Saskatoon 1981 was a tough place to grow
up, relatively speaking of course. It
wasn’t like growing up in El Salvador, violence wasn’t a problem, fitting in
was. When I entered grade nine, Wildwood
Collegiate had three main suburban cliques.
There were preppies decked out in Oxford sweaters, converse sneakers and
Bryan Ferry hairdos, hockey jocks sporting matching “Wings” jackets and of
course the skids with marker-drawn metal band logos tattooed all over their
jean jackets. I didn’t belong to any one
of them. I didn’t know who I wanted to
be until I saw Doug Baker, a grade eleven who towered over most of us like we
were in kindergarten. Legends swirled
around Baker, that even in grade nine his face was heavily lichened with
stubble and that he once threw a thirty-pound Olivetti at the typing teacher,
Ms. Dinsmore. It wasn’t so much Baker’s
size that was impressive, it was his image; he was the one true punk in school. He wore a torn jacket, safety pins and had spikey
black hair. A large “God Save the Queen”
patch was splashed across his back and “No Future” was written above a red
bandana tied around his thigh. Baker
oozed anarchy: I liked that.
I had a brother who was two years older and
this gave me one advantage: he introduced me to punk rock while we were still
in grade school. In the late 1970s it
was impossible to hear punk music without a facilitator, someone who was able
to find and spread it by distributing tapes.
The mainstream record stores like Sam’s wouldn’t sell punk, you never
heard it on the radio and parents carefully monitored access fearing the end of
civilization. My brother snuck Never
Mind the Bollocks into our house in 1978 and we listened to it, ears to the
speakers, and felt rebellion for the first time.
The other benefit of having an older
brother was I could hang out by his locker while appearing to have grade eleven
friends. My brother and I were
discussing London Calling at his locker when Stevie Strand overheard the
conversation then walked up to me.
Stevie was bigger than most grade nines and
had a menacing presence.
“Are you into punk?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to figure out if I
was about to get slammed against the locker.
“Me too.” he said, brightening up.
That was the moment our friendship began. We started sharing punk tapes and spent many
Saturdays at Trash Records, a dive record store in the basement of the Stone
Block building, a monolith of concrete that stained Saskatoon’s skyline. Trash had all the new punk bands, a large selection
of bootlegged punk records and punk paraphernalia.
Throughout the winter and into early 1982,
Stevie started crafting his punk image. He bought a jean jacket that he cleverly cut
to look tattered, bound it with safety pins and added a large “Anarchy” patch
on the back. He spiked his hair, wore a
bike chain around his neck and learned to curl his upper lip. He practiced this maneuver whenever blue
hairs gawked at him on the bus. I bought
cargo pants and adorned my canvass jacket with punk pins I bought at Trash. I never quite looked the part like Stevie.
During the summer of 1982, our nightly ruse
was “going for a bike ride” which started by finding someone to pull us a six
pack at Sudsy’s offsale on 8th Street, then ended at the local punk
bar on Broadway called HeBGBs. We saw
many of the popular local bands at the time: The Clampdown and Meninblack, but
when we arrived for the DOA show, HeBGBs asked for ID. Busted.
We sat in the parking lot, sipped beer, and listened to the roar of
music inside. It was that night we
decided to form a band.
Stevie wanted to play bass because he
idolized Sid Vicious and I knew basic chords on the guitar, but we needed a
drummer. That’s when we found Albert
Tomkins. Stevie saw Albert playing drums
in the school jazz band when he ran into their rehearsal one day and yelled:
“Fuck jazz, punk rules!” The problem was
Albert was a wuss: he wore bunny-hugs in summer and was already programming in
BASIC.
Fear and uncertainty smeared across
Albert’s face when we approached him in the hallway, but with a little
prodding, he felt it was an opportunity to get respect. He just had to work on his image.
“Hang out with us and nobody will touch
you.” Stevie said.
This wasn’t entirely true. Stevie was frequently beaten up by skids, but
felt it was a punk’s duty to get “nicked” by rockers. Emboldened, Albert adopted a punk/new wave
hybrid style, to the chagrin of Stevie.
I constantly reminded Stevie that Albert was not a punk, but that he had
a drum set, a red-speckled Pearl 7-piece he bought at Woolco.
Stevie and I rented instruments for our
first jam in the Strands’ basement. His
parents were out, luckily, because when Albert counted us in it was a cacophony
of arbitrary noise.
“Bodies… I’m not an animal!” Stevie
shrieked. “It’s an ABORTION!”
To Stevie’s credit, he was a decent Johnny
Rotten impersonator, but the first fissure in our relationship came later that
evening. Stevie and Albert fought over a
band name.
“We need something gross.” Stevie said,
“Some kind of body part, like the hemorrhoids.”
Albert disagreed vehemently.
“Hemorrhoids are around assholes. I don’t want to be in a band about assholes.”
“Fuck you.” Stevie replied. “So what’s a
good name?”
“Something dangerous, like the ICBMs.”
“What the fuck is an ICBM?”
“Stevie you’re so dumb: Intercontinental
Ballistic Missile.”
The change in Albert’s demeanor was stark;
he was suddenly much more confident with his Depeche Mode hairstyle and “I’m so
bored with the U.S.A.” t-shirt.
Fearing excess adrenaline would lead Stevie
to punch Albert I proposed a compromise.
“How about something a little less
ass-holey,” I said, “like ‘The Spasms’.”
“I’m okay with that.” Albert said.
“It’s not Hemorrhoids, but it’s okay.” Stevie
agreed, grudgingly.
We practiced all summer and got stickers
printed at Trash Records that we randomly slapped on lampposts and mailboxes
throughout the neighbourhood. Under the
jagged letters for “The Spasms” was a quivering cartoonish corpse. We were in grade ten, so the grade nines
idolized us and even Doug Baker started speaking to us. We were the school punks.
Our first official gig was the school
talent show, preposterously named “Awaken ’82.”
We vowed to awaken them and have parents running for the doors. Most teachers were ardently anti-punk, so when
we enlisted, we chose the doppelganger “The Sparrows” with the music style of “soft
rock.”
Our idea was to get on stage wearing preppy
clothes, doff them to reveal our punk garb then launch into the Pistols’
“Holidays in the Sun.” Stevie was amped
to let the obscenities fly, but Albert was less enthusiastic. His parents, Bob and Mary Tomkins, were in the
audience for opening night, proud as peacocks that Albert suddenly had friends
and even girls occasionally called his home.
We awaited our turn back stage, listening to
the woodwind ensemble before us. The Spasms
had to impress with ferocity, not talent.
We tried to convince Albert of this.
“Trash your kit, Albert, Keith Moon style.”
Stevie implored.
“I don’t know.” he muttered, “My parents
will KILL me.”
“Can’t you just knock some shit over?” I
asked.
“Well, maybe a cymbal.”
“We’ll help.” Stevie nodded and winked at
me.
Finally it was time for our introduction. The emcee was our friend Alex and he was part
of the deception. As we readied our instruments,
Alex spoke of The Sparrows following the traditions of bands like Air Supply,
creating “heartfelt” ballads. I peeked
through the curtain at the smiling, innocent audience, mumbling with
anticipation.
The curtain rose, the lights came on and Stevie
started:
“Welcome everyone. I’m sorry to tell you the Sparrows were
unable to attend so they sent the Spasms in their place. Ready boys?”
On that cue, we ripped off our dress shirts
to reveal white tee shirts, each with the slogan “Fuck rock, punk rules!”
emblazoned on the front. Students in the
audience stood and roared.
Albert, now beaming, started hammering the
snare in a marching beat looking every bit as punk as Paul Cook. I started into the G power chord
while Stevie belched into the microphone: “Cheap holidays
and none of those miserrrries.” Rolling
out his R like Rotten himself.
“I don’t want a holiday in the sun, I wanna
go to the new Belsen!”
Just as Stevie was about to sing the next
verse, the stage went dark and Stevie’s and my instruments fell silent. Albert’s drumming slowly petered out as students
in the audience booed loudly. Ms.
Dinsmore had been tipped off about our performance and stood by the breaker
box. Parents, including Albert’s, looked
stunned.
At that moment Stevie started yelling at
the crowd.
“This is bullshit!”
“Fuck you Dinsmore, fuck all of you!” He screamed while Mr. Herst and Mr. Stieglitz
tried pulling him off stage.
In a final act of defiance he sent a
projectile of gob into the crowd, smacking Mary Tomkins in the forehead. She looked like she’d been shot. Chaos ensued, parents rushed to her aid,
students laughed and started flipping chairs.
The “Awaken ’82” banner dislodged and floated to the ground. I glanced towards Albert; he looked catatonic
then slowly mouthed the words “oh shit.”
In that moment I finally understood the meaning of punk: Stevie caused
anarchy and it was beautiful.
It was the beginning and the end of the
illustrious Spasms, who shone brightly then fizzled out like a birthday
sparkler. Albert and I were suspended
for a week and he never spoke to me again.
The last thing I heard was that he became a financial analyst, ripped
off some seniors’ pension money and was awaiting trial. Stevie was expelled, then two weeks later he
moved to Vancouver and we lost contact. By
the end of high school I had moved on from punk, graduated with honours and
eventually became a teacher, but vowed never to work at Wildwood, especially
during Principal Dinsmore’s reign of terror.
Thirty-five years had passed when I received a link to Stevie’s obituary. The webpage said he died doing what he loved:
playing music. He was in a geezer punk
band called STD when he discovered lung cancer.
A few people commented about his kindness and the love he expressed for
his two kids. I added this simple
epitaph: “Fuck death, punk lives.”
