Treat Me Like Dirt - Liz Worth

 Couple funny things about this one - it was published in 2008 but I just recently heard about it randomly and the author wasn't even born until 1982 so she's a researcher on this "old music" that was created before she existed! I guess kinda like the white blues researchers in the 1960's. Just seems funny to an old man like me who lived through it all.

Worth arranges the book as an oral history and opens quite randomly with no background information (a basic introduction would have been appreciated) as a few folks start talking about their time in Toronto. She gives a lit of everyone before the first chapter, so you have to look back to find out who this is talking, rather than explaining who the person is as she's quoting them. So, the format is a little strange, but the scene was strong, so I am definitely interested and you generally get used to it as you go along, although when new characters are introduced, you still go, "wait, who is this?".

We get firsthand accounts of the likes of Simply Saucer - who initially sounds very out there, especially for the time - Teenage Head, the Diodes (who I loved when their first LP came out and I got to see them open for the Ramones in Chicago! They mention that show as one of the best of their career.), Viletones and lots'n'lots'n'lots of much, much more obscure bands - like groups that played once but splintered into other factions. Of course, once a movie theater promoter decided to have bands play and brought in the Ramones, that changed everything for everyone. As with other college/art/ rock'n'roll scenes at the time, things started moving quickly after that.

Although everyone complains that Toronto was basically an uninteresting, small town, it had a college, a nearby bar that had live music, a happening record store/hangout, a hip movie theater (aforementioned that moved into having live bands) and lots more going on - way more than the truly small town that I grew up in that basically had nothing at all, including any like-minded people. Of course, the college helped bring artistically minded people together, which included music lovers. The scene continued to grow with more bands, more stores - underground record/clothes/more - more venues and lots of parties!

Like other scenes, the bands started getting more'n'more attention, especially after the main groups did a trek to NYC and played at CBGB's. Kinda ironic that Teenage Head was the band that everyone thought was going to hit and, while they're legends now, nothing major came of it, but a group like the Diodes, who apparently were mercilessly picked on in Toronto for no real reason, got on a major label and toured and played with the likes of the Ramones when I saw them in a ballroom in Chicago. Obviously, the Diodes simply worked harder than the other bands - they had their club, Crash'n'Burn, that helped all of the bands in town, they had management, they practiced, they wrote catchy songs and they simply did the grunt work. Not to say that bands like Teenage Head shouldn't have been signed, as well, but the Viletones, with a singer called Nazi Dog, was simply not going to get signed by a major, so stop being jealous of something that you could not possibly aspire to. It is kind of amazing the huge amount of jealousy there was because the Diodes got signed, although I suppose that happens in most any scene, but it seems like no one thought “maybe we could be next”, they just thought “fuck them for being more popular”. Of course, major labels had no idea what to do with punk bands and the Canadian affiliate didn’t think much farther than NY, so they didn’t capitalize like they should have.

Toronto seems to have had more than their fair share of complete assholes in the scene, as well - seemingly more than most of the other scenes - like, actual, real-life criminals and violent thugs and gangs. The pacifist in me never cared for the real life violence that the hard core scene brought with it in the States, but it seems like the original scene In Toronto had serious violence right from the start, and only escalated, which certainly didn't help the cause. And, as with a lot of scenes at the time, drugs started coming in heavily and, of course, that fucked things up even more. It really gets depressing at this point, but that's often the story - the early days and super fun'n'exciting'n'new and then all the shit starts coming into play - egos, violence, drugs, accidents, illnesses and all the rest. Kinda makes it difficult to read from this point on - wish that there were some tales of younger bands that were still having fun mixed in with the depressing shit.

So, unfortunately, it ends on a seriously depressing note, with lots of people dying - drugs, suicide, violence, and often some combination of these - while other people just got wasted, some went straight and Teenage Head kept rockin', touring the country and making money but never breaking the Canadian border. 

Certainly an interesting tale and glad that Worth put this together, although I still think that there could have been editorializing to help pull it all together, but even so, well "worth" reading, even with the melancholy ending.