Saturday, February 18, 1984

St Valentines Massacre

Click image for more photos ...
I posted a call for comments to the Facebook group 1980's Punk Rockers in London, Ontario in April of '21:

"I have a few photos of 10,000 Screaming Apaches and Bits of Food from, I believe, a Valentine's Day event (1984) at St Stephens Hall in Wortley Village. Jeff Patterson, who was the voice of 10,000 Screaming Apaches has been helpful with his recollections of the band. Anyone else have recollections of either band or the event?

We used to live in Wortley Village and it would have been an all ages event."

I understand that this event had quite a few bands with the Terminals headlining and I believe The Dormant Checker Effect played as well. Although I haven't bumped into any photos of these other bands. ... as yet. I believe this event happened on the Saturday following Valentine's Day and have filed this in my blog for that date. I may be wrong, it might have been the Saturday before. See the poster in What Wave #24 p. 50 for a listing of bands.

10,000 Screaming Apaches had Jeff Patterson (voice). He recalls that, "we used to jam at The Practice Place at 9 High street where I lived with the drummer, Jamie MacLean (October Crisis, Magic Bin Men). The guitarist is Tony Stafford and the bass player is Pete Kenney. Tony went on to form The Finks." I understand that Pete Feend, who joined in the discussion thread, was in the Finks as well. He provided some links to YouTube videos the Finks had made.

Bits of Food had Charles Vincent on vocals/bass (extreme mohawk fame), Warren Pratten on guitar, Galen Curnoe on drums/guitar, Owen Curnoe synth/drums.  I believe that later that year Frank Shaw assumed the vocals role. See Mark Favro's BOF Brief History (and see Mark's comment below).

St Stephens (of Hungary) was a Catholic church at the corner of Bruce Street and Wortley Road right across the road from the Landon Public Library. We lived a couple of blocks to the west, this was our neighborhood. The church is long gone, a coffee shop and condominium building are in it's place. It was an odd place for a concert of this sort but I suppose they were trying to keep the younger ones in the church. I wonder how that plan worked?

Some of the comments and reactions from those who remember the event:

Keith Ruck recalls that "[it was in the] basement of St. Steven's church if I remember correctly. Fuck was everyone young! ... those were some damn good times. The all ages shows were the only ones I could get in to in those days."

Ruby Canterbury recalls, "I remember going to the gig, it was in such a weird venue"

Pete Feend wrote,  "I was there for 1st time seeing the Apaches. My old band Redline had done a few shows with Pack O' 3s and I was checking out the new band."

Mark Favro spotted himself dancing madly in one of the photos. In the photo above that's him in the green shirt. He looks like he's having some fun!

Ian Trotter says, "I was a fan, these guys had a couple catchy tunes. 10k Screaming Apaches up over the wall, some reggae based tune about a New War, cover version of My Old Man's a Fatso...yeah they were cool"

James MacLean (who drummed for 10,000 Screaming Apaches says, "Great pics never knew any existed of this show Charles Vincent [of Bits of Food] always had great hair then!" 

Dave O'Halloran's gospel of that period, What Wave #24, tells me these bands were short lived.  However, they had fun and made music. That's something to remember.

These photos are from scanned slides taken at the time. The slides were scanned back in 2012. The pandemic of 2020-21 has given me the time to sort through them and document the event. This note prepared April 30, 2021. 

St Stephens

Click image for more ...
Our friend Dave O'Halloran (aka What Wave Dave on CHRW) has been sharing on Facebook, with our grateful permission, photos that we had taken of various bands back in the 1980's. Yesterday (August 3, 2024) Dave writes in 1980's Punk Rockers in London, Ontario group:

"Some more Reg Quinton pics, this time it's; 10.000 Screaming Apaches, Bits Of Food and the Terminals at the same show circa 1984.

Thanx to James MacLean for identifying the venue as St Stephens Church, It was at the south east corner of Wortley and Bruce and hosted a few live events."

These photos have been shared before, see my blog entry on the St Valentines Massacre (2021). There's a lengthy discussion there as we tried to figure out the who, what, where and why. I'll not repeat that here, go read it in the earlier blog. Suffice to say there's rather complete details on the bands that performed and how we happened to be there. St Stephens church was torn down sometime after we left London. It's shops and apartments now.

There is one photo here of the Terminals that I had not shared before — it's out of focus. One fan recognized that it would have been Lori Wedge on bass (her back is to the camera). Dave is more of an archivist than me and likes to share all of the photos. That's fine by me!

— 2024/12/20 I have moved this post to the approximate date of the event.


Wednesday, February 15, 1984

Great Gallery Gig

Click image for more ...
Our friend Dave O'Halloran (aka What Wave Dave on CHRW) has been sharing on Facebook, with our grateful permission, photos that we had taken of various bands back in the 1980's. Today,  August 4, 2024, Dave writes in 1980's Punk Rockers in London, Ontario group:

"Here's some more Reg Quinton pics, this time it's the Great Gallery Gig held at Museum London (then called London Regional Art Gallery) circa 1984.

Pictured are; Omerta, Bits Of Food and Dormant Checker Effect. Big Thanx to Mark Favro for identifying the bands."

Page Graham comments: "Holy Shit! Jeffrey and Philby...my radio co-hosts! I'm betting it's me dancing in between them, but the photo is obscured by the sax player. Keep 'em coming, Reg! I have ZERO photos of myself from this era. There's gotta be one in your archive..."

These photos, and more, appear with some discussion in my blog post Suffer Machine at LRAG (2021). I see that many of these slides show some deterioration. Mold grows on slides and leaves spots. Worse than dust or scratches as you can tell the film emulsion is rotting away. These were probably slides that we had developed ourselves.

Many thanks to Dave for his work organizing photos and figuring out the location and time for many of these. My 15 minutes should be over soon ....

--------------
See also, Youtube videos shared by Mark Favro
2024/12/20 I have moved this post to the approximate date of the event.