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Punker Than You
Punker Than You
Punker Than You
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Punker Than You

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PUNKER THAN YOU is the story of Paul 'Poker' Cartwright, former member of a Canadian hardcore punk band called Murderburger. In what starts off as an angry Letter To The Editor, Paul veers into the history of his hometown of Morganfield, and describes the rise and fall of the Morgie punk scene of 1989. Snotty, smart, funny and foul-mouthed, this ain't your Grandma's CanLit, boyo!

LanguageEnglish
PublisherDave McIntyre
Release dateAug 26, 2010
ISBN9780986526510
Punker Than You
Author

Dave McIntyre

DAVE MCINTYRE is a Toronto-based writer who has been writing fiction since 1999. He holds a B.A. in English Literature from Concordia University and he has studied Creative Writing at the University of Toronto.Mr. McIntyre's fiction and essays have appeared in 'Front & Centre', 'The Fiddlehead', 'Pottersfield Portfolio', 'paperplates', and other journals and publications.

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    Punker Than You - Dave McIntyre

    PUNKER THAN YOU

    A NOVEL

    by Dave McIntyre

    Published by Dave McIntyre at Smashwords

    • • • •

    Copyright ©2009, 2010 by Dave McIntyre

    ISBN no. 978-0-9865265-1-0

    also available in softcover edition: ISBN no. 978-0-9865265-0-3

    All rights reserved. Unauthorised reproduction of the contents of this novel in any form - electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise - without the written consent of the author is strictly prohibited.

    This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblances to names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons either living, dead or unsure, is coincidental.

    Smashwords Edition, License Notes

    This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

    for more information please contact:

    punkerthanyou@sympatico.ca

    • • • • • • • • • • • • •

    Dedicated to my mother, who has always wondered

    why I never wrote any happy songs

    • • • • • • • • • • • • •

    Part One:

    DEAD ON ARRIVAL

    (first attempt, July 1995)

    Life is a joke / And the joke is on us.

    The Nothings ('Morbid and Old')

    • • • •

    'Days of Spikes and Liberty'

    (sidebar article accompanying 'Groove Inc. Rocks the Boat')

    from Sonic Sauce, December 1994 issue, Volume 3, Issue 11

    by Darcy Vandenheuvel

    Fans of Groove Incorporated's new vocalist/rapper Matt Molotov might be surprised to learn about Matt's history as a teenage punk rocker. Or maybe not. These days almost every major musician in North America claims to have played in a punk band in their youth. But Molotov insists it was different for him.

    Morganfield was a total backwater, says Molotov, referring to the north-Scarborough neighbourhood where he attended secondary school. They had never even seen a skateboard until I showed up!

    Under the nom de plume Spike Liberty, Molotov fronted the hardcore outfit Murderburger, self-releasing their own CD and touring Ontario, including playing an opening slot for Kitchener hardcore legends The Punkaholics. Jake (the Punkaholics lead singer) said that they should have been opening for us, Molotov exclaims. That just blew my mind!

    Molotov also single-handedly built the Morganfield Hardcore scene from scratch, putting together local shows and even assembling bands using his friends, ranging from the old-school New York punk of The Nothings to the Chili Pepper funk of The Milk Studs.

    We could blow the T.O. bands off the stage any night of the week, Molotov insists. There was just so much potential. They should have put out their own albums, they should have toured. But kids can be pretty lazy, you know?

    Tired of dealing with his go-nowhere bandmates, Molotov quit punk rock altogether after Murderburger fell apart in 1992 and made the transition to techno in Toronto's burgeoning dance scene. With his contributions to Groove Inc.'s second album, Molotov has proven that he is not just another one of Canada's standing army of never-were punk rock wankers.

    There's nothing wrong in saying that punk is dead, he continues. Look around, it's just the facts. And I'm happy to say I did more to kill it than anyone else!

    1.

    July 9, 1995

    to: Sonic Sauce

    c/o Triumph Media Publishing Inc.

    57 Spadina Avenue, Suite 2—

    Toronto, Ontario

    M5V 3V5

    att'n: Mr. Darcy Vandenheuvel, Contributing Editor

    Dear Fuckhead,

    As I usually have better sense than to pay attention to your shitty magazine, I only recently became aware of an article which appeared in your December 1994 issue concerning a certain band featuring an ex-bandmate of mine (Groove Inc. Rocks the Boat, Volume 3, Issue 11). While I admire your ability to kiss the ass of Mr. Molotov and his digit-headed cronies and heap praise on a sophomore CD release which even to a non-fan of dance music sounds forced and starved of inspiration, I was particularly amused by Matt's willingness to discuss his crazy punker daze of yore and his associations with the punk rock scene in Morganfield - amused, because in all of the other articles that I have seen on Groove Incorporated, Matt is rather less than interested in discussing his past follies and escapades. The sidebar article with its precious paragraphs devoted to the Morganfield scene is the most coverage I've ever come across from anyone of that time and place - not even Chart or Exclaim! have ever bothered to mention Morganfield circa 1988-1991. And then you go and issue a very downtown-Torontonian dismissal of the Morgie scene, in particular Matt's go-nowhere bandmates, of which I - Paul Cartwright, a.k.a. Poker Cartwright: guitarist, co-songwriter and all-round patsy - am one.

    Yes, Darcy, another letter from a disgruntled former musician. Lucky little you.

    How many of these letters do you receive on a monthly basis, I wonder? How many on a daily basis? How many big fish in the small pond that is the Canadian music industry (an oxymoron if there ever was one) have you goaded into sniveling shitfits of misinformation and lies about musicians who never made the cut? Drummers who were dropped before the first album, singers who had to be shuffled off to rehab on the eve of the start of a major European tour, record companies which exist mainly as tax write-offs for shareholders who own every album Phil Collins ever recorded and who think that the Tragically Hip is a heavy metal band? Indeed, how much do you actually have to prod these acts before they start dumping on the little people who may at one time have shared a stage with them or helped to write their early hits? Not much prodding is needed, I'd imagine, if my limited experience with the assholes who control the music biz and its top-selling acts is anything to go by. Oh, by the by, Mr. Vandenhoofer, did I mention I was a little miffed by your article?

    I found a used copy of the magazine issue in question in the free bin at the local bookstore and came upon the article by chance. The photo caption on the bottom left of the page read: Groove Inc.'s Matt Molotov says 'Disco Rocks!' - I was immediately repulsed and yet fascinated, drawn beyond my will like metal filings to a magnet. I read the article in question, and since then the rest of my weekend has been a total and utter write-off. I have done nothing but fume and drink and otherwise make everyone within hearing and smelling range downright miserable. Not that I blame you entirely for this predicament - I did pick up the thing by accident after all. (By the way, it's not out of complete disinterest in your publication that I have not been following recent issues of Da Sauce. Besides, I can see by your prominent placement on the shelves at Chapters that you are doing just fine without my patronage. The fact that your publication has not yet been induced to have free sample issues inserted and bundled with The Globe and Mail or any of the other Toronto newspapers is a sure sign of your continuing success and robust fiscal condition - nothing says success in Canadian publishing quite like being able to charge the full cover price each and every month.)

    So now I've vented a little, and I still don't feel all that much better. Heck, I'm between jobs as I write this, with nothing but my upcoming birthday present from my long-suffering parents to look forward to, reward-wise, so it's not as if I have some higher agenda keeping me from schooling you until my printer runs out of paper. Shit, I could be over at one of my friends' pads drinking and watching The Simpsons and otherwise just not giving a fuck about anything, but wouldn't you know it, that damn interview of yours just won't leave me alone. I have a phone number, I'm listed in the goddamn phone book. Did it ever occur to you to call around and consult your sources? Get some background info, maybe dig up some interesting facts on Molotov et al? Get your hands dirty and commit random acts of journalism, perhaps?

    For instance, did you know that he was the first kid in Morganfield to get a mohawk? Did you know he used to wear a blue suit on stage and call himself Spike Mulroney without an iota of irony? Did you know he was the only male cheerleader that Morganfield North Secondary School ever had (you've seen him twirl that microphone on stage, I'm sure; where do you think he learned those skillz to pay the billz?) Did you know that his family owns the largest Canadian-owned chain of theme restaurants? Did you know that everyone in Buffalo NY thinks that he is a hermaphrodite? Buddy, I am a treasure trove of trivia on Matt Molotov and his early musical career! You could have asked me all of the questions that Matt no doubt refused to answer (just like he refuses to answer any of my letters or e-mails I've sent him in the last three years, but that's a whole other ball of confusion). Instead you go and dust me off as, and I quote, one of Canada's standing army of never-were punk rock wankers. Lo, sir, thou hath wounded me gravely with thine mordant drollery. Eat shit.

    It's past ten p.m. and I'm still writing. I'm missing some quality tee-vee because of you, Darcy, thanks a whole bunch. I oughta just sit here in front of the computer and keep on writing, insulting you over and over until you cry, you dim hack. In fact, now might be a good opportunity for me to clear the air a little and open your tiny little rock and roll mind. Me and my fellow soldiers in this standing army of never-weres are the folks who put food on your table and funny little pills on your tongue, and we deserve a bit of respect from you media whores. Our stories drive the music far more than your magazines and cute little programmes on CityTV, and the Morganfield scene is just one of those stories. In fact, Matt Molotov is just one character in that particular novel, and he's about an unreliable a narrator as they come.

    Maybe I oughta thank you after all, Dorky Van Damme. You've given me a reason to get up tomorrow morning. I'm gonna sleep on it and write this out properly tomorrow. Frankly, you should be paying residuals for my help with the research you don't seem to want to bother with, but we'll negotiate that later. For now, let's see if this letter can turn out something useful and put your precious degree in Communications to some good use.

    • • • •

    2.

    Before I dissect your dismissive missive on the Morganfield scene and the community from which it sprung, Monsieur Vandenheuvel, allow me a few minutes of your precious time to expound upon the subject of my fair hometown, and why someone like me gets so cross when someone like you brushes it off as just a north-Scarborough neighbourhood.

    Look at a map of Metro Toronto. Let your eye drift upwards and to the right, to the northern part of Scarborough above the CP rail line and the Toronto Zoo. Look for a slim V where Queen Street and King Street separate just above Comfort Road, with eight bisecting avenues including Margaret, Agnes, Elizabeth, Wilhelmina, Constance, Eudora, Prudence, and Anne. That there's the core of Morganfield, Ontario, founded in 1881 by one Sir Hubert Allen Morganfield: CP Railway Executive, Liberal Party supporter, and proud bearer of a kick-ass pair of mutton-chop sideburns. The town bears his name, natch, and those eight sororal avenues are named after Sir Hubert's daughters - pardon the history lesson, Darcy, but these factoids were drummed into every little Morgie student's head from their plastic-pants days onward, and I can not help upchuck 'em during otherwise civil discourse. Kinda like how you can't help but barf out brainless fellatiographies of sub-musical dance twaddle like Groove Incorporated. Feel my pain, fellow Tourette's sufferer!

    So anyway, back to the map. I want you to look at the longest of the eight avenues, Elizabeth. Follow it east of Queen and it becomes Lower Elizabeth Avenue, terminating over at Railway Street. Now follow it west of Queen. Notice how it ends at Fifth Street, with only a dashed line connecting it to Morningside Road to the west? I have yet to see a Metro Toronto map show anything but that dashed line, even though Elizabeth Avenue has connected with Morningside since World War Two. It's as if you Toron-toads wanted Morganfield to be at least psychologically amputated from your proud body politic. Hell, the cartographers would probably put a dashed line at the north and south ends of Queen Street too, if they thought they could get away with it. Even after the merger, Morganfield was always separate from the rest of the Toronto boroughs: a bumpkin nowheresville written off by you downtown types with your all-too-obvious jokes and putdowns (Q. How many Morgies does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A. Two. One to put it in and one to lecture you about how much better the light is in Morganfield than in the rest of Toronto!) Oh yes, we Morgies remember well, we do.

    Now don't get me wrong, Van. We were proud of our splendid isolation. Long after Malvern and Agincourt were subsumed into the G.T.A., Morganfield minded its own business for over a century, and minded it well, thank you very much. We had our own town council, jobs at the Shirley Soda plant and CP's Eastern Canada head office plus the rail yards just over the town line, our own schools and hospital, even our own garbage collection. Then the Scarborough Amalgamation Act came along, a deal squared away between your city council and our slime-ball town mayor, and it all went down the crapper. November 5th, 1985: Morganfielders recall this date much as others recall the JFK assassination or the space shuttle disaster. That old-time camaraderie between Morgie and non-Morgie still exists, of course (Q. What's the difference between the Toronto Zoo and Morganfield? A1. Residents of the Toronto Zoo smell better! A2. The females in the zoo are better-looking and their antlers are smaller!), but now we can not even boast about having a border to protect us. We see the subdivisions sprouting up like bland geometric fungus down from Steeles to the west and up from Old Finch Avenue from the south - that bleak brick tide is washing ever closer to our bucolic shores, and we know that it is only a matter of time before we're just another blunt suburb where nothing but conformity is bred. Sooner or later, you're gonna drag us down to your level. Happy?

    I get worked up over things like this, Darcy. I get angry about it now just like how the adults back then were angry over amalgamation, what with their wounded civic pride, not to mention the substantial hike in their tax bills. At the time it all happened, however, I was barely into Grade Nine at Morganfield North Secondary School (there is no Morganfield South school, in case you're wondering - locals have been debating the reasons for this for generations), and I only had a vague idea of what was going on. Our Vice-Principal, Mrs. Wyatt, a.k.a. Quiet Wyatt, was livid over the students' disinterest when she tried to have us discuss the changeover and what it meant to us as young Morganfield citizens. This is your hometown! she said. This is about who you are! But y'know, the houses and trees and streets still looked the same from our bedroom windows. Few of us could understand why Quiet Wyatt was so upset. Frankly, becoming part of a big city seemed like a swell idea. The older kids, at least the ones with a flicker of energy sparking in their eye-holes, all talked longingly about leaving Morganfield as soon as they were able. Now the big city was coming to us. That sounded like progress.

    One of the rites of passage for kids in Morganfield was the pilgrimage to the roof of the north-end apartment complex up on Lower Anne called Brooklin Arms. The Brooklin Arms was better known as Broken Arms, and it was as close to an actual slum as our innocent burg ever managed: welfare bums, single mothers, the occasional visit from one of the four Morganfield Police cruisers on any given weekend. Squint your eyes right and it just might pass for the real Brooklyn on a slow night. Anyway, the trip to the roof involved a quick sneak past the first floor apartment of the fat bastard superintendent, a soft-shoed trot up four flights of stairs (the elevator was rarely in working order), and then a shimmy up the metal ladder to pop the trap door open, and there you were: the highest point in all of Morganfield, top of the freakin' world. I was eleven when I first went up on some December afternoon with Steve Coleman and Kevin Mulcahey and a two-litre bottle of Shirley Cola. We spent an hour playing poker for spare change, our shoulders hunched against the cold wind until we couldn't stand it anymore, and we then marked down our names and left. I made four or five return trips after that, the novelty vanishing quickly, but every time I was up there my eyes would veer to the south-west where out on the horizon I could barely make out the thin distant prick of the CN Tower, a vision that seemed alien and yet still weirdly comforting. It was as if that tower was a compass point directing me away from a flannel-coated adolescence toward a bright and modern future.

    If I am sounding a bit nostalgic here, that's because nowadays, well, I suppose I am. To paraphrase a certain horse-faced folk singer from way back when: Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you got 'till it's gone? That about sums up my feelings about my long lost El Dorado out beyond the River Rouge.

    Nowadays I can afford to be all reflective and crotchety. Back then, however, I was just another pissed-off teenager with a skin so thin you could see my pulse throb from the other side of the wrist. Little things set me off, not that I could explain exactly why. Like the one time I was playing road hockey with a group of kids near my house on Third Street: it was around September, and I remember the day being weirdly warm despite the overcast sky, like some leftover summer heat remained trapped under the clouds, waiting to be burned off. I had my hockey stick and my Canadiens ball cap for armour. Every shot I managed to get past the defense had been blocked; even my own teammates were ragging on me. We had already moved the nets to the curb twice to let cars pass; all I wanted was just to get one lousy shot past the goalie.

    Come on, Paulie! big Steve Coleman shouted from the goalie net behind me. Put 'er through the pipes!

    Look alive, Paul, Kevin Mulcahey called out. You're not a cripple out there!

    Suddenly one of the opposing players pointed down the street - he looked like he was about to shout Car! but instead he made an incredulous face and just shook his head. We turned around and saw not a car, but a tractor rolling slowly up the street towards us. Now it was not unusual to see a tractor on Queen Street once in a while, particularly during harvest season or when the farmer's market was on. But Third Street? Was this guy lost, or was he going out of his way to disrupt whatever traffic he could find? And our stupid pick-up game in particular?

    We moved the nets once more to the curb, and leaned on our sticks and waited. The tractor was an old Massey Fergusson with an open cabin, pulling a flatbed trailer half-filled with baled hay. The driver was a pudgy farmer with a CAT ball cap pushed high up on his forehead, one utility-gloved hand on the wheel and the other draped languidly over one of the stick-shifts. A stereo player was rope-tied to the back of the driver's chair, playing a Kenny Rogers cassette to distorted maximum volume. The farmer's broad face was stretched out into an arrogant ear-to-ear smile that was amplified by the ruddy beard that ran in a semi-circle under his chin like a reversed halo.

    He nodded at us as he passed, faux-friendliness seeping from his face while Kenny lectured us townie kids on the importance of knowin' when to hold 'em, and knowin' when to fold 'em. My eyes glazed over, and I found myself overcome with an inexplicable fury. The trailer started picking up speed as it rolled onward, and I found myself rushing back to the sidewalk where I had left my half-finished can of Pepsi. I threw the drink as hard as I could, dark drops flying in the can's wake until it clunked against the back of the flatbed. The farmer drove on, oblivious to my attack.

    I stood there in the middle of the street, breathing heavily, my limbs trembling with rage. Some of the kids approved of my throwing of the Pepsi - Jamie Playfair joked that it was the closest I had come to a goal all day. But the others were downright Protestant in their condemnation. What did you that for? Kevin Mulcahey kept asking me, glowering and squaring his shoulders as if he was about the beat the answer out of me. But I had no answer, at least none I could articulate. Sure I was mad at the game being interrupted, but there was something more that had touched off a primitive instinct in my simian teenage brain. Something in that farmer's air of smugness, his insufferable sense of ownership over that street. I just wanted to scream out at the top of my lungs at that guy, for no good or worthwhile reason: I AM AGAINST YOU!!!

    I had to step away from the computer for a few minutes there, Darcy old chap. That was my mother on the phone, asking how her little boy was doing in his cozy one-room basement dungeon whose monthly rent he can now only barely afford. Yes Darcy, I finally did make it to T.O., or at least as far as Queen East and Broadview (wrong side of the Don River to really qualify as Toronto, isn't it? Though I did make it to the real Queen Street as opposed to the piddly equivalent in Morganfield so, y'know, shoot for the sky and at least you'll be among the stars, blah blah blah.) I am also unemployed as of last Thursday, which should partly explain where I am getting the free time to bellow insults at you page after page. Poker Cartwright: the newest member of this country's vast welfare nation. The Pogey Express. Team Canada. I was a mere two weeks short of qualifying for U.I. when I was rounded up by my slope-browed supervisor who then pounded his caveman club on his desk going Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! and gave me my walking papers on account of a lack of boxes to stack and orders to fill. He then waddled over to his tire swing and bade me farewell and fuggoff in his own sweet manner, and I shuffled away forthwith. Ever had a job where getting fired is the best thing that ever happened to you? This wasn't my first, I'm afraid. But I digress.

    So to the matter of the phone call. My sainted mudder was asking me what I wanted for my upcoming birthday. (So I hear it's your birthday / Who gives a shit? Name that Klassik Canuck punk tune for a hundred dollars Monsieur Vanny-van!)

    What do I want? I told her. A bus pass and some money!

    That's not really a proper present, is it? she replied. A stickler for empty traditions, the ol' girl. Of course, I suppose my old bedroom might serve as a proper consolation prize, should the main gift not be redeemable for valuable grocery funds. Oh yes, and student loans. Did I mention that I dropped out after first year Business Administration at York back in '91? I'm just the complete package, Vanny Boy!

    Ah, but don't shed a tear for Ol' Poker, Darcy. I have enough dirty coins and barter-worthy records in my collection to keep me in (one-room-in-a) house and home for a few months. That goddamn Sonic Sauce article might seem like a trifling distraction in light of my current troubles, were it not for the magnitude of your offenses to both historical accuracy and propriety. I could have wiped my butt with a piece of foolscap and come away with a more thoughtful article than what you came up with. And my punctuation would have been exquisite. But again, I digress.

    Anyway, about Morganfield: for whatever it merits, it was indeed a dull place for a non-farming teenager to grow up. With a stroke of a pen we were no longer a town but a part of a city, with no way of connecting to that city - no GO station, and for a long time not even a bus connection for those of us lacking a driver's license. Boredom was a demon we fought daily. After the summer jobs were done, after the road hockey games were rounded up when the sky grew dark, after the last roll of quarters had been doled out at Vector Video Arcade and the last level of Dragon's Lair had been mastered, some of us turned to our one portal on the greater world, a teenage cargo cult looking for that magic ceremony that would make us one with the city, and one with the future.

    I am, of course, talking about television. (All that build-up for nothing, eh Darcy boy?) See, MuchMusic was added to the cable roster just around the time that kids of my generation were entering our teenage years. Many a Morgie teen routinely squandered their otherwise productive afternoons sprawled out on the couch watching video after video of shiny-shirted freaks belting out synth-heavy anthems while big-haired vixens in denim shorts strutted provocatively in the background. I remember sitting on the couch with my guitar and my sheet of chords copied from an old how-to songbook from the school library, riffing and plunking along with Billy Squier or Haywire or whatever was on the tube.

    And then one day MuchMusic played a video by a band of non-shiny-shirted misfits, with not a synth or vixen to be had, and more than a few Morganfielder lives changed completely.

    The song was 'Have Not Been The Same,' and the creators of this song was a collective with the unlikely moniker of Slow. This was not the first video that warped our teenie minds, nor would it be the last, but it was nonetheless the Christ-birth from which I measure my time on this flat planet. What you had was a gaggle of geeks in flannel shirts and thrift store suits bashing holy hell out of their instruments, the whole event caught in grainy film footage like a seventies slasher flick. There wasn't a rock star among the bunch: the drummer was a blonde Barney Rubble bashing the skins, and the lead guitarist looked like a debating club reject, and the bassist was a music class nerd if I ever saw one (he played his bass with his fingers, fer cryin' out loud!). Only the second guitarist looked like an actual rocker, what with his spiked hair and leather jacket, but even then he was lackadaisically strumming the strings as if he was doing the other guys a favour by showing up.

    Still, the most perplexing part of the whole shebang was the lead singer: a skinny twerp with hair in his eyes holding the microphone limply between his fingers, singing a vocal that was one long animal roar: I've been drinkin', but drinkin' doesn't make me f-f-f-f-f-FEEL alright! Jesus, he looked like he wasn't even old enough to drink! He must have been all of ninety pounds, a skinny mop-haired shrimp who looked about as unthreatening and harmless as - well, any of us in Grade Nine.

    I spent the better part of an Algebra Intro lab raving and arguing with Steve Coleman about whether these Slow guys were a bunch of students who had been rounded up to perform on camera pretending they were the band - how could such a bunch of dorks could have created such fierce-sounding music? Kevin Mulcahey, on the other hand, thought the song was a bellowing piece of crap and told us both that we were idiots. He was genuinely offended by the same video that Steve and I found so amazing. Lines were drawn and words were said, and by Grade Ten the kid I had hung out with since kindergarten, Kevin Mulcahey, would barely acknowledge my tragically uncool presence in the school hallway. Funny, isn't it, how some can hear the universe unfold in a two-chord change, while others can just listen to the radio while they're doing homework and not reflect upon it once.

    The MuchMusic vee-jay who introduced the Slow video had insinuated that what we were listening to was punk. This confused the hell out of me. How could this be punk rock? Nobody in the band was British. And no mohawks! How could they be a punk band if they didn't have mohawks? And yet my guitar teacher, who for six months had put up with my requests to learn everything from the idiotically simple three-string run in U2's 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' to the impossible intro to Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway To Heaven,' simply folded his arms when I brought in a tape recording of 'Have Not Been The Same' that I had cleverly procured by holding a tape recorder up to the television speaker and playing back the VCR dub. I draw the line at that punk rock garbage, he told me flatly. I ended up figuring out the song on my own.

    I was confused by the video, but I was still excited. A lot of us were. Peter Hammond saw it while raiding his dad's Molson Export in the rec room; Steve Coleman saw it while channel-surfing with the flu; Andy Lefebvre saw it while his parents were having one of their epic screaming matches in the kitchen; Wanda Seeley saw it while babysitting her little sister. We all found out that we had witnessed the same video over the next week. This was a band of kids not much older than we were, from Vancouver no less (who ever heard of a band coming from Vancouver? Not us rubes, that was for damn sure!) And though we disagreed on the value and the images and the lyrics, we all agreed on one thing: that big noise they made sure sounded like FUN!

    The next year and a half was marked by such minor epiphanies, very occasional bright flashes in our consciences between the dull stretches of school work, awkward dates with girls, tryouts for the high school football team (the perennially losing Morganfield Grizzlies), chores assigned by our parents, and general daydreaming over everything and nothing in particular. There would be more practicing of instruments, occasional cacophonic jam sessions in basements and garages, and more revelations distilled via MuchMusic including videos from the Dayglo Abortions and D.O.A. (more bands from British Columbia! What the hell?!) Eventually someone got a hold of the debut album from a band from Kitchener called The Punkaholics, and the effect in our tiny crew of rock kids would be like a brain bomb that would warp our perceptions...

    But I'm getting ahead of myself here. I've got plenty of time to explain the wheres and whys of Morganfield Hardcore. I forgot I was haranguing you over your dumb sidebar article, Darcy! My how the mind wanders when blinded with rage, eh?

    Okay, there is no question that Matt put together most of our shows and inspired us generally. But he sure as hell did not put together the bands. And the fact that no one ever released a CD besides his own benighted band was his idea! He even wrote it into a GODDAMN MANIFESTO which I am madly looking for as I write this. Yes, Darcy, a manifesto. He was Morganfield's very own Karl Marx. Or at least its Josef Stalin.

    For better or for worse, Matt Molotov Miller was the leader of the Morganfield Hardcore scene, as well as its prime catalyst. He took more risks and generated more ideas than anyone I've ever met. Which makes seeing him on Electric Circus as I did two weeks all the more painful, if not wretchedly amusing. There was our former Fearless Leader along with the rest of Groove Incorporated rapping to a room of nylon track suits and facial glitter, twirling his microphone like some cheerleader of the Digital Apocalypse and grinning for dear life. What can I tell you? Think of Pierre Trudeau peddling Jordache Jeans, or Winston Churchill singing a medley from Cats. Matt Miller is like an Eaton's toy shelf on December 26th: All Sold Out.

    Now Matt wants everybody to think that other Morgie scenesters hold it against him that no one ever heard of them. And did he actually have the gall to say that we were lazy? What a crock of shit!

    True Morganfielders are anything but lazy. Just ask the only Morganfield musical troupe (aside from the aforementioned Murderburger in your helpful sidebar typing exercise) that ever left a footprint in the great cultural jungle of Rock'n'Roll. Maybe you remember The Synging Telegrams from that song 'Cheddar Chocolate' that Q107 plays on their Psychedelic Sunday program every month or two. Maybe you even own one of the many garage rock compilations that include 'Cheddar Chocolate', one of those old-timey records with the dayglo album sleeves featuring blonde chicks in short skirts and go-go boots. We young aspiring (ahem) punks in Morganfield learned about The Synging Telegrams through the regulars who hung out at Grover Antiques on Queen Street - this was the only place in town that sold records and tapes (apart from the music section at Eaton's, and the less said about that particular wasteland, the better), and that's where even today on the bulletin board you might find a moldering yellow clipping from Rolling Stone magazine in 1977 that talks about the album the band recorded but never released: one of the lost treasures sought by fans of very bad music... by the time you reach the pipe organ solo in the middle of their desecration of The Who's 'My Generation' you too will wonder how brown the acid was in the studio where these Canucks were recording this mess. Hey, we were impressed that any group of Morgies could make it to the American music press, pan notwithstanding. But that one song 'Cheddar Chocolate,' with its flanged guitar drone and backwards cymbal rolls, was as close as any Morgie had gotten to fame and fortune and outside-world acknowledgment, and that unreleased album remained a holy grail of sorts for anyone in Morganfield concerned with our fated role in pop history.

    And guess what? It happened that Graeme Forsythe, drummer for The Synging Telegrams, hung out quite a bit at Grover Antiques. He was a balding hippie type who smelled like spoiled vegetables, and there was a rumour that he used heroin, which freaked out a lot of Morgie kids. A heroin junkie! In Morganfield! You could imagine our disappointment when we found out that he was just a drunkard. Still, Graeme knew a lot about music, and he was happy to point us ignorant kids to the good records in Grover Antique's stash, regaling us with tales of touring the United States, and performing on American Bandstand (which never happened, but Graeme told the story so convincingly you could practically smell the pomade in Dick Clark's pompadour.) If Graeme liked you enough he would allude to the fact that he had a dubbed copy of the final mix of the unreleased album, and that he would play it for you if you came down to his apartment up at - where else? - The Brooklin Arms.

    I myself never took up Graeme's offer, but Pete Hammond went. So did Andy Lefebvre and Jamie Playfair. It turns out they were some of the lucky ones. Graeme turned out to be a big pervert, and it was years before he was finally arrested on charges of child molestation. Believe it or not, the kid who finally turned him in was actually the son of Morganfield's ex-mayor. His quote in the font-page article in the local weekly paper, The Morganfield Beacon?

    The album sucked!

    So you see, whether it was punk or polka or surf-rock or whatever, a music scene had to develop in Morganfield. Kids have been lured into a diddler's den with the promise of candies or booze or dope or cash, but when was the last time you heard of kids being tempted by music? Especially music that was advertised as awful? This was what made otherwise sensible people like myself and many, many others come together and form what became the Morganfield Hardcore scene of 1989, and why it became the hidden store of rock gems that remain forgotten even to the like of journo scumbags like you, Darcy. We Morgies are just plain cut from a different cloth.

    (By the by, Darcy: the name of that Klassik Canuck punk tune was 'The Birthday Song' by the Dik Van Dykes. You're welcome again!)

    • • • •

    3.

    Whenever anyone asks me about growing up in Morganfield, I think of the story my dad likes to tell about how his brother Eddie came to visit back around 1980 when he was discharged from the Armed Forces. Uncle Eddie pulled into town around 3:00 p.m.; both my parents were still at work and I was at the sitter's house, so he bummed around on King Street for a while, finally taking a seat on a bench in Harriet MacTavish Square, across from the town hall. He sat there for a while with his arms stretched out, taking in the scene.

    A group of teenagers came walking by. My uncle called out to them, asking: where's the action at in this town?

    One of the teenagers looked back and said, You're sitting on it.

    So yeah, Darcy, that's Morganfield in a nutshell: nothin' to do and nowhere to do it. Particularly when you're trying to form a band and wondering where you'll find a live example. There was always at least one live show at the Morganfield Summer Fair, but this usually meant a folk singer or some a country band that was on their way down from the Billboard charts. In 1985 there was talk about Gowan and his band booking the Sir Hubert Memorial Arena for a show, but depending on who you talked to, the show was either disallowed in a secret Town Council meeting citing Gowan's morality (?!?) or canceled because Gowan wanted too much money.

    The most reliable source of live music was a trucker dive up near Steeles Avenue, simply called The Roadhouse. The Roadhouse featured weekend shows by cover bands, but it was a bar, and so of course kids weren't allowed in there. Me and Steve Coleman and Craig LaBrie were jamming together around 1986, and we spent several Friday nights up at the back of The Roadhouse with our ears cupped to the door listening to nameless groups plodding through the most recent hits from Heart or Robert Palmer or Bryan Adams along with guaranteed crowd-pleasers by Rush and Led Zeppelin. It could be boring at times, but it was better than spending another windy night on the roof at the Broken Arms.

    Through the winter and into spring we practiced in Craig's stepfather's basement store room on Sunday afternoons, learning songs that we thought would one day get us a gig at The Roadhouse: 'Summer of 69' by Bryan Adams, 'She's So Cold' by the Rolling Stones. I was the guitar player and main singer, mainly due to the fact that I could get most of the words out while still playing my instrument. Steve Coleman started out on guitar, but eventually switched to bass - he figured that playing one note at a time would be easier in the short term. Also, he was bigger and stronger than the rest of us, and the bass guitar suited him more than the piddly Sears knock-off six-string he had been playing up until then. Craig LaBrie played on a drum set which consisted mainly of cardboard boxes that had to be replaced frequently, particularly when we had our 15 watt amplifiers turned up full and he had to hit the boxes harder to be heard over the guitars. He kept saying he was saving up for a proper drum kit, one he had seen at Steve's Music in downtown Toronto (It's just like Neil Peart's, he kept saying, as if that mattered somehow) but instead he eventually borrowed a hi-hat and a bass drum with kick pedal from the storage locker in the Morganfield North music room, and by borrow I mean take out without permission and never return. I felt a bit guilty about this, but I had to admit that with the new equipment the beat got a lot steadier. Before that Craig had been keeping time by kicking the bass drum box.

    On my own I attempted to write songs, usually consisting of a single riff that I would bring to the band and then play over and over until we got bored with it. For lyrics I started out writing about knights fighting dragons and laser battles in outer space - most of these songs were pretty embarrassing, to say the least. Then I got beaten up by one of the perennially losing Morganfield Grizzlies' linemen because he thought I was ogling his girlfriend, and out of that experience I got a set of lyrics called 'Big Fists, Small Brains.' Craig and Steve thought the words were good, but I had too much trouble getting them down over the lead riff I wanted to play, and I eventually gave it up. I finally had my breakthrough with a tune called 'Morganfield Stinks,' later amended to the more emphatic 'Morganfield Sucks'. The chord progression was just a sped-up version of the main riff from Yes' 'Owner Of A Lonely Heart' but I swear to this day it was unintentional (if Trevor Rabin happens to read this, please do not sue me for back-royalties - I'm broke enough as it is!) We played the hell out of that song on many a Sunday, sometimes for thirty or forty minutes at a stretch, improvising lyrics, playing solos, and just trashing the joint by throwing Shirley Sodas and sandwiches at each other and smashing Craig's cardboard drums and screaming at the top of our lungs like deranged idiots:

    THE HIGH SCHOOL'S A DIVE CALLED MORGANFIELD NORTH

    THE JOCKS ARE ALL BULLIES AND THE TEACHERS ARE DORKS

    POLLUTION FROM TORONTO MAKES IT SMELL BAD

    IT'S THE WORST BORING TIME THAT YOU EVER HAD -

    MORGANFIELD SUCKS!

    Good times.

    For a year we kept playing, and we started to sound better, or at least not completely terrible. My Uncle Eddie brought down his old Marshall amplifier from North Bay so I could plug in my Japanese-built six-string and make it sound like a real guitar. Craig filled out his kit with a snare drum and some cymbals from Graeme Forsythe (at his apartment Graeme kept on offering Craig beer and even whiskey, trying to persuade him to stay and listen to the album dub. Wisely, Craig turned down the offers.) Meanwhile Steve's amplifier blew a circuit, but the new distorted sound turned out to be a surprising improvement. He started playing the bass a lot harder, until it was almost like a second electric guitar.

    The band got into a Sunday routine. First we would meet up for coffee and egg rolls at the Happy Dragon restaurant on Comfort Road (The Best In Chinese-Canadian Cuisine Since 1954, dontcha know?) Then we would amble over to Craig's stepfather's clothing store on King and Eudora where we would set up in the store room and jam out versions of songs such as Honeymoon Suite's 'New Girl Now' (don't laugh, it's got some cool riffs). I had discovered the meaning of 69 in an old porn magazine I had found in an alley off of Wilhelmina Avenue, so naturally our cover of 'Summer of 69' took on a more lascivious turn. Of course, our practice sessions were capped off with our extended jam of 'Morganfield Sucks' where we got to trash the joint. Afterwards we would clean the walls and throw out the old boxes, pop open some fresh cans of Shirley Soda and talk about what our band should be called: Electric Charge, Free Breast Exam, The Cheezies, Degenerate Raspberries, Breast Exam Deluxe, Snooker and The Pool Cues, The New Beatles, The New New Monkees. We would choose a name for the coming week, and then the following Sunday we would jam and wreck the joint, re-inventing ourselves for the next week's imaginary worldwide tour. It was a fun way to pass the days: daydreaming and destroying, and then starting all over again.

    At the start of the school year in September 1987 there was an announcement that Morganfield North Secondary would be holding a Christmas talent show in the school Cafetorium, open to dancers, singers, and (ding-ding-ding!!!) bands. Steve and Craig decided that we would have to enter the contest. I was a bit reluctant - we had so much fun playing by ourselves, why ruin it by performing for an actual discerning audience? But a band's gotta start somewhere, right?

    Without consulting either me or Steve, Craig had pencilled us in as Intrepid Entrance, which was Craig's idea of a fab new wave handle - this was the first problem. The second problem was that Craig drafted his girlfriend, Shauna, on keyboards: something I didn't find out about until the next band practice, when I showed up ready to chew out Craig about naming us Intrepid Fucking Entrance only to be confronted by a shiny Yamaha keyboard set up next to my Uncle Eddie's guitar amplifier. Craig said that Shauna would help round out our sound, while Steve for some reason thought it was a good idea to bring in a fourth player. I tried to look on the bright side - bands like Bon Jovi and Loverboy had keyboards, and lord knows Bon Jovi and Loverboy songs got a lot of play up at The Roadhouse. Unfortunately Shauna had a knack for picking the wimpiest voices for her synth output, making every song she played sound as dangerous as a kindergarten recital. The only good thing was that the keyboard gave Steve and I a fixed pitch for tuning our guitars. Our new sound may have been soggy, but damn it all if we weren't in tune!

    Then at the next weekend's practice, Craig announced that we needed a front man. This time I lost my temper, arguing that we already had four people in the band, but once again Craig was adamant. I had no idea why he was power-tripping all of a sudden; perhaps the chance to play live had changed his priorities. Or maybe he simply thought he deserved to be the band's leader after spending six months kicking a cardboard box. Anyway, the singer Craig brought in was a slick-looking Grade Eleven gino named Tyler, all mullet coif and shredded Def Leppard jeans and unironic demeanor. Tyler sang every song with this hunch-shouldered shuffle where he cradled the mic to his jaw and pushed out every note through his diaphragm, eyes half-closed like he was really feelin' the music, man! Again, I gritted my teeth and tried to be positive - Tyler was a pretty good singer, and he wasn't that bad of a guy once he got to know you. He even complemented me on my guitar style, whatever that was. If nothing else, I was at least playing a lot better without having to sing at the same time.

    For the talent show, we worked out our two song set: 'New Girl Now' followed by 'Summer of 69.' On the advice of Graeme Forsythe we invited some of our friends to simulate a live show in our practice space. We even dressed up in our Craig-approved stage clothes: gray suits and ties on everyone except Shauna, who wore a silver dress that looked like a big sister's prom night leftover. After we finished playing, Peter Hammond told us that we should re-name the band Honeymoon Sour, which was his way of saying we sounded like a bad version of Honeymoon Suite (not the cleverest of ripostes, I admit, but those were the days when calling someone a Massengil Medicated Disposable Douchebag was considered the apex of wit.) Otherwise the rest of our audience gave us a passing grade. Intrepid Entrance was ready to rock the world!

    The talent show for the most part was a pretty dull affair: a Grade Nine dance class, a re-enactment of Monty Python's Dead Parrot skit, a ten-girl choir with the music teacher

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