Blog Post by Kris Hamlyn of the Secret East
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| I Was A Skywalker live at Headquarters in St. John's, 2011. Photo by Lacey Critch. |
Newfoundland & Labrador has always been known for live music. Traditionally, there has never been a shortage of eclectic entertainment to fill the air on any given night of the week, especially in the capital city of St. John’s. While the province may be best known for folk music, accomplished singer/songwriters, and an endless supply of talented cover bands, there has long been a rumbling from beneath the surface of the arts community in the form of a vibrant and unique musical underground.
For live underground and alternative music in Newfoundland & Labrador, there have been few musical genres that have made such a lasting contribution as punk rock music from Mount Pearl.
Live punk rock in Newfoundland & Labrador dates back to St. John's in the late 1970s, but the scene and community that surrounds the music may never have thrived and evolved to where it is today without the contribution of kids from Mount Pearl. For the last three decades, it has been rare to find a punk rock gig in St. John’s that didn’t feature a strong presence of Mount Pearl bands or musicians.
Punks from "The Pearl" have not only occupied stages across the capital city, but they have also assumed fundamental roles in every aspect of organizing and promoting the music scene. For many years, Mount Pearl punk has helped break the mold of how live music was made in Newfoundland & Labrador. For that reason, the current independent music scene has greatly benefitted from the D.I.Y. community that these musicians helped foster.
Breaking Out of the Bars
In the earliest days of Newfoundland punk in the late 1970s, the process of putting on live gigs adhered to the same structure that has been commonplace in the music industry for many years: bands would play at pubs and nightclubs as an attraction to drum up bar sales. Usually the musicians would play for the funds collected at the door via a cover charge, and the bar would pocket their share from serving beverages to the patrons.
In recent years, punk has become a more accepted genre in mainstream music. With time, punk bands have become a mainstay at rock clubs, and to this day, bars continue to play a big role in the punk scene. However, in the 1970s and 1980s, the rowdy and controversial reputation of punk music was not yet considered a safe bet for profit-driven venues.
An important part of punk rock has always been about challenging and defying norms, and in the 1980s and 1990s, the Newfoundland punk scene effectively disrupted the structure of live local music. As punk quickly became a youth culture, the need grew to find venues that were accessible to all ages, and that wasn’t always an easy task. From community theatres and festivals, to the unlikely places such as tennis clubs, church gymnasiums, and ice rink locker rooms: punk kids from Mount Pearl were always innovative and creative in finding ways to present their art. These kids made their music happen with little money and few resources, even if it meant using their own basements, sheds or backyards.
To continue on our mission to tell the story of Mount Pearl punk rock, we thought it was significant to compile some snapshots of the many eras, venues and scenes where the live music was created. While it is impossible to cover every show that was played at every venue by every band, we wanted to offer a broad overview of Mount Pearl's many contributions to live punk shows in Newfoundland & Labrador.
Peace-A-Chord
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| Peace-A-Chord 1995 flyer from the Peace-A-Chord Collection, Mun Digital Archives |
For over two decades, Peace-A-Chord was one of the most anticipated summer events for both young music fans, as well as young and burgeoning local musicians seeking an opportunity to showcase their art.
Mount Pearl punk bands always had a welcomed place on a Peace-A-Chord bill. Performances of bands from the city stretched from the likes of Good To Go, Plan 13, Bud and Hung Up in the 1990s, to bands like Dopamine, Nerve Attack and Three Chord Revolution in the early 2000s.
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| Dopamine live at Peace-A-Chord in 2003 |
After a conflict with the City of St. John’s over noise complaints in 2003, the two-day festival only lasted a few more years with reduced performances in Bannerman Park in 2004 and 2006, as well as an indoor Peace-A-Chord at the LSPU Hall in 2005. The final year for Peace-A-Chord was in 2007 as a part of Eastern Edge Gallery's 24 Hour Art Marathon Festival.
The Mount Pearl Frosty Festival
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Frosty Festival Unofficial Battle of The Bands poster from 2007.
Image courtesy of King Sized Kids.
The Mount Pearl Frosty Festival began in 1983 and has grown to become one of the largest winter events in Atlantic Canada. While the scope of the festival is much broader than more arts-focused event like Peace-a-Chord, the Mount Pearl Frosty Festival has always offered live music as an important element of it’s diverse array of indoor and outdoor festivities.
As a community-focused event open to all ages, the Mount Pearl Frosty Festival Battle of the Bands has long been a rare chance for young bands of the city to take the stage in their own backyard. Over the years, the Battle of the Bands has featured Mount Pearl acts as diverse as a teenage grunge band called Pud in the early 1990s, Good To Go in the mid 1990s, Three Chord Revolution and Moke Cove in the early 2000s, and bands like Call The Ambulance, King Sized Kids, The Lost Ark! and I Was a Skywalker in the latter half of the decade.
The LSPU Hall
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| Poster for the Good To Go / Molotov Smile split 7" release show at the LSPU Hall in 1998 |
The LSPU Hall is a registered heritage building that was built on Victoria Street in downtown St. John’s following the Great Fire of 1892. The name is a tribute to the Longshoremen’s Protective Union which once occupied the hall. Since the late 1970s, the structure has housed the Resource Centre for the Arts.
While the LSPU Hall may be best known for it’s tremendous addition to local theatre and performing arts, it was also a fundamental part of the independent music scene, especially in the 1980s and 1990s.
If you were an under age punk in Mount Pearl at the turn of the 1990s, taking a trip to the LSPU Hall in St. John's was likely your sole opportunity to see live punk rock music.
Age of Majority was Mount Pearl’s first hardcore punk band, and they played their first gigs at the LSPU Hall in 1990. In the years that followed, the theatre affectionately known as “The Hall” hosted many shows that frequently featured Mount Pearl bands such as Pud in the early 1990s, and the prominent wave of skate punk bands in the latter half of the 1990s such as Good To Go, Plan 13, Bud, and Hung Up.
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| Mount Pearl's Bud and Plan 13 at the Curling Club in St. John's |
In addition to the LSPU Hall, Mount Pearl's punk bands of the mid 1990s also played various all ages shows at venues like The St. John's Curling Club, The Star of the Sea Hall, as well as the St. John's Lion's Club.
Accessible places to play for all ages punk rock shows weren't always easy to come by, and there was rarely a stone left unturned in the search for new locales to make live music.
Bars & Matinees in the 1990s
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| Good To Go live at the Cornerstone in St. John's. Photo courtesy of Good To Go |
Throughout the 1990s, some of the live music venues in downtown St. John’s began hosting daytime all ages matinees in addition to their 19+ shows. Bars such as The Loft, The Edge, The Cornerstone, and occasionally The Breezeway on MUN campus hosted punk, metal and alternative rock shows. Many of the bills of these live shows heavily featured Mount Pearl bands of the era.
One of the biggest gigs for Mount Pearl’s Good To Go was opening for The Hanson Brothers at the Cornerstone in May of 1997. This was not the teenage pop trio that would rise to popularity a few years later, rather this band of Hanson Brothers was the Hockey-themed “puck rock” alter ego of legendary Canadian punk band NoMeansNo from Victoria, BC. The Hanson Brothers played an all ages and bar show in St. John’s, and Good To Go landed the supporting role for both gigs.
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| Good To Go opening for The Hanson Brothers at the Cornerstone in St. John's in 1997. |
In August of 1998, Summersault was a touring outdoor festival organized by the Canadian rock band, Our Lady Peace. The outdoor festival touched down in select parks in Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and on September 3rd, Summersault arrived in Bowring Park in St. John’s.
In addition to Our Lady Peace, Summersault featured notable bands such as Garbage, Sloan, Moist, Treble Charger, Hayden, Julie Doiron and others. During the festival’s visit to St. John’s, local bands joined the bill such as Bucket Truck, Lizband and Hung Up.
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| Summersault 1998 in St. John's t-shirt design. |
Hung Up was a project that was kickstarted by Trev Sturge of Mount Pearl’s Good To Go after the breakup of his original band. Hung Up also featured current NL singer/songwriter Sherman Downey on vocals.
Summersault 1998 marked the beginning of Hung Up’s accomplished run. After their appearance at Summersault 1998, Hung Up played many local shows, as well as toured across Canada in support of their album Runnin' Out, which was released on a Winnipeg-based record label called Crack Records in 1999.
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| Calio's ad from an issue of the Muse Newspaper, 1998 |
Calio’s
Beginning in the late 1990s, an establishment called Calio’s on Water Street in St. John’s would become synonymous with local punk, metal and alternative rock. Though operating in the evenings as a bar, weekends at Calio’s became home of all ages matinees right up until the bar’s closure in 2001.
Most local punk rock bands of the late 1990s and early 2000s would have played Calio’s, and Mount Pearl musicians were no exception. Calio’s hosted many bills that were headlined by bands such as Hung Up, Plan 13, and Bud, as well as a new crop of punk rock bands from Mount Pearl including Dopamine and Three Chord Revolution.
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Riverdale Tennis Club & All Ages Shows in the 2000s
With the closure of Calio’s, the local all ages punk scene soon found a new unlikely home at the Riverdale Tennis Club on Portugal Cove Road in St. John’s. Like many makeshift all ages venues, the club house was a small recreation room that was not an ideal set up for live music. There was no equipment, no stage, and there was a large brick fireplace and trophy case that lined the wall which caused a potential danger for kids who would slamdance or mosh around the room.
What made Riverdale a perfect venue for the time was it’s central St. John’s location, as well as the ability to host all ages events at night. Without venues like Riverdale, bars were only able to host daytime matinees on the weekends before the hours that alcohol was served.
Riverdale was an incredibly important place for punk bands from Mount Pearl in the early 2000s. Members of the Mount Pearl band Dopamine would form Cold Turkey Records and release their own self-titled CD and promote a slew of all ages show at Riverdale, along with their fellow hometown band Three Chord Revolution. De-Mons, who would become one of the longest active punk bands from Mount Pearl, also played their first gig at the tennis club.
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| Nerve Attack live at Riverdale Tennis Club, 2003 |
After a considerable amount of punk rock and metal shows in a few short years, Riverdale Tennis Club stopped hosting all ages gigs by 2004. Complaints from residents in the neighborhood due to the late nights, loud noise, and crowds of rambunctious teenagers were cited as the reason as to why the club would no longer take live music bookings.
Other alternative spaces were explored in the years that followed with all ages gigs finding temporary homes at The Masonic Temple (now the home of the Spirit of Newfoundland dinner theatre), the gymnasium of the St. Andrews Church in downtown St. John’s, as well as Primers on MUN campus.
Some venues were as short-lived as only hosting a single show, such as the attempted reunion of Mount Pearl punk band Plan 13 that was organized by Cold Turkey Records at the Swiler’s Rugby Club in 2004. The massive turnout of the show resulted in large groups of attendees partying on the rugby field. Complaints were called in from nearby residents and the police arrived to shut down the show before Plan 13 were able to finish their set.
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| Shit Legion live at the Brother O'Hehir Arena in 2005. |
Brother O’Hehir Arena
As the availability of venues willing to host all ages punk shows became scarce in the mid-2000s, many musicians from the previous era of the local scene had now turned legal age and opted to play at bars where proper equipment was readily available and noise complaints were not an issue.
Despite this, Mount Pearl's Scum Tribe Records was still rapidly growing a following of young punks who had a drive to keep the “do it yourself” attitude of the all ages scene alive. After some single occurrence shows at both The Hub and the Rabbittown Theatre on Merrymeeting Road, Scum Tribe lucked into discovering the Brother O’Hehir Arena (currently known as the Yetman’s Arena) on Bonaventure Ave in St. John’s in 2005. While Brother O’Hehir was mostly known as an ice skating rink, the arena also had a small banquet room upstairs that wasn’t being utilized at the time.
The upstairs room of the Brother O’Hehir was similar in size to the Riverdale Tennis Club. Like many of the other all ages venues before it, there was no preexisting stage, though the rink manager helped the bands make one of their own using benches that the arena had in storage. On the occasion that the main room was booked, the rink manager would also offer up the locker rooms for punk bands to play.
Brother O’Hehir played a vital role for Mount Pearl punk in the mid 2000s. The arena became an unofficial home for the scene created by Scum Tribe Records, and it also became a place where many new and young bands played their first shows. Mount Pearl bands such as Nerve Attack, The Ridiculice, Profession:ill, Shit Legion, The David Butler Band, Cider Squadron 666 and many other spin-off projects played a majority of their all ages gigs at Brother O'Hehir over a few short years.
After a change in management and renovations to the banquet room, Brother O’Hehir stopped booking live music for good around 2008.
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| De-Mons live at Distortion in 2008. |
Bars and Matinees in the 2000s
The late 2000s saw a new crop of live music bars in downtown St. John’s turn their focus to heavier and more alternative bands. Not only were these venues looking to book 19+ gigs, but there was a renewed interest in offering all ages matinees.
In the summer of 2007, a pub called Turner’s Tavern on the east end of Water Street in St. John’s took a chance outside of their regular programming and booked a punk rock show on Canada Day. The show was such a success that the bar quickly shifted gears and began catering to their new found audience.
For the few years that followed, Turner’s Tavern hosted a mix of late night gigs and daytime all ages shows. The bar became an unexpected hub for a younger generation of bands, including new bands from Mount Pearl such as King Sized Kids, a group that featured members who would go on to comprise many important punk bands in the years that followed.
2007 also saw the opening of a bar called Distortion in downtown St. John’s. Distortion was operated by Glenn Tizzard, a sound engineer who had previously provided his services to all ages shows at beloved venues such as the Riverdale Tennis Club. Tizzard’s passion for heavy music and the local community made Distortion an important pillar in the music scene for over a decade.
As one of the longest running local music venues to cater heavily to punk rock music, Distortion was a home to multiple generations of Mount Pearl punk bands by offering bar shows and all ages matinees. Through the eras, Distortion would offer a stage to Dopamine, Three Chord Revolution, Cider Squadron 666, De-Mons, Moke Cove, Call The Ambulance, Profession: ill, King Sized Kids, I Was a Skywalker, Clocked In and many others. These bands also had the opportunity to open for a wide variety of touring acts at Distortion as diverse as The Regulations from Sweden, The Flatliners from Ontario, and many other visitors from across Eastern Canada and beyond.
Junctions (later renamed Headquarters) was also a recurrent venue in the late 2000s that provided a much larger room and stage than most bars that were open to punk rock shows. Many of the aforementioned Mount Pearl bands were booked at all ages and bar shows, and the venue also hosted local band Over The Top's album release show, as well as offered opening spots for touring acts that ranged from Ontario screamo band Silverstein, to Vancouver's punk legends D.O.A.
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| Bees & Honey live at the Rose & Thistle in 2011. |
Although it was not an establishment that offered all ages shows, many of the Mount Pearl bands into the 2010s would often play and promote shows at The Rose & Thistle on Water Street in St. John's. The bar was not a typical live music venue for loud bands, but it offered a small and more intimate environment than the bigger rock clubs. The Rose & Thistle also had the rarity of a window on stage that allowed people to watch the bands from the sidewalk outside.
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| Astonish Yourself live at the Paradise Rec Centre |
Closer to Home: Punk Shows in Mount Pearl and Paradise
Besides the Mount Pearl Frosty Festival, there have been few attainable options throughout the years for punk bands from Mount Pearl to perform on their own stomping grounds.
In the mid 1990s, Good To Go performed at what might be one the more absurd shows to happen in Mount Pearl: the grand re-opening of an Ultramar gas station on Commonwealth Ave. The band played in the parking lot to a largely unimpressed audience, though they claim it may have been one of their best paying gigs. And what other punk show comes with free BBQ?
Mount Pearl bar shows were rare for punk bands, but they did happen occasionally. Barkley's on Commonwealth Ave had Good To Go take their stage in the 1990s, and the lounge similarly booked bands in the 2000s such De-Mons and Moke Cove during what would be the establishments last stint of hosting live music.
For a few years starting in 2008, a handful of all ages punk shows were held at St. David's Field in Mount Pearl, but that was short-lived and didn't become a regular gig. In another unlikely instance, Mount Pearl hardcore band Clocked In would take the stage at Mount Pearl City Days in 2011.
The bordering town of Paradise became a viable destination for young musicians in the late 2000s when the Paradise Recreation Centre began taking bookings for all ages shows. Some of the young Mount Pearl bands of that time such as King Sized Kids and Astonish Yourself would frequent the Paradise Rec Centre in 2009.
Despite the substantial number of punk bands to come from Mount Pearl over the years, there never really was a consistent home for live alternative music in the city and the scene largely remained centralized to St. John's.
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| Western Massachusetts hardcore band Hoax live at The Shed in 2012. Photo by Stephen Spencer. |
House Shows
Playing house parties had always been commonplace for teenage bands, but Mount Pearl punks took the practice a step further.
In 2007, Rob Forward of local bands such as Profession: ill, Crusades and Clocked In, began putting on house shows in the absence of available all ages venues. From his parents' basement in the Power's Pond suburb of Mount Pearl, a notable hardcore punk band from Vancouver called Go It Alone played a live set while on a cross-country tour for their second and final album, Histories. A band from the other side of the country with such a level of notoriety playing in a basement in Power's Pond may seem surreal, but a small crowd of kids who were lucky enough to witness it can confirm it did indeed happen.
Not too far from Rob Forward's parents' basement, drummer Stephen Spencer started a yearly house show called Spence-A-Palooza. What started as a small show for a few friends in 2007 would grow over the next three year and would feature a slew of young Mount Pearl bands such as Astonish Yourself, King Sized Kids and The Lost Ark!.
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| Envision live at the Shed, photo by Meghan Romano |
Derek Ashley of Mount Pearl bands such as I Was A Skywalker and Pockethands also helped to fill the void of all ages venues when he opened the garage door in his dad's backyard in the west end of St. John's to start an era of what was known as "shed shows". Not only was "The Shed" a host for many local bands, but a number of touring acts including Toronto pop punk band !ATTENTION!, Western Massachusetts hardcore band Hoax, and the Halifax hardcore band Envision made appearances in the backyard venue while on tour.
As many of the musicians from Mount Pearl moved to St. John's in the 2010s, the tradition of house shows was carried on in the capital city. In addition to the standard 19+ shows, the all ages matinees at bars, halls and community centres have been largely replaced by house gigs and outdoor pop-up performances in recent years.
House shows may not be the most accessible option for reaching new young audiences outside of the existing scene, but they do conjure the same spirit that the Mount Pearl punk scene has always carried: if you can't find a place to play, make a place to play.
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| Pockethands at a house show at "The Manhole" in 2012. Photo by Stephen Spencer. |
While our dive into three decades of live Mount Pearl punk may seem comprehensive, we know that we haven't been able to get to everything. In the coming weeks, we'll be using the blog to further highlight some more of the bands, shows, venues and stories.
As our research continues, we are still looking for your input and insight! Do you have any memories, photos, posters, cassette tapes, CD's or other miscellaneous memorabilia that might be of interest to us? Please get in touch: admiraltyhouse@mountpearl.ca
You can also now follow and interact with the project on Instagram: @mountpearlpunk
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