Argh Fuck Kill: The Story of the DayGlo Abortions Read Free Page B

learn to incorporate both elements in his own music. It is the combination of Mahavishnu-like minor chord riffs executed with Black Sabbath-like power that separates the DayGlo Abortions from their crossover brethren. Very few bands can claim such diverse influences.
    Getting back to the story, Murray was lonely without his chums in the Ivy Street Gang. The DayGlo Abortions were still in the distant future, and the boy needed other diversions to occupy his time. Murray started Grade Five, doing his best to adapt to his new surroundings. The Caucasians at his new school ignored young Acton for the most part, and he found it easier to make friends with the Aboriginal students. “We lived just down the road from the reserve, and the Natives were friendlier,” recalls the singer. At this point in his life the youth was unfamiliar with people of different ethnic persuasions, and had never witnessed racism up close. “The only black man I could remember was a guy named Virgil in a movie called
In the Heat of the Night.
The racism was scary and strange and very disturbing,” says Murray, thinking back forty years. The boy saw the way white people treated Aboriginals at his school and was not impressed. “It blew my mind—I couldn’t wrap my head around it,” says the singer, still in disbelief. Instead of cozying up to the white kids, he joined a hockey team composed primarily of Aboriginals. “They were good hockey players,” says Acton of his teammates. He was comfortable with them.
    Murray’s grades at Lampson Street School were passable, but he did not fit in. Further, the boy’s allegiance with the Aboriginal students made the transition difficult. “That alienated me from the mainstream right off the bat,” says Acton, not without rancour. He soon teamed up with a Métis boy named Jim Steveneau, and they began breaking into houses on the way to school. The young burglars started with vacant houses but soon graduated to occupied residences, breaking in when the occupants were away to steal what they could. One lucky score yielded $300 cash, which the pre-pubescent pirates quickly squandered on new bicycles and an entire season of hockey cards. Emboldened, the young criminals began sneaking into homes while the residents were asleep. Jim and Murray were eventually caught, and Murray received community service and probation. At eleven years of age, it seemed that the boy was well on his way to a life of crime. He also started smoking pot and dropping LSD that year.
    As is often the case, Murray was introduced to marijuana by an older child. The female, an associate of Jim Steveneau’s, was almost an adult. Murray recalls being offered the joint and thinking,
why not?
Grass back then was nowhere near as potent as it is today, and Acton says he smoked weed on a number of occasions before it had any real effect. The girl who gave Murray his first toke has apparently turned into a “crazy wino lady,” and he still sees her around.
    Jim Steveneau, several years older than Murray, had a tendency to bully smaller children, and the younger boy knew that Jim was not a good role model. “I didn’t like the guy very much,” says Murray, even though the two hung out regularly. The guitarist says that he ran with Jim mostly because his intuition warned him to stay away. “Somebody told me when I was really young that if you practice listening to the voice in your head you can almost read minds and predict the future. I heard the voice and went in the opposite direction,” says Murray, recalling decisions made many years ago. Even if Murray had been capable of predicting the future, it is unlikely that he could have foreseen the towering highs and crashing lows that would become so commonplace for his band the DayGlo Abortions.
    Anyway, Murray and Jim eventually had a falling out after Jim broke into Murray’s house when the Actons were out of town, proving that his intuition had been right. The angry youth retaliated by