PERFECT YOUTH: The Birth of Canadian Punk (15 page)

“They played at our high school the same week that we did,” says McDonald. “We had been booed off the stage, and we decided we weren’t going to play anymore because we sucked. It was so awful. And we went and watched the Queen City Kids. They played and we went and talked to them afterwards. We told them how awful our gig was and that we were going to break up the band ’cause it was just no good. They told us not to, and sat us down and told us stories about bad gigs. They told us that you’ve got to play for yourself. Because of that, we decided not to break up.”

The band was admittedly terrible when they started. But as their confidence grew, they found themselves expanding on the basic punk template they had started with. “When we started we didn’t know how to play anything,” says McDonald. “But we learned. We weren’t only interested in punk music. We were interested in everything. Those influences started to get in as we developed our ability to actually play music. At first, I think the whole punk rock thing wasn’t a real philosophy or anything. It was more energy expulsion and a reaction to what was going on in our immediate environment.” Hearing the band’s two-song EP,
Be My Barbie
, you can see the beginnings of McDonald’s genre-bending experimentation. On the surface, “Crude City” is just a standard ’77 punk song, albeit through the lens of a band living a few hours from a massive oil deposit. But the subtle guitar effects that bridge the verse and chorus, along with the left-field repetition of the song’s last note, hints at a band with a record collection that might not consist solely of Buzzcocks records. Fittingly, it wouldn’t be long before McDonald would really blur punk lines in Jr. Gone Wild, one of the first bands to fuse country and punk into the lovably obviously named genre of cowpunk.

The Rock and Roll Bitches, previously known as Legal Limit, had grown as a band by leaps and bounds since their early shows with the News. They, too, had heard about the Modern Minds’ experience with Wanagas and Bumstead, and booked time to record an EP. But unlike the other bands, their experience in the studio turned sour almost immediately. The band’s guitar player didn’t add the leads he’d been promising for weeks, and the master the band received at the end cut much of the high end out of their attack. Still,
Wild West
showcases a band who might have reasonably pulled off a name like the Rock and Roll Bitches; like the Stooges, they snarl and swagger through four songs, including the immensely catchy “Someone Could Lose an Eye,” replete with a Johnny Thunders–style solo within the song’s first 50 seconds.

“They were larger than life. The Rock and Roll Bitches were
real
rock and roll,” says Mike McDonald. “They were our New York Dolls. They wore red cowboy chaps or women’s clothes when they played. After one of our gigs, their singer, George Wall, was like, ‘You guys should play with us sometime. You guys were great.’ I said, ‘I don’t know. Our songs are pretty simple.’ He said, ‘Hey, you only need three chords to rock ’n’ roll, man.’ Stuff like that had a big impression on me when I was 16.”

When not helping Edmonton punks find ways to sonically emulate their idols, Larry Wanagas continued to work with roots and country artists, a very different world he had originally come from. “It led to a situation where I found myself with one foot in roots and one foot in punk,” he says. “A lot of music in the studio was roots. A lot was punk. Then I found an artist that did both.” A peripheral member of the Edmonton scene, k.d. lang had landed in Bumstead Studio singing back-up on a country record, while spending her nights trying to join the Diefenbakers as a vocalist. Wanagas saw immediate potential in the young singer, and his experiences with the Modern Minds proved perfect training for the job of breaking an alternative country artist.

“She wasn’t punk, but she wasn’t country,” he says. “She was singing Patsy Cline, but she wasn’t acting like she belonged in the country scene. It was hard to get her to play in regular country rooms. And then I was able to put what I learned about building your own scene with the Modern Minds to use with her.”

“The Edmonton punk scene is a huge part of why someone like k.d. lang became k.d. lang,” says Ford Pier. “She was playing all these hall shows with hardcore bands. She absorbed some of that. She became successful because of her amazing singing voice, but she got their attention by being a fucking kook. Particularly in the early days, when she first went to a larger community, they were blown away by her energy. And I think she got a lot of that from the grassroots community, which by necessity she was associated with when she was part of a smaller scene.”

k.d. lang would go on to win multiple Grammy Awards and challenge mainstream perception of gay and lesbian artists. Wanagas would go on to meet Bill Clinton, and I would get to look at the picture and marvel at the pile of 7" singles on Wanagas’ desk where it all started.

With stacks of brand-new singles and down payments on a batch of Ford Econoline cargo vans, the Edmonton scene was now ready to take the logical next step and get the hell out of Edmonton. Which is precisely when things started to fall apart for the scene’s first wave. Three-and-a-half hours north of Calgary and over 15 hours from Vancouver, the next-closest potential tour stop, it was Edmonton’s isolation, once a key factor in nurturing a weird collection of raw talent, that sounded the death knell for bands like the Modern Minds and the Rock and Roll Bitches. There was a strong connection between Calgary and Edmonton, and bands regularly travelled between the two cities to spend a week or more holed up at the Calgarian or the Spartan Men’s Club. Mike McDonald refers to it as being “kind of like the Beatles training in Hamburg, but not as cool.” The Modern Minds were the first band to try to take it out of Alberta.

“You could only play in Edmonton every few weeks, so you had to leave to play,” says Moe Berg. “You’d start by going to Calgary, then you’d get invited to Vancouver, and Regina, and Saskatoon.”

“Moe didn’t sit around and wait for people to do things for him,” says Wanagas. “He would make an effort to connect with other bands in other cities. He was the one who reached out to the Pointed Sticks.” The Modern Minds made the trek out to Vancouver for the first time to open for the Sticks at the peak of their popularity. For the band and Wanagas, it was an overwhelming experience to travel from a city with a tiny — but dedicated — scene, to a major metropolis where punk was a visible part of everyday culture. It’s no surprise Wanagas moved there soon after the Modern Minds folded.

“In Edmonton, you’d stick out like a sore thumb,” he says. “But you could really find a place as a band in Vancouver. There was a huge difference between trying to make a scene for yourself, and going to a city like Vancouver and just being embraced, which the Modern Minds were.” The band played the legendary Cave, a former supper club that had hosted concerts with everyone from Bo Diddley to Johnny Cash. It was only one trip, though, and the prospect of spending more time in a shitty van endlessly rumbling across a huge country started to wear on the band.

“When we actually got to the point where we realized we
had
to tour, that’s when Bob pulled out and said, ‘Listen, I’m going to university. I need a plan B,’” says Kim Upright. “Touring didn’t fit into that plan.”

At the same time, the Rock and Roll Bitches started to roll in neutral toward a similarly unceremonious end. After investing in a van, the band found themselves spending more time fixing flooded engines than driving to shows, and eventually, half of the band just stopped paying for it. They played a few tense gigs with rejigged lineups before realizing it was time to throw in the towel.

Although they never recorded, the Diefenbakers seem to have had the best touring luck out of any of the Edmonton bands, maybe partially due to the fact that, without a single to promote, they were inherently forced to take themselves a little less seriously. While on one of their regular trips south to Calgary, the band partook in an age-old teenage rite of passage: large-scale vandalism.

“I climbed up this big water tower and painted the band name with a bucket of paint,” says Paul Soulodre. “It was a really tall water tower. Then I had all this paint left over so I just dumped it over the side. It splattered all over these cars. Somebody said, ‘Hey, there are people coming.’” Of course, I went into a panic and started going down two rungs at a time. Somehow I got to the bottom of this huge tower without killing myself, and I ran as fast as I could across the field. I guess I made it out of that situation.”

The Edmonton scene was at an interesting crossroads. Hardcore was invading and changing the social make-up at shows, and the first wave of bands was either moving on or moving out. Moe Berg began eyeing Toronto and contemplating leaving the speed and violence of the punk scene behind.

“I had trouble with the gigs when it got violent,” says Berg. “I remember playing a show at the university, playing on a stage about a foot off the ground, and this big, dumb rich kid, whose dad was a surgeon, decides to stand in front of me and spit on me. Again and again and again. All over my guitar, and everything. My beautiful ’63 Rickenbacker. I didn’t know what to do. Am I supposed to take this? And out of my peripheral vision, I see a fist come and smash this guy in the head. And his head just exploded. And then the room just went crazy. And I thought, ‘I don’t know if I want to do this anymore.’”

Mike McDonald refers to his time with the Malibu Kens as “like going to school.” Still teenagers, the band broke up when “girls and artistic differences, the usual” got in the way. McDonald rebounded quickly with Jr. Gone Wild, expanding on the lessons he learned in Punk School with the Malibu Kens and doing something entirely, mind-blowingly original. Similarly, the Diefenbakers would be swept into the world of alternative surf-jazz-rockabilly with their friend Jerry Woods and their new project, Jerry Jerry and the Sons of Rhythm Orchestra.

“We started Jerry Jerry as a fuck band, but I started doing more and more of it,” says Jerry Woods. “And then gradually I started to go, ‘Oh, that’s not too bad.’ I think I got better in spite of myself at some point in time.” While not explicitly punk, bands like Jr. Gone Wild and Jerry Jerry formed a logical continuum from the outsider punk that had formed the core of the Edmonton scene since day one, when the closed bar scene necessitated the literal invention of a brand new culture that could exist outside the mainstream.

“It evolved,” says Moe Berg. “I remember playing a gig and seeing this kid in the front row dressed in a leisure suit. Young Asian kid. Ken Chinn, 14 years old.” An underage skate rat, Chinn quickly became a fixture of the Edmonton scene; too young to participate in the first wave, he would be riding giants when the next one crashed in. Berg continues, “In the mid-’80s, right before I moved to Toronto, I remember going to see SNFU play on my own. And I thought, ‘Wow. This is the best band Edmonton has ever produced.’ I got chills. This was where it was headed. We finally had a world-class punk band in Edmonton. That was the best thing that ever happened. Edmonton made a band that went out into the world and influenced bands everywhere. Their attitude, that collective effervescence, bringing the humour back to punk. Even the punk scene in L.A. was dark at that time. They were funny, they were sarcastic. It reminded people that it could be about kids, what kids think. Bands owe their cars, their pension, their huge homes, to SNFU.”

Berg is right. SNFU was one of the most popular punk bands in the world at a time right before punk broke in the mainstream; today, their influence can be seen all over the shopping malls and amphitheatres of America. Despite their massive influence, vocalist Ken Chinn, alias Mr. Chi Pig, has become something of a case study in the dangers of a lifetime dedicated to punk and hardcore. Signed to major indie label Epitaph Records in the ’90s, Chinn has spent much of the last decade homeless in Vancouver, his career sidelined by drug addiction and mental illness.

I spend weeks trying to get in touch with him. When I finally do, our conversation is brief; he’s talking on the phone at a bar, and we’re cut off after about 10 minutes by what sounds like a fight somewhere in the room. Still, his enthusiasm for that era is palpable.

“Bands from here sang about stuff I could relate to,” he says. “Edmonton is a pretty boring place. Basically, you’re in an igloo for six months. What do you do? You get bored. You get drunk, you listen to records. You can’t skateboard in the winter, so we’d get in the garage and try to play in a band. I had no idea how to sing. We knew people that had instruments, but our guitar players couldn’t play. Everyone was learning at the same time, and it went from there.”

SNFU’s big break came in 1982 when Social Distortion and Youth Brigade rolled through town as part of the doomed tour that became the subject of the celebrated punk doc
Another State of Mind
. Youth Brigade stayed in touch with the band, putting one of their songs on a compilation album and eventually releasing SNFU’s first album on their California-based label, BYO Records.

“It was huge,” says SNFU guitarist Marc Belke. “It gave us exposure all over North America. It put us in the ring with bands like Social Distortion. A lot of bands self destruct before they get to their first record. We took things one step at a time, and we were lucky enough to have opportunities to do a few shows out of the city and do that first record on BYO.” Belke now works as a morning show host at a Northern Ontario radio station, a suitable job for someone who spent years honing a charismatic persona in front of some of the most hostile audiences in the world.

“The bravery of these performers made people reevaluate their relationship with entertainment,” says Ford Pier. He’s not exaggerating; the legacy of the Edmonton punk scene speaks for itself. “We have the advantage of being participants in a subculture, and we have personal relationships with our pastimes. Most people — they’re not going to meet Britney Spears. The thought doesn’t even cross their minds. So how much can they have invested in what she says or does? It’s like looking at an aquarium.” He’s right; kids in Edmonton could meet Moe Berg. They could drink with him, and he could show them how to play guitar. And even though his life has taken him on some unexpected detours, anyone who wants to try can track down Ken Chinn, one of the most influential punk rock frontmen of all time. And if they do, they can ask him about the importance of seeing the Diefenbakers, or the Malibu Kens, or, as Pier tells me before we pay our bill, “that time Chi threw the octopus into the audience . . .”