punk haiku 8 leaside found, first demo
For the next four years, our practice place was the heart of Scenic life, Our god awful glorious sound rising up through the street gratings in front of our building. We created an interior world soaked with mix tapes of Kinky Friedman and his Texas Jewboys, the Left Banke, Big Star, Flaming Groovies. Our songs would sprout up in a rythm back and forth between me and Ken. We never wrote together unless the song manifested as the whole band jammed. Almost Tender, I Wanna Touch, Underneath the Door, the hits kept on coming. Every rehearsal, the cassette machine spinning, spinning, getting it all down. A couple months would pass and we’d head out of the basement for a gig, and more or less annually we’d go into the recording studio. We recorded Demos that anyone else would have released as LPs, but our heart was in the private space where we took the world of sound apart, we were impatient to continue, and didn’t care to “waste” time finding out if the rest of the world got it. And when it really mattered, we tended to get too high and let it all go.
While there was no denying that Mike Cusheon’s departure was in some ways a relief, it again left us at square one, and one IS the loneliest number. We decided that if we didn’t in fact have a functioning band, we could pretend we did by getting a drummer to play with us at least long enough to record a demo.
punk haiku 7
Two more bands played T.O. in March. The Rolling Stones played unnanounced for two nights at the El Mocambo tavern, recorded for their “Love you Live” LP. It was promoted as a contest to go to a party with the Stones by CHUM FM, and to win a ticket, you had to write in and say why you should be there. The thought of standing around in some hotel ballroom waiting for the Stones to stagger in and sit at their private table did not appeal so I didn’t enter. Gary Topp did and sent in a copy of a letter he had mailed to CHUM in 1964, telling them how they should play the Rolling Stones because they were one of the most happening beat groups going, and CHUM’s straight laced reply that this was out of the question. An impeccable reason, and Gary was in at the party, which turned into a concert, which Gary said was a good stones rehearsal, bloody loud, and which I of course now really wanted to go to (In 1972, at the Exile on Main Street gig at Maple Leaf Gardens with Talking Book era Stevie Wonder opening, I had a nosebleed ticket in my hands from a scalper for a beat, and while I was deciding if It was good enough, someone else grabbed it, and that was as close as I had gotten to a Stones show, and remains probably my greatest Rock and Roll concert regret) and out of irritation, the evening of the show, I tried the irrationally easy route in and tried phoning CHUM and asking them if they had any extra tickets (last minute cancellation?) and the DJ just said “You’ve got to be kidding” and hung up.
punk haiku 6 writing songs, iggy, patti.
February 19, 1977 I was on a train east out of Toronto en route to my sister Janet’s 100 year old farmhouse. Slate roof, wrap-around porch, Ontario winter. I was writing a song in the train, lifting the chords from “Waiting for My Man” (with a couple of changes) because I had no guitar and no way of remembering what I was writing.
“Some say Jenny Janey found it looking for work
some say Maurice himself found it in line for the clerk
some say society taught it to us from birth
all I know is sweet heaven I’m waiting for all that I’m worth.
It’s just the sweetest thing you have ever seen
like walking standing still in a dream
Do the Wait.”
Punk haiku 5 a drummer stays/talking heads
One night in November we got a call from Wally, a drummer who lived downtown in Rochedale, which had been Canada’s most notorious hippy enclave of a university residence, existing as virtually a closed society with parallel government and mores, but which had recently been cleaned up and restocked with standard issue first year removed from the suburbs university freshman. It was a stormy night, snow and wind, but Ken and I drove down and across town to get him and his drums- Ken riding shotgun on my shaky, still fresh driving technique (in my parent’s toyota hatch-back), navigating freeway and stoplight and finally, Rochedales parking lot, looking, considering it’s history, appropriately like an arial map of Moria, full of bottomless potholes and parking barrier mountain ranges.
We located Wally, he was an affable, chatty fellow, and we filled up the hatch with bass drum cases and hi hat stands and the back seat with smaller drums and cymbals, found a place to stuff Wally, and then headed back through checkpoints and straightaway and finally the concentric circles of Don Mills to 34 Ternhill Crescent. Drums were unloaded and carried downstairs (Ken and I of course helping, and, despite Wally’s chattering and lack of content, excited. Who cared how he talked- here was a DRUMMER. We knew enough to know that if you added a drummer to what we already had, you had a band.)
So, down in the basement, Wally setting up, Ken playing host and rolling a joint, talk about musical influences (on the phone, Wally said “yeah, sure” to everyone we mentioned.)
Punk haiku 4 "1 2 3 4/ drummer for a day"
SEE ME SMILE
An out-take from the SUNSHINE WORLD cd. Recorded during the Scenics' first studio sessions, summer of 77. I always thought the first two lines of this song were a manifesto of a sorts: "Turn your eyes around in your head/what you see is just what you get"...
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Femme Fatale/Too Much of Nothing
These next three songs are from the first time the proto-Scenics played with a drummer- October 17, 1976, the enigmatic Mike Brown.
punk haiku 3 "FANZINES, THAI STICKS, & D TO G"
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DO THE WAIT
First version of this that we have on tape- within a month of Andy's writing it on a train to his sister Janet's house on February 19, 1977.
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IN THE SUMMER
Ken's song recorded the same day as Do the Wait. Versions of all three of these songs (from the recordings studio, later in 1977 and in 78) would make it onto the Sunshine World CD.
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SCENIC CAVES
From the first tape the "Scenic Caves" ever recorded. October 15, 1976. No drums, but Andy's high-school buddy Dave Moore on second guitar.
"In the Summer needs to supplant "Seasons in the Sun" as the finest Canadian summer anthem ever" Cameron Gordon, Chart attack review of Sunshine World
"Do the Wait" from Sunshine World- #9 on the Toronto Star anti-hit list, and featured on "Five Songs you Gotta Hear Today" on the syndicated "Explore Music" radio show.
GIVE US A WEEK OR SO TO GET THINGS SET UP, AND FREE DOWNLOADS OF AUDIO FROM ALL THREE PUNK HAIKUS WILL BE AVAILABLE AT OUR DREAM TOWER RECORDS STORE.
punk haiku 2- Andy meets Ken
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TIMMY TAKES A BATH
Water down the drain, a wall of smeared guitar and "puddles where her eyes used to be." The first live play of Ken's opus at the Beverley Tavern, Oct 14, 1978. A song in two parts, audio sample is beginning of part 2.
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GROWING PAINS
The beer league ball-players talk it out while Andy tries to make sense of Growing Pains. First song of set 1, Larry's Hideaway, June 16 1980. A good night. The first song of set 2 was the "Heard Her Call My Name" that is on the CD "How Does it Feel to Be Loved: The Scenics play the Velvet Underground".
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LITTLE JOHNNY JEWEL
Ken and Andy, alone in the basement of Andy's suburban home, bounce this one off the walls while they figure out what a band might sound like. Taking off disguises, October 31, 1976.
GIVE US A WEEK OR SO TO GET THINGS SET UP, AND FREE DOWNLOADS OF AUDIO FROM ALL THREE PUNK HAIKUS WILL BE AVAILABLE AT OUR DREAM TOWER RECORDS STORE.
PUNK HAIKU 1
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LITTLE JOHNNY JEWEL
we did it from time to time, unplanned, and off the cuff. on this encore version, Mark decided to half-time the drums. a different feel.
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World Around Me
was a song that never made it out of the basement. we only played it for a few weeks in 1978. i wonder why.
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What Does She
Ken wrote this as his (then) wife Sue was expecting their first child. the entire lyric is ‘what does she/i wait for’. this version was the first time we played What Does She live.
GIVE US A WEEK OR SO TO GET THINGS SET UP, AND FREE DOWNLOADS OF AUDIO FROM ALL THREE PUNK HAIKUS WILL BE AVAILABLE AT OUR DREAM TOWER RECORDS STORE.
PUNK HAIKU 2 coming Feb 9, 2010. Audio features a couple of 'epics'. Ken Badger's wall-of-guitar Timmy Takes a Bath live at the Beverley Tavern, 1978. Andy Meyers' 'trying to make sense of it all' Growing Pains, live at Larry's Headspace, 1981. And Ken and Andy play Little Johnny Jewel as a duo in the summer of 1976, before there were any other Scenics.
PUNK HAIKU CHAPTER 1