Argh Fuck Kill: The Story of the DayGlo Abortions (22 page)

On a passing note, Spud ended up with the girl that night after giving her the lowdown on Nev’s
modus operandi.
The happy couple retired to the rented van in the parking lot, with a bottle of bubbly and some blow. Nev the Impaler, one can assume, was stuck with Mike Mills and an endless number of watery American beers.

Myrtle arrived in Athens with her rebuilt engine and the band rolled on, taking the old engine along for spare parts. When the band eventually made it home, they had carried the heavy piece of rusting steel for many thousands of miles without salvaging a single part from it. “The whole engine was totally shot,” says Spud, the disgust still evident in his voice after all these years. Ben Hoffman probably could have hired another lawyer with the money the band spent on extra gasoline, but hindsight is always 20/20. Unfortunately, the old engine also created additional problems at the border. More on that later.

At least Myrtle was running smoothly now. From Georgia, the DayGlos through Florida and along the Gulf of Mexico to New Orleans, making little money but encountering every sort of problem. The constant fighting with bar owners and promoters was taking a toll on the group and morale was low. It wasn’t enough that they’d lost $2500 on the new engine, but they also had to go to war every night just to make enough money to continue. Life was tough.

The boys did a well-received gig at the Dungeon Club in New Orleans, and the bartender allowed the group to crash at his place. When Bonehead used the phone to call home, he learned that Angie had left him for Cretin, and that she had moved into the guitarist’s room on Mason Street. Bonehead felt betrayed, of course, and was gloomy and miserable for a spell, cursing Cretin for the lowdown, dirty, backstabbing girlfriend stealer he was. Unlike Joey and Johnny Ramone, who refused to speak to each other again following a similar incident, Bonehead and Cretin eventually managed to mend their friendship. Unsurprisingly, it took a very long time for the drummer to build up any sort of trust for the DayGlo bandleader, and he remained once-bitten-twice-shy. Cretin and Angie would eventually have two girls together, but that would come later. For now, Bonehead and Cretin were just a red cunt hair away from pistols at dawn.

In Houston, Texas, the boys attempted to pull themselves together. The show reminded Spud of the famous Sex Pistols show where rednecks and cowboys in the audience tried to kill the band. Whereas no one died at this gig, the DayGlos made no money, even though the show was well-attended. The promoter, it seemed, had failed to negotiate a price, leaving the owner free to pay as little as he wanted. The DayGlo Abortions rolled on, thoroughly dejected. Finally, in Salt Lake City, Utah, after being screwed at yet another club, they were at the end of their rope. Spud put a vote to the band, asking them if they wished to continue the tour and finish the spotty bookings along the West Coast, or if they just wanted to call it a day. By now, the boys were so fed up that they were only too happy to quit this awful charade of a tour. The DayGlos knew that if they planned to tour the USA again—and they did—that they would have to find a booking agent who wasn’t either criminally incompetent or an absolute crook. Did such a person exist? If so, they had yet to meet him/her.

The trip home was much more relaxed now that the musicians knew they wouldn’t have to fight with club owners every night. The boys took their time driving through California, stopping to drink with friends and acquaintances along the way. Summer was coming to an end, and although the rain would soon fall in Victoria, the California sun was always shining. Reluctantly, they left California and rolled through Oregon and Washington before finally reaching the Peace Arch crossing at Blaine. Nev, apprehensive about crossing with the band, abandoned ship before they reached the border, and who could have blamed him? His mom, who drove down to pick him up, didn’t have any drugs in her car, but who knew what the cops might find aboard Myrtle?

As it turned out, Nev made the right decision. The Border SS went over Myrtle with drug-sniffing dogs. Though they didn’t find any dope, they were highly suspicious about the two packs of cigarette papers in Mr. Bonehead’s vest pocket. Obviously, these scruffy punkers were up to no good. Weapons of mass destruction were not yet the rage, but the border guards would have been looking for them otherwise. Then, in Spud’s guitar case, one plucky guard made an interesting find. They were annoyed that the lettering was worn off the slim metal container, making it impossible for them to tell what was inside. An officer sprayed the can out the open bus window, but the wind blew the aerosol mist into his face, and also into the eyes and nose of another guard standing nearby. Spud and the other DayGlos tried not to guffaw when the border guards gagged and coughed as tears rolled down their cheeks. The bassist would have told the guards that the can contained bear spray had they asked, but they insisted on learning the hard way. “That was fuckin’ hilarious,” laughs Spud, revealing a worrisome lack of respect for law and order. Border guards have enough to worry about without having to put up with disrespectful punk rockers on a smelly bus.

The border guards did not appreciate the bear spray. They fined the group $150, and another $150 for neglecting to pay duty on the repairs made to Jezebel in New Jersey. The old engine in the back of the vehicle had given them away, bringing the total amount to $2650. The fines, however, left the DayGlos somewhat less than repentant. “Fuck, I woulda paid another $150 to see them mace themselves again,” chuckles Spud, allowing that disturbing lack of respect for authority to resurface.

Thus lightened of pesky cash, the DayGlos were allowed to continue the journey home. Back in Victoria, the group did a final show at Harpo’s on the 21st of December before sending Mike home on the ferry for Christmas. Finally, the boys were able to rest up and lick their wounds. Myrtle had survived yet another gruelling trip across North America—but not without blowing another engine. The tired bandmembers were not at all ready to quit, but a lack of good booking agents and the impending court case had conspired to make them a bit anxious. Life for a DayGlo Abortion was never easy.

Financially, the tour had not been rewarding. The three hundred bucks the boys each returned home with disappeared instantly, leaving them to wonder how they would survive. Welfare took care of the rent on Mason Street, but there was nothing left for anything else. Forced by circumstances to take very drastic measures, the bandmembers took menial jobs that paid cash under the table. A DayGlo had to do what a DayGlo had to do.

The musicians knew that Ben Hoffman had hired the legal firm of Ruby and Edwardh to represent Fringe Product, but they were unaware that those costs would be deducted from their royalties. Although the DayGlo Abortions had been expecting bad news of this nature, the reality of the situation struck them in the face like a beer bottle full of piss. Marlys Edwardh, the attorney who would be handling the case, informed Ben Hoffman that her hourly fee would be $250. Clearly, lawyers would be the ultimate winners in this crusade for public decency, and the losers would range from Fringe Product and the DayGlo Abortions, to Ontario taxpayers, who would bear the full cost of the prosecution. Viva la punk rock.

On January 17th, 1989, the preliminary hearings began. In exchange for dropping the personal charges against Ben Hoffman, Marlys Edwardh agreed not to argue the method and manner in which the prosecution had seized the material. The charges against Hoffman were duly dropped, and Marlys went on to question Sergeant Fitzgibbons as to whether or not the albums in question were part of an accepted genre with like-minded and similar contemporaries, whereupon Fitzgibbons admitted that he had not done his homework. Marlys further established that the various pillars of society who had written letters of support for Fitzgibbons had not actually listened to the albums. Despite this, the judge ruled that there was enough evidence to proceed, and ordered both companies to stand trial. This was very dry, tedious stuff, and the musicians (except possibly Cretin) were not all that interested. Subconsciously, at least, they were preparing themselves for defeat. After all, how many times had any of them beaten the system? The fix was always in.

Fringe Product was also dealing with a number of setbacks. The negative publicity generated by the case prompted several record stores, including the large Sam the Record Man chain, to stop carrying Fringe products. Worse, the music industry was in the process of switching over to CD format, and only one vinyl pressing plant (Cinram) remained in operation. The owner of the plant told Ben Hoffman that he did not intend to finish pressing the remaining albums from the
Here Today, Guano Tomorrow
order, leaving Ben to wonder if the plant was liable for damages, since the case was still before the courts. Did the pressing plant have a legal right to cancel the order? As the complications mounted, so did legal costs, which ,of course, would be paid for by the DayGlos. All this over a couple of songs and some eye-catching artwork.

Meanwhile in Toronto, Marlys and her legal staff went to work. Along with various music business luminaries, Marlys decided she would present a number of high-powered witnesses, including novelist Mordecai Richler’s son Daniel, who is also a novelist. The legal team had trouble finding the big names they wanted. A half-assed effort was made to contact Frank Zappa, but nothing came of it. Dee Snider of Twisted Sister and PMRC fame would surely have volunteered had anyone thought to ask him, but alas they didn’t. Marlys Edwardh eventually gave up and pinned her hopes entirely on Daniel Richler. Wasn’t he almost as famous as Frank Zappa was?

Marlys struggled to mount a defence, but there were few precedents to use as a reference. Only one other musical group had ever been charged under the archaic law, so the defence basically had to start from scratch. In 1979, a cornball act known as McLean and McLean had been busted, along with other bullshit charges, for “unlawfully appearing in an immoral performance.” The dirty duo initially beat the rap on a technicality, but the Crown appealed and they were later convicted. Ultimately, the potty-mouthed pair was discharged. It seemed there was a small minority of noble citizens in rural Ontario who had taken it upon themselves to protect society from ill-mannered riff-raff, even if most of those taxpayers did not necessarily wish to be saved.

The defence paid several academic types to provide insight regarding the nature of the material. Most of the scholars agreed that the DayGlos were crude motherfuckers, but none considered the songs to be obscene. Clearly, what is obscene to one person is not obscene to another, and such nebulous things depend entirely on one’s point of view. The legal definition clumsily describes obscene material as being “a dominant characteristic in which is the undue exploitation of sex.” One academician, Velda Bernstein, argued that erotic sex and sexism were not present in the songs and therefore couldn’t be considered obscene. Velda went on to say she heard tremendous distress in Cretin’s voice, and that he sounded like “an animal in a cage.” The scholar also said that she personally enjoyed Cretin’s sense of social criticism. Clearly, Velda had missed her calling as a music critic.

Wayne Sumner, who at the time was the chair of philosophy at the University of Toronto, was able to see what even DayGlo Abortions fans often missed, namely that Cretin’s real target was hypocrisy. An expert on moral philosophy, Wayne insisted that the material did not denigrate a social group or class in regards to race or gender. He also noted that “a publication cannot exploit sex unless it is
about
sex.” Wayne correctly identified Cretin’s secondary targets such as religion and authority figures, and in closing maintained that the material was not designed to arouse or sexually titillate in any manner. The songs were not meant to make people horny, but it is not beyond the realm of possibility that one or two sexually-confused fans may have masturbated while listening to DayGlos music. Again, that was not Cretin’s fault.

In April of 1989, the trial, which had been scheduled for June 18th, was postponed for various reasons. The case became even more complicated when both the Ontario Provincial Police and the London Police Service received new complaints about the DayGlo Abortions. Apparently, a child in a detention home had shown an unhealthy obsession with a DayGlos album, prompting the staff to protest to the OPP. The complaint to the London Police Force stemmed from an incident in which a disturbed young offender responsible for a great deal of property damage was apprehended with a DayGlo Abortions tape in his possession. Were the DayGlos responsible for the behaviour of their fans? If that were the case, manufacturers of video games would be accountable for players who ran amuck in high schools with automatic weapons.

These new developments made Marlys unhappy. When the lawyer learned of the situation, she told the court that she would withdraw her agreement to the adjournment of the June court date if they didn’t wait until the trial in Ottawa had been held before laying new charges. Both police forces hemmed and hawed at length before agreeing not to prosecute at the present time. Maryls’s threat had worked.

But enough of legal matters. The DayGlo Abortions were beginning to tire of the hoopla, especially since it wasn’t putting beer in the fridge. In fact, the case was costing them large. Pressed as they were for cash, the band was pleased when several moneymaking opportunities arose as a result of all the publicity. The first was an offer to play a number of shows in San Francisco, which were arranged by Maddox from Lethal Gospel. Maddox actually paid to fly the band out, and the boys were happy not to make the long drive to California aboard noisy old Myrtle. As a cold rain fell in Victoria, the DayGlos hopped aboard a flight bound for sunny San Francisco. No one seems to recall the show at The Farm that night, which probably says more about the amount of cheap beer consumed than it does anything else. Spud does remember that after the gig, Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers told him that he didn’t think Spud was a good bassist until seeing him play live. Spud, who had never heard of the Red Hot Chili Peppers before, accepted the off-handed compliment gracefully and didn’t bust a beer bottle over Flea’s head, Winnipeg style.