While Broken Social Scene was playing to a sold-out crowd for the second night running at the Kool Haus last week, other sorts of sounds were emanating from an innocuous-looking house in the Annex. Inside, the air was thick with the sweat of scores of tattooed youths, crammed shoulder-to-shoulder in every room and passageway in order to see (or at least hear) a band called Fucked Up play a fiery set.
With all the fuss lately over the local indie scene, it’s often easy to forget about all the other independent music being made in this city. A vibrant punk/hardcore scene has existed here in some form or another for nearly three decades, thriving even without the benefit of the spotlight.
Toronto’s punk/hardcore scene started gathering energy in the late ’70s, but many argue that its most important pioneers were Bunchofuckingoofs, who in the early and mid-’80s ruled over Kensington Market from their basement boozecan/home, Fort Goof. The Goofs embodied the punk lifestyle at the time, with its drinking, drugs, and violence, but were also pillars of the Market community, acting as informal neighbourhood security. Crazy Steve, the band’s singer, even ran for city alderman at one point.
“It was just a really small, underground, tightly knit scene, very street-level, a lot of very intense, crazy people,” recounts veteran local concert promoter Ewan Exall, who has been involved in the scene for the past two decades.
“In 1986, you had to know where the Record Peddler was to get a Dead Kennedys record, and you had to be brave enough to walk in there, and you had to be smart enough to look at the wall where the flyers were to find out about the shows,” he explains.
Though flyers are still omnipresent in the scene, the internet has spread punk/hardcore music to more people than ever before.
“The internet has changed the way people communicate about shows and bands, and has definitely helped us gain and keep new friends, bands, and fans all over the place,” says Naomi Allan, singer for hardcore/punk rock band The Sinkin’ Ships.
Now, instead of seeking out obscure record shops or relying on word of mouth, punk/hardcore fans can look up a band on myspace.com, or sign up for mailing lists to find out about shows.
While punk/hardcore bands obviously appreciate having a crowd to play for, part of the appeal of the scene in times past was the subversive, almost secret quality it had. If you were really interested, you could find out about shows and bands, but it wouldn’t be spoon-fed to you. The internet has changed this, and the scene is larger now as a result.
Punk bands on large labels like Epitaph and Fat Wreck Chords tour globally and are managed like mainstream artists. In fact, many elements of punk have become mainstream-Green Day albums now win Grammy awards, little girls are being sold “Punkz” versions of Bratz dolls, and Tim Armstrong of Rancid has penned songs for pop star Pink.
Despite the mainstream attention, the anti-establishment, do-it-yourself ethic of punk still persists. On any given night, there might be a $3 concert at Sneaky Dee’s or the Bovine Sex Club featuring local punk/hardcore bands like The Sinkin’ Ships, The Fallout, The Tijuana Bibles, The Heatskores, The Threat, or dozens of others. At shows like these, the cover is cheap, the energy is electric, and the bands actually hang around to chat with fans before and after their sets, giving the scene a real sense of community. At expensive mainstream concerts, fans would be lucky to get anywhere near the artists they’re paying to see.
Perhaps it’s that sense of community that explains the longevity of the Toronto hardcore/punk scene, but fans have their own varying reasons for being drawn to it.
“Growing up, I saw problems in the way my world was being run… It made me angry, and pop music just didn’t address that. It was fun to dance to, but punk and metal and rap acts usually had some political streak to them and had a lot more heart,” says Allen.
Others, like Exall and Allen’s bandmate Jamey “Cactus” Vella, had older siblings who exposed them to aggressive music as kids.
“The fundamental appeal of punk rock music is that teenagers basically are completely insane, and it allows them to have some sort of sense of release, and maybe be exposed to values or ideas that allow them to negotiate that very difficult period of their lives a little more easily or with more grace,” Exall notes.
Whatever the appeal may be, there is little doubt that Toronto hardcore is attracting a lot of people at the moment. One name in particular seems to be everywhere: Fucked Up. The five-member Toronto hardcore band is a top seller at Rotate This-the scene’s favourite independent record shop-and the band is also gaining momentum in the U.S.
There have been rumours that Fucked Up might be the next addition to Vice Records, a label that boasts Bloc Party, The Streets, and local boys Death From Above 1979 amongst its trendy fold. The snarky harbingers of cool at Vice magazine wrote a favourable piece on Fucked Up in their October 2005 issue, though a representative of the record label responded via e-mail to the rumours of their signing by saying only, “We like them a lot.”
When the crowd and humidity had subsided after Fucked Up’s Saturday night house concert, the band sat down to talk about their burgeoning popularity and the local hardcore scene. Damian Abraham, the band’s boisterous singer (and U of T Women’s Studies major) explained how things have changed since the band formed in 2001.
“This, five years ago, would have been the biggest show we’d ever expect to see, and we would have announced that, and flyered for months,” he points out.
As it happened, the band decided at the last minute to drop out of an afternoon show at the Funhaus club in favour of playing the downtown house party. Thanks to the internet and good old-fashioned word of mouth, they found a sweaty, fire-code-defying houseful of fans in attendance despite the impromptu switch.
“It certainly feels like there’s a groundswell of hardcore activity. Toronto doesn’t really know it-this scene goes totally under the radar of like, NOW and eye,” Abraham continues. “So yeah, it really feels like things are blowing up here, totally unbeknownst to Toronto, but beknownst to the rest of the world.”
With their underground accolades, rising international attention, and penchant for vinyl releases, multimedia features, and bizarre album art, Fucked Up do share some similarities with Toronto’s beloved fey indie-rockers.
“We’re the next Broken Social Scene. I can’t wait ’til we each have our own solo records out. Sandy [Miranda, Fucked Up’s bass player]’s going to be the new Metric,” Abraham declares jokingly.
However, the band is also quick to counter any parallels.
“No, I don’t think hardcore’s going to be the next indie rock,” Abraham says. “I just think the music’s too aggressive. And we’re called Fucked Up, so that kind of limits the potential for this band. We’re ‘unselloutable’ because we’re called Fucked Up.”
Maybe so, but prick up your ears at night and listen for the pneumatic drumming, insistent vocals, and skillful guitar playing coming from that house down the street. You never know who might end up at the Kool Haus next.
