Argh Fuck Kill: The Story of the DayGlo Abortions (30 page)

The DayGlos finally arrived in Vancouver for a wild show at the New York Theatre on September 22nd, 1995. According to superfan Garrett Grant-Downz, the boys whipped the audience into such a frenzy on “Argh Fuck Kill” that three people, including himself, jumped from the balcony into the pit. The two other fans were so badly injured that they were taken away in an ambulance, but Garrett was all right. “Then some fool wearing a Deicide T-shirt stabbed another guy and received a good beat-down by the victim’s friends,” recalls Garrett, who claims to have seen the DayGlos thirty-seven times since 1989. Unlike many other veteran fans of the band, he is not yet dead or in jail. Fans of the legendary band have a tendency to live fast, short lives.

The DayGlos were exhausted from the road and longed to get home to their own beds. Touring was great, but towards the end, things like privacy seemed forever out of reach. Just to sit on the couch and watch TV all afternoon was a luxury they missed, or at least it was for Spud. However, the band still had one more show to play in Vancouver, and it was important to do it right.

Bonehead and Spud were a little surprised to see Mike Anus at the Starfish Room on Saturday, September 23. They invited the lead guitarist backstage, concerned at his haggard condition. They knew Mike was still doing junk, but it was a shock to see what the stuff could do to a person. He had lost weight and his skin was a reptilian shade of green. The ex-DayGlo accepted a beer but hardly touched it. Heroin made booze redundant.

The DayGlos hit the stage that night and gave it everything they had. While Spud still sensed some negativity towards Gymbo, he was happy that most of the fans seemed to accept the new singer. In the pit, the males were as rowdy as ever, crashing recklessly into the girls who clung tightly to the front of the stage. At least the broken glass on the floor made for dandy traction. The boys hammered out the last notes and fled the stage dripping wet. Minutes later, they were back for an extended encore.

Indeed, Gymbo’s presence gave the band an enhanced air of danger. While the pit at a DayGlos show had always been a hazardous place, having Gymbo around practically guaranteed someone would go home with a black eye or a broken nose. Prowling the stage with microphone in hand, the singer looked for all the world like a mugger sizing up his next innocent victim. The little bastards could run but they couldn’t hide.

Backstage after the show, Mike seemed to be having trouble staying awake and nodded out several times. He was obviously very high and could barely talk. During a semi-lucid moment, Mike told Gymbo that he felt Squid wasn’t getting enough recognition. “Mike thought Squid deserved more credit, and no one seemed to give him any,” remembers Gymbo. Mr. Anus, as the reader may recall, is very frugal with his praise, so if he applauds the musicianship of another player, one can be reasonably certain that he does so for good reason. Spud claims that while Squid could mimic Cretin and Mike reasonably well, he wasn’t technically as good as either of them. “He could fake it pretty good, though, and that’s what counted. The fans didn’t notice if he missed a couple notes.” Mike didn’t hang around backstage too long. “He had to leave early,” Spud quips, suggesting that Mike had to “get well.”

The next day, hungover and tired, the band took the ferry home to Victoria, and even Spud had a bed to sleep in that night. Never mind that the vehicle needed to be hosed down with bleach or, better yet, crushed in a compactor. The beast had served the band well and they would keep using it until the wheels fell off—which could happen at any time. It wasn’t as if the DayGlo Abortions had money in the bank for a new vehicle. As always, the group scraped by on promises and handshakes.

Spud rested up for a few days before confronting Mark Franklin about the lack of management. The DayGlos had lost several gigs simply because John was too lazy to send the contracts. Mark sympathized with Spud but could not see an easy solution. At this point the band wasn’t turning enough of a profit to warrant hiring someone to run God Records full-time. Then Spud had an epiphany: Bonehead was unemployed, so why couldn’t Mark hire him through the work incentive program? Hell, the government would even pay most of his wages. The arrangement would be a marriage of convenience for all parties concerned. Mark couldn’t see a downside. What was there to lose?

To this end, Mark gave Bonehead a crash course in the music business and set him up in the little office that housed God Records. The drummer learned readily enough and actually showed an affinity for the work. “He’s a mouth-piece,” says Spud, explaining Bonehead’s natural proclivity for business. The drummer-turned-record label executive was especially pleased to have a 1-800 number that allowed him to place and receive calls worldwide. International sales for the group had been growing steadily, and Bonehead could cultivate business with unlimited access to overseas markets.

Not just that, but Bonehead was now in a position to collect royalty cheques and divide the proceeds. Without turning this book into a smear campaign, at least several bandmembers report that the distribution of funds was somewhat less than equitable. In other words, they claim that Bonehead had short arms and deep pockets when it came to dividing the royalties. Although there wasn’t a great deal of money to divide in the beginning, this issue would eventually cause dissension within the rank and file. For now, the DayGlo Abortions were functionally dysfunctional and all was well.

Anyway, with the rainy season closing in, the DayGlos worked on new songs in Squid’s basement. With the addition of the new members the band entered into a highly creative phase. Not only were Squid, Hung, and Gymbo writing material, but the entire group was also contributing in one form or another. Under these ideal conditions, the new album quickly began to develop. This time, even though they had recorded the last album less than a year earlier, the musicians weren’t as rushed and were able to pay more attention to detail. Some of the songs were already half-written, inspired by life on the road. Touring was good for that.

Meanwhile, The Cretin had also been busy. Free from his duties as a DayGlo Abortion, he was able to pick up a few bucks through various government contracts. One of the contracts involved building a number of remote weather stations for the forest industry, but government funding soon vanished and the work dried up. After that, Cretin lived off his savings and did shows with Colour Out Of Space and Lummox. With his money dwindling away, Cretin and a friend formed a company and began installing BC Hydro Power Smart upgrades to private residences. The money was good, and the pair raked it in with both hands. “They paid us $150 just to replace kitchen and bathroom fans with high-efficiency units, and we could knock them off in about five minutes. Later, we’d do an air-flow chart, pump insulation into the attic, and take home $3000 for two days’ work,” recounts Cretin, grinning at the memory. Sadly, that job also petered out when the contractor supplying the work began to jerk them around. As usual, Cretin turned to his music.

Winter arrived with a vengeance, lashing Victoria with sleet and rain. The boys didn’t mind a little water, and decided that the time had come to record the new album. Again, Scott Henderson was the man and Sea of Shit was the place. The band settled in and got to work. Even though the new guys didn’t quite have the work ethic that Spud and Bonehead possessed, the senior Day-Glos were always on hand to make sure they didn’t slack off too much. As usual, the musicians smoked plenty of Bonehead’s high-grade weed to help with the creative process, and guzzled many gallons of beer to ease the stress. Narcotics were generally frowned upon, but it is possible that a few rails of coke went up a few noses from time to time. Although this wasn’t Mötley Crüe, the boys were not generally adverse to stimulants.

The songs themselves were better arranged and slightly more humorous than the tracks on
Little Man in the Canoe
were. With titles such as “Sperm’s Point of View” and “Double D Diddlers,” the group was as profane as ever, and Sergeant Fitzgibbons must have been gritting his teeth over such nuggets as “Urinal Disc Sandwich” and “Stroke all Day.” While the former sounds like a prank the boys might pull on Bonehead at a truck stop, the latter is self-explanatory. Fitzgibbons, of course, had never masturbated in his life, and even if he had, the officer would never have been so… vulgar as to write songs about the act. That just wouldn’t be right.

As far as the mixing went, Spud was pretty much on his own again, and Scott Henderson intervened only when the head DayGlo asked for help. Squid also wanted to be part of the process, so Spud gave him a copy of the tape and told him to work on it separately. Several days later, when Squid compared his mix to Spud’s, the guitar player agreed that perhaps he’d missed a few things. Spud gave the younger DayGlo a crash course in mixing, and the two put the baby to bed. Unfortunately, this account is unverified and one-sided, as no one seems to know where Squid is these days. No doubt the guitarist will turn up someday with a few things to say.

Gymbo has his own story about the mixing. According to the singer, he and Squid threatened to pull out of an upcoming show in order to force Spud back into the studio to make a change to “Sperm’s Point of View.” Gymbo claims that the bass line was nearly inaudible, giving the song a weak bottom end. The senior DayGlo flatly refused at first, but eventually conceded when he realized that Squid and Gymbo wouldn’t bend. “We felt that we had a responsibility to make the record as good as possible,” says Gymbo Jak, explaining the mutiny. “Spud just wanted to be done with it.”

The final mix was complete but, rather than let Mark Franklin master the tape, the boys elected to listen to it again when they got back, just to make sure they’d done a good job. This might have seemed like a good time to take a break, but instead the band decided to embark on another winter tour. Although the DayGlo Abortions generally stayed close to home during the winter, it just didn’t seem right to sit around when there was money to be earned on the road. Little towns everywhere were open for business these days, and such tours were becoming increasingly lucrative—or at least that was how it looked on paper. Sometimes, the gang arrived home with little more than pocket lint, but it made no sense to sit around when they could be out on the highway with the booze, the girls, and those yummy deli trays. Even Spud could not justify such laziness.

Bonehead got on the horn and quickly pieced together the tour. He sent out the contracts and did all the things a real manager would do. At this point, Bonehead was nudging Spud aside as the de-facto leader of the group, even if Spud wasn’t fully aware of the change. Spud was sick of running the show anyway and was glad to have someone else step up to the plate. Bill Crepell certainly hadn’t worked out, but Bonehead seemed better suited for the job. Spud got himself another beer and dug the remote control out from under the couch cushions. Let Bonehead do all the work.

Soon—all too soon—the DayGlos were ready. Bracing themselves for a long, cold tour, the gang climbed unhappily into the battered Econoline van, wishing that they still had the motorhome. Where would they whack off when the need struck them? The van afforded no privacy.

On the ferry ride over, Bonehead again stocked up on Tabasco Sauce. After a quick show in Vancouver, the boys hit the highway for the journey east. A blast of icy wind rocked the van as they ascended the Coquihalla Highway. Away from the sheltering mountains, the full force of Mother Nature was against them. Although the musicians knew that most of Canada lay buried under a thick mantle of snow, they were not fully prepared for the brutality of winter. In retrospect, the rain back home wasn’t so bad.

The DayGlos plowed through snowdrifts and fought raging head winds as they made the rounds through British Columbia and Alberta. Outside Banff, Spud almost ran over Bigfoot when the hairy creature suddenly darted from a Husky Stop. In this sort of weather, even abominable snowmen needed hot chocolate and maybe a doughnut or two.

Spending so much time in close quarters occasionally led to trouble. Squid, though seemingly harmless and soft-spoken, had a way of provoking Gymbo to the point where the singer would confront Spud and demand explanations for various band policies. After listening to Squid for ten minutes or so, Gymbo would be convinced that Spud and Bonehead were selling him down the road. Spud would fend off these heated diatribes and try not to lose his temper, but sometimes he would also pop his top. “Squid was the sneaky guy stiring up shit in the background,” Spud recalls. “He liked to rile Gymbo up.”

The prairies seemed colder than ever as the DayGlos pushed onwards to Winterpeg. Arriving in the frozen city, they were absolutely amazed that the citizens could survive such inclement weather. The winds howled, the snow fell, and sheets of black ice covered the streets like slippery death. The van, although Spud had wisely equipped it with snow tires, slid crazily because he had little experience driving on ice. The nervous bassist avoided disaster after disaster on the way to Ozzy’s, narrowly missing several vehicles. Somehow, the gang made it to the show and left town the next day with nothing worse than hangovers. Luck was truly on their side.

Thunder Bay was even uglier in the winter. The beer was almost as cold as the parking lot, although the girls were warm. By now, the DayGlo Abortions were beginning to adapt to the frigid climate, but frostbite was still a likely prospect. Only by wearing layers of clothing were the boys able to keep their fingers and toes. On they went, through southern Ontario, and into Quebec. Back home in Victoria, Spud’s TV set waited patiently.