St Valentines Massacre

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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

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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.

Great Gallery Gig

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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 ....

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See also, Youtube videos shared by Mark Favro

• Dormant Checker Effect, Mutation Live (1984)
• Bits of Food, Live LRAG (1984)
• Omerta, Live LRAG (1984)
• Lubatunes, Great Gallery Gig (1984)

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

Blue Peter, Victoria Park

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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, April 7, 2024, Dave writes in The Cedar Lounge - Blue Boot group: 

"RIP to Paul Humphrey, lead singer of the band Blue Peter who made their London debut at the Cedar Lounge. Later they played Fryfogles, Bullwinkles, the Spoke and probably other venues in London before ending up in Victoria Park as pictured below. They made 2 appearances at Victoria Park, August 1 1983 and May 21 1984. Thanx to Reg Quinton for the great pics!"

I recall that my brother Paul was visiting that weekend. I see him dancing in one of the photos. I had recorded a C90 of a CHRW Blue Peter broadcast from the Broken Spoke (UWO campus pub) dated 82/01/16, since digitized, that I have shared with Dave. CHRW used to broadcast shows back then. Back then tapes got recycled and shows were lost.

— 2024/12/21 I have moved this post in my blog to the approximate date of the event. I'm assuming it was August 1, 1983.

Hippies & Generics

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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, July 17, 2024, Dave writes in 1980's Punk Rockers in London, Ontario group:

"Here's some more Reg Quinton photos. This time it's The Hippies playing at the Forest City Gallery circa 1983. This was when FCG was at 231 Dundas St, south side near Clarence St, second floor.

The Hippies consisted of: Lindsay Young, Brian Young, Kelly Mulvey and Henry Kox and released one 7" record in their tenure. They did a name change to Tenement 13 and the band ended shortly afterwards. Lindsay, Brian and Henry regrouped in late 1984 as The Bloodbrothers with Al Cole (who was The Hippies manager) on vocals, and only lasted a couple gigs. A short while later, Jon Traut came in as singer and they became The Boy From Nowhere and they still play occasionally to this day."

Marty Spacil comments that "Lindsay Young, Brian Young, were also saddlesores" (I'll assume Saddlesores was another band from that era).

Kelly Mulvey, the Hippies singer in these photos, comments "Wow memory lane thanks". Recently, back in October of 2023, there was a 60th birthday bash for Kelly at an east end London pub. A couple of the photos from this session were used in Peter Tangredi's promotion of the event on Facebook (the Wabi Sabis played at the bash). I've clipped his posts and added both to the album.

There is a final interesting picture I've added in the album. Later that day Dave writes: 

Generics

"Another Reg Quinton photo, this time the Generics at Forest City Gallery circa 1983. This is probably the same show The Hippies played at FCG, which was just posted.

Only found this one pic of Marc Sahrmann and Mary Lou Ambrogio."

Chris Richards comments, "I always forget about this one, and I don't remember much about it, so it's cool seeing a photo to prove it happened. Yes, we broke up in February 82, and reformed in June 83. The FCG gig was a spur of the moment one-off which I don't think we even practiced for. Presumably we were awesome and received a standing ovation from a packed house of adoring Generics fans who demanded three encores before presenting us with flowers."

Again, many thanks to Dave for his work to research and organize these old photos and to share them with an interested audience. Kate and I both appreciate his work. And we are happy to see these photos put to good use.

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

63 Monroe, Victoria Park

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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, May 18, 2024, Dave writes in 1980's Punk Rockers in London, Ontario:

  

More Reg Quinton pics. This time it's 63 Monroe playing the bandshell at Victoria Park, London ON circa 1983. It's my fave lineup of the band; Markii Burnaway, Pete Dekoker, Jeff Rooth and Steven R Stunning.

Peter Lambert comments: "Love Rooster and his Staccato drum kit!" Pete was an original drummer with NFG.

Markii liked the picture of him on his guitar (which it turns out he still has) and has used it as his Facebook profile picture.

The originals, which Dave posted, were slide scans and badly in need if work. In the album above I've cropped and adjusted exposure so these pictures are a bit better than what was shared on Facebook.

An odd coincidence that, on Victoria Day Weekend (the first summer holiday of the season), Dave posts these pictures from Victoria Park.  Many thanks to Dave for organizing the photos, figuring out the location, date and time. It's work that is very much appreciated — by those who were, and remain, fans and, of course, by Kate and me.

— 2024/12/21 I have moved this post in my blog to the approximate date of the event. ... sometime in the summer of 1983.

Gang of Four

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Gang of Four were an English post-punk band, formed in 1976 in Leeds. The original members were singer Jon King, guitarist Andy Gill, bass guitarist Dave Allen and drummer Hugo Burnham. We got to see them early at Wonderland Gardens, London on Saturday March 5, 1983. It was late in my Ph.D. program (I dropped out a year later) and we attended with a gang of my classmates. At that time Dave Allen had been replaced by Sara Lee on bass. Shortly thereafter Hugo Burnham quit the band. I recall they struggled to continue with drum machines and then Ginger Baker (of the Cream) for a while but they seemed to just peter out by the mid 1980's. They did, however, continue under Andy Gill with various line ups.

I was introduced to the Gang of Four in 1980 by a friend Curtis (he was a high school chum of Gord's and was attending Althouse Teachers College) who followed the NME magazine. He was really into English punk, we both loved the Clash. The Gang of Four debut album, "Entertainment!", was impressive for being radically different from anything before or since. Through out their career the signature sound has been a driving bass and drums dance beat with jarring/slashing guitar over the top. Dissonance is a description, not adequate but good enough. You either loved them or you didn't — I did.

At the time we saw them they would have been touring to support their latest "Songs of the Free" (1982) with their back catalogue of "Solid Gold" (1981) and "Entertainment!" (1979). The album "Hard" came out later that year and has Sara Lee on the cover. I had all their albums and have continued to follow the band through the years. Sadly Andy Gill passed away in 2020 and the band truly is no more.

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The band had a couple of backing singers with them on this tour and Sara Lee also sang. Between the three of them, with Jon King carrying the lead voice, they put on quite a show with really great dance music. Andy Gill, as seen in the photo at left was ultra cool while Hugo's drums with Sara's bass laid down the dance beat. The place was hopping; not as much as Jon King who really threw himself into the show. It was quite a memorable performance. Wonderland Gardens was a smallish performance hall that would have held only a couple of hundred or so. I much prefer seeing bands in small venues where you can get up close to the stage.

There is a set list of tunes played at this show, I can't vouch for the accuracy but I can say: "I was there".

I had taken some pictures of the show but they were filed away and forgotten until recently (I'm writing this in April, 2021). I have a friend Brian Busby who was also a fan of the band. We talked about these photos several times and I had hoped to find them, if only to share with Brian. He had done an interview with the band a year before we saw them and has been in contact with surviving band members. During the COVID-19 pandemic I found some color negatives in the fall of 2020, then the BW negatives in the spring of 2021. Both have been scanned and shared on Facebook. I've also shared them with Andy's widow Catherine Mayer.

We had a chance to see them a second time much later when we were in Perth Australia. At the time they were touring for the "Content" album. I'm sorry to have missed that show.

At this writing a tribute album, "The Problem with Leisure", with a reinterpretation of 20 classic Gang of Four tunes is available for preorder.

Our friend Scott from 63 Monroe tells us he was hired as security that night, which would have been a little like having the fox guard the hen house. Brian Busby recalls that one of the backing singer was Michelle Cobbs who he saw just two months later singing with Roxy Music at the Forum. I recall seeing Sara Lee playing bass with the Waitresses at a show we saw in Washington D.C. The Gang of Four Wonderland show had the "Hoi Polloi" as the front act. They were a very Canadian good band, but they were fronting for one of the best bands there ever was.

Many thanks to Brent Wootton who was also at this concert and helped to jog some of my memories.

See also Episode 21 of "My Life In Concert" by Various Artists, he too was there.

This blog posting and photo albums were composed during the COVID-19 pandemic in April, 2021. The blog entry has been filed for the date of the concert.