Argh Fuck Kill: The Story of the DayGlo Abortions (37 page)

Willy Jak, on the other hand, was enjoying every bump, each skanky bar and excitable teenager. Up to this point, he hadn’t really done much travelling, but now it was beginning to look as if he might be able to see the world. He’d just barely missed the last European tour, and the band was already talking about going back. If he could just avoid becoming a drug casualty, and if his liver would hold up, then he had a real shot at living the dream. “It was cool to have Willy in the band,” reflects Gymbo. “Plus, he had a vehicle and a place where we could jam.”

Even the insects in southern Ontario knew the band by now. They attacked the hungover musicians when they stopped for a piss break, eager to drink DayGlo blood. The boys moved on, stopping in all the usual places, renewing acquaintances and building new ones—or in some cases, sneaking quietly through town and avoiding people they’d angered. Although Gymbo was no longer as volatile as he had once been, some bar owners had keen memories and a surprising ability to hold grudges. Gymbo wasn’t that way at all, and forgot his transgressions almost as quickly as he committed them. What was a little spilled beer, a broken window or two? Why couldn’t the bastards cut him some slack?

Toronto. Gymbo was at home, and the show was insane even by DayGlo standards. A new generation of DayGlo fans was on hand to continue old traditions such as washroom-trashing and beer-bottle-throwing. Things got broken. The bandmembers barely noticed the increased mayhem and chaos; for them, this was simply business as usual. They collected the money and rolled out, leaving a trail of cigarette butts and broken beer bottles. Same old, same old.

The DayGlos noticed that the tour didn’t run as efficiently without Spud, who always took care of little details. The bassist was good at securing hotel rooms and soothing angry club owners. Bonehead and Cretin struggled to pick up the slack. The boys might have been able to change a flat tire in a pinch, but even that simple task was almost too much. Whenever the vehicle broke down, they now had to look for a tow truck. Cretin, even though he had fought with Spud regularly, was forced to admit that “MacGyver” was handy with a wrench. Not to mention the money he saved on repair bills.

The DayGlos rolled on, but every stop was a blur for Cretin and Bonehead, and even Gymbo by now. Though Willy was the new kid, he soon adopted the same jaded attitude of his bandmates, even if it disappeared when they hit the stage. In the van, or eating at diners on the road, the senior DayGlos behaved as if they’d been there and done that, and they had. Fortunately, most of it was fun, so they planned to keep going. It was better to struggle and be free than it was to take orders. Besides, Cretin and Bonehead were getting a bit long in the tooth for a career change.

Back again, across Ontario and into Manitoba. A show at Ozzy’s—more madness and insanity. The vehicle broke down but a fan fixed it for free. The tour was an invaluable learning experience for Willy, but Cretin claims that the bassist is always very calm under duress. “Somebody could be getting dismembered outside the van, and Willy would be like ‘Dude, did you see that?’” This character trait would serve him well as a DayGlo Abortion.

The DayGlos were earning a fair amount. Many of their original fans were grown adults with children of their own, and now those kids were old enough to attend shows. This new generation of punks allowed the band a second life that they did not take for granted. Though the boys didn’t often let it show, they were very grateful for the intense mosh pits and the shouting fans. Without the kids, the band could not have survived.

The DayGlo Abortions rested up over Christmas, and on a chilly day in late January of 2001, the boys boarded a plane for Australia with a stopover in Los Angeles. Willy, who hated flying, stayed up drinking all night. When it was time to leave, a friend named Creepy Simon had to pry a bottle of whisky from Willy’s hand and run him down the hill on his longboard to the waiting taxi. “I was suffering from alcohol poisoning on the plane. I can’t believe they let me on,” the bassist recalls of the ordeal.

Willy wasn’t the only one with problems. Gymbo was refused entry at the stopover in LA and was sent home minus his ticket. This was an expensive setback and the singer was very discouraged. Instead of sitting out the tour, Gymbo used money from Shred Central to re-route his flight through Hong Kong. Bonehead also had to take the China route, all because of a minor pot bust decades ago. The Yanks are very unforgiving about that sort of thing.

At any rate, Gymbo finally arrived at Kingsmith Airport in Sydney a day later than the rest of his colleagues. The temperature that day was at least +40 Celsius, and the singer received a serious sunburn waiting outside the terminal in just ten minutes. Back home in Toronto, it was snowing.

Former road manager Ferris Jak arrived from Vancouver, and Nigel treated the boys like visiting royalty. “Basically the tour was a party, in which the DayGlos also played some shows along the way,” Nigel recalls. “I’d never met Nigel before, and he gave me some weed as soon as we got in the vehicle,” says Willy Jak. “AC/DC came on the radio, and it was almost as if Nigel had arranged it. The whole thing was kinda surreal.”

Gymbo, entering into the “spirit” of things, was suitably impressed by the lax liquor laws. “You could go into any store and buy mixed drinks in cans,” the singer says, dumbstruck. After partying all night, the DayGlos hit the Gold Coast with Vicious from Queensland and Vicious Circle from Victoria. “It was awesome touring with those guys,” recalls Gymbo.

Although Gymbo had already missed the first show, which was held at the Annandale Hotel, the second one went off as planned. The punks in Australia seemed every bit as boozed up and energetic as the fans in Canada, maybe even more so. At the Gabba Hotel in Brisbane, Bonehead took the stage with blood running down his face after being AWOL for several hours. “Murray doubted Brian’s sanity,” quips Nigel. The DayGlos were impressed that fans in Oz knew all the lyrics and sang along loudly, drunkenly. The boys almost felt homesick.

Gymbo was amazed that they were allowed to enter the zoo in Brisbane with open liquor. “We had these big bottles of beer and they didn’t bat an eye,” says the frontman. A convenience store clerk was happy to make Gymbo a vodka Slushie with booze provided by the singer. Later, at a restaurant, the DayGlos were shocked to see diners drinking beers from their personal cooler. The gang must have felt as if they had died and gone to booze heaven. “It was great,” says Gymbo. Mostly, the boys stuck to mixed drinks. “The beer was horrible,” complains Ferris Jak. Australians, no doubt, will disagree.

Before leaving for Melbourne, the DayGlos played several dates on a ship in Sydney Harbour, where a vessel carrying an East Indian wedding party responded to a medical emergency aboard the punker boat. “The wedding guests were terrified by the punks, who screamed and shouted and behaved like drunken lunatics,” recalls Gymbo. “They’re probably still traumatized by that.” Willy, on the other hand, was freaked out by the tropical wildlife. “The birds are crazy, and there were huge cockroaches and spiders all over the place,” the bassist remembers. Good thing bugs weren’t that big at home.

The boys weren’t used to driving on the left side of the road, but the thirteen-hour journey to Melbourne didn’t bother them much. “The guys were familiar with long trips across the prairies back home, and were excited to be looking for kangaroos and koala bears,” explains Nigel. The boys saw plenty of wildlife when the band stayed overnight on property belonging to Nigel’s sister. “There were lots of kangaroos jumping around, much to Bonehead’s delight,” recalls the Australian host.

The DayGlo Abortions continued the tour, and they didn’t make many piss stops. With his bladder full to bursting, Gymbo whizzed out the window just as a bus full of tourists rolled around the corner. “They had front row seats, obviously,” the frontman says, deadpan. There is a good chance that the video can be found on YouTube.

In Melbourne on January 26th, the DayGlos played to a rowdy crowd at the Arthouse Hotel. The next day, Cretin, Willy, and Gymbo bought a pig’s head at the market with the intention of putting it in Bonehead’s bed while he was sleeping. Somehow, the cagey drummer got wind of the evil plot and didn’t return to his bed at the hostel. “Bone knew we were up to something,” Willy recounts. Three days later, the band discovered that the drummer had shacked up with the caretaker. “He wouldn’t tell us if he did the deed with her or not,” laughs Gymbo. Meanwhile, the week-old pig’s head was starting to stink horribly, so the boys plastered it with DayGlo Abortions stickers and stashed it in an air vent at a radio station after an interview. “We never heard anything about it later, so they must have quietly disposed of it,” hypothesizes Gymbo. “I think they were already kinda scared of us,” Ferris adds.

Back in Sydney, the party continued. One night near the end of the visit, Ferris escaped to a room upstairs to pass out. The next day, he noticed that the shag carpeting in the living room was torn to shreds. “They mowed the carpet with a gas lawnmower!” exclaims Ferris. “I guess it was getting too long.” Good thing that Nigel was in the process of building a new house, because the DayGlos would make sure there wasn’t much left of the old one.

Angie and Cretin were planning to vacation in Australia after the band left, and much to Gymbo’s chagrin, the singer’s wife soon arrived from Victoria. The bandmembers didn’t spend much time chatting with Angie, since it was time to leave. For Gymbo, the tour was probably his favourite time with the DayGlo Abortions. “Australia is like this big, crazy Canada where everybody is friendly and you can drink in public,” says the singer, reflecting on his time in the land of kangaroos and barbecues. The musicians brought home less than $1000 each, but they have plenty of fond memories. “It was one of the funnest times of my life,” Willy Jak agrees. “Nigel is such an amazing guy.”

In February of 2001, Jesus Bonehead teamed up with Rancid Randy to open Old Nick’s Emporium on Johnson Street in downtown Victoria. Bonehead was already printing DayGlos merchandise at Randy’s old shop Hot Off The Press, which operated from Bonehead’s basement. With the help of a younger associate, the trio worked on new designs and quickly expanded their line of shirts. By producing the merchandise at his shop, Bonehead had neatly eliminated the middleman and assured the band of a steady supply. The DayGlo Abortions were DIY all the way.

That spring, the hard-working band embarked on yet another Canadian tour organized by Chad Barton’s Dead End Productions. This time, Vicious from Australia were the guests and the DayGlos played host. The tour took the Day-Glo Abortions, Vicious, and Neckbeerd through the wilds of British Columbia and Alberta, hitting twenty-four towns in just thirty days. Cherokee had an ulterior motive for adding Neckbeerd to the tour, and promised to help them earn some cash on the condition that they move out of his basement. His wife was pregnant, and it was time to get rid of the noisy punk rockers.

Canmore had become the place to play on Canada Day, and shows there were legend. “They were paying about $2500 a night then,” recalls Cherokee. As always, the secondary market was lucrative and the fans were happy to have them back. If anything, it was the small towns that saved the DayGlo Abortions from the drudgery of full-time employment, and if it weren’t for places like Red Deer and Canmore, the band may have indeed floundered. As it was, the band could do a quick tour and get home a month later with enough money to pay the bills. Being a DayGlo was much better than being a dishwasher or a ditch digger.

Vicious were fans of Nashville Pussy, and were ecstatic when the Southern rockers had a cancellation and asked the DayGlos if they could join the Red Deer bill. “That was like a dream come true for Vicious,” recalls Cherokee. Nashville Pussy agreed to headline, but they began to waffle after hearing the DayGlos’ ferocious soundcheck. Cretin was looking forward to getting drunk earlier for a change and shouted across the bar to them: “Are you Nashville Pussy, or are you just pussies?” After that, the Americans had little choice but to stick to the original agreement.

The DayGlos were scheduled to play at a big outdoor event known as Skate Fest in Jasper, but no one seemed to be aware that a larger civic event had been planned for that day, and even Premier Ralph Klein was in town to celebrate. “The cops had already told the bands to turn it down, and then the DayGlos showed up to do their thing,” remembers Cherokee. “Next thing you know, the cops are chasing Gymbo around the stage.” To add shit frosting to the cake, the band lost their $2000 guarantee, and Gymbo went to jail for three or four hours until arrangements could be made for his release. “I’d love to find out what Gymbo actually said to that cop onstage,” laughs Cherokee, who also remembers that one of the guys from Neckbeerd slapped a band sticker on a cop’s back. Gymbo shakes his head sadly when reminded of the incident. “I never went to my court date and there is probably still a bench warrant for my arrest in Jasper.”

The tour ended in mid-August and Vicious flew back to Australia. At home in Victoria, Jesus Bonehead kept busy by releasing
Stupid World, Stupid Songs,
a collection of older material, on God Records. The album was a best-of affair that featured the band’s most popular songs, most of them penned by Cretin. The DayGlos also played the odd show without Gymbo, who was now integral to the group. The fans had finally accepted the brash Portuguese singer, and indeed many do not remember the DayGlos without him. Since it was difficult for the singer and the band to get together, it wasn’t until late fall of 2001 that the DayGlos made plans to tour the eastern seaboard.

Rather than have Gymbo fly to Victoria, the band flew to Toronto and rented a van. The temperature that November was fairly cold, and the DayGlos were spoiled, climate-wise. The DayGlos did a show at the El Mocambo and then, after a few dozen beers, retired to Shred Central to sleep. Willy Jak awoke in the morning to discover that his sleeping bag had melted to his legs. In his desire to stay warm, the bassist had moved a little too close to the electric heater. Lucky for Willy, the sleeping bag was not highly combustible. Cretin, forever hurting himself, stepped on a nail walking down the stairs at Shred Central and tore a huge flap of skin from his heel, causing him to limp for the remainder of the tour. At least he didn’t break any bones.