Then you know that the snow will go...eventually and that you can begin to live normally again and wait for summer. The summer of 1982 was a summer to remember. I had gone back to Northern Ireland in the summer of the previous year and was already infected with something a strong dose of penicillian just couldn't get rid of. I was walking around in standard punk issue uniform, bike jacket, bleached levis, you get the picture, but by this time I had added a patterned hankerchief that I wore as a headband and convinced Gaz to do the same. I am sure we looked like prats and would get various comments from the bouncers at the pub doors like - "cut yer head son?" I was also beginning to say "eh" a lot.

Punks that went to Canada from the UK often had a superior attitude to the locals and were of the view that the only good punk bands came from the UK. Naturally I assumed the same. In reality, however, punk was stagnating in the UK. The Oi movement was in full swing offering mediocre offerings from the likes of Chron Gen, The Partizans and the awful Becky Bondage and Vice Squad. Crass was doing what Crass did best, telling us that Falklands war was immoral, that we shouldn't eat meat and Jesus died for his own sins not ours. By this time we were all of the view that Crass was full of shit. Malcolm Owen was dead and the Clash were becoming mainstream in the US. I was first introduced to a new type of punk when Kealan and Gord convinced me to sit down and listen to DOA from British Columbia. At first I was sceptical, and why shouldn't I have been. With names like Chuck Biscuit, Joey Shithead and Randy `give it to me baby a-ha -a-ha`Rampage, DOA sounded like a collective of rejects from a kid's western, a teen comedy and a porno movie. InitiallyI wasn't that impressed until DOA brought out their seminal album Hardcore 81, which quite frankly blew me away. I need to qualify this by saying that there was a lot of awful punk music from North America. When I arrived the scene in Toronto was a mix of outdated punk and new wave that had merged together and was represented by the likes of Micky De Sadest and Martha and the Muffins. Just as the foundations of the punk /oi movement was being built on in the UK (by lesser beings), the awful punk / new wave scene in the US and Canada was also being torn down and rebuilt but by gods in bands such as DOA, the Subhumans, the Dead Kennedys, Black Flag and the Circle Jerks to name a few. One thing they all had in common was they played fast, very fast punk rock. With Colin's depature we no longer aspired to sound like the Clash, rather we sought to emulate the bands mentiond above - and play faster pussycat...faster.

I had two visitors from the Land of Puddles in the summer of 1982. Gaz has already chronicled his expriences with Canadian customs and immigration (if you could just touch your toes Sir - very good, this will only take a minute) but he enjoyed the rest of his stay. I introduced him to a special brand of Canadian cigarettes that made him "very aware of everything" as well as allowing him to experience the sensation of his hair.. "actually growing in my head." I also took him to see the Dead Kennedys in Toronto which was a great show where we met what were to become two good pals, Vince `PeeWee `Pauluchi and English Neil from Dorsett. There were a lot of people from across the pond knocking around the scene and they generally got a geographical prefix added to their first name, for example, English Neil, English Rob, Scottish Paul and of course...Irish Stu.

The second GBH reprobate to arrive was none other than Geordie `the HeadBanger` Hill. Geordie's brother had moved to Burlington just up the road from me and Geordie came over to visit his brother that Summer, just as his brother was preparing to go back to NI to visit Geordie and his folks. I guess communication was not Geordie's strong point. Geordie is currently living in Bangor and is working for... the Royal Mail. We hung out a lot together and he even forced me to take him to see Iron Maiden in Toronto. I retailiated by forcing him to go and see SLF at El Macombo, where we ended up having a Chinese with the lads.

And so the summer of 1982 was a great time. I had seen two good pals, I had made a few more good pals, I had seen a couple of great bands and I had been turned onto the emergent hardcore scene that was coming up from the South. Zeroption were becoming tighter as a three piece and were begining to gig. All we needed now...was a manager.

1 comment:

hungryhomer said...

Yeh stu , i remembered the maiden gig about 30 secs after i posted my 1st comment to you man .How could i forget that ? After puttin up with 5 or 6 songs of watching the toronto metalheads go nuts by basicly standing as still as humanly possible , holding their lighters above their heads and sorta shouting yeh ! wooo ! It was time to show em how it was done over this side of the world & introduce them to a bit of brain bashing ( did'nt expect to open my eyes and find a circle of open mouthed canucks gawking at me though )Still great memories !Drop me an e-mail & we can do a bit of catching up magacks ! on hungryhomer40@yahoo.co.uk talk to you soon big dude .