Friday 23 February 2007

Jill's Fags


" IT'S A FAB PROTECTIVE FOR THAT TYPE OF A GIRLBUT EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT SHE USES IT WELLIT'S THE THERAPEUTIC STRUCTURE I CAN USE AT WILLBUT I DON'T THINK IT FITS MY B.D. DRILL"

Protex Blue The Clash

I had always wanted a punk girlfriend, one that had spikey hair, bondage jeans, the whole makeup thing, but was still attractive and feminine. I met Jill `Option` through the various punk parties that were going on in and around Oakville. She came from the whiteoaks side of town, while I was from the Bronty area.
In the eyes of Gord and Kealan she lacked credibility, largely due to an incident at a Ramones gig where she allegedly chanted, ` we want the sex pistols - we want the sex pistols` all the way through the band's performance. The fact that the sex pistols were not on the line up seemed to be immaterial to Jill. We gradually drifted together and then about two years later we drifted apart. In the interm she came to manage zeroption although I remain to be convinced that she thought we were any good.

Our relationship started off as many do, friends, just friends. We attended a couple of gigs and messed around a little. Things became more serious after a Young Lion's show in Toronto. We had gone back to one of her friend's place and while listening to Gang of Four, I slipped my arm around her shoulder, it wasn't rejected, her friend raised his eyebrows at both of us and looked slightly disappointed. After that we started going out. To be frank I thought he was after her too, so I had to move fast. It later transpires he was more interested in me but I didn't know much about the gay scene in Ontario despite the fact that Toronto was known as the San Franciso of the North. The song that was playing at the time was `tainted goods` (as opposed to Soft Cell's `tainted love`) both, however, would have been a very apt description of the relationship. The irony ws not lost on either of us. She worked part time in a Chemists - which was handy!

In terms of her appearance she fitted the bill. She had fantastic spikely hair, occassionally dyed blue, a leather bike jacket, red bondage jeans, with the look beiong completed by a pair of black monkey boots I brought her back from Belfast, which in truth, were perhaps half a size too small for her. In terms of Canadians and my contribution to their foot related difficulties, I have done pretty well. Kealan, in particular, is scarred for life due to my attention to his digits. Not only did I buy him a pair of brothel creepers which were so small that he eventually pushed his big toe through the front of them, but I have also broken his ankle by repeatedly jumping on it as he drunkly crawled up Kirk Jackson's front garden. The cracking noise on my final attempt was a dead give away that all was not well. This was confirmed by his attempts to stand up right. Attempting to place any weight on the aforementioned ankle he immediately flipped over and groaned in agony. Initally I thought this was really quite funny, but soon realised that he was in real pain. I also managed to drop a beer bottle in front of him (which smashed) just as he was doing (a very poor impression) of the nutty dance, thus cutting open his foot. The problem was as our drummer, he kind of needed his feet. Anyway, I digress.

By this time we had rented a practice room above an office on the outer fringes of Oakville. Colin had left the band and Gord andI were sharing vocals, shouts, hysterical laughter particularly when he'd smoked too much of a certain substance.

We would trudge up to it most days after school and gradually put a set together. It also became a party place, which we shared with scared. Large volumes of alcohol was consumed - especially, when in season, superbock - illict substances were abused, as were any females that happened to enter the place. Chris X, one of the Oakville punk army, would frequently come round, grab the nearest female and attempt to perform incredible feats of sexual daring, often ontop of broken beer bottles and in full view of all asundry. Weeks later he would regail us with stories of his most recent trip to the clap clinic including going into lurid detail about the location, size and pain caused by whatever was growing out of or on top of his favourite body part.

Jill tolerated the parties but showed a healthy distain for the hangers on. She did begin to tap into the scene in Toronto and helped us get a few important gigs playing with the likes of Youth Youth Youth lead by the much moustached English guitarist Brian and the exceptionally talented and very good looking Young Lions, who later became pretty good friends of the zeroption and stole all our girlfriends!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jill Heath has been a prominent figure in the Toronto hardcore scene around in the scene for a long time. She’s been a promoter, run a record label, hosted numerous radio shows, written a punk column for Nerve magazine, managed bands as prolific as the ROLLINS band, and moved on to do bigger punk events like the Warped Tour.

Jill (J): Oh yeah and tour managed.
Yes. Welcome to the show Jill.
J: Thank you.
First off I wanted to ask you how did it all start ? How did you first get into punk rock?
J: Well this is going to be the weird part. Stephe and I started this conversation about two years ago when the creative reality book known as “American Hardcore” by Steven Blush came out. Actually if you are really interested in how creative that book got you can check all the reviews on amazon.com and they’ll kind of give you the lowdown on it. Anyways that kind of started an e-mail conversation that started about two years ago so I’m gonna read my response and then we will sort of see if I disagree with anything I said two years ago.
Okay.
J: Oddly enough I can’t really remember. There is no one minute that stands out in memory that said this is what I want to be doing with the rest of my life. But I do remember my mom taping an interview for my from CBC Radio with Bob Geldof of the BOOMTOWN RATS who even back then well before something he dreamed up called Band Aid had his brain in gear with his mouth open. That interested me. I think I was 12 or 13 at the time. The CBC back then, we are talking the 70’s back then, were giving a certain amount of air time here and there, in their regular news programming to this wacky new thing coming out of the UK without giving much attention to or perhaps not realizing the extent of the local scene that already existed here in Toronto. Back then I was turning on the television with some regularity, I don’t relate these days. So that would have been another access point. And once you realized it was out there it was just a matter of getting out there and connecting with it locally. And by locally I meant the Toronto scene, although Oakville later had a little burgeoning scene including shows at the Y, back when I used to teach Tai Chi there. That was not happening back in the day, as we say. And once you actually looked for punk rock it was easy to find a community because there was a lot less people into it so you were a lot easier to spot. I got involved at the Rock Against Racism – Toronto chapter early on as a teenager and that is also how I hooked up with like minded folks like the YOUNG LIONS and YOUTH YOUTH YOUTH for example, and Deanna from the fanzine Script. And also Nick Smash from the fanzine Smash It Up, the first fanzine that I ever saw from Toronto. I first met TOXIC REASONS through a road trip with the Rock Against Racism folks to Dayton Ohio for a conference there. CKLN 88.1 FM wasn’t on the air yet, neither was CIUT nor CHRY.
No there probably wasn’t any campus-community radio stations.
J: Yeah. It wasn’t on the air yet being the first of the three campus-community stations to get on the air, neither was CFMU in Hamilton where I did my first two years on the air. But Brave New Waves hosted by Brent Banbarry, which was in the graveyard overnight slot on the CBC Radio. That was like having a really cool jukebox that went coast to coast. The internet didn’t exist as we know it today. So the printed word was in hard copy only for zines and music newspapers. And can I also say that CBC “Brave New Waves” was much more interesting then it is now. I have to admit that I have tuned in a few times and have gone “Nahhh”.
I agree. Enough with the Knitting Factory.
J: Yeah Brent Banbarry was an amazing, kind of like he was our John Peel. Really taped into stuff. Played a lot of interesting and diverse stuff. A sad thing that he doesn’t do that anymore.
He does “Go” though on Saturday mornings, which is amazing. It’s a Game Show.
J: He knew when to quit though, which is good. Before the show started to suck like some bands that don’t know when to quit. So yeah I pretty much agree that that is how I got into punk rock. That’s what I thought two years ago. That’s pretty much what I think now. It wasn’t really any kind of one thing that made me go…..
So I have a question. You mentioned about Bob Geldoff. Did you go see them ? The BOOMTOWN RATS at Seneca College.
J: No I did not. This was before there was like a public transit thing that worked. It wasn’t as connected as it is now. We are talking back when the Go Train ended at my stop. And now it goes way beyond, way over to Hamilton.
All the way around the lake.
J: Yeah, yeah. It didn’t do that back then. And there was the last train going westbound was 11:43pm.
So how did you get, I mean you mentioned Rock Against Racism, how did you get involved in a local scene ?
J: Well I saw a poster and I think it might have been on your basic phone pole, all hail to street postering and the people that still do it.
Was this in Oakville or Toronto ?
J: It was in Toronto actually. I think it was the first Canadian chapter and one of the first ones in North America. I probably either saw it there or there was this very cool record store that Brian Taylor used to work at …actually even before Brian Taylor worked ... actually even before Brian worked at it one of the buyers at Rotate This. They used to have a small store on Queen Street, 110 Queen Street East, and that was before they took over both sides of this foyer. They only had one side of a foyer beside “This Ain’t the Rosedale Library” and the whole foyer became everything. Posters for this, posters for that, gig posters. It was like this really large bulletin board. So I think I may have seen a poster there or on a street corner between walking from Union Station, where the train stopped over to Queen East. And I went to a chapter meeting and that is where I meet Nick Smash from the RENT BOYS and Smash It Up zine. The RENT BOYS didn’t exits yet, but Smash It Up zine did and Chris from the YOUNG LIONS, the bass player. He was there. That’s how I made their acquaintance.
That’s crazy. And so what happened then ? How did you start finding out about more punk bands ? Was it all through Rock Against Racism ?
J: That was kind of an interesting entry point. And also bare in mind that around about that time if not then, shortly thereafter they interviewed a guy who looked a lot like Lemmy from MOTORHEAD on the New Music, which was actually a reasonably decent hour long program on City TV on Sunday evenings from 6:00 – 7:00pm. Actually it is really funny. The guy that does “White House Report” or whatever, John Roberts was JD Roberts back then and he interviewed BLACK FLAG for example when I brought them here in 1984, very strange. Anyway they interviewed a guy who looked a lot like Lemmy called Ben Hoffman who some years later went to really great lengths to defend your right to put out records that might be offensive to some people when DAYGLO ABORTIONS went to court over whether they were allowed to release certain records. And he ran a small store called the Record Peddler. That was one of the really good things about …chain record stores have their place however there is nothing like being able to walk into a record store or a book store or whatever, that is not a chain and just walk in and know someone well enough to say “Is there anything in here I need to buy ?” And they can tell you what you might want to buy and this band put out a record but it’s not all that. They were pretty honest about it. This one really stinks. This one you might like. This one is really obscure. The fact that they know your taste well enough that they can just make recommendations and that the recommendations don’t suck.
I want to go back to the scene a bit. I want to ask you about some of the bands aside from the RENT BOYS, YOUNG LIONS…
Actually the RENT BOYS weren’t around yet, but the YOUNG LIONS definitely were. That’s how I met Chris. That was just about 1980 or thereabouts. From Rock Against Racism putting on a few shows because if you were in a band you knew other bands, so that’s where you get things like L’ETRANGER and Andrew Cash. Peter Cash wasn’t in bands yet but Andrew was. Peter was the roadie. They played along with the YOUNG LIONS and also the place where the YOUNG LIONS rehearsed was a place called the Garage because it was a garage and they lived upstairs. And the rehearsal room was downstairs main level. They rehearsed there as did the 20th Century Rebels, who were an 8 piece, kind of varied….
…..ska band.
Ah no. Reggae band actually.
From Malton.
Yeah.
I have their 12".
They did a really great version of the national anthem with the HUMMER SISTERS and the CBC paid for it. It’s great. They actually rehearsed downstairs too and you could tell when they were practicing because all you could hear was bass rumble through the floor. The drums were very quiet, the guitar was very quiet, but the bass was so loud. So it was because they all knew each other that they went we’ll go on and put on a show together. This is before things like “Start Dancing”. So this was local bands playing generally in church halls and basements that were amenable to the concept that racism was not cool. I mean it sounds like a very basic concept 25 years on, but back then it was something radical. We hadn’t heard about this because the Rock Against Racism in Europe and the UK hadn’t really come here. They released a compilation but that is really as far as the profile got.
And there was a skinhead scene at the time.
Yeah. Even before…and that is where you started getting SHARP which was Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice so you knew that they were in this camp and not this camp over here. We just happen to have short hair.
You started mentioning “Start Dancing” and some other things. What were some places that you got to go see shows at ? What were some of the places that allowed shows to take place ?
Oddly enough, this place that is now a youth hostel on the North West corner of King and Spadina, the Cabana Room, which actually if you left there at 11:30 at night you could run to Union station in 13 minutes because I had done that a few times. So there was bands there. There was the Turning Point which for a while was the Young Drivers of Canada. It was 192 Bloor Street West.
Right beside McDonald’s.
Yeah. It was a Young Drivers of Canada and then it was something else. Who knows what it was. The Edge. Actually I was at the very last show ever at the Edge that a couple of guys called the Garys – Gary Cormier and Gary Topp - used to book a club called the Edge which was on the north east corner of Gerard and Church. So this was the Edge and the very last show there was DOA with Randy Rampage in in it actually. That was an odyssey. By the time I started doing shows, I guess in ’81 or something like that we had the Edgewater which was at Roncesvalles Hotel. It was basically in the Roncesvalles Hotel, like the Drake…oh and the Drake had shows too. So the Edgewater was at the north west corner of Queen and Roncesvalles. And then the Drake Hotel which still exists and is so much swankier now had shows both on the main floor and in the basement. But it changed. For a while they had them on the main floor and then for a while they had them in the basement.
And Larry’s Hideaway ?
…which was bulldozed. You wouldn’t want to stay there anyway even though they let the bands stay there.
So that had started already.
I think for me a really big year for Larry’s Hideaway and I’m sure there was earlier stuff, but in 1985 I saw the GUN CLUB, EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN, NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS, BLACK FLAG. Oh I think that was in ’84. Anyway that was a hammering year for music there. There was just a lot of shows. The Gary’s were bringing tons of stuff. They basically brought up most things they wanted to see. Oh the Concert Hall, did they….
The Concert Hall did lots of shows.
888 Yonge which is on the north west corner of Yonge and Davenport.
CTV.
Isn’t it the Mike Bullard show ?
It is the CTV building with MTV there.
Opposite Canadian Tire more or less.
What about the Upper Lip ?
Oh Yeah. The Upper Lip came along. Actually the SUBHUMANS played their first show. The Canadian SUBHUMANS, eh. And I did some shows there as well. And that would have been Yonge and Wellesley more or less. West side of the street, second floor.
Bond Street ?
167 Bond Street. No. 167 Church Street was a hall too.
Was that the Party Centre ? BLACK FLAG played at the Party Centre.
Yeah I brought them. Those are the two shows that I did in ’84. They also played at Domino’s. Domino’s was on Isabella on the south side just in from the corner. They had dance nights. And it was around the corner from Nuts and Bolts, but everyone called it Sluts and Dolts. So it was kind of like a dance club, and so was Domino’s but Domino’s had bands so the first time that BLACK FLAG played here, I guess it was in 1982, which was the who the heck is singing and the guy playing guitar is supposed to be singing. Dez Cadena on guitar and Henry Rollins on vocals. That was their first time in Canada. And they played at kind of a dance club. There wasn’t a lot of clubs back then.
Although we’ve listed a bunch.
That was over the years. Oh yeah and 167 Church Street was this awesome multi use facility. Kind of build up on the Masonic temple where there was multiple rooms that you could use. I actually had rented a couple here and there and actually MDC brought a band with them from Chicago called ARTICLES OF FAITH. They said ‘Yeah there is this band that we really like and we would like for them to open the show.’ I’m like ‘Sure, why not.’ Yeah so ARTICLES OF FAITH opened the show for them and that was the first time I saw them. Actually I did TSOL there and I can’t remember who else. Oh yeah the SUBVERTS from Chicago.
Oh Rob was talking about the SUBVERTS when he was in.
Really really good band. But do you know one of the best things that ever happened at 167 Church. I mean there was good shows like T.S.O.L. and MDC with ARTICLES OF FAITH, but in 1984 in December I put on the BLACK FLAG “Slip It In” show.
I was there.
Do you remember the guy protesting ?
I remember the christians outside with the cover of “Slip It In” …
And “Your going to burn in hell if you go into this show”.
Yes. My brother loved it.
So here we are burning in hell. What happened was, this was about 20 years ago, if you have not seen this album cover ….
..and we both went to Catholic school at the time.
Oh yeah. Have we talked on air about how Stephe’s parental units were not very keen about his record collection, at the some point…
No we haven’t talked about that.
Oh. We could talk about that some time.
We could. But that was big when the P.M.R.C. was active.
The Parents Music Resource Centre done by Tipper Gore. Al Gore who is Mr. Enviro guy know….
According to Eye Weekly.
Well you know what is funny is that the PMRC, for those who didn’t have it inflicted upon their universe were all about rating records, which you know what good luck if you could ever keep quorum and put a sticker on a record that was accurate. That was about the time that people started putting Parental Advisory stickers on just so they could get people to buy it because ‘this will offend your parents, better buy it quick.’ Oh yeah, so if you have not seen the album cover for “Slip It In”, and oddly enough it was censored for Canada.
Was it really ?
Well there is a piece of art missing so…. Censored in quotes okay. It’s got a nun who’s got her arm wrapped around the bare leg of a man. You can tell it’s a guy because it’s got black long haired legs. And so she’s got her arm wrapped around this guy’s leg saying ‘No one knows more than I that the less that girls or women know the better they are likely to be’. So this Christian group had these little lovely placards in which, I don’t know how they got the art, but on the Canadian Fringe Product release the little saying was not on the front cover. So just the nun hanging out with her arm around the guy’s bare leg. I don’t know where they got the art but they had little placards and little flames of Armageddon….
…oh they stapled the cover. Someone went and bought a record and stapled the cover to the placard
That’s hilarious. It’s like ‘Okay we are going to support this record by buying it and then we are going to deface it. But what did they do with the records is what I want to know. Did they listen to it ? Are they also know eternally damned.
Yeah, who knows ?
Yes that was the only show of mine, I am so disappointed, that was the only show of mine that ever got protestors out to it.
That was great. I think there was more than one.
One was a dentist. A born again dentist. I remember that for some reason. He was the leader of the little squadron. Actually the other …. Many moons ago I did a Hallowe’en show in Oakville. We have a little Masonic temple there. It is quite small. And Brian from YOUTH YOUTH YOUTH did the door for me. And he had a mohawk then. So it was SECTION 8, ZEROPTION, and the YOUNG LIONS that were playing. So the Mayor came to the show.
No way.
Yeah. It was the first punk rock show in Oakville.
And he wanted to open the show or something.
No it was Harry Barrett. My dad knew him actually because they had both done some time in the military so they knew each other. My dad was in town planning and Harry was the Mayor. And he came to the show and Brian was working the door and he goes ‘Can I help you Sir ?’ and he stuck his head in and said ‘So this is what they call punk rock,’ and Brian goes ‘Apparently so.’ And that was about it. He didn’t want to go in and tear it up or mosh or anything or start a circle dance. So he just stuck his head in. It was Hallowe’en costume party too and there was one guy dressed as a Tylenol cap because that was around the time when the Tylenol capsules had the cyanide scare and that. He left shortly after. I think the noise was a little much for him. Yeah. It was funny though. The Mayor came to my show.
Is there other memorable moments. That was one of my question in this round of things that I wanted to ask. Memorable moments of the early punk scene.
Yeah the police shut down…well they didn’t exactly shut it down. Back in the day it was kind of tricky getting your all ages shows to happen in bars. They kind of figured out how to make this happen now, but you had to have a certain amount of food rung in to balance the alcohol if you were having underage people in the bar. So technically then you had a restaurant license. So the Roncesvalles Hotel, conveniently enough, you did shows in the basement. There was hotel rooms upstairs but kind of in between there were stairs up to the pizza place. And then six stairs more up to the hotel lobby kind of thing. What they did. I had the CIRCLE JERKS in 1981. Oh yeah it was actually within a very short period of time where I did the SOCIAL DISTORTION on the “Another State of Mind” tour with them and YOUTH BRIGADE. Yeah, so I did them at the Club Without Name, which was 8 or 900 Dovercourt east side of the street maybe just a little north of Bloor. A guy called Ian was booking it. But the CIRCLE JERKS, I think it was slightly earlier than that I am having some brain drain here. We did two nights there. We also had them play Grimsby at the Grimsby Hotel. So if there is anyone there…that was a really rare show.
Is there anyone who went to Grimsby ?
Yeah. People came from out of town. It was actually good. The show broke even, which was kind of cool. It was kind of funny. We had to bring in a little P.A. for the room. So I did the CIRCLE JERKS and it was two nights at the Edgewater Hotel. And a really great poster, you know someone had an old school vertical says the Edgewater running down the side in a long skinny line of type, so someone did a poster, Ken Brown as a matter of fact, which had little punkers stage diving off it and swinging from it. Ken Brown was my favourite poster artist. I used him for many of my shows for a long time. So he, Ken Brown, this is one of my really weird parts, he was underage. Like way underage. Like I think barely got his driver’s license to be able to drive to the show because he kind of lived out by Highway 427 and Islington. So he was at the show on the Friday evening and the police came in and they were getting around the no restaurant license by having the pizza parlour upstairs bring down pizzas and selling slices to everyone which was cool. It was like if I could get that happening at all the shows it would be awesome because it was pretty good pizza. So they came in and they were selling slices to everyone and the weird thing about the set up for the Edgewater was that you walked downstairs, like 12 stairs or whatever and there was two sets of glass doors. The room was essentially shaped like an “L”. So if you look through one set of glass doors the room looked empty. Like you couldn’t see a person in there because everyone was in the front. Like if you looked through the other doors it was crammed and there was rather an active pit going on. So the place was like look through one door and it’s empty and you look through the other ones and there is this little snapshot of chaos in their mind and they said ‘this show is bordering on a riot and everyone had to sit down immediately and watch the band.’ And the CIRCLE JERKS were on the stage at the time. So what Keith Morris did was bring up a chair on the stage and sat on the chair and said “Okay everyone has got to sit in a chair because the police are here and this is how we have to be at the punk rock show.” And they started going through the entire room I.D.ing everyone. Like just carding the whole room, right. So my little artist pal Ken Brown who might have been 16 at the time and he said the police have my ID. I don’t know what to do. And I said ‘Have you been drinking ?’ ‘No, no. They left with my I.D.’. ‘Did they say they were coming back ?’ and he goes “No they told me to wait here. They didn’t say what was going on.’ ‘Well lets just hold on there and see if the police come back with your I.D. or not.’ They were trying to see if they could bust them for underage drinking. It was really interesting. I mean you just can’t see it happening nowadays, you know you hire security and the police don’t come. Things like that where it was such an unusual and bizarre thing to have a punk rock show and the police would show up and try and shut down your show. Trying to screw with the venue, which in this case was a hotel that happened to be smart enough to figure out ‘Yeah we can do an all ages show here. All we have to do is bring food in and we have a restaurant that serves pizza and we will bring it in.’ Yeah, the police didn’t like people being clever. So that was kind of a memorable evening. And the next night I think we ended up having to play at a speakeasy. Oh, did I say that out loud. Yes. And it was lots of fun. That was where you had some really serious word of mouth going because now you would send out an e-broadcast to your list and that’s how people would find out about stuff and that’s how people would find out about stuff and that’s how I got feedback from people….
But back then you had to call people or let them know if you saw them on the street or whatever…
Yeah. And then I pulled another weird stunt, and this gets into how I started doing shows, but there was this band playing Buffalo that I knew who had the day off the next day and in some ways you just get over having to drive to the States to see bands.
Is this 7 SECONDS ?
Yeah, yeah.
I remember that show. I went to that one. With YOUTH OF TODAY.
YOUTH OF TODAY were already playing at the Bridge / Ildiko’s, whatever you want to call it. The Starwood. 507 Bloor West just east of Lee’s Palace.
So many people showed up to that show and there was no flyer. Nothing. It hadn’t been booked. It was all word of mouth.
I went to the show the night before in Buffalo and I said ‘So you guys got a night off, why don’t you come to Canada ?’ and they agreed to it. And so I drove home that night, put on nice clothes, put my funny hair under my hair band and went into the immigration office and did permits that morning. You could do that back then. It was a paper or two. And then I drove to the border which was only an hour away and showed up… because we didn’t really have fax machines back then, like twenty years ago. So I drove to the border, showed up with their permits and I actually, this is hilarious, the guy Sammy that was drumming in YOUTH OF TODAY, he was very young. And he eventually ended up drumming in CIV when he was a little older, but he was so young I had to sign legal guardianship to get him into the country as a Canadian.
I think he was twelve.
He was out on summer vacation. They were like ‘what is this guy doing ?’ and I was like ‘He’s the drummer.’
His dad was a jazz drummer, which is why he was such a good drummer. I didn’t realize that you had to sign guardianship for him.
Well I didn’t either until I got there and they were like ‘Okay this guy is really young and do his parents know where he is ?’ ‘Yes, he’s on the record see.’ Yeah it was strange.
So the first time I ever heard about you was Jil Jil Productions or Jil Jil Promotions.
It was productions because that is how I registered the name (laughter). And that was kind of a slam although it just seems so small minded after the fact but years ago there was this other guy who did shows under the name of Jam Jam. He was not especially well liked here for a few different reasons which relate to some things that went on at his shows, so it was just kind of a joke because someone phoned me up and said ‘this band is coming to the Toronto area. Would you like to do a show with them ? We need to do a show.’ And I went ‘Oh, okay.’ And I needed a logo to stick on the poster so it was kind of a joke at the time and it stuck. Jil Jil Productions. One ‘L’ of course. And so it just stuck.
Okay. When did you get into doing shows? How did this start ?
Well actually someone phoned me up and said, it might have been the CIRCLE JERKS. Oh no. SOCIAL DISTORTION / YOUTH BRIGADE I think was the first thing. On the “Another State of Mind” tour. They showed up here a few days….
So that would have been your first show ?
I think. Well I was doing local shows too. Because if you are kind of involved and going to shows you end up just knowing people. And there was bands from Oakville but there was no place to play. We couldn’t play at the YMCA yet or the Kanoke Arena because they wouldn’t rent rooms to us.
They hadn’t been broken in yet.
Boy they really needed to be worked on for a few decades. And so people would come to Toronto and play the Turning Point for example. And actually we did kind of a joke show where there was a record that came out called “This is Boston, Not L.A.” in which there was all the Boston bands on it so we did a show called “This is Oakville, Not Toronto”. In retrospect you ask ‘Did we really do that?” Yeah we really did that just as kind of a joke because there was enough bands from Oakville.
Didn’t you distribute that record here ?
Which one ?
Didn’t you have something to do with that record getting it here?
Well here’s the thing that I did a number of times when …. actually I did this with the MISFITS too, but they didn’t actually play the show because they ended up breaking up. Distribution was a little different then. The internet didn’t exist as we said, so unless the store was actually stocking your stuff already and really the store that was most helpful to you having a show and to people getting the music was the Record Peddler so I said ‘Can I bring a box of 25 records so that we can actually have the record on sale here so that people can find it and buy it in advance of the show because that kind of helps the show out a little bit and it helps the band out. So I would bring in boxes of 25 or 50 copies. Actually I bought 25 copies of the BAD BRAINS with the thunderbolt over D.C. 12” took that into the Record Peddler because people were selling stuff at their show and they didn’t know that they could just ‘I’ll buy those and take them to a store for you.’ It was weird because it was like a mini distribution thing specifically related to ‘this would be helpful because it would help a band that wants to come and play here.’ So just send me 25 records and I would take them to the store and they would sell there so it was good.
But I remember seeing that record at the Record Peddler and that is one of the first records I ever bought.
A good record too.
And I thought it had something to do with you getting it there.
I am trying to remember if it did. Memory lapse. But for me I was doing local shows and then….I am trying to remember how someone got my phone number. I’m thinking it was …. I can’t remember if it was the CIRCLE JERKS with the infamous ‘Oh we closed your bar.’ The police shut down the Edgewater and the Roncesvalles Hotel or if it was SOCIAL DISTORTION and YOUTH BRIGADE and SOCIAL DISTORTION and YOUTH BRIGADE showed up a few days late because that was the bus…. If anyone has ever seen that movie the ongoing thread throughout the entire movie is that the bus is always breaking down. So someone threw up on the bus so they had to stop and clean it and then they couldn’t really get the bus rolling again. Someone blamed it on someone else and years later admitted it was him and not whoever the headlining act or singer for that band. So instead of Saturday they showed up on a Monday. So what we did was we had the YOUNG LIONS and someone else. We made an announcement that they were stuck and not making it here tonight. If you wish to leave right now you get your money back. If you stay we have the YOUNG LIONS and a handful of people left. And everyone else was like ‘ehhh it’s fair money. We’ll stay. And they will be here on Monday, we hope’ So there was less people on the Monday and it wasn’t that huge of a show.
What were some of the bands that you brought to town ?
Wow.
Because there was a lot.
There was a lot. I was going to bring out a whole list that I e-mailed you ages ago, but I forgot to print it. CHANNEL 3, SOCIAL DISTORTION, YOUTH BRIGADE, ARTICLES OF FAITH, MDC, DOA, DEATH SENTENCE, DR. KNOW. Oh this is one of the best shows. The three D show. DRI, DR. KNOW, DIE KREUZEN. It doesn’t get any better than that. And that was the guy from the courtship of Eddie’s father. That is one of those….do you know El Jave from NO FX who was actually one of the Bad News Bears kids. The little Hispanic kid in the movie. So the courtship of Eddie’s father, the kid from there is DR. KNOW.
What ?
From the band DR. KNOW. Come on, didn’t you watch tv when you were a kid ? It rotted your brain.
Not enough.
So that was at the Ukranian Hall, which was just on the south west corner of College and Spadina.
And you went down these set of stairs ….
…and there was this huge room.
It was insane. It was the first time I was getting beaten up by metal heads because they didn’t really know how to dance. They didn’t really know how to circle pit they just killed you with their spiked leather jackets.
Their spikey things. Well we had to groom them into that. So yeah it was DRI, DR. KNOW and DIE KREUZEN.
It was definitely a meeting of the two scenes. One of many.
Well and Reid English from SUDDEN IMPACT did a very fine job on the poster of that.
Yes he did. That was an amazing poster.
Reid English was also a fabulous artist as well.
He did a lot of great flyers.
Yeah including the SUDDEN IMPACT album covers. But what was really interesting was, as you said, that was kind of the meeting of the minds as far as metal and hardcore scenes go in Toronto. And that was like ’84 / ’85. And we had heard about it in other cities where it was just a rough meeting of the minds. People didn’t get along. People would beat each other up at the shows, Blah blah blah, where the worst thing we had clueless people who needed to be groomed into circle dancing politely with other friends. And people actually commented upon this especially on that tour. Well actually that wasn’t a tour. Those three bands just happened to come together at that point in time. And they had seen lots of it particularly with DRI who were doing the crossover era. Like they were getting really fast anyway so there wasn’t any difference between them and a thrash metal once Spike could play lead. Do you know what I mean. Okay I am going to play a double kick drum and know I am going to play it really fast. So there wasn’t a huge difference a lot of the time. And at that point in time CKLN was on the air. That was the first time a community radio station in Toronto. It wasn’t just broadcasting cable. It was right up there at 250 watts at the top of the building. And a guy named Brian who sang in a band called YOUTH YOUTH YOUTH, back in the day, started this radio show called Arg Rock or Aggressive Rock. And what he was into aside from the loud fast music from punk rock he was also into loud fast music from metal. This is kind of before METALLICA got going and they stopped wearing Spandex by the way. So he was playing a lot of both on his show and I think that is really how we got all those metal heads at that show. He was basically saying ‘Go to the show. It’s going to rock your world.’ I mean DIE KREUZEN were doing things like covering AEROSMITH once in a while at their shows and DRI were playing really fast and loud. DR. KNOW were odd folks who knew how to play a thrash tune as well. So that was kind of the ideal introductory show for metal heads to the punk rock scene. And definitely hands down every city should have had a Brian Taylor on air who was saying ‘This is music you’ll both enjoy. Punkers and metal heads go out to the show and meet each other. Enjoy yourselves and have a really good time.’ And that is basically how those two scenes kind of melded. Imagine people would be open minded enough to go to both of those kind of shows basically in large part because Brian was on the air representing them within the same hour saying this is all good music.
Okay, I am going to have to skip through some other stuff because we are running out of time. I wanted to ask you about the label, Lone Wolf Records. When did that start up ?
Oh well here is a weird one. When MDC, one of the shows I did at 167 Church Street, the Party Centre said ‘Oh we got this band from Chicago that we really like that we would like to bring with us – ARTICLES OF FAITH. They hadn’t put a record out yet and their first one came out on HUSKER DU’s label on the Reflex label in Minneapolis. But they had brought AOF with them and I went ‘Wow what a ripping band,’ and liked them enough that by the time they were trying to release their second record and they had no takers ….
….which is weird.
Well punk rock is strange and alien. NIRVANA hadn’t happened yet. Not everyone was looking for their own punk rock band. So Pat Gruber who was a friend of theirs and their manager said ‘I got a stack of rejection letters.’ And Reflex Records was not really a going concern anymore so recently not so long before that these very fabulous guys who had a band called THE NEW MR. ORRS were such huge fans of the YOUNG LIONS that they brilliantly figured out the ultra scheme which was the Youth Venture Capital program. A loan program from the Canadian government where by you put up half of the assets required to produce a record. It could be master tapes that were worth $2,500 bucks and they put up the other half. So I put up $5,000 worth of …. A car to deliver the records, the master tapes and stuff like that and they put up the other five grand to cover the pressing because they were making jackets back then. So they figured out how to do that and put out the YOUNG LIONS record. I’m like ‘brilliant.’ They didn’t really care if they managed to get back the ….
So the NEW MR. ORRs put out the YOUNG LIONS record. I did not know that.
They were such huge fans of the YOUNG LIONS that they figured out how to do this thanks to the Canadian government for helping to release this. I knew those guys as well so I asked them ‘How did you do this,’ and they said ‘Here’s all the numbers.’ So I did the same thing. I filled out the application forms and got some money. It took me a couple of years to pay it off but I decided that I wanted to start a label if only to put out bands that I really liked. I drove to Chicago to see their last show. And the photo that is in their insert is them right after they finished their last song. They got off stage and I lined them up and took their picture. And I didn’t know I was going to put out their record yet. So that’s how I started a label. Just because there was a tape out there called “In This Life” by ARTICLES OF FAITH and I thought it should be more than just this really cool tape. I thought lots more people should hear it. So that’s why I started a label just because I wanted people to hear a record.
ARTICLES OF FAITH. What other things did you release ? You released a NO MIND record.
Actually number 2 was a 7” by NOTHING IN PARTICULAR. Andy Ford who used to be in A.P.B. And then NO MIND was number three and who was number four. Oh that’s the one that never came out. I did STRAW DOGS, TOXIC REASONS, CHANNEL 3, JELLY FISH BABIES….
It’s all starting to make sense know. I remember a lot of these records.
The same thing with TOXIC REASONS. They had to change the artwork for here because they had a brown paper wrapper being torn away to show a swastika underneath. You couldn’t really do that in Europe yet. They were still very sensitive about the swastika especially in the country where in Germany the punk labels were very big. They said ‘we cannot release this.’ Because it might mean to some people that they are supporting fascism and the album was called “Fashion for Fascism”. They could do it here and they were very excited to be able to do that because that’s what they really wanted to release over there but couldn’t.

equalizingxdistort said...

That's an interview I did on my radio show, but I didn't post it up. I am posting in hopes that I can get in touch with you about anything you might know about Coup D'Etat. B ut I would also like to talk to you about Zeroption. Can you contact me at equalizingxdistort@ciut.fm?