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!ATTENTION!: TORONTO POP PUNX TO INVADE USA. Toronto pop punkers !Attention! will be venturing across the border for their first US tour ever in a couple of days. We like to keep tabs on these guys, though they are living in Toronto these are some good ol East Coast boys with ties to Cape Breton. They have played in a plethora of truly fantastic bands: One Day Late, I Was A Spy/Rudy Huxtable Project, Horses, and countless others. Below is the interview I did with the band around this time last year when they made their first attempt at touring the United States. We hope they fare much better this time around. ------ (In respect to being turned away at the US border in 2010) I heard you guys got stopped at the border and had to cancel your U.S. dates. That's a real bummer. What went wrong? Glenn: It's a real shame that a lot of really hard working bands from Canada have to go through the experience we did every time they want to cross the border into the States. It was incredibly disappointing to have spent four months of burning my fucking eyeballs out on my computer screen sending countless emails, posting relentlessly on message boards and searching for random people on facebook through other people's friends lists, to have it all end in one instant (one instant lasting six hours of interrogation and intimidation). A brief version of the story would be: Nathan had crossed earlier that day with our gear and his American passport in our van and made it in no problem. "Can't keep one of our own from his homeland!" --one of the guards later claimed to me. The rest of us took a bus from St. John, New Brunswick to Bangor, Maine to meet up with a friend. Stories got mixed up and after four hours of lying to a staff of giant border guards with too much time on their dirty hands, we each told the truth and received a nice set of fingerprints and mug shots and were turned away. They made us go on the bus two at a time and get our stuff and as the bus pulled away and the only female guard (the meanest of the bunch) said "WELL! You're not getting into the United States, that's for sure !". We ended up cancelling nine shows in the USA which was bringing us down to finish our tour by attending The Fest 9. However, the one good thing to come out of all this is that we quickly learned who our friends were in the eastern half of Canada as we booked three shows in one hour on the drive back through NB.
That's encouraging that you were able to at least fill a few dates on your way back to Toronto. Do you find many examples of this type of comradery and helping each other out in the Toronto scene as well? That is exactly what playing in punk bands is all about. It's rad to be able to play with so many great bands from Toronto made up of some of our best pals. Anytime we've ever had any van troubles and not been able get our shit to shows our pals always come through. We're always scratching backs with Junior Battles, Orphan Choir, Prevenge (Mtl), Dig it Up (Mtl) ... the list goes on. X X X X You guys have a 7" record out. I have to tell you it's refreshing to see the punk 7"s still being put out. In this age of myspace pages, download codes and perhaps worst of all .... online webzines... is there still a place for the good ol' punk rock 7"? Glenn: I would say that is entirely the point. There's always going to be that sense of achievement and pride that comes with recording your own records, doing your own artwork and layouts, booking your own tours, and creating tangible things that you can share with other like minded people. If that drive to create these things with your own hands (DIY) isn't what is fueling you to play in a band then I would have to say you're doing it for the wrong reasons. If I wanted to create something that would instantly be recognized all over the world by dumping more trash on the internet, I'd take a video of a cat sucking it's own dick and put it on youtube. When you see bands on myspace with 50,000 friends, “cool” haircuts, and “neat” band photos they'll probably have five songs and no records out. Not to mention probably never having to work a day in their lives for “their art”. They're all just cats sucking their own dicks on youtube if you ask me. Heh. I feel like I've gone off on a tangent. ANYWAYS. Punk bands make records and book their own tours.. X X X X GO !ATTENTION! GO!
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MATT DIXON, Editor in Chief
Feeling down in the dumps in his second year of university Matt Dixon took things into his own hands and started to interview bands, put on little shows throughout his native Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island and started this little webzine that could. He likes to listen to rad records and watch films at Charlottetown's only art-house theatre, the beloved City Cinema. Current Listening: Buried Inside, Q & Not U, Tallest Man On Earth, Lucero, The Transit. E- MATT (AT) JUNNNKTANK.COM X |
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