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The Viletones
Screamin Fist EP - 7"
Vile - 1977
Michael Panontin
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"The Viletones are not a group of musicians, they are a spectacle."
That is how Globe and Mail scribe Paul McGrath described Toronto's most infamous punk band the day after their debut performance in the basement of the Colonial Tavern on Yonge Street in May 1977.
It was not Toronto's first taste of punk and new wave. The Ramones had played their two scene-starting shows at the New Yorker Theatre the previous September. And the Talking Heads rolled into town in January '77 for a show at the A Space gallery and another the following night at the Ontario College of Art. Locally, the Diodes were already up and running, having played in support of the Heads at the OCA show. But nothing could have prepared uptight Toronto for what they were about to witness that May evening.
Singer Steven Leckie, a.k.a. Nazi Dog, had plastered the city with posters, ensuring that the hip, the bored and the just plain curious would all show up. And he did not disappoint. "Leckie comes out and starts smashing a beer bottle and scraping up his arms," the Diodes' manager Ralph Alphonso would tell Sam Sutherland in his book Perfect Youth, "and he's gushing blood and everyone in the crowd is like, 'Holy Shit!'" The following day the Globe and Mail would feature the group in their Fanfare section with the ominous headline, "Not Them!, Not Here!".
That summer, the Viletones along with the remainder of Canada's punk royalty at the time, the Diodes and Teenage Head, would travel to ground zero in New York City. On a four-night run at CBGB - "Three outrageous punk bands from Toronto, Canada", read the posters - the 'Tones made a similarly strong impression. None other than Lester Bangs, one of punk rock's earliest literary proponents, would later write in the Village Voice, "This guy Natzee Dog [sic] hung from the rafters, crawled all over the stage, and hurled himself on the first row until his body was one huge sore."
There were other trips to the Big Apple, including one outrageous night at Max's Kansas City, when according to the Forgotten Rebels' Chris Houston "Leckie hit an artery and was spouting blood". At another Max's gig, Leckie promised to kill himself on stage. And though he never actually followed through with the threat, he did manage to knock his guitarist Freddie Pompeii unconscious after dropping him from his shoulders in the middle of a song.
Suffice it to say that by the time Leckie, Pompeii, bassist Chris Hate (also Haight) and drummer Motor X returned to Toronto to make their first record, it was something hotly anticipated by the cognoscenti. It's hard to say whether the Viletones' Screamin Fist EP was the first punk record released in Canada. But I'm guessing it was certainly the most talked about.
And rightfully so. The title track is killer punk, and has since become somewhat of an anthem, especially with that menacing bass/drum intro and Leckie's equally scary scowl. You can imagine the sort of impact that a song like 'Screamin Fist' must have had on a local scene hungering for its own voice. Over on the flipside there is more of the same. The sludgy 'Possibilities' eases up on the throttle and is thus a bit of a letdown, but the frantic 'Rebel' sticks to the formula - loud and fast rules! - and is all the better for it.
The Viletones followed up with the 5-song Look Back in Anger EP, and Leckie seemed to be riding high in the saddle. But that's when he took the first of many tumbles. For all his appeal - "He was the closest thing we had to a star," the Toronto Star's Paul Goddard once remarked - a major label deal proved elusive. Their gigs grew increasingly violent, especially with the arrival of an east-end gang of thugs called the Blake Street Boys, who were not above roughing up the occasional unlucky patron. So when the suits finally did show up, they were somewhat taken aback. The Diodes' Paul Robinson summed things up nicely: "I remember all the big people from Warner Brothers coming down to check them out, and just going, 'Oh my god, what is this?'"
What's more, Leckie's Nazi schtick started to catch up with him. As early as June '77, McClean's magazine wrote that "the Dog pulls out a small Nazi naval flag as he sings 'Heinrich Himmler Was My Dad'". The following year he would draw the ire of the notorious - and now-outlawed in the US - Jewish Defence League. After allegedly receiving bomb threats, a clearly contrite Leckie explained to the Toronto Sun, "At first we did it just to shock the old people. And the kids like it. But I'm no Nazi. Nazi Dog was a name to get attention to the band. I can't believe some people really get bothered by it."
Things would get even worse for Leckie. In 1978, Pompeii, Hate and Motor X all conspired to leave the band, quietly forming the poppier and aptly-named Secrets with ex-Diode John Hamilton and leaving their singer high and dry. Undaunted, Leckie reformed the Viletones with a softened-up image and an updated sound, but unfortunately by then punk was starting to lose some of its original swagger to post-punk, new wave and, perhaps most importantly, those younger, up-and-coming hardcore kids.
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The Viletones
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