Argh Fuck Kill: The Story of the DayGlo Abortions (33 page)

Communication was fairly easy in Montreal but the boys had problems in Quebec City. Although they could order beers at the bar without too much trouble, restaurant menus presented a challenge. The boys didn’t hang around any longer than necessary, even though Gymbo met a fetching punkette who excited him with her broken English. Hung also supplied Mike with a goodly pile of PCP, which rendered the guitarist completely useless. Mike leaned so far out the van door to take a piss that Brian Else had to grab his hair to keep him from falling out. “That was bad,” recalls Brian. The boys continued on, stopping in every industrial graveyard, in every rusting steel town and forgotten outback. Kids there had nothing better to do than get drunk and fight at DayGlos shows. But they generally paid to get in.

The police in Fredericton, New Brunswick shut down the show for noise bylaw violations, causing angry fans to riot. When would cops learn?

While Downway were doing soundcheck in Timmons, the DayGlos took turns running out to the parking lot to kick their van, which set off the overly sensitive alarm. This was typical entertainment for the boys, who were easily amused. During Downway’s set that night, thugs smashed all the windows in the vehicle but no one heard the alarm because the music was so loud. From there, the situation outside quickly devolved into a mini-riot, during which many fists and beer bottles were thrown. Mike, drunk as a skunk, wasn’t at his best, and Brian Else had to hold him up so he wouldn’t fall over onstage. When Brian let go for a moment, Mike crashed into the drum riser and broke his guitar. Gymbo, meanwhile, hurled a beer bottle across the bar and accidentally nailed Lettuce in the head. Apparently, someone in the crowd had thrown the bottle at the singer and he was simply returning the missile. Poor ol’ Lettuce had a nasty bump but was otherwise uninjured. “I think Gymbo pissed somebody off,” guesses Brian Else. “He had a tendency to do that.”

Gymbo remembers long hours on the road outside Thunder Bay. “Bonehead had the top bunk, and I saw him up there looking at a
Hustler
magazine. I passed out for a while and, when I woke up three hours later and looked over, he was still going over the magazine. He must have read every word.”

Other times, there were plenty of girls around, and the musicians did not lack for willing partners. There was also plenty of grass to smoke, which Bonehead stashed in old paint cans at the back. “There was always drugs, and there were always chicks, so it was a pretty good time to be in the band,” Gymbo reflects. “It was every kid’s rock n’ roll fantasy come true.”

Eventually, the tour began to wind down. The leaves fell from the trees and the temperature dropped as the DayGlos zigzagged back and forth across the prairies, slapping at increasingly rare mosquitoes and dreaming of peace and quiet that would not be coming soon enough.

Onstage at Three Amigos in Saskatoon, Hung wiped a booger on Gymbo’s back, prompting the singer to headbutt him in the face. “He also tried to drink two of the group’s three pitchers of beer. I wouldn’t deck him just for wiping greenies on my back, would I?” asks Gymbo, who wasn’t as upset about the snot as he was about the beer. Hung left the venue bleeding and missed the rest of the show. He swore he was done, at least for this tour.

The next day, the DayGlos dropped Hung at the bus station and drove to High River, Alberta to meet up with Cherokee aka Chad Barton of Dead End Productions. Cherokee, who was instrumental in getting the DayGlos into the secondary markets of British Columbia and Alberta, would be around for years. A part-time schoolteacher who lost his gig cherry to the Ramones, Bad Brains, and DayGlo Abortions at Infest in 1993, Cherokee had previously booked the smalls and felt he was ready to take on a bigger challenge. The DayGlo Abortions were all that and much, much more.

Cherokee remembers meeting the group for the first time. “The DayGlos pulled up outside my house, and Gymbo started unloading all this crap from Barney onto my driveway. Amplifiers, empty beer cans, fast food wrappers—every kind of trash you can imagine. What a mess!” Gymbo can’t remember why he emptied Barney, but thinks he might have misplaced a bag of weed or some porno magazines. Maybe Barney just needed a cleaning.

The first show Cherokee booked for the DayGlos took place in Lethbridge, Alberta. Incredibly, having decided that he wasn’t ready to go home yet, Hung was at the venue waiting for them. The show that night was a smashing success, and the band was glad to have the wayward guitarist back. Since the rooms, the food, and all the beer were included, the band only had to pay for the PA system. Unfortunately, promoter Tim Smith had already collected a 50% advance from half the venues on the tour, so the band got the shaft. That was the end for Tim, whom the DayGlos quickly replaced with Cherokee.

Moving on, the boys played an uneventful but extremely hot show in Calgary. From there, they drove to Banff and celebrated a night off by drinking four-dollar pitchers of beer until daybreak. Bored and in need of entertainment, Jesus Bonehead and Brian Else tried to capture a passing elk with a lasso they’d found somewhere. “We wanted to ride that stupid elk but it wouldn’t hold still,” Brian Else laments.

At this point, the new lineup was functioning well as a unit, or at least they were when they weren’t too fucked up. Mike and Hung were a formidable team, and the angry thunder that blasted from the Marshall cabinets was a shriek from the catacombs, a howling tempest of guitar overkill that threatened to overwhelm the senses. Gymbo was at his menacing best, while Bonehead and Gibb provided a blitzkrieg rhythm section that had the fans gasping. The roof could fall in and they would not miss a beat. Born to be onstage. Born to kill.

In Golden, BC, the band sacked Brian Else for standing up to Gymbo and Mike, who had been tormenting him for weeks. “The venue gave us eleven cases of beer that night, so things got a little bit out of hand,” laughs Brian. The DayGlos re-hired the soundman the next morning when they realized that he was the only one who could load the van properly. Gymbo no longer wanted any part of that job, even if it meant bringing Brian back.

Incidentally, Cretin’s sister Saskia had become a family doctor with a private practice in Golden, BC. The doctor councils her patients to avoid the DayGlo Abortions whenever they play Golden because the band promotes a “reckless and irresponsible lifestyle, and should be avoided at all costs.” Because DayGlos fans often need medical attention for various cuts, scrapes, and contusions—not to mention various STDs or drug-related problems—Saskia is, in effect, shooting herself in the foot. “She’s actually a pretty good person,” says Cretin, and the pride in his voice is apparent.

The DayGlos became reacquainted with a group of skater girls in Vernon known as the Smorgies. The party was always on with the Smorgies, and the DayGlos never went without companionship. Although the boys were almost home now, there was no harm in indulging in one last fling, was there? From there, the boys drove to the Tk’emlúps Indian Band reserve outside Kamloops for another wild show. Here, Brian passed out with his boots on and the boys got their revenge on the soundman for marking them up. Mike Anus wrote “Kill All Natives” across Brian’s forehead with felt pen, which failed to impress the chief. “At least Gibb stopped them from burning my hair off,” recalls Brian.

Anyway, the reunited team hit the road and eventually made it home. Back in Victoria, the DayGlos did the usual drinking and fucking, interspersed with long naps and plenty of masturbation. The act was so much more pleasurable when not performed in a motel washroom with six smelly guys lounging about on the other side of the door. Now, with plenty of free time on their, ahem, hands, the boys did all the things they could not do on tour, such as take baths or eat dinner without guarding their food from acts of sabotage. Terry Gibbard, who had seen and done many unspeakably vile things in the last five weeks, would never tour with the DayGlos again. “Once was enough for me,” vows the musician.

The group rested up before playing around town again, and soon they were doing shows almost every welfare day at a club known as Wasteland. Although they were performing without Mike Anus, who had drifted away again, the shows were well attended and hugely successful. Still, the sound was not as full as it could have been, and Hung, though quite capable, could not make up for the missing guitar. The DayGlos were shorthanded again.

Meanwhile, The Cretin, who was gigging with his band Lummox at the time, felt that a little friendly competition was in order, and also began doing welfare day shows, but at a different hotel. In fact, Cretin had even enlisted Mike Anus. “We had a poster that said ‘Tired of blowing your cheque on cheap impostors? Come and see the real thing!’” Cretin recalls, laughing. The ex-DayGlo singer had been out of touch with his old comrades, but Spud, Bonehead, and Gymbo found the poster so offensive that they paid Cretin a visit. The boys expressed shock and dismay that the ex-DayGlo would target them in such a manner and begged him to cease and desist. Cretin poo-pooed their concerns and promised no such thing. This was more fun than he’d had in a long time.

That night, the DayGlos heard the Lummox album
Natural Born Swillers
for the first time. The boys seemed to be enjoying the record, but were taken aback by the song “I Wrote That Song,” even though it was directed at the larcenous nature of the music industry rather than the DayGlo Abortions, who still played many of Cretin’s songs. The boys gulped nervously and adopted worried expressions, especially when they heard the line “…and I’ll tear a strip right out of their hides!” “They freaked because they thought the song was about them,” laughs Cretin, who enjoyed his ex-bandmates’ discomfort just a little more than he should have. Though Cretin meant his ex-bandmates no animosity, he wasn’t above teasing them a little.

Cretin parted company with his DayGlo associates, but now they were on each other’s radar again. Both Lummox and the DayGlo Abortions continued to play shows in and around Victoria, though neither band toured. With just one guitar, the DayGlos weren’t willing to take the show on the road, even if attendance was still good at home. The bandmembers held down odd jobs or collected welfare—whatever they had to do. But changes were coming.

Around this time, a juvenile delinquent named Melodie “Mel” Schedel was caught stealing a car. As part of her probation, Mel was ordered to do something constructive with her life, so she began writing for a local rock magazine. This misguided scheme led to an interview with punk legend Jesus Bonehead. “We started hanging out and, although there was a twenty-year age difference, he asked me out when I turned eighteen,” recalls Mel. Though Bonehead was clearly smitten with Mel, his philandering ways were greatly reduced but not entirely eliminated. Temptations on the road can be difficult to resist.

Romantic entanglements aside, Spud decided in February of 1998 that it was time to bring Cretin back into the fold. Bonehead was still opposed to the idea, contending that they would lose creative control of the band. He may also have worried that he would lose financial control of the DayGlos, but those fears were not voiced. Spud argued that Cretin must have mellowed with age and wouldn’t be quite so assertive. The bassist secretly wondered if this would indeed be the case, but the plan in his head was the only one that made sense. If he didn’t want the band to continue with just one original member, then Cretin
had
to return. Spud felt that surely he could get along well enough with his old friend to record an album and do another tour before he bowed out. How difficult could that be?

As it turned out, Cretin was having too much fun performing in Lummox with ex-BFG bassist Merrick Atkinson. Merrick was an abrasive and obnoxious bully who never failed to entertain, even if he did have a tendency to overdo the liquor and drugs beforehand. Lummox were not admired primarily for their musical acumen, but rather for their dirty humour and an uncanny ability to offend nearly everyone. Lummox, if such a thing was possible, made even the DayGlos seem politically-correct. Cretin was in no hurry to leave the band.

Spud was a bit nonplussed. It had never occurred to him that Cretin might refuse the offer. It wasn’t over yet though, and Spud managed to convince the guitarist to play a show with the DayGlo Abortions at a punk club in Toronto known as The Generator. The long-running venue was closing its doors forever, and owner Donny Blais (who also managed The Forgotten Rebels) had invited the DayGlos to attend. Since Donny was springing for airfare, they agreed. For Spud in particular, the show would be bittersweet. Maybe there was nothing he could do to save the DayGlo Abortions.

Practice went well, and the band sounded great with The Cretin on lead guitar again. In fact, Cretin’s presence breathed new life into the DayGlos and everyone was excited. Spud was even beginning to suspect that Cretin was on the verge of agreeing to join them for the next album, even if he was not quite ready to commit full-time. Maybe another small push would do it.

Gymbo, unfortunately, felt he was being pushed out. The boys insisted they weren’t firing him, and that he was still an important part of the group. Despite that, Gymbo couldn’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t needed and decided to move to Toronto. The singer agreed to be available whenever the band wanted to tour, just so long as they gave him a few weeks notice. This sounded like a reasonable arrangement for all parties concerned, and Gymbo immediately left town. Crazy Steve Goof had a new drinking buddy.

On Friday March 13th, 1998, the DayGlo Abortions flew to Toronto for The Generator show. Upon arrival at Pearson Airport, the boys were impressed when Gymbo, dressed as the devil, picked them up in a stretch limousine. There were refreshments aboard, of course, and the bandmembers rode to the gig in style. It was almost as if Gymbo hadn’t moved away.