The Scenics

"Wow! I’ve been hearing about this 25-minute movie for 29 years, and it’s amazing to view it now! What a window to a time that was rarely documented: the pre-hardcore, original punk era- astonishingly fresh, creative, rule-busting, and shot full of newborn energy/excitement. It’s Toronto,  December 2, 1978, a three-camera, good-sounding film (not video) of seven bands (one song each) playing at the farewell concert of premier punk club, The Horseshoe Tavern. 

The stars are Teenage Head and The Viletones, known from collectible singles—but not footage. Lesser known openers prove equally supercharged, fascinating, and varied. The Scenics are like a Canadian Velvet Underground; Cardboard Brains are more The Weirdos vein; The Secrets add a taste of R&B/Vibrators/U.K. Subs groove; The Ugly rip snort   through a Dead Boys/Ramones dirty shockwave; and The Mods are Jam clones to a t (or a suit and skinny tie!), but they’re excellent, fierce, and tight; Nazi Dog’s Viletones make magically menacing three-chord rock, and, in the one song they were allowed before cops stopped the show and punters rioted, Teenage Head cooks a classic rock ‘n’ roll infested chaos.”   THE BIG TAKEOVER

“Punker than you’ll ever be.” TORONTO STAR

“This 26 minute documentary was actually the first film by Canadian filmmaker Colin Brunton, who has since done production work on Cube, Hedwig And The Angry Inch and CBC’s Little Mosque On The Prairie. (Also, more recently- Schitt’s Creek ed.).  The film resembles a good punk song in several different ways. It’s not overly long, it’s in your face and you’re left wanting more.”  CHART ATTACK

“A great and enjoyable document of the fashion and music of that Toronto scene of the time. Both the sound and footage are surprisingly high-quality, especially in comparison to a lot of the sadly primitive documentation from the early punk and hardcore years.” THE LEFT HIP, MONTREAL

“Finally seeing the light of day this week, three decades after its initial completion in 1979… There are great live performances by all the bands —The bonus footage of a cable TV performance by highly underrated Scenics proves quality will always win out over quantity.”  MONTREAL MIRROR 

“ The camera work on Pogo is exceptional, and Brunton and Lee effectively mix interviews with concert footage from the club.  With more than 500 people shoehorned into the Horseshoe, and escalating tensions a la Altamont, this should be a shambles. Instead, we get an up-close look at the night from both the performers’ and the audience’s perspective.  That is, until the scene predictably degenerates when the cops show up and the chairs and bottles start flying” METRO, CANADA

"Band after band hit the stage until the cops broke it up, allowing the final Teenage Head to play just one song. The crowd smashed about 200 chairs and the promoters moved to a new venue called The Edge.

Watching The Last Pogo  is a pleasure. The acts were terribly young, trying to look angry if it killed them. The crowd is visibly drunk, lots of them strung out on pills and chain smoking. There are a few dropouts, the sound is muffled, it shows more nipples than the Superbowl people would allow, and the camera work is not particularly steady (try to get near a stage with your camera amidst a jumping audience). So who cares? Punk wasn't supposed to sound hi-fi."  HERE COMES THE FLOOD

"The Last Pogo attacks, destroys, and evades in less than half an hour, with the fury of blitzkrieg. That’s just enough time for the pizza shop to make it to your door with its greasy wares. It’s the length of your average sitcom. In these 26 minutes, The Last Pogo is a masterful disaster-piece. The film depicts a time when nothing was sacred and nihilism meant everything. Seven of Toronto’s grimiest bands showcased their talent in small bursts amid a crowd of polite, yet boiling Canadian punks. Concert footage is anchored by brief interviews with the bands and venue staff, and it’s these fleeting glimpses of the people behind the scene that provide the real heart of The Last Pogo.

While, today, the aged punks of yesteryear are happy to talk up their brilliance and relevance to anyone who will listen, the young bucks of The Last Pogo live for the here and now. We never have to endure their “back in my day” lectures. They are forever captured in The Last Pogo’s time capsule as the snot-nosed, ignorant, and piss-and-vinegar youth who despise what they don’t know and shun what they don’t understand. For a fleeting moment, they are the kings of a mountain of garbage, but it’s their mountain and it’s their garbage."  TINY MIXTAPES

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