by Chris Walter
Youth Brigade and SNFU rolled out the next afternoon safe and sound. The violence in the pit did not spill onto the stage, but only because a large number of capable bouncers prevented that from happening with flurries of well placed punches and kicks. While the gig in Tucson with MIA that night was not as full, Otto liked it better because it wasn’t so violent. Despite how it might sound, Otto was no pacifist. He wasn’t afraid to fight, but he needed a reason.
Back in Los Angeles for Monday morning, work continued. The recording was almost finished, but there was still the mixing to do. Although Evan had become increasingly unhappy, he managed to get his drum tracks done. He didn’t have a problem in the studio, but everything else about being out of town made him uncomfortable. Various psychiatric problems that had mostly lain dormant until now rose up to torment him. Although Evan’s bandmates could see the drummer was in distress, there was nothing they could do but hope things would improve. Evan’s mental well-being was important to them, but there were a great many things going on at once, all of them begging desperately for attention.
The boys wrapped up the recording and headed for San Diego, where a wild, crowded show helped ease the tension of the studio. “There were some skinheads outside the show who didn’t like it that we had a ‘Chink’ for a lead singer,” Evan remembers. The band was lucky that the boneheads didn’t know Ken was gay. In fact, the bandmembers themselves didn’t know either. Next was a show in Anaheim at the Flashdance Club on December 23rd. The gig was more violent than most Canadian shows, but it paled in comparison to the brutality the band had witnessed in Phoenix. The boys rolled out afterwards and returned to LA. Although things had gone well in the studio, the young punks from Edmonton were beginning to wish that the work was over. Luckily, their involvement in the mixing process wouldn’t be as demanding.
By this point, the accumulated stress had rendered Evan C. Jones almost catatonic. Preoccupied with the mixing, the drummer’s bandmates were too busy to worry about him, and managed to finish the project in the allotted time. The boys wanted to celebrate by visiting Las Vegas on the way home, but Evan’s mother and sister gave him a plane ticket as an early Christmas gift. Mark Stern drove Evan to LAX and saw him off. No one knew it yet, but the young drummer had woken up in the van breathing noxious fumes for the last time. Evan arrived home, hungover and confused. Maybe he wasn’t cut out for this.
Tired but satisfied, SNFU said goodbye to LA and rolled into the desert en route to Las Vegas. In the last two weeks they had devoured many tacos, inhaled each other’s farts, endured countless bad jokes, and squabbled amongst themselves just as punk bands had been doing since 1976. Clearing all obstacles, they had driven across North America to record their first album, even if Evan seemed to be struggling. Marc remembers having the time of his life on that trip. “I wanted to be driving around in a van playing punk rock. There was nothing in the world that I would rather be doing,” he says, reliving the memory. Chi Pig felt the same way and has always enjoyed touring. The pair enjoyed the unpredictability of life on the road. This was adventure, pure and simple.
Las Vegas was fun, but the band couldn’t stay long because they wanted to be home for Christmas. After gambling away what small amounts of money they could afford to lose, the boys drove through Nevada into Utah, heading due north towards Edmonton. They drove non-stop on Christmas Eve making good time. The temperature began to drop, and what had been sand and sun slowly became snow and ice as they moved across Utah, through Idaho, and into Montana. Night gave way to Christmas morning, and the van began to run low on gas. The needle on the gas gauge plunged ever lower, but every service station was closed for the holidays. When yet another station was shut tight, the weary musicians dug out their jackets and began to worry in earnest. They were running on fumes now, and even those vapours would soon be gone. Otto and Jimmy dropped the Bob and Doug McKenzie act, and even the obscenely cheerful Belkes had fallen silent. The situation looked grim.
Sure enough, the van sputtered to a halt miles from nowhere on a windswept and desolate highway not far from the Canadian border. Without the interior heater, the temperature inside the van immediately began to drop, prompting Otto to see if he could flag down a passing car. To his joy, and for the first time ever, the young man was happy to see a highway patrol car bearing down on them. Otto waved frantically to attract attention, even though the cops would have had to be blind to miss the van on the shoulder. To his surprise, the police car flew past without even slowing. Merry Christmas indeed.
Otto climbed back into the van, but finding it no warmer, he tried the highway again. Luckily, another car soon happened along, and this time it stopped. The motorist, a big, tattooed man wearing heavy silver rings on most of his fingers, grinned at the stranded punks and then lifted the hood of his Lincoln Continental to remove a jerry can of gasoline secured within. He gave the gasoline to the boys, explaining that another Good Samaritan had given it to him after he had suffered a similar misadventure, and that they should refill it for the next stranded motorist they saw. The boys gratefully accepted the fuel, swearing to return the favour. After carefully pouring the gas into the van, they headed off once again. “We thanked that dude on our album,” says Muc.
Unfortunately, the gas stations they found were closed, and they had almost run out of fuel again when they finally reached one that was open. They filled not only the tank but the jerry can as well, just in case they should come across some poor bastard stuck on the highway. Although the chances seemed slim, the boys did not wish to be overdrawn at the karma bank. They sped towards the border, feeling optimistic and warm. Nothing could keep them from Christmas dinner with all the trimmings.
The border, of course, was another ordeal, and customs officials tore the vehicle to bits looking for drugs, guns, bombs, and/or illegal fireworks. The border Gestapo attacked the old van with such gusto that it was almost inoperable when they finished. Finding nothing but crusty tissues and toxic socks, the officers finally waved the boys through with disgust, regretting that they hadn’t found a marijuana seed or two. These kids were bad eggs, they could just tell.
Motoring across Alberta, the tired musicians drew ever closer to home. They reached Calgary in late afternoon and resisted stopping for lunch. If they kept going there was still a chance they could make it home for supper. Amazingly, they passed a car stranded on the side of the highway and were able to give the jerry can of gasoline to the grateful driver. Soon the boys were rolling again, and Otto barely slowed down as he sped through Red Deer. The boys finally reached Edmonton as dusk fell, giving them just enough time to wash up for the festive meal. Unwilling to forgo turkey with all the trimmings for mac and cheese, Chi Pig ate Christmas supper with the Belkes. Soon afterwards, the exhausted musicians slept like dead men.
The next day, Otto cleaned his van as best he could while the others did laundry and loafed around the house watching TV. While the trip had been a huge success, the boys sensed that Evan’s problems were real. Sure, their first record was in the can and a large tour of North America was in the works for July, but would they have a drummer who could hold it all together? As always, the road ahead was full of potholes.
Of Pigs and Men and Other Stuff
Despite being half-drunk, the boys decided to do an impromptu set at a punk residence known as the No House just after New Year’s Eve. “Everyone was bombed, and even Marc and Brent were having a few beers,” remembers Evan “Tadpole” Jones. At this point, thirsty punks had already consumed a keg of beer sold by the hosts, and several bands, including Entirely Distorted and a band from St. Albert known for making disturbing chicken noises, had already played. The scene was set for some serious madness.
Using equipment borrowed from the other bands, SNFU kicked into the first song with a noisy crash, delighting the drunken guests. “People were actually ‘stage diving’ off the mantle above the fireplace,” recalls Dave Dutton-Fraser, who lived at the No House. The well-oiled musicians crashed about w
ildly, and all seemed to be going well until Evan toppled backwards off his drum stool. Unfortunately, the drum riser was in front of the living room window and Evan smashed through it, falling completely out of the house onto the snow-covered porch. The partygoers pulled Evan from the snow, brushed off the broken glass, and carried him back inside to finish the chaotic set. “I was wearing my leather jacket, thank God,” says Evan, explaining how he escaped with only a relatively minor cut on his forehead. Although he probably wouldn’t have fallen through the window if he hadn’t been drunk, his intoxicated condition might have saved him from serious injury.
Dave Dutton-Fraser describes the fun that came later, after SNFU whipped the guests into a frenzied state. “I got to punch two Lawson brothers in the head that night because, like potato chips, you can’t have just one. Ken offered to pay for the window but never did. Instead, myself and other residents of the No House got free passes to many SNFU gigs. We trashed the house when we moved out anyway, so it was a hell of a deal.”
After resting up at home for a few days, Evan was in decent shape, and the stress he had displayed in LA seemed to be gone. A show at Spartan’s in February was a huge hit, and the Edmonton punks were happy to see the boys home again. On the outside, everything looked like roses.
As it turned out, those roses were wrapped with barbed wire. In February of 1985, not long after the Spartan’s show, the band convened for a meeting at the Nose Dive, where they occasionally met to discuss business, plan tours, or brainstorm song ideas. On this day, however, Evan sensed that the gathering would be weightier than others. “They sat me down, and I could tell by the looks on their faces that some serious shit was going on,” Evan C. Jones recalls. Evan’s associates—especially Gubby, who was almost militantly straight edge—only wanted to express their concern over his downward spiral. The drummer was drinking excessively and dropping too much acid. Coupled with his somewhat fragile mental state, the results were scary. “They just wanted me to get better and stop destroying myself,” says Evan, and his gratitude for their alarm is evident in his voice. Marc Belke remembers the meeting, but stresses that it wasn’t an intervention. “Evan was Evan, and we never got together to talk about getting rid of him or anything like that,” the guitarist maintains. Nor did they insist that he lay off the liquor and drugs. They just wanted him to shape up and drum.
Nevertheless, the percussionist was losing weight at a steady pace and had not regained the pounds he lost in LA. Mentally, his headspace was even worse. SNFU wasn’t firing Evan, but they could see that he couldn’t go on much longer if he continued with such destructive behaviour. Not only did they care about the youngest member of the band, but they would also have to find his replacement if he became unable to play, or, God forbid, died. “I had a lot of respect for Evan,” says Marc. “Out of that unit at the time, he was probably the most experienced and talented member of the band.”
Evan’s problems were just one more thing to keep the boys awake at nights after the amplifiers were switched off. Transportation was a serious concern that needed to be addressed if they were to function as a real band. To remedy this problem, Gubby bought a Chevy van from his brother, Lumpy. “Gubby showed up after a gig with a van that Lumpy got at an auction, and suddenly we had wheels,” Brent remembers. Otto would stay on as roadie, but the band had taken its last trip in Slavek Branicki’s 426 hemi Plymouth Grand Fury. Although they needed the van to tour, the bandmembers were happy just to have something that would take them to Spartan’s and back. Apparently, the van Lumpy sold to Down Syndrome blew up almost immediately, but that’s another story.
While the band tried to keep busy, Chi Pig joked caustically that instead of naming their debut album …And No One Else Wanted To Play, they should call it Finally. For the young punks, four months seemed like an inordinately long time to wait for their record, even though a turnaround that quick is very fast by modern industry standards. While waiting for the record plant to press the album, all they had to do was book a fifty-date North American tour for SNFU. How difficult could that be?
Curiously, while the band was preparing to release …And No One Else Wanted To Play, the original wave of hardcore punk was on a steady downward spiral. Because hardcore had taken so long to catch on in Edmonton, SNFU were just getting started while others had already left the party. The DayGlo Abortions and Death Sentence would both release albums in 1986, but for now it was up to SNFU and DOA to keep hardcore afloat in Canada. SNFU’s first album would make such an impact when it was released partly because new records by the original groups simply weren’t as good as their first, or even their second albums. These bands had learned what mainstream rock acts already knew: namely that one had a lifetime to make the first record but only a year or so to produce a sophomore release. SNFU’s debut album would have shone brightly anyway, but next to the tired offerings available, it would positively glow.
Finally, in early May, the record plant shipped the albums, and the jackets came back from the printer. The release party was predictably chaotic and noisy. BYO sent several boxes of records to Edmonton, and fans eagerly snapped them up, anxious to have the songs they were hearing at Spartan’s on vinyl. The LP quickly sold out, leaving fans no alternative but to buy the album at record stores hip enough to stock BYO product. Reviews were uniformly good, and critics such as Pushead of Maximum Rock n’ Roll gushed enthusiastically. The cover featured an image by controversial photographer Diane Arbus that would lead to problems later, but for now, everything was fine.
The band’s tight performances flaunted a new level of showmanship and musicality, but they sensed that trouble was coming. Sure enough, after a show in late May, Evan advised his bandmates that he was leaving the group. His drug use was getting out of hand, and he couldn’t bear the psychological pressure of touring. “I told him that I understood, and not to feel bad about himself,” says Chi Pig. As it turned out, Evan’s girlfriend had recently chosen to have an abortion rather than become a mother at sixteen, but the decision was not made lightly. Although he was not prepared financially or emotionally for fatherhood, Evan felt bad about the situation.
There were other factors behind his departure. Evan reports that the camaraderie he once enjoyed with his fellow musicians had deteriorated. “Marc and Brent were always clowning around, and I just couldn’t take it any more. I wanted to scream at them to be serious for once, but that wouldn’t have done any good.” He couldn’t forget how uncomfortable it felt to be squeezed face-to-buttcheek in the van with his fellow musicians. Although Evan still loved playing live, the downtime had become torturous. As far as he could see, there was nothing left but to quit. The drummer played his last show and walked away. He was done.
Although the other members of SNFU knew that Evan was in bad shape, his departure came as a shock nevertheless. “I had no idea he was going to quit,” says Marc. They had secretly hoped that he might get his act together in time for the upcoming tour. The loss of a drummer would have been troublesome at the best of times, but right now this was nothing less than a disaster. Where were they going to find a replacement on such short notice?
As it had been when they needed a replacement for Warren Bidlock, the solution was ridiculously easy. Dave Bacon, who roadied for SNFU, and played in five local bands, was ready and willing to step up to the plate. In fact, Dave had already jammed with the band at least once, playing bass on “Misfortune” when Jimmy was late for soundcheck at Spartan’s. By now, Dave knew the songs almost as well as the guys themselves did. He was such an obvious candidate for the group that they didn’t even audition anyone else.
Although Dave preferred to play bass or guitar, he was happy enough behind the drums, and the band immediately went to work. Since the tour to support the new album was only a month and a half away, the band would have to practice relentlessly if they wanted to sound good. Luckily, SNFU had a very strong work ethic, and the extra time in the basement would not cause any undue suffering. Despite the fact t
hat some members also held down full-time jobs, they rehearsed a minimum of three times a week. There was only one way to get to Carnegie Hall.
SNFU had been rehearsing in a rented space, but when Dave joined the band, they moved into the basement of his house on 93rd Street, where they wouldn’t have to pay. This was exactly what the band had done when Jimmy Schmitz joined SNFU, and this method of acquiring new members and rehearsal spaces simultaneously was becoming old hat. “It was a running joke that if we practiced in your house and someone left the band, whoever was living in the house would automatically take his place,” says Marc Belke. As always, the show would go on.
The new guy was a fiend for practice and liked nothing better than to make music. Born April 26th, 1965, Dave Bacon was only slightly older than Evan C. Jones was, and the drummer would again be the youngest member of SNFU. Originally from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Dave’s father worked for SaskPower, which kept the family on the road a fair bit. “We were kinda nomadic back then,” Dave remembers of this early period. His mother, who worked at the Air Force base, commuted to and from Moose Jaw as her husband accepted various positions within SaskPower. Life on the prairies was not about rock n’ roll.
When Dave was nine, the Bacons settled in Saskatoon, where they stayed for many years. Like the Belkes, he was influenced by the music of his siblings. “I remember watching the Reprise record label in the middle of a Jimi Hendrix album, the one with the steamship, going around on the turntable when I was about three or four,” Dave recounts. The older Bacons were products of the times, favouring the usual longhaired 60s bands, psychedelic drugs, and all things groovy. “My mom had seen it all by the time I came along,” says Dave, with the air of a child whose parents had long given up the battle.