March 9, 2010 Literary Arts

The other London of punk

Treat Me Like Dirt proves Lester Bangs wrong about everything Canadian punk

by Emma Healey

Liz Worth at Disques Sonik on March 6, for the Montreal launch of Treat Me Like Dirt. PHOTO EMMA HEALEY

It’s hard to find good writing about the rise of punk rock in Canada. While Canada had a thriving punk scene in the ‘70s, to many outsiders it seemed like nothing more than the little sibling of big-name scenes in the United States and the United Kingdom.

American rock critic Lester Bangs best summed up this attitude with his pithy dismissal of Toronto band the Viletones: “[Lead singer Nazi Dog] hung from the rafters, crawled all over the stage, and hurled himself on the first row until his body was one huge sore. Somebody asked me what I thought and I said, ‘Fine with me […] now every band in the world is the Stooges.’ I didn’t tell Nazi Dog that, though; I told him: ‘You guys were cooler with hockey haircuts.’”

Bangsian sarcasm and outsider cynicism aside, the Viletones were a band who influenced countless young Canadian punks and still have a following to this day, just like the Forgotten Rebels, Teenage Head and the Diodes, along with countless other Toronto punk bands.

While there were no Stooges-style antics at the March 6 Montreal launch of Liz Worth’s book Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto and Beyond, it felt a little more like a punk show than your average book launch. Between the lack of space, the leather jackets, the scene veterans and the drunk guy who heckled publisher Ralph Alfonso as he spoke to Worth about her experiences researching the book, the event felt less like a traditional reading than a conversation between Worth, Alfonso and the audience.

In many ways this seemed appropriate: punk has always been, at its core, a collaborative culture. The best evidence of this is the literature the scene left in its wake, from fanzines to books like Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s Please Kill Me, a history of the rise and fall of punk in New York City; Marc Spitz and Brendan Muller’s We Got The Neutron Bomb, about the golden years of punk in L.A., and now Worth’s book. Between these and others, punk seems to have more oral histories than all other genres of music combined. Books have been written about every band and genre and scene imaginable, but there seems to be something about punk that invites (or requires) testimony. This makes sense to Worth, who said that “punk suits oral history because it was never just about the music. The fans and the girlfriends, […] the people who helped bands put out 45s, all those people were just as important as the bands. It’s about everyone working together [...] you couldn’t have a book about just the bands.”

While the U.S. and U.K. are constantly producing new books and reissuing old albums that capitalize on punk’s enormous historical and cultural impact, Worth’s book is the first of its kind in Canada. That’s not to say we’re lacking in stories—in fact, quite the opposite.

“Sometimes I would sit down with people and they would just start talking; I’d have no room to ask questions,” Worth said. “They’d say, ‘No one’s asked me about this for 30 years.’”
Alfonso said that Canadian publishers’ lack of understanding on the subject may have something to do with the lack of literature: “People think punk only happened in New York and London.”

“London, Ontario!” yelled someone in the audience. And while that might sound like a joke, Worth’s book is proof that the scenes in Toronto, Hamilton and London were as complex, diverse and influential as anything New York had going on.
Take that, Lester.