Argh Fuck Kill: The Story of the DayGlo Abortions (32 page)

Back home in Victoria, the boys rested up for a spell. Jesus Bonehead ran God Records and printed T- shirts, while Spud and Michelle Grant settled into a reasonable facsimile of domestic bliss. Michelle was pregnant now, making it unlikely that Spud would be along on the next tour. Unbeknownst to every-one but him, the bassist had already decided that he would cut just one more LP and do one more tour with the DayGlos before hanging it up for good. To ensure that the group had at least two original members, he planned to bring Cretin back into the fold. Bonehead felt that Cretin would run roughshod over the existing bandmembers if given the chance, but Spud had made up his mind. He watched Michelle’s belly grow and patiently bided his time.

Around this time, Gymbo was able to realize a long-standing ambition. The skater, who had long aspired to be a member of the Jaks Team, collected the necessary signatures for his petition in one fell swoop. “Slutty and Emon started my petition at what was once Snotface’s house, and we ended up at some bar. I got over twenty signatures on a piece of cardboard they tore off a beer case.” This was a remarkable achievement, considering that prospective members need the signature of every chapter member. At any rate, Gymbo was soon awarded his colours. The easily-identifiable denim vest with the “Absolute Music” patch is coveted by anyone who belongs to the subculture, even if the average citizen knows nothing about the Jaks. The skateboarders are quick to take offence when outsiders label them as a gang, and prefer to think of themselves as a “team.” After all, if outlaw bikers can insist they are club members, then there is no reason why the Jaks can’t be a team. Regardless of terminology, Gymbo was now a full-fledged member of the Jaks Skate Team.

Bonehead had also been busy, and one of his early contacts through God Records was an Australian by the name of Nigel Halloran, who phoned to purchase a wholesale quantity of DayGlo merchandise. Further conversations led to an invite from Bonehead to visit Victoria, which Nigel and his wife Lisa accepted. “My wife worked for Air New Zealand, which meant that we could fly up to Victoria on a shoestring,” says Nigel, recalling the introduction. Bonehead treated his guests well, showing them around Victoria and hosting a barbecue attended by Rancid Randy and others. “After seven hours of table tennis, I flaked out,” the Australian recalls. This was the beginning of not just an association, but also a friendship that would last many long years.

Life went on, and the boys soon spent everything they’d earned on the road, forcing them to find real work. As always, they took lousy, poor-paying jobs they could abandon without notice. The band was a mistress that demanded both body and soul; she did not supply the necessities of life.

Squid’s house was torn down, forcing Gymbo to move into a barn that had been converted into a house with two normal guys. The selling point was that Bonehead’s place was only a twenty-minute walk down the road. “It wasn’t the high point of my life,” recalls the singer. Hung, meanwhile, squirreled himself away in a Fernwood Road apartment and, combining tour money with cash from cocaine sales, bought himself a new guitar. The DayGlo axeman, it seemed, had decided to supplement his income by taking a sales position.

Living arrangements aside, the DayGlos still had one other little problem to solve: now that Squid was gone, the boys needed someone to fill his sweaty sneakers. Rather than find someone who could play guitar like Mike Anus, the decision was made to re-hire the
real
Mike Anus. No one was exactly sure what kind of shape the ex-DayGlo was in these days, or if he would be too wired to tour, but Bonehead eventually found Mike in a Vancouver detox and asked him to come see them when the drugs were out of his system. Ten days later Mike arrived in Victoria, still suffering from withdrawal symptoms, even though he was heavily medicated on Ativan. “I had a pretty large habit when I went into detox that time,” Mike acknowledges ruefully. “I was still dope sick when we left on tour.” The band rehearsed once or twice, but mostly they would learn to function as a unit onstage.

The DayGlo Abortions packed the trailer and jumped into the dreaded Econoline van. Nigel Halloran decided to join the band and rented a car for the trip. Amazingly, Nigel didn’t drink or do drugs at the time. “He was crazy enough already,” recalls Brian Else, who was along as soundman. “He’d eat bugs and stuff.” Nigel, it must be said, wasn’t mad enough to ride in the van.

To get warmed up for the upcoming tour, the DayGlos decided to do a little jaunt to the BC interior. There wasn’t much money involved, but this would be good practice to get the band back into shape. The first show in Vancouver was okay but not great, since Mike was still a bit green around the gills. He was feeling a little better the next day and had managed to avoid the booze, mostly because he was too sick to drink. The lads then made tracks for the Tk’emlúps Indian Band reserve outside Kamloops, where Bonehead had somehow secured a gig. The show was fun, and the young people were very much into the music. Later, Gymbo recalls watching a TV show called
The Reserve
with his fellow bandmembers, the shaman, and other tribe leaders. “We were watching a show called
The Reserve
on the reserve, it was kinda surreal,” recalls the singer. Not wishing to offend the tribe, the boys smoked several bowls of ceremonial herbs. The ceremonial beer was also tasty.

Next morning, the gang bid
adieu
to their gracious hosts and made tracks for the show in Kamloops. Spud, who noticed that the van seemed to be running a little strangely, asked Nigel and Bonehead to keep him in sight, at least until he crested the hill on the way out of town. Nigel, unfortunately, disregarded Spud’s request and quickly sped ahead in his rented car, leaving the other bandmembers far behind. Sure enough, the van sputtered to a halt just before the crest and Spud had to pull over. “I could see the bastards speeding away, but no one had cell phones back then. We were on our own.”

The events that followed were almost unbelievably unlucky, even for punk rockers with a rundown van. First, the fuel pump was replaced erroneously, forcing the DayGlos to return to the reserve to get drunk again. They missed the show in Kamloops that night, but woke up early to get the van. The boys drove away but the problem returned, forcing them back to the garage. When the real problem was at last fixed, they left again, only to have the brakes seize. Spud was forced to phone pregnant Michelle for her credit card number, as the fuel pump repairs had used up all their loot. Even after spending another large pile of cash, the problem persisted, forcing Spud to stop every few miles to bleed the brake lines. As a final indignity, the bassist discovered that the headlights had been mysteriously disconnected. The DayGlos also missed the show in Victoria that night, but at least they were finally home.

One might conclude that this miserable experience might cause the musicians to seek work that was more rewarding—maybe hauling corpses to the morgue or cleaning septic tanks. Instead, the DayGlos sulked around Victoria that winter, making the trip to Vancouver just once. When the endless rain finally let up in March, Bonehead began planning a much longer tour, even though he was beginning to hate the process. The DayGlos were currently using a promoter named Tim Smith (not to be confused with Sam Smith in Winnipeg), but Bonehead didn’t trust the guy and was looking to replace him. Honest promoters were rarer than helpful cops.

This time, since Spud planned to stay home with his girlfriend and newborn child, the band enlisted the help of local musician Terry “Gibb” Gibbard, who was a friend of Bill Crepell’s. Terry, who also played in the industrial band Big Top Karma, learned the songs easily enough, but the non-assuming fellow was clearly not cut from beer-stained DayGlo cloth. If the DayGlo Abortions were
Star Trek,
Terry was the new guy who gets killed in the first five minutes. He would survive the tour, but just barely.

Anyway, in late April of 1997, the bandmembers climbed into the purple cube van that Bonehead had acquired from Gary Brainless of Mickey Christ. “Barney” was a step up from the road-weary Econoline van, which had finally been put out to pasture. Now, happily, there was room for the boys to stretch their legs without kicking someone in the head, even though Nigel Halloran had also squeezed aboard. At least Bonehead’s dog Arrow would not be along to pant and drool and bleed all over the vehicle, which was named after the insipid cartoon dinosaur due to its vivid purple colour.

Leaving town, Gymbo clearly remembers seeing Mike curled up in the back of Barney, shivering with dope sickness and trying not to shit his pants. “The guy was in bad shape, but he knew the songs, so…” says Gymbo, trailing off. Mike had done just a little junk while wintering in Vancouver and was now paying the price. How many musicians have suffered from dope sickness on the road? Someone should ask Art Bergmann.

The DayGlos hit the road with Pigment Vehicle and Downway, stopping in all the little towns that had become so crucial to their survival. Such places had become a chief source of income for the band, so the DayGlos played as hard as they could, knowing that the bars would be even fuller next time. Small Town Canada loved the DayGlo Abortions, and vice-versa.

Most fans in the small towns these days were barely aware that Gymbo wasn’t the original singer, and fewer still remembered Mike from the classic DayGlo lineup. However, they could see that the new guy was a shit-hot guitar player, even if he seemed a bit sick and didn’t move around much. The roar that came from his Marshall stack was that of a jet engine on takeoff, the full-throated bellow of ten angry dragons. So what if he looked as if he would keel over at any second? The band sounded great.

Recording engineer and soundman Brian Else met the musicians in Calgary. He’d been touring with DOA, and would now continue with their rivals the DayGlo Abortions. These days, the band toured with a soundman whenever possible to avoid being at the mercy of a dodgy house soundman. To call Brian a glorified roadie would not be correct, but as well as doing sound, he also did more than his share of grunt work. The newest member of Team DayGlo took plenty of abuse, which would eventually lead to a showdown. But not just yet.

In Jasper, the gang was surprised to learn that an old friend of theirs named Lettuce was cooking at the bar where the band was to perform. Lettuce had moved to Jasper from Victoria after breaking up with his girlfriend, and the DayGlos were a welcome diversion. Unfortunately, the power went out the first night the band was in town, so while some members sat drinking in the gloom, Gymbo and Gibb went off-roading in Barney, leading Bonehead to believe that the vehicle had been stolen. Spud, obviously, would never have allowed such a thing to happen, but the grouchy bass player wasn’t around to spoil Gymbo’s fun. Much to Bonehead’s relief, the drunken bandmembers eventually returned with the vehicle. Then the shouting started.

The DayGlos played the next night to a large, enthusiastic crowd, but when they prepared to leave the following morning, Lettuce was waiting beside Barney with a sackful of booze. “Lettuce had keys to the liquor room, and he fucked off without telling his boss,” laughs Brian Else. The DayGlos had a new merch guy. And some more booze.

Terry “Gibb” Gibbard lost points with the other bandmembers after informing Bonehead that Hung had been shoplifting from every convenience store and truck stop along the road. “It was no skin off my back if Hung got busted, but Bonehead was pissed,” Gymbo remembers. “After that, we didn’t invite Gibb to hang out.”

The bands rolled on. In Saskatoon, a cop materialized onstage to snatch a lit joint from Gymbo’s mouth. The police then attempted to shut down the show and told Brian Else to kill the sound. Brian responded by shutting off the main bins but leaving the monitors on, allowing the band to continue. Meanwhile, the tussle onstage continued and the officer finally managed to take Gymbo’s microphone away. The cop, after all, had a gun and Gymbo did not. Even then, the frontman kept singing. Gymbo’s voice was so powerful that he could be heard above the drums and guitars, which did not make the officers happy. The cops finally stopped the music but by then the crowd was getting ugly. “I decided to duck under the soundboard because bottles were raining down,” Brian Else recalls. It took many more reinforcements before the angry fans were finally subdued. “Gymbo was always lighting joints onstage,” says the soundman. “It was a full-on riot that time.”

Surviving Saskatoon, the tour pushed through Manitoba and into Ontario. Mike Anus aka Mike Jak aka Mike Lehmen was starting to feel as if he might live by the time the DayGlo Abortions hit Toronto; not well enough to join the party yet, but well enough so that he could stand unassisted and grin crookedly on occasion. It took great strength for Mike to resist the charms of Crazy Steve Goof, who always wanted to drink beer and raise hell. Mike didn’t have to worry that Steve would lead him to junk, though. According to Spud, Steve hated cocaine and solvents, but allowed himself a little angel dust (PCP) once in a while. Apparently, not all drugs were created equal.

In Toronto, Tolan from Pigment Vehicle built a crude tattoo machine from bits of scrap and a Walkman motor. Eventually, almost everyone in the DayGlo Abortions and Pigment Vehicle received a stick man tattoo, applied by members of both groups who took turns operating the homemade machine. These sloppy tattoos were permanent reminders of the tour—at least until the recipient had it covered up or removed. Some still have them.

Mike survived the temptation to get shitfaced with Steve Goof, and the band moved on to Montreal. The punks at Foufounes Electriques liked to get on the stage and jump onto Gymbo’s back, who would then catapult them into the boiling pit. “It was unbelievable,” remembers Terry Gibbard. “I’ve never seen anything like that in my life. There was broken glass and blood everywhere.” In Montreal, Mike decided that he was well enough to start eating again and, since he was well enough to eat, that he might as well have a few beers. This led to a massive drinking binge. At seven o’clock in the morning, drunk out of his mind, Mike did fifteen standing spins on his skateboard without falling. Though the guitarist managed to stay away from the junk, his head ached royally the next day. That’s how he could tell he was still alive.