PERFECT YOUTH: The Birth of Canadian Punk Read Free Page A

Zero , and John Armstrong’s Guilty of Everything , all of which paint stirring portraits of a life spent in the trenches. Victoria’s early scene was tirelessly documented by Jason Flower for All Your Ears Can Hear , which chronicles every single band to play a punk-tinged note in Victoria from 1978 to 1984 and compiles any available recordings onto two accompanying CDs. Then there’s Chris Walter, who was a tremendous help in convincing punks from Winnipeg that I wasn’t a total creep or a lecherous newspaperman. His two band biographies, the Dayglo Abortions saga Argh Fuck Kill and Personality Crisis history Warm Beer & Wild Times , were indispensable resources for piecing together the early Victoria and Winnipeg scenes, respectively. That Walter initially scared me shitless (it had something to do with his head tattoos and a well-publicized history as a serious brawler) only made his revelation as a true gentlemen eager to help a fellow writer all the more moving.
    I hope there are more books. I hope every city in Canada is fortunate enough to be given the enthusiastic unveiling of a book like Liz’s or Jason’s. Perfect Youth is not intended to be the final word on any of these bands. There are omissions. There are people who refused to talk to me, and there are people I ultimately found impossible to track down. There are inclusions that not everyone will agree with. Ultimately, it’s a collection of snapshots of a scene that mattered, even if the only thing that defined it was its divisively remote nature. Because in 1976, even a city close to the American border like Vancouver might as well have been Reykjavík. Canadian punks created incredible, revolutionary art because they had no hopes or illusions of a recording contract, a platinum record, or a free lunch. They were lost in the wilderness at the corner of Portage and Main, Yonge and Bloor, Hastings and Columbia. They were beautiful freaks who became lawyers and drunks, real estate moguls and petty thieves.
    This is only a drop in the bucket of their history. But it’s the snapshots I wanted to share, before I return to my daily ritual of trying to get Chi Pig on the phone to finish our goddamn interview.

BACK DOOR TO HELL
THE VILETONES
    The Viletones [© Don Pyle]
    October 15, 2006, 5:00 a.m. EST
    Copies of the Sunday edition of the Toronto Star have started to appear on doorsteps in the suburbs and in the racks of downtown convenience stores. Inside the paper’s arts section screams the attention-grabbing headline “Nazi Dog set to snarl again.” The Viletones have reunited, leading the Star to print a headline that could have just as easily been culled from a decades-old archive, still offending 30 years on. A few days earlier, the article’s titular Nazi Dog, better known now by his given name, Steven Leckie, gave an interview to the paper in which he declared himself the lone survivor of punk’s first wave — John Lydon doesn’t count to him. He extols the virtue of a punk rock death count. He proclaims his intentions to render obsolete modern punk bands as he once did Goddo. He calls new audiences “milk drinkers.” And the Star runs it in all its titillating hyperbole, just as Leckie intended. Whether announcing plans to kill himself onstage in New York City in the ’70s or showing off his self-inflicted scars on TV, the character of Nazi Dog has always dominated local punk coverage. A lot has changed in Toronto since the Viletones first stalked the stage of the Colonial Underground on Yonge Street. But it’s good to know that some things stay the same.
    The first time that I met Steven Leckie, he barely looked at me. Seated together in the living room of B-Girls vocalist Lucasta Ross, Leckie was entirely absent from our conversation. One of my only notes, beyond Ross’ recollections of her own history, is that I was offered a sandwich.
    Then he called me. Leckie was full of conspiracy theories; about his friends, about his former