DISORDER
Fast-forward a couple of decades, and I am looking over some mailorder sheet or other (usually it is Bomp!, but I have ordered from plenty more over the years). I spot a compilation album called Disorder by a first-wave Canadian punk rock band called the Ugly that was remastered by Chris Spedding in 1995, and I had to order it just on the strength of Spedding’s having a hand in it.
The first thing I noticed was how clear the sound is. I am used to the lo-fi quality of early punk records that normally ranges from muddy to unintelligible (and the last several tracks on Disorder are like that), but there was none of that on the main tape from which this compilation was taken. Chris Spedding did yeoman’s work to really bring out every last wrinkle of this band’s work.
The compilation CD by the Ugly comes mainly from a tape that was discovered in a garage; none of the Toronto punk bands ever got a major recording contract, so it is a miracle that this music exists at all. The songs were all written by the band except for the last two cuts that come from their final performance in the winter of 1978, “Hey Little Girl” and “Lust for Life”. “Lust for Life” is the most accessible Iggy Pop song – sometimes misidentified as a Stooges song – and was co-written by Iggy Pop and David Bowie; remarkably, the song was used for several years as the theme song for Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, starting right after Peggy and I had our honeymoon aboard one of their big ships. At the end of that performance, Raymi Gutter smashed his guitar, shook hands with the other bandmembers, and split.
Highlights on the compilation CD are “Disorder”, “You Gotta Be Mean”, “No Place to Go”, “Hell Time”, “Baby You Bug Me”, and “Black Days” (that’s one of the lo-fi songs, but you don’t mind when the music is this good); actually though, this is one of those records that works best as an album.
Their most infamous moment came when a punk rock concert called Outrage was being filmed in Toronto, and the Ugly were excluded from the bill. About midway through the concert, they threw a flaming guitar at the Viletones while they were singing “Danger Boy”. Nazi Dog put out the fire; after a while, he busted up the guitar and threw it into the crowd. But the Ugly had the last laugh when they stormed on stage and snatched up the Viletones’ instruments for an impromptu performance of “Disorder” that lasted less than a minute. After they pulled the plug, Mike Nightmare then fought it out with the Viletones’ Freddy Pompeii until Mike was literally thrown back into the crowd by the bikers who were on security detail. It is all still on the film though, to this day. (Ironically, Mike Nightmare also got beaten up pretty badly by one of the musicians who worked with Chris Spedding on Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds, Phil Lynott; Spedding later remastered their compilation CD Disorder).
(November 2011)
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