Misfits & Miscreants: An Oral History of Canadian Punk Rock by Chris Walter

To say that Misfits & Miscreants is an ambitious project would be a serious understatement. While there have been other books written on Canadian punk in recent years, most of them prefer to stay laser-focused on one band, one city, or one era. What Walter does in this book is document the ways in which Canadian punk began and continued to evolve from the 1970s until the present, told through the voices of those who experienced it firsthand.

While a number of the bands featured in the book have been written about in other works, most notably Perfect Youth by Sam Sutherland, Treat Me Like Dirt by Liz Worth, I, Shithead by Joe Keithley, and even Walter’s own autobiographical works (Mosquitoes & Whiskey, I Was A Punk Before You Were A Punk, I’m On The Guest List, So Fuck You) and his other music biographies (Personality Crisis, Dayglo Abortions, SNFU, The Real McKenzies), nothing in Misfits & Miscreants comes off as a retread. Instead, this book helps to compliment, supplement, and build off the aforementioned works, while also drawing in stories from and about other bands whose stories had never really been written about before.

That said, some of this book might come off as a series of unrelated stories from musicians whose names tend to appear as a footnote here or there. But to those who care about punk, Canadian punk, and Canadian punk history, this book is a fantastic read. If I had to pick one flaw, it would be that it might require that the reader is at least somewhat familiar with Canadian punk to help put some of these tales into context. However, if this is your first book on Canadian punk it works as a solid introduction to the country’s secret punk history, which will hopefully inspire you to pick up some of the other aforementioned books and help you discover some of the best bands you never knew existed.

Order the book here: http://punkbooks.com/mandm.html

MDC: Memoir of a Damaged Civilization

It seems like everybody who’s a fan of music has a small handful of bands that completely define various genres or subgenres to them. For me, MDC is the band that completely epitomized political hardcore punk, alongside bands like D.O.A., Crass, Subhumans (both the Canadian and British ones.), and Jello Biafra’s various projects. Like a tonne of other bands, I first discovered the band while I was shopping at one of my favourite record stores in town, Orange Monkey Music. I was 15 and was at the shop at least a couple times a week, spending what little hard-earned cash I had on learning as much as I could about punk rock.
One day, flipping through the bins of CDs (this was right before vinyl came back in a big way) I came across a copy of the Millions of Dead Cops/More Dead Cops compilation album, combining their debut album with an early singles and EPs collection.

Over the years I’ve built a pretty solid mental punk rock encyclopedia and a pretty decent record/CD collection to match, but to this day there hasn’t been an album that’s thrilled, intimidated, and scared me like that one. Every single track on that album is pure fucking political-as-fuck hardcore gold. Short, fast, lout, and right to the fucking point. I mean, you can’t really get more direct than “John Wayne Was a Nazi”, can you? Sticking the song “America’s So Straight” right in the middle of “Dead Cops” was one of the most spectacular production decisions on a political punk record I’ve ever come across. Songs like “Greedy & Pathetic” and “Multi-Death Corporations” are some of the best, fastest, angriest punk songs I’ve ever heard. Meanwhile, “Corporate Deathburger” and “Chicken Squack” were what prompted me to consider that maybe eating animals might be something to disagree with (I went vegetarian about 2 years after buying this album, vegan about 3 years after that), and the song “I Remember” as well as the album’s artwork really prompt me to think about my position in society as a straight white dude who’d had mostly positive interactions with the police so far in my life. So it would be a bit of an understatement to say this band has had a bit of an impact on me.

Some of their later albums might have been kind of lacking; Smoke Signals is kind of all over the place and not in a good way, and there isn’t much that I find too memorable about Metal Devil Cokes, but records like Millions of Damn Christians, Shades of Brown, Magnus Dominus Corpus, and their split with The Restarts, Mobocracy are all fucking stellar political hardcore.Which is why I was super excited to discover that their singer/lyricist Dave Dictor had just released a memoir, titled MDC: Memoir of a Damaged Civilization, published by Manic D Press in San Francisco.

It became pretty apparent from the beginning of the book that this was less of an autobiography or band history than a collection of stories that really stand out for Dave Dictor throughout his life and career, which I was somewhat surprised by. Considering how boldly political of a band MDC is I expected the book be at least 40% anti-capitalist/anti-police/pro-queer rants. Instead what we get are the kind of stories you’d tell to your friends over pints or to help pass the time on a long drive. It has a kind of “you know who I am and what I’m about so let’s cut that shit. Here, let me tell you about the time the dog I was looking after saved me from getting beaten by Nazi skinheads” feel to it.

For fans of the band, I’d definitely recommend it. If you’re into hardcore left wing political punk and don’t know this band, where the fuck have you been? Get over to my place, we’ll have a beer (if that’s your thing) and crank their records until the neighbours complain, then I’ll loan you my copy of the book.

Why one of the Best Records I Own is by a Band I’ve Never Heard of

A few years ago, the local radio station CKMS was holding a record sale in the middle of the Waterloo Town Square. Thousands of records collected over the years by the radio station were being sold off to help make their upcoming move a little easier, and to raise funds for the small, independent radio station. And besides, not many of the programmers play vinyl on their shows very often anymore, so these thousands of records had been sitting down in storage for who-knows how long.

After hours and hours of flipping through boxes and boxes of vinyl, I managed to find some pretty good gems, including a few D.O.A. records, both Pailhead records, a Hanson Brothers (no, not the Mmm Bop band), and some Bauhaus. But one record really caught my eye. Well, not so much the record itself than a piece of paper taped to the corrugated cardboard the record was taped to. At the radio station, almost all of the records, cds and tapes have pieces of paper stuck to them where the DJs write down short reviews of the record, a general description of the band’s sound, or recommended tracks to play. This record however only had one line written on it:

“This band actually has a song called “FIST ME WITH YOUR WRISTWATCH ON.”

The record was called “Pet my Pussy” by a band called Lurch, and after years of scouring the internet, I have yet to find a single shred of information about them, aside from the few sparse details on the back of the record sleeve which are available on the Discogs.com page on the record.

All I know for certain about this band is that they released this 4-song 7” ep in 1992 on Smilin’ Skull Records, based out of Sherwood Park, Alberta. It was recorded in Edmonton, and there are 500 copies of this pressing of the record. The band consists of Christine, Leslie, Gene and Paul. And they have an awesome sense of humour. Aside from the intentionally shocking title of the final track on the record, the record cover is a hilarious joke in and of itself. “Pet my Pussy” featuring a picture of a cat sitting in a litter box. There’s just something inherently funny about that, simultaneously vulgar and innocent.

Sonically, the band resembles the punker side of L7 and Bikini Kill, simple; catchy, and pissed off, played at the high-end of mid-tempo. As far as subject matter goes, the songs are grim, and cynical. There is no lyric sheet, so the lyrics are a little difficult to decipher, so as far as meanings go, it’s just my best guess. The first track “Abracadaverama” details a symbolic destruction of a person at the hands of a shitty boyfriend/partner. It’s slow and angry, but for some reason I always get the chorus stuck in my head, “It’s a summer of love, it’s a summer of hate. We’re all fucked up in an orgiastic state.”

The lyrics of the second track, “Watcha Gonna Do?” are vague, but I get the feeling that it’s about a shitty person trying to get someone to do something they don’t want to, which contrasts awesomely with the catchy, almost upbeat chorus. Track three is “L”, which is decidedly the fastest song on the record. The lyrics are about a mysterious girl who “has a name but she won’t tell. She just answers to the letter ‘L’”, and is for the most part a pretty typical “tough rebel girl” song, which reminds me a lot of L7’s “Fast and Frightening”, at least lyrically. It seems like the song is both celebrating L, but recognizing that she’s also a pretty fucked up girl. Hey, this is a 90s punk record released at the height of the mid-80s/early 90s grunge era after all. To me a lot of that music, which evidently was a huge influence on Lurch, is about self-expression and celebration, both the good parts of the person, and the fucked up parts. And speaking of fucked up parts, the last track on the record is pure fucked up gold.

Like I said earlier, “This band actually has a song called ‘FIST ME WITH YOUR WRISTWATCH ON’”. I also said that the record did not come with a lyric sheet. Never before have I been so glad that a record lacked a lyric sheet, because it makes this song so much better.

Now, this will be of no surprise to anybody who knows me, but I love being grossed out. Gross stuff is absolutely hilarious to me, of course keeping context in mind. That scene in Re-Animator where Herbert West decapitates Dr. Hill, and when the decapitated head won’t sit upright, West sticks it onto a receipt spindle, I laughed my ass off, and Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste and Braindead (AKA Dead Alive) are some of the funniest gross movies I’ve ever seen. And that’s exactly how I feel about this song.

Faceoff! Hehehe

Whoever sings this song does so in that kind of awesome, pissed off style, where you can only understand about a fraction of what they’re actually saying, which makes this song that much better, because whenever you can understand what she’s saying, it’s so vile that you can only wonder about what the fuck she’s saying when you can’t understand it. Plus, as far as the music goes, it just sounds mean.

The song opens with the lines “You’re (unintelligible. It sounds like “a rubber pin-matt”, and if it is, I can’t even begin to imagine what that means) between the sheets/ see how you are between the cheeks. (more shit I can’t understand)/I want something more than your throbbing gristle. (once again, more mystery words), now give me your goddamn fucking Quartz! Come on, do it you piece of slime/I’ve got the pain if you’ve got the time!” before launching into the chorus of repeating “fist me with your wristwatch on!” four times.

The rest of the lyrics are hard to understand, due mostly to the how she’s singing the song, more yelling than singing, so you can barely make out the words. But every now and then you hear something, and it’s both hilarious and wrong at the same time, which makes this one of the most perfect “gross-out punk songs” I’ve ever heard.

So, why one of the best records I own by a band I’ve never heard of? It’s because it’s something I found completely by chance, and would have completely overlooked if it hadn’t been for the slip of paper taped to it. The songs are simple, but catchy and pissed off, which is just how I like my punk, and “Fist Me With Your Wristwatch On” is one of the most perfect gross-out punk songs I’ve ever heard, due in part to the fact that I can’t understand most of the lyrics, and the few that I can, are so fucking bizarre and gross that I can only imagine what the rest of the song is like. The band has an awesome sense of humour, and aside from the few details printed on the back of the record sleeve, I have yet to find out a single shred of information about them, which makes this record that much more mysteriously awesome. I hope you enjoy it, ‘cause I sure as hell do.

So if anybody knows anything else about this band, any other records they’ve put out, or if anyone in Lurch has gone one to form any other awesome bands, let me know!

Download: http://www.mediafire.com/download/myktyqb9u5c3jjb/Lurch_-_Pet_My_Pussy.rar