"Over the years, people have urged me to remaster The Last Pogo, but it is what it is," filmmaker Colin Brunton says, talking on his cellphone from Canadian Tire. "When the sound falls apart at the end, that's exactly what happened at the show - it was chaos."
It has been three decades since Brunton made The Last Pogo as a 25-minute film document of Toronto's vibrant punk scene - begging for leftover film stock, borrowing film students and gear and persuading arts councils to give him grants to complete it. And now, the film is being dusted off (literally) for a screening at North by Northeast's music-themed film festival this weekend.
The Last Pogo was the legendary last punk show booked by legendary local concert promoters the Garys at the legendary Horseshoe Tavern. Brunton, whose current day job is producing Little Mosque On The Prairie, was driving a taxi by day and catching bands by night. "I made the movie because I thought it would be cool," says Brunton, who, despite his modest ambition then, went on to produce Bruce McDonald's Roadkill and other film and TV fare.
Featuring performances by the Garys' favourite local bands - the Scenics, Cardboard Brains, the Secrets, the Mods, the Ugly, the Viletones and Teenage Head (who played one song before the police shut the club) - and interspersed with interviews and punk attitude, The Last Pogo is a raw document of a brief, memorable era in a city that was one of the few places in North America punk bands such as the Ramones could play. The Garys made sure local bands would open for visiting acts, and this was key in developing the professional scene Toronto music fans have enjoyed ever since.
Brunton has a Last Pogo blog too.
Here's screening info from the NXNE website (5:30 p.m. Sunday at the NFB)
The Globe story also touts Rolling Like A Stone, built around some after-show footage of the Stones' tour of Sweden in 1965.
There looks to be lots of interesting films screening over the weekend. Here's the NXNE film page.