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Amerigo Maras and Bruce Eves
Raw / War - 7"
Crash 'n' Burn - 1977
Michael Panontin
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Easily the rarest punk artifact to come out of Canada, the 'Raw' / 'War' seven-inch was the brainchild of Toronto conceptual artists Amerigo Maras and Bruce Eves, who founded the Centre for Experimental Art and Communication, a sort of grittier alternative to General Idea's more glam/gay work. As Eves explained in Liz Worth'sTreat Me Like Dirt , "There was the whole A Space, General Idea crowd and then there was the whole CEAC, leftist politics, gay liberation stuff at the other end, butting heads."
Maras and Eves would eventually let the basement of their building on Duncan Street to the Diodes, who transformed the space into the by now mythical Crash 'n' Burn club in the summer of 1977. It was around this time that the band, along with singer Mickey Skin of the all-girl group the Curse, were sort of corralled by the artists into contributing to what was essentially an issue of the CEAC's newsletter. "They [the CEAC] wanted the Diodes and the Curse to be political, and manipulated 'Raw' / 'War' to this end," the Diodes' Paul Robinson recalled. "It all seems a bit contrived now, but it was interesting and very them."
'Raw' is exactly that. After a very punk-rock opening of "One, two three, four, five", it features thirty-second blasts of crashing, if a tad amateurish, Stooges-like guitar chords, interspersed with Maras and Eves' polemical observations. Over on the flip, we have more of the same, only this time without the music. Eves and then Maras read what feels like a political manifesto - bits like "We see social struggle as cultural struggle" and "Does a repressive society reproduce repressive social models?" - with Skin in the background snarling, as if in response, a litany of gems like "Stick it up your fucking ass!" and "You're the scum of the earth!".
Skin and the Curse would go on to further infamy the following year with their controversial 'Shoeshine Boy' single, while the more focused, careerist Diodes would stake out the fame side of the equation with a cover of the Cyrkle's 'Red Rubber Ball' and the pop-punk anthem, 'Tired of Waking Up Tired'.
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