Photo by Tim Sebert.
We hit the NXNE press conference/launch last night, and ran into Last Pogoers Gordie Lewis from Teenage Head and Vince Carlucci from the Cardboard Brains. Fast Eddie Smith snapped shots as we were deluged by a constant flow of eats and beers, and it was all pretty crammed and jammed. Kudos to Liz Anderson of Flip for doing such a decent job of promotion. Apart from hearing the low-down on the run-down of all the bands ‘n’ stuff, we ran into a few more ghosts from the past including Virginia Kelly of VK and Associates, and filmmaker Bruce McDonald.
We caught word that Hugh Cornwell of The Stranglers is going to be at NXNE to show off his new movie, and so we’re gonna have to try and track him down during the frenzy of the fest; one of the most memorable of the relentlessly awesome shows at the Horseshoe in 1978 was The Stranglers blowing the roof off the joint to an overflow crowd of 500+.
Meanwhile, back at Pogo HQ, co-director Kire Paputts is busily transferring the 150 hours of footage we’ve compiled since we started shooting The Last Pogo Jumps Again back in June 2006. On top of this footage, we’ve got miles (er…kilometres) of archival footage, some never-before-seen footage of The Last Pogo, and a growing pile of photos and handbills. Finally, in sad news, all-round helper-dude Ollie Brunton confessed that he skipped history at his high-school yesterday. We’ll have to see if his grounding affects the shooting we have planned for this weekend. Because no one loads a camera and fiddles with a tripod quite like Ollie.
And just for shits ‘n’ giggles, we dug up the above photo from a cardboard box deep in the catacombs (i.e. basement) of Pogo HQ. For those of you who didn’t have the pleasure of meeting Mr. Ramone he was the proverbial nicest guy you’ll ever meet.