by Chris Walter
The brothers saved their money to buy mail-order punk gear from California, and Ken took to wearing stovepipe trousers, blue-on-blue Argyle socks, and blue-on-blue slip-on Vans runners, which were hard to get at the time. Punk clothing was almost non-existent in Canada, especially in E-Town, so the brothers were ahead of the curve when it came to fashion. Several years later, Danny measured Ken’s feet while he was sleeping and brought him two studded belts and a pair of eighteen-hole Doc Martens from London, England before the legendary boot company started farming the work out to China. Later, Danny even bought punk T-shirts for Ken in LA. “You couldn’t get that stuff in Canada,” Ken remembers. Nowadays, the war is over, and such items are available in any mall.
In the relentless grip of puberty, Ken and Danny had no choice but to accept the fact that they were gay. Even before puberty the brothers knew they weren’t like the other boys in the family. They didn’t even have to talk about it between themselves; they just knew. “I liked to hang out with guys. I wasn’t trying to hit on them, but I liked their company, whereas my brother always wanted to hang out with girls,” the singer recalls. Already a target because of the way he dressed, Ken felt no urge to broadcast his sexual preference. “It was nobody’s business but my own,” he explains. “I didn’t want to lie about it, but I didn’t want to advertise either.” The bonds that held Danny and Ken together grew even stronger as they grappled with the social stigma that accompanies homosexuality, especially in ‘70s Edmonton. As noted earlier, E-town wasn’t exactly a stronghold of sexual enlightenment and personal expression.
All this notwithstanding, the teenagers began to enter skateboard contests, where they heard about a half-pipe skate ramp at a store called Skiers’ Sport Shop. Ken and Danny went down to see for themselves and were amazed to find a full-scale half-pipe constructed from curved wood with angle iron supports. “It was twelve feet wide, sixteen feet high, with four feet of vertical. That ramp was as solid as fuck,” the singer says reverently, as if describing a work of art. The half-pipe was the only one of its kind in E-Town, which made it even more special. Cautiously at first, but with growing confidence, the brothers learned how to skate the mighty ramp, mastering new tricks and inventing their own. Eventually, the owner of Skiers’ Sport Shop invited them to join his skate team. This was the next step for those wishing to become professional skaters, and the boys were thrilled. Ken Chinn would have been even more excited had he known that would he meet the Belkes there, and that the association would lead to the formation of SNFU. A need for speed was the catalyst that brought them together.
Ken Chinn graduated from high school in 1979, with honours in English and Commercial Arts. Despite sticking out like a sore thumb and missing many days, he succeeded where few thought he would. His brother Danny also graduated with honours. For them to succeed under such difficult circumstances was truly remarkable. To reward the youths, big sister Peggy took them to Hawaii for two weeks, a major sacrifice on her behalf.
Free from school, Ken searched for a purpose in life. He would never be truly happy at home, and the teen often skated the city streets looking for excitement. With no money, and nowhere to go other than Skiers’ Sport Shop, kicks weren’t easy to find. The restless youth often dropped by the Belkes, where he stayed for supper on occasion. Although the Belke household was not entirely without stress, he much preferred to be there than hang out with his mom and Willy Rose. On “Stepstranger,” a song he wrote for the 1996 album Fuck You Up Like a Bad Accident, Ken’s lyrics left little room for interpretation. The song was about his stepfather Eric in Winnipeg, but the lyrics also fit his current situation.
Who the hell are you?
All you do is fuck my mom and eat her food.
Why the hell should I listen to you?
You are a stranger to me and you always will be.
Meanwhile, with Ken to keep them motivated, Marc and Brent progressed to the point where they were invited to join the skate team at Del’s Sport Centre. “Del, which was short for Delmont or Delmar or something, sold skateboards and stuff too, so they were sort of competitors of Skiers’ Sport Shop. Brent and I used to ride with Del’s son Darren, and some other kids. We sort of sucked, really,” admits Marc. “The Skiers’ guys were a lot better. Ken could do spin 360s and stuff like that.” The skateboard scene still wasn’t very big, and competitions were held only a few times a year, but through their involvement in the skater community, Brent and Marc got to know Ken better.
One fine night, Chris Belke took Marc and Brent to the SUB Theatre to see a new group The Smarties. The gig was an eye-opener for Marc and Brent because The Smarties were playing songs they knew and liked. “We’d seen junior high school dance bands, and they were playing whatever, but this was the new music,” says Brent, remembering the excitement they felt. This music was different, and they saw that change was coming. While the boys didn’t feel as if they belonged yet, there was something going on and they wanted to be part of it.
Marc, Brent, and Ken had already missed the first wave of punk, and the underground music scene had been growing for years. Moe Berg, who was there in the beginning, offers a brief history of punk in Edmonton: “The Smarties, who played originals and covers, weren’t the first punk band partly because they weren’t really punk, but also because there were other bands around by the time they started. Before they were The Smarties they were called The Nerve. That band was far edgier and took their influence from Iggy and Alice Cooper. The Nerve did some Sex Pistols covers and had some cool originals. If my memory serves me correctly, they may have preceded my band The News. Another group called Legal Limit played our first show with us. Members of Legal Limit went on to play in The Diefenbakers and Jerry Jerry and the Sons Of Rhythm Orchestra. The Rock and Roll Bitches, the Malibu Kens, and others started up after that. SNFU came along after those bands.’
‘The prevailing attitude in the community at large was probably similar to what it was in most cities outside of London, New York, and possibly Toronto,” continues Moe, who found success only after moving to Toronto and forming The Pursuit of Happiness in ‘85. “This was fringe music and the people who listened to it were a bit freaky. However, there was a core audience in Edmonton that sprang up immediately as soon as we [The News] started playing. There were probably one or two hundred people— depending on the gig and what bands were playing. The scene’s epicenter was a record store called Obscure Alternatives owned by Randy Boyd, who booked a lot of gigs and encouraged people to hang out at his store. Randy organized our first trip to Vancouver to play the Smilin’ Buddha.”
Early bands suffered from a shortage of venues, and the problem existed long before SNFU came along. The Ambassador Hotel located at 10041 - 106th Street began booking punk bands in a desperate bid to generate sales. They sold booze, but there was a price to pay for the increased business, and the owners struggled to adjust to the noisy and boisterous newcomers. Despite the influx of rambunctious and oddly dressed youngsters, the Ambassador Hotel would go on to become one of the longest running venues in town, lasting well into the ‘90s.
Business in licensed bars actually increased later when younger punks finally reached the legal drinking age. “The Ambo came to an end after reps from the Best Western Hotel chain caught a show one Saturday night and yanked the franchise. Then it became the Sixth Street Blues House,” says Adam Warrington, who slung beer there for more than a year. The best venue, however, would be the Spartan Men’s Club. The hall would last but five years, in which time SNFU would come to dominate the Edmonton scene completely.
The shortage of venues posed such a dilemma that Randy Boyd opened the No Name Club, but soon changed the name to The Suicide Club after a song by The Modernettes, who played there with the Subhumans on November 16th and 17th of 1979. On that evening, a guest had to be physically restrained from hurling a cymbal Frisbee-like into the crowd, but other than that, both dates were unqualified successes. “The Suicide Club was really cool—all graffitied
everywhere, and a big high stage. Someone billeted both us and the Subs in their apartment, and it was freezing cold outside,” recalls Modernettes’ frontman John Armstrong. “We were all a lot skinnier back then and the wind blew right through us. I recall playing well; the band was very tight at that point, and Mary charmed everyone.” When the band played an impromptu set in someone’s basement, Mary bled on a borrowed bass, prompting a glib observer to dub the instrument “Bloody Mary.” The Suicide Club, of course, was doomed from the start, and the cops soon closed it for the usual bogus reasons. They barely needed an excuse.
A band that would soon be known as The Diefenbakers also appeared at the Subhumans/Modernettes show. Guitarist Paul Soulodre recounts the debut: “We went up after The Modernettes’ set and asked if we could do a few songs. I remember the rueful look on Mike Normal’s face as he handed me his Les Paul and said, ‘Be careful with it.’ We did ‘Holidays in the Sun’ and ‘Stepping Stone,’ and that was it for me—I was hooked. We repeated the performance at a hall party later with the Subhumans, prompting Wimpy Roy to dub us ‘The only band that can’t play ‘Louie Louie.”’
Ex-DOA road manager Bob Montgomery remembers how the young punks who became SNFU were always underfoot: “Ken, Jimmy, and a couple of others were at every single show. I started sneaking ‘em in—telling the club guys they worked for the bands, that sort of thing. The Young Canadians were playing at a place called the Riviera Rock Room in Edmonton, and I got into a huge hassle with the owner trying to sneak Ken and his friend, whose name escapes me, into the show. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but I got them in and we became pals.” This friendship would continue to be beneficial for SNFU when Bob and his American citizenship helped get their gear into the USA.
Despite a dearth of venues, bands managed to find places to play, and a few of them began to cut records. The Modern Minds were the first Edmonton band to deliver a record, releasing the Theresa’s World EP in early 1980. In what was already a familiar pattern for punk groups everywhere, The Modern Minds broke up shortly after the release of that recording. Modern Minds’ bassist Bob Drysdale went on to play for other bands but passed away in May of 2003. “He was one of the most talented musicians I’ve ever known,” Moe Berg laments. “Bob was a major influence on us,” says Marc Belke. “He was a dynamic performer with a raging presence.”
The Rock and Roll Bitches, who took an old school, New York Dolls approach to the genre, released the four-song Wild West EP a few months after The Modern Minds split up. Due to the technical complexities and expense of making a record, most bands went unrecorded, except for maybe a demo tape. Like some rare species of woodland creature, many early groups existed just long enough to produce a solitary vinyl offspring. New bands, such as Joey Did and the Necrophiliacs, (who soon became the Malibu Kens) popped up to replace groups that had folded. The New Age was here.
Disco was dead, so The Smarties performed at a failed discothèque, where Brent and Marc saw them next. Since the brothers didn’t know anyone else there, they were happy to see Ken Chinn. As usual, the skater was gregarious and friendly, which helped ease their nervousness. “Ken was fun to hang out with because he was way more uninhibited than we were. Brent and I were just shy, middle-class kids. That was the real start of our friendship,” relates Marc. The way the media carried on, he and Brent wondered if crazed punk rockers might stick them with ice picks, but the gig was surprisingly peaceful. The Smarties would soon fade into history, but many of those in attendance that night went on to become important players in the Edmonton underground music scene.
Marc and Brent’s first band The Dogmatics disintegrated when Tim Tokarski’s parents sent him to private school. “He was one of those guys who are too smart for public schools,” Brent observes. Undaunted, Marc and Brent continued to jam. “We’d ask a kid from school if he wanted to come over and play drums. So what if he’d never played drums before? We’d skip school in the afternoon and Marc would figure out UK Subs songs on the guitar.” Although the brothers learned the basic chords from books and never took any formal guitar lessons, “Jungle Jim” Algie showed them the all-important barre chord. “The power chord was the secret that changed everything,” says Brent. Phil Larson bought a PA, and that also helped bring the music together. To the chagrin of Mr. and Mrs. Belke, the teens practiced regularly and the howling racket that arose from the basement eventually began to sound almost music-like. The youths dreamed of performing live.
One night, Marc and Brent saw the Subhumans and The Diefenbakers with Ken Chinn and Jim Algie, and The Smarties abruptly became irrelevant. Things really started to change at that point. With a mutual love for skateboarding and punk rock, it only made sense that the trio should become real friends. Soon the youths were poring over new releases at the record store, buying as many as they could afford before rushing back to the Belkes to play them loudly. The new music did not impress Mr. and Mrs. Belke, who constantly warned the boys to turn it down. In fact, the aggressive hybrid of punk rock known as “hardcore” was downright terrifying. Nothing good could come of hardcore.
New music continued to inspire the young musicians. They read reviews in magazines such as NME and Trouser Press, and eagerly hunted down the latest arrivals. In one foray to the record store, Marc bought two brand new albums that had recently arrived. He knew just by looking at the soundtrack for The Decline of Western Civilization, and Black Flag’s Jealous Again that he had struck hardcore gold. Marc hurried home to play his latest acquisitions. As the Sex Pistols had changed his world earlier, these albums represented another quantum leap. “I listened to Black Flag, and I was actually fucking scared. Even the photographs were creepy!” remembers Marc.
From the living room, Mr. and Mrs. Belke were also listening. The music was bad enough, but the stage banter from Decline was too much for Mr. Belke. “After supper, my father grabbed the records and later burned them in the fireplace,” Marc remembers. “He looked at the back cover of Jealous Again and said it was like John Hinckley all over again.” While the vinyl may have gone up in smoke, the music was there to stay, and several songs from the soundtrack soon landed on the band’s set list. “We did ‘Jealous Again,’” laughs Marc. While that song is fine indeed, “Revenge” probably would have been more appropriate.
Marc was so upset at the destruction of his personal property that he decided to make like the Ramones and leave home. “I took off and tried to live with Phil [Larson], but I couldn’t get a hold of him so I went home again, all in one day,” the guitarist recalls of this turbulent period. He kept his feelings bottled inside and waited for an opportunity to escape from suburbia.
By now, Ken had already made the break and was living on Boyle Street with Ken Hansen, a friend from school. Ken Hansen was a commercial arts student and Ken Chinn had studied graphic arts, so the two had that in common. Ken Hansen would eventually design merch for SNFU, and received credit on the first three albums for his artistic efforts. “I would dream up a concept and Ken would make it happen,” recounts the SNFU singer. “He did everything for the band.” Ken Hansen is also responsible for turning a piece of “borrowed” artwork into the iconic SNFU merchandise that survives to this day.
Practice continued in the Belke basement with Brent and Ken sharing vocal duties. Before long, the teens made a demo tape with Phil Larson on bass, Marc Belke playing guitar, Ed Dobek from the Malibu Kens on drums, and Ken Chinn—who had begun to write his own lyrics—as the primary singer. Although the recording was as rough as could be, the songs were musically coherent, and the members of the band all managed to stop at the same time. “Punk rock was the lowest form of music, and they were proud to be part of it. They aspired to be the lowest of the low,” Mrs. Belke reflects glumly.
From early on, Marc dedicated himself to the guitar. While Brent didn’t have much trouble learning the basics, he didn’t practice the way Marc did. The slightly younger twin skipped school with increasing regularity in order to get in more practi
ce. “I’d get home from school and Marc would be watching Love Boat and playing guitar,” Brent remembers. “He’d practice all day long.” Marc was determined to master the instrument, even if he had to drop out of school to do it. “I’d have breakfast and go to school, and when first class started I’d go home and play guitar,” Marc remembers. “I’d play Sham 69 and Ramones songs. For me, it was fucking great. I was happy.”
Eventually the truancies caught up with Marc, and the situation at home reached a boiling point. Forced back to classes, the guidance counsellor decided that Marc needed some real life experience and found work for the troublesome teen at a car wash. They wanted him to see that an education could save him from a lifetime of drudgery, but Marc felt they were simply punishing him for cutting classes. “They never sat me down and told me that it was important to decide what I wanted to do,” Marc remembers. “I had a lot of people bossing me around, but they didn’t explain why I should listen to them.”
Needless to say, Marc did not see a future at the car wash and soon bowed out. After another emotional and heartfelt conference with his parents and the guidance counsellor, Marc left Harry Ainlay Senior High in grade eleven. Regular school might have been over, but rock n’ roll high school was about to begin.
At last Marc was able to focus on his music full-time. Free from the grind of school, the teenager applied himself to the guitar with a renewed sense of purpose. Ironically, the guidance counsellor had only strengthened his resolve to become a musician. “I have it in my nature to try even harder when people tell me I can’t do something. I’m kind of stubborn that way,” muses the musician. “Although it didn’t seem like those comments from the guidance counsellor were harmful to me, my confidence is not what it could be sometimes. I’ve been in a band and played thousands of shows, but I’m definitely not that confident in some situations.” Hopefully guidance counsellors receive better training nowa days.