Not every trek out of Regina ended in unmitigated disaster; a trip to Calgary for an intended week of shows at the run-down Calgarian Hotel turned into a full two weeks, and a trip to Saskatoon, a three-hour drive straight north, yielded the band’s only recordings. In a studio behind the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Training Academy, the band tracked songs like “Living in Poverty” and “Political Animals,” celebrating the sessions by spray-painting their band name on the side of the nearby cop shop.
Ultimately, raucous high school gigs and chances to open for the Subhumans weren’t enough to keep the band together, and by 1981, differing opinions on musical direction led to the end of the Extroverts, the first punk band from the previously culturally inhospitable province of Saskatchewan. Thankfully, the band was far from the last original band to emerge from the middle of Canada, igniting a spark of originality that continued through the decade.
“I saw the Extroverts at this outdoor thing for the Regina Exhibition,” recalls Jon Wyma, who would go on to play bass in pioneering Regina hardcore shit-kickers Diplomatic Immunity, sharing the stage with everyone from SNFU to Dead Kennedys. “I remember just being a little punker and all these older punks thought it was so cute that someone who was 12 or 13 was into the same music as them. I don’t think they even realized at that time, kids four or five years older than us, that there was another undercurrent of even more aggressive, more rebellious music coming along. But the Extroverts were definitely an inspiration in terms of knowing that you didn’t have to be Van Halen to play music. You could just be ordinary kids.”
And the Schnitzel House, that punk bastion of family-owned Hungarian entrepreneurial spirit, still hosts concerts every night of the week. It may go by the more club-like name of “The Distrikt,” but it’s a lasting reminder of the pioneering work of a few hockey-obsessed anglophiles and a pile of mannequins.
Only a year after the formation of the Extroverts and three hours to the north of their beloved Schnitzel House, Saskatoon’s music community was ready for the kind of sea change that punk was bringing to everywhere else in the world. The lynchpin for an explosion of exciting, original music in the small prairie city of Saskatoon was found somewhere in the shelves of a record store on Second Avenue.
Toronto transplant Ron Spizziri bought the failing Records on Wheels at the corner of Second and 21st, after specifically instructing the former owners to run down the stock as much as possible before he took control of the business. He set about building his own perfect store, one that would stock the new sounds of New York and London alongside the Anne Murray and Kenny Rogers records he knew would ultimately keep the store afloat. Says Spizziri, “A kid would come in, buying his punk albums, but he’d notice we were carrying things that he wanted to pick up as a Christmas present for his mom and dad.” Fuelled by gift-giving and and the timelessness of Kenny Rogers’ historically sound poker advice, Spizziri’s new Records on Wheels flourished in downtown Saskatoon.
“He was the guru about all the cool music from across the pond,” explains Jay Semko, bassist for the city’s first punk band, the Idols. “He had a line on what was happening in Britain, so you’d go and hang out with Ron and eventually spend money buying import records from him. It was a group of people I got to know. Before I got to them, I was playing in a bunch of different cover bands.” Spizziri’s influence didn’t end at the store’s cash register; invited by some friends to play a few records on their college radio show, he quickly landed a gig hosting his own program. A vital resource for new music, the late-night show on CJUS, broadcasting out of the basement of the University of Saskatoon’s Memorial Union building, allowed Spizziri a chance to promote new records in the store, upcoming gigs, and local talent, which was quickly developing in between the racks of Records on Wheels.
Jay Semko, later of platinum-selling Virgin Records roots-rockers the Northern Pikes, formed the Idols in 1979. The band, who wore matching $25 double-breasted two-piece suits, played their first show at the university opening up for Canadian prog-rock outfit FM (the original home of legendarily mysterious performer Nash the Slash) and were almost immediately picked up by a local booking agent who saw an opportunity to market the band as “Saskatoon’s first new-wave band,” an attempt to capitalize on punk curiosity stirred up by media coverage of bands like the Sex Pistols and the exploding international popularity of the new genre.
“He helped to build us, but we always thought it was really cheesy and hated it,” laughs Semko, who still calls Saskatoon home. “I just always thought billing us as that was kind of hilarious.” With a dearth of local punk gigs to play, the Idols were sent on the road in an old school bus, playing a mix of originals and Ramones covers, and spreading the punk gospel to Saskatchewanians who were not looking to convert.
“We were really freakish to them. We had short hair, and we all wore the same suits, and we played a bunch of songs they didn’t know,” recalls Semko. “Sometimes they just hated us. Like loathing. Real hatred.” One early show ended with an audience member approaching the stage and making a noose out of a microphone cable. The band continued to antagonize the audience by playing their fastest, hardest material, and before long, they were being chased out of town by 10 trucks full of rednecks. “They were following us, throwing beer bottles at the van and yelling,” says Semko. “You feel like you’re going to get tarred and feathered. We got 10 miles out of town before they gave up following us and harassing us.” The band’s first guitar player promptly quit.
But life wasn’t all attempted hangings and wintery Dukes of Hazzard escapades in Saskatoon. Bolstered by the audience for new types of music that Ron Spizziri had been nurturing through his store, radio show, and a new cable-access TV show (what wasn’t this guy doing?), a group called the Alternative Music Society formed at the University of Saskatchewan, hell-bent on bringing some real punk shows to the prairie outpost. The AMS succeeded in helping to build a viable scene within the city, bringing bands like Simple Minds and Social Distortion to town and giving new bands an opportunity to get their sea legs opening for established acts.
“It was a social outlet,” explains Darlene Froberg, a former member of the AMS. “But it was its own little subculture, too, because at the time, Saskatoon was a small, conservative town. We got hassled a lot because we had green hair and looked like punks.”
“They were a cool group of people, and they liked us,” continues Semko. “They liked the fact that we were different, that we played original music. So we got a lot of gigs, good opening slots for people that they brought in, like the Cramps.” Bringing American psychobilly bands to Saskatoon wasn’t Darlene Froberg’s only extracurricular activity; along with her sister, she operated the city’s lone punk clothing store on Broadway, a tiny second-floor enclave called Propaganda, Saskatoon’s own Let It Rock, with a tiny northern colony standing in for the sprawling metropolis of one of the world’s oldest and largest cities.
“We had bondage pants and army coats, ruffled shirts from the ’60s,” says Froberg. “We had that little market cornered because the people that were going to the shows needed something to wear. We’d buy clothes from all over and sell them second-hand. We were only open about a year. It wasn’t very lucrative because our market was so small, but it was a lot of fun. People really enjoyed it.”
Other bands began to pop up at that time, including Doris Daye and, later, Seventeen Envelope, which featured bassist John Sinclair and Semko’s future Northern Pikes bandmate Bryan Potvin. Sinclair eventually moved to Toronto, joining Edmonton native Moe Berg in the Pursuit of Happiness, recording with Todd Rundgren and opening for Guns N’ Roses. Not a bad future for a couple of prairie punks.
“I was 18 years old,” recalls Potvin. “I was working a part-time job. I was in the last year of high school. And I got this cold-call from this guy named Johnny Sinclair saying, ‘Hey, you play guitar. You want to jam sometime?’ I was like, ‘Sure.’ So I went over to his
house and he had this massive collection of records by artists I’d never heard of. I was like, ‘What the fuck is this?’ This whole world of music I had no idea existed. Within a week of knowing John, I went into this used record store in Saskatoon with three milk crates full of my records, all my Led Zeppelin and my YES. I just dropped them and said, ‘Take it all. I want to swap out.’”
While Doris Daye never played outside of Saskatoon, the band, like others, provided a valuable outlet for alienated kids living in a culturally conservative climate, helping to build a foundation for later musical successes.
“I wouldn’t say we were originators of anything,” says John Sinclair. “But we found a way to express ourselves within that, you know? That was a comfortable place for us to come out as artists and musicians.”
“We looked like a bunch of fucking weirdos,” laughs Potvin. “We were eclectic looking. And almost impossible to book.” Like Sinclair, Potvin sees the value in the band as much greater than the roughly 10 shows they played together. “I think if punk taught me anything about art, not so much about business — it’s just honesty. I think that’s really what it boils down to. That’s what I learnt from those late teen years when I was focusing on that type of expression. It’s just honest. I think that audiences eventually smell a rat when someone’s not being honest with that. That’s what it comes down to.”
Although the burgeoning scene was flush with enthusiastic, motivated music fans like Potvin and Sinclair, there were some very real dangers underneath the surface. Bar fights and threatening audiences could spark genuine violence directed at bands like the Idols. Scarier still is the unsolved murder of a young punk, rumoured to have been targeted for his appearance. Details are scarce and memories have faded over 30 years, but Froberg specifically remembers being questioned by the police.
“The police came, they interviewed my sister and me at the store, along with all our friends. That was quite bizarre. They weren’t questioning us like we did it. They were questioning us like we might know who did it,” she specifies. “I didn’t really know him, he just kind of hung out with us. He was down on Spadina Crescent, by the river. It was late at night, like one in the morning, and he’s walking and somebody pulls up because he was dressed weird, and he was beaten to death. It shook everyone up. It was like, ‘Do we have to stop what we’re doing and being who we are? Is this a threat to us as individuals because of how we look and what we’re doing? Or is it something that the guy did by himself that brought it on? Or was he just in the wrong place at the wrong time?’ For a while after that, people wouldn’t really want to go out alone.”
When the dangers weren’t coming out of pickup trucks in the middle of the night, they were exploding at the shows themselves.
“I remember the first two weeks in December 1980. It was brutally cold, I’m talking –40 Celsius,” says Jay Semko, detailing a particularly surreal Idols set. “We had a two-week gig at a hotel. You had to play four sets a night, and it was a big deal to us because we’re an oddball band, and to actually get a full two-week booking was great. But you had to sign this thing where you couldn’t drink while you’re playing. At the very end of the night, I had a five minute window where I could order myself a beer. So I order a beer, go sit down at the table, and this brawl breaks out. And there’s only, like, 30 people in the bar, it was so cold. It was like an Old West barroom brawl, ‘Everybody partner up and fight!’ People breaking beer bottles and trying to cut each other. I’m sitting in the middle of all this, and I felt like I was invisible. I didn’t want to move because I thought somebody would attack me. The soundman was covering the mixing console with his body. I was able to weasel my way out of there and into the lobby. The guys were all watching TV and said, ‘John Lennon got shot.’ And I was like, ‘What?’ And then the fight spilled out into the lobby and this one guy got thrown through a window. He came back the next day to work the bouncer. And his whole back, it looked like he was bitten by a shark.”
By the early part of the 1980s, things were transitioning in Saskatoon. New bands continued to form, while the first-wave bands were breaking up and reforming in new configurations, the most notable being Potvin, Semko, and the Northern Pikes.
“There were a lot of bands that just came and went back then,” says Spizziri. “You’d see them open for a touring band once or twice, and they’d disappear. I guess it’s just so hard because we are so isolated out here, especially back then. Most of them felt they had to move away from Saskatoon. The Northern Pikes were the first band that were proud to be from Saskatoon. I’d be visiting Toronto and catch them at the Diamond Club or the Horseshoe, one of the nice venues. And they’d be announcing, ‘We’re from Saskatoon.’ They weren’t hiding it.” It should come as no surprise that Spizziri’s son now plays in a band that tours internationally and proudly calls Saskatchewan home; buzzed-about indie kids Rah Rah, who had a show in Paris, France (not Ontario), on the night Spizziri and I spoke.
“We had a lot of fun, we really did,” concludes Semko. “We had a blast playing. I guess I enjoyed the abusive times. I really got a kick out of those gigs when we weren’t as well liked as we wished we were. To me, in some ways, we were accomplishing our goals, as odd as that sounds. And once we did our thing with the Idols, there were tons of other groups doing similar things. So I can’t help but think we had an influence in people moving forward a little bit in music.”
PASSION BASTARDS
OTTAWA
The Action [courtesy of Ted Axe]
December 31, 1979, 11:59 p.m. EST
In a tiny basement below a shawarma joint, 200 kids are crammed into a room fire coded for about 75. Ritalin, still a new, unknown psychiatric drug, is passed around the bar, while two people are literally fucking against a wall to the right of the stage. The Bureaucrats are performing, ready to ring in the new year, celebrating the first six months of a centralized Ottawa punk scene. It’s all been built around this bar, the only one in the city with a strict no-covers policy. The Rotters Club has become the official headquarters for Ottawa punk, and this evening of late-night revelry is a celebration of all the things that have changed since it planted its foot on Bank Street. The calendar rolls over to 1980, and the party rages until 5 a.m. Despite the arrival of a pair of ambulances to whisk two audience members, felled by alcohol poisoning, to the hospital, the cops never show up. The Rotters Club remains punk’s neutral territory, a clubhouse of sin in an uptight government town.
For the second time in the four years I’ve spent doing interviews for this book, I find myself in the conference room of a fancy Bay Street office in Toronto. My attempt at dressing professionally (a button-up shirt, balanced by visible holes in my shoes) becomes immediately laughable as I sit down on an exquisite leather couch and wait for Stuart Smith, a high-powered commercial real estate agent with an iPad glued to his side. Smith is, for all intents and purposes, the architect of the Ottawa punk scene. He founded the Rotters Club, the city’s underground punk enclave, and ran a recording studio just inside the Quebec border, where he recorded almost all of the city’s bands, along with the touring groups who passed through the Canadian capitol.
Today, Smith sells land, and judging from the size of his watch, he’s pretty good at it. But like my other bizzaro Bay Street punk experience (with Mods drummer and big-shot entertainment lawyer David Quinton-Steinberg), there’s an immediate connection, something that transcends the cost of the couch, the watch, or the holes in my sneakers. I don’t really belong in Smith’s office. In fact, I appear ridiculous in it. But as we trade stories about D.O.A., Teenage Head, and great Ottawa bands like the Bureaucrats and the Red Squares, the distance between our worlds shrinks dramatically. He’s in a suit and I’m in Levi’s, but it’s another reminder that punk is a culture that is founded on community. Punk exists to bring people together under a common banner, be it politics in Vancouver or drugs in New York. At the core is a passion for music and a lifelong lov
e of alternative culture, and that doesn’t change, even here on Bay Street. I ask one question about the Rotters Club, and I set Smith off on over an hour and a half of tales of debauchery that I can’t imagine get told often in this office. Here’s hoping his underlings never read this.
The Rotters Club was founded in summer 1977, located underneath a Lebanese restaurant on Bank Street. The brainchild of British transplant Stuart Smith, his business partner Carl Schultz, and aspiring comedian Michael MacDonald, the club was designed to give all three an opportunity to pursue their respective passions; the first show featured film, music, and comedy. Crucially, the Rotters Club was also started as a reaction to Smith’s negative experiences in the early ’70s as a touring musician fighting against a powerful local musician’s union that had hindered his career more than helped it.
“One of the guys in our group inherited some money, and he brought the first Mellotron into Ontario,” says Smith. (The Mellotron was an early sampling keyboard, replicating full octaves of a recorded sound using magnetic audio tape.) “The musicians’ union heard about this and said, ‘Sorry, you can’t use that.’” The union wanted Smith’s bandmate to pay union scale for every single finger at every gig he played, reasoning that each note he could play was taking away a job from a working string player. The Musicians’ Association of Ottawa-Gatineau, AFM Local 180, had the same stranglehold in Ottawa that they had in the Maritimes, blacklisting bars that hired non-union talent or refused to pay union scale. The consequence was a closed scene: No punk band could find a bar to hire them at a bloated union rate, even if they could have afforded to pay dues in the first place. (They couldn’t.) So when Smith finally settled himself in the city after half a decade on the road, he was ready to tell the union where to stick it.
PERFECT YOUTH: The Birth of Canadian Punk Page 26