Argh Fuck Kill: The Story of the DayGlo Abortions (31 page)

The DayGlos played Montreal and Quebec City before turning around to make their way home, and Toronto was covered in snow. Winter touring was tough, and the musicians felt that the experience had aged them prematurely. Gymbo touched his leathery face and wondered if the girls would still sleep with him if he looked like Grizzly Adams. How could anyone live this way?

Against all odds, the DayGlo Abortions survived the journey back across the prairies. Finally, the tour van climbed the Coquihalla Highway, straining mightily under its heavy load and wheezing from a lack of oxygen. Then, at the very apex, the vehicle slowly rolled into the valley, temperature warming, the snow fading away. How very nice it was to be back on the lower mainland, where temperatures often reached +10 Celsius in February. So what if the rain fell for months on end?

The boys quickly spent what little money they’d earned, and then they were back to normal. Broke, and with nothing better to do, the DayGlo Abortions gathered to listen to the final mix of the new album. Much to Spud’s consternation, Squid, Hung, and Gymbo, who had apparently been satisfied before, now had problems with the mix. Gymbo and Spud had differences over a bass solo that had been dropped from one song. Other tracks had snare issues and not enough guitars. At this point, Mark Franklin was not helpful. “We’d complain, and he would say, ‘Well, that’s punk,’” Gymbo recalls disgustedly. The bickering became heated, with Spud and Bonehead wanting to finalize and the rest of the band insisting on changes. Gymbo argued that just because the music was punk didn’t mean it should sound like shit. Something was wrong and it had to be fixed.

As it turned out, the snare issue was simply Bonehead’s rattling bracelets. Amplified, the jewellery sounded like a heavy artillery barrage. “They were on his right hand, so every time he hit the hi-hat you could hear the noise, but he refused to take them off,” recalls Spud. The problem was fixed by removing the hi-hat from the mix entirely. “You could still hear the hi-hat through the other mic, though,” Spud explains. The music might have suffered slightly as a result, but at least Bonehead didn’t have to take off his bracelets. For the next album, they taped the bangles to his wrist.

Artillery aside, Spud finally let Squid and Gymbo return to Sea of Shit to work on the mix. After making a number of changes, the pair presented the tape to Spud, who listened critically before restoring a few tracks. “They forgot to put the floor toms back,” says Spud, bitter about being undermined. Finally, after much deliberation, the bandmembers signed off on the tape and it was sent for mastering.
Corporate Whores
was at last in the bag.

Including the time the DayGlo Abortions were away on tour,
Corporate Whores
had taken months to put together. This seemed like eons in comparison to the usual speedy pace of the DayGlo assembly line, and the bandmembers were glad that the record was finally done. For once, the process had almost seemed like work.

On New Year’s Eve, as 1995 became 1996, Sick Sense played what may have been their last show at a punk festival on Vancouver Island called Shred Fest. Though the band never officially broke up and the members remained friends, Gymbo and Hung were clearly occupied full-time with the DayGlo Abortions. In fact, it was just a fluke they were able to play Shred Fest. Since the DayGlos were headlining that night, it was simple enough for Gymbo and Hung to perform in both bands. Otherwise, Sick Sense would have been out of luck. “We might have played the odd show after that, but nothing stands out,” says Mark Morr, who later joined Jake Warren and Jono Jak in Breach.

The Victoria winter was long and rainy. When spring finally arrived, the Day-Glo Abortions packed for the next tour. The lazier bandmembers, in fact, just grabbed the same suitcase containing the same mildewy clothes they’d worn on the last tour. The new record would soon be on the shelves, and they wanted to strike while the iron was hot. The band also planned to sell the CD themselves, which Mark promised to ship as soon as possible. The first tour of a new album was always worthwhile, even if the boys inevitably arrived home without large amounts of money. This was prime time to tour.

As enthusiastic as the DayGlos were about the album, travelling conditions were again less than ideal. The van was not spacious and, including the merch guy, there were seven passengers aboard. To make the trip even more uncomfortable, Bonehead had decided to bring his dog Arrow along and, though friendly, the animal took up more than its share of space. Squeezed butt cheek to butt cheek with Bonehead’s dog drooling all over them, the gang tried hard to be optimistic. The tour was not going to be a walk in the park. “It was a fucking nightmare,” Gymbo groans. A nightmare that was just beginning.

The DayGlo Abortions hit the same little towns in British Columbia before teaming up with the smalls (who spelled their name using only lower case let-ters), for a series of dates. For Squid, this was very exiting news. “Squid had a bit of a man crush on the smalls, so he was quite happy,” Spud recalls. The two bands did the usual prairie shows, and the little towns in Alberta were as receptive as ever. “We made more contacts each time we went through, and there were more opportunities to earn money,” remembers Gymbo. Spud was astounded that the kids would come out whenever the band went through. Though the bassist was terrible with names, he recognized many of the faces. In Canmore, the same skinny kid with the same wonky green mohawk spat at the band just like last time, still trying hard to live up to his media-informed notion of punk rock. The little towns were time warps, where Sid Vicious wasn’t dead and spitting was cool. The punk, Spud noticed, was careful not to hit any of the bandmembers with his lung butter. Gymbo didn’t much care to be gobbed at. There are too many nasty diseases these days for that sort of nonsense.

Edmonton, Calgary, Regina, Saskatoon. The cities flew by, each blurry, beery gig indistinguishable from the next. To the dismay of old-school fans, the set list included about half the songs from the new album. “Welfare Nation” was Gymbo’s favourite of the bunch because “everyone we knew (including us) was on welfare at the time.” Everyone except Cretin that is. Other than a short period following
Death Race 2000,
the guitarist somehow managed to stay off welfare. He attributes this to stubbornness rather than pride.

Gymbo encountered some negativity in Winnipeg, but the thick-skinned Portuguese could take a fair bit of abuse and wasn’t particularly sensitive. The singer could also snap at any given moment, and anyone who pushed him too far risked a punch in the face. The element of danger always existed when Gymbo was onstage. He did not suffer fools gladly.

The DayGlos singer wasn’t the only one to encounter negativity. Audiences often didn’t quite know what to make of the smalls, who were somewhat less visceral in their attack—meaning that they didn’t have enough argh fuck kill songs in their repertoire. Sometimes the audience stood watching blankly, but other times they shouted for the DayGlos or booed openly. “Mike had a soft, well-trained singing voice that didn’t exactly go over with our fans,” Gymbo recalls. The smalls, though still touring, were nearing the end of their run and hadn’t released any new material in some time. Though once quite popular, the smalls had no choice but to endure legions of intoxicated DayGlos fans screaming for them to get off the stage. They were good sports, but such a pill did not slide down easily.

Somewhere along the road, the DayGlos picked up the new CDs, which flew rapidly from the merch table.
Corporate Whores
was in stores now and, while it wasn’t selling like
Feed us a Fetus
or
Here Today, Guano Tomorrow,
Mark Franklin told them the album was doing all right. At this point, the DayGlos could record Bonehead snoring and it would still make money. Longevity has its rewards.

The mini-caravan rolled into southern Ontario, through Thunder Bay and Sault St. Marie, where nothing ever changed but the beer was always free. Spud wondered if Sudbury got smellier every time they went through, or if his nose was simply becoming more sensitive. No matter, the crowds were decent and the money was good. The DayGlos were big in Sudbury.

In Orillia, Ontario, musician Chris Crash remembers partying with the boys after a show: “Someone passed out so Bonehead squirted lighter fluid on the guy’s pants and set him on fire. We all had a good laugh before Gymbo pissed on him to put out the blaze.” Fun fun fun.

The smalls had other, healthier, physical outlets. Aside from playing every night, and despite the massive amounts of booze consumed afterwards, the band never missed an opportunity to play street hockey. “They had all the gear in their cube van: nets, sticks, all the pads, everything,” Gymbo recalls, in awe of the band’s fortitude. “We played them once and they smoked us so bad that we never tried again.” Proud to be Canadian indeed. The DayGlos singer was also impressed that the smalls had a diagram taped inside their van door that showed exactly where all the gear belonged. “They had it all mapped out so the space would never be fucked up.” Gymbo did his best to stow their own gear so everyone would have a place to sleep if they couldn’t get a hotel, but no one had bothered to bring any foam mattresses or bedding. “That was never easy,” says Gymbo as phantom aches return. The only way to sleep on such hard surfaces was to get completely slaughtered. Still, the bandmembers never questioned the arrangements and slept wherever they could. DayGlos had true grit.

The bands gigged on. Toronto was as crazy as usual, and Steve Goof had not yet grown up. Arrow cut his paw on broken glass and bled all over the van. The DayGlos and the smalls got drunk, and everything was the same as ever. They moved out the next day and drove to Montreal, which was always good to the DayGlos. Montreal had a huge scene and the punk rockers were an extreme bunch. By the time the DayGlos left town they were suffering from alcohol poisoning and needed liver transplants badly. Unlike Keith Richards, they could not afford blood transfusions and had to make do with the polluted red stuff that ran sluggishly through their hardened livers. Not just that, but they had to survive the trip back.

In Hamilton, the merch guy could not resist taking two 24-packs of imported beer that sat unattended near the back door as the DayGlos loaded out. The boys were happy with the free beer, but Spud freaked out and threw the suds in a dumpster outside Niagara Falls. “Instead of destroying the evidence by drinking the beer and pissing it out later, Spud tossed it in the trash, which was really not his way at all,” recalls Gymbo, still mystified. The DayGlo leader explains: “I figured the beer was a gift because the owner didn’t pay us the full amount, but then the promoter told me the beer was stolen and that the club owner had called the cops. I didn’t want to get busted, so I got rid of the beer. I’m sure that whoever found it must have been very happy.” No doubt.

At the party after a show in Kitchener, a crazy drunk ran outside, roared up and down the street on a motorcycle, then staggered back into the house where he passed out in a chair. The partygoers left him alone for a few hours, but inevitably decided to tart him up. Bringing out the felt pens, they drew the usual swastikas and male genitals on his face, but that wasn’t nearly enough. Chocolate syrup made dandy glue for the pubic hairs they stuck to the victim’s cheeks and chin. Spud, who was videotaping the proceedings for posterity, was amazed when smalls drummer Terry Johnson unzipped his pants to “teabag” the unconscious man. “Terry has the biggest set of testicles I’ve ever seen. They were fucking huge,” recalls Spud. Terry, who could not quite bring himself to put his nuts on the sticky face, was saved from making the decision by bassist Corb Lund, who pushed Terry directly into the victim with his foot. “I rested them on his forehead, but I was probably aiming for his chin. Call it extreme drunkenness,” reflects Terry some fifteen years later. As the partygoers rolled on the floor howling with laughter, the drummer retreated to the washroom to clean himself. Apparently, Spud still has a copy of the tape somewhere.

According to Spud, Terry not only had gigantic balls, but the drummer was a champion boozer as well. “He’d sit backstage after every show with a big bottle of liquor all to himself, but he never seemed drunk,” recalls Spud. “He’d share if you asked him, but you could tell he didn’t really want to.” The other smalls were not exactly teetotallers either. “I seem to remember some acid and a lot of booze,” says bassist Corb Lund, whose liver has since recovered enough to allow him a successful solo career as a country artist.

Some fans across the prairies might remember the DayGlos for the rest of their lives, but to the weary musicians those shows have blended together into a single, boozy haze. The DayGlos parted ways with the smalls in Alberta and continued on. That they made it back across the mountains and into BC is the real miracle. By now, they were operating on remote control, every gig ending in the same noisy and predictable way: sweaty, bruised bodies, eager young faces, vats of beer, girls, clouds of pot smoke. Blood.

Squid began to act up a little more. Spud had seen this sort of thing before, and it usually ended with someone leaving the band. Sure enough, when they got back to Victoria, Squid announced that he was done. Spud, though not surprised, wasn’t happy about this latest development. Despite his tendency to cause shit, Squid knew his stuff and wouldn’t be easy to replace. “My personal opinion is that Squid quit because his ultimate goal was to take over, and he finally realized that would never happen. Squid thought that he should have a bigger part in the band than we gave him, and I have a feeling that he did this to other bands, too,” hypothesizes Spud. Gymbo, conversely, feels that Squid left, in part, because he wasn’t a people person, and was most comfortable in his own company. “I think it was tough for him to jump in a van with a bunch of smelly guys and live like a dog for months at a time.” The singer also thinks that money played a part in Squid’s decision to leave. “Once, we got back to town with only five bucks each in our pockets,” Gymbo recalls. “How did that happen with all the guarantees and stuff?” The singer thinks Squid took some sort of training and now holds a normal job. The punk rock vagabond lifestyle is not for everyone.