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.