Somethin' On My Mind: RIP Frankie Venom
I've been too swamped with other deadlines for le blogging this week although there's been tons to post about. (If you haven't caught the Take On Me, Literally video yet, give yourself a few minutes of happiness.)
But I wanted to drop in to share my sympathies to those who today are mourning Frank Kerr, aka Frankie Venom, of one of Canada's original and most indefatigable punk bands, Teenage Head. My favourite tribute so far is on The Last Pogo website: Frankie Venom talked the talk and he walked the walk. He also climbed staging, hung from rafters, rolled on broken glass, danced on tables and once, at the Colonial Underground in '76, either fell through the shoddy wooden stage (according to some) or crawled underneath and punched his way through.
(Forget it, Jake. It's Hammertown.)
That classic punk documentary is now finally out on DVD, by the way, and watching it would be one way to honour Frankie's memory. There'll also be a Last Pogo 30th-anniversary event at the scene of the original concert-crime, the Horseshoe Tavern, at the end of November.
General | Posted by zoilus on Thursday, October 16 at 8:58 PM | Linking Posts | Comments (1)
COMMENTS
I was trying to find footage of Frankie at his best (largely unsuccessfully) and found a CBC news story from 1977 featuring Teenage Head, the Viletones and Michaele Jordana and the Poles (http://archives.cbc.ca/arts_entertainment/music/topics/102-761/ - Story 2, though Peter Gzowski's interview with Iggy in Story 1's pretty fine). You only get quick snippets of Teenage Head, but Frank was more physical and slyly snide than he'd become in just a few years. It's interesting in the clip to notice his relative stillness and calm next to Jordana and Leckie's desperate needs for attention, and how awful Hana Gartner is.
Posted by Alex on October 23, 2008 9:54 AM