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Too Much Trouble
A Very Oral History of Danko Jones
By Stuart Berman ECW PRESS
Copyright © 2012 Stuart Berman
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-77090-340-1
CHAPTER 1
MY MAMA MADE ME FOR ONE THING ...
Contrary to popular legend, Danko Jones was not born a lion or raised a devil child. He was simply an only child, born and raised in Scarborough, an eastern-Toronto borough with a reputation for vibrant multicultural strip malls, sprawling subdivisions and producing an inordinate number of famous funnymen (Mike Myers, John Candy, Jim Carrey).
To compensate for a lack of siblings and playmates, the only child will often resort to creating an imaginary friend. But Danko didn't have to go to such extreme measures—at a very young age, he had already found the best bunch of fantasy friends a lonely kid could ask for.
DANKO JONES The first band I ever loved was KISS, when I was six years old. I bugged my mom and she finally let me buy a KISS album at the Music World in Fairview Mall. I chose the thickest record I could find, and it was KISS Alive! And, on the back, there was an address for the KISS Army. I sent a letter and got back five 8 x 10 glossies—four individuals and one group shot—and then two notebooks. And that basically made me a fan for life.
I was drawn to them because I was an only child. They wore make-up, so you didn't know what colour they were, and I used to think they were my brothers; that's honestly what I thought. As a six-year-old kid, I was pretty lonely and I got really attached to KISS.
My dad threw the record out, because I didn't stop playing it and my parents started getting worried. When I was old enough to save up my allowance, I never bought records, I bought cassettes, because I knew my dad couldn't break them over his knee.
Danko's early embrace of KISS schooled him on all of the essential tools needed to become a rock prodigy: the power of persona, a sexualized swagger and an unyielding quest for the ultimate electric-guitar riff, a fascination that would lead Danko through a preteen pop-metal phase (Van Halen, AC/DC, Mötley Crüe and the like) and then toward the more aggressive attack of early Metallica, Slayer and Washington, D.C., hardcore punk. As a non-white, hard rock–loving teenager attending a midtown Catholic high school (De La Salle College) where the goth-pop likes of Depeche Mode and the Cure reigned supreme among the student body, it was natural that the teenaged Danko particularly identified with the ultimate outsiders of 1980s hardcore.
DANKO JONES I had read about Bad Brains in a metal magazine that was raving about this band of four Rastafarian guys. When I got Rock for Light, I realized all bets were off and I just got into all kinds of music. Because Bad Brains would go from a reggae song, like "Rally 'Round Jah Throne" or "The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth," and then they'd go into "Coptic Times" or "Riot Squad" on the same album—that fucked with my sensibilities and everything I had learned up to that point.
Another record I credit for broadening my horizons is Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back—I got into them because they sampled "Angel of Death" by Slayer on "She Watch Channel Zero?!" and, on "Bring the Noise," Chuck D says, "Wax is for Anthrax," a thrash band that I was listening to at the time. And then I saw the video for "Night of the Living Bassheads" on MuchMusic, and it was just so heavy. That actually prompted me to buy the record—"I can't believe I'm buying this rap record, but hey, let's take a chance!" But the Beastie Boys were on [Public Enemy's label] Def Jam, too, and the Beastie Boys sampled Led Zeppelin, and Kerry King from Slayer played on Licensed to Ill and Rick Rubin was wearing a Slayer shirt in their video [for "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party!)"]. You just had to jigsaw puzzle everything together at the time. Back then, there was no internet, there was no MySpace, you couldn't sample songs on iTunes for 40 seconds. You basically had to grope in the dark to figure out which bands were cool and which weren't. The only antennae you used were your ears.
After graduating from high school in 1991, Danko enrolled in the film studies program at York University, which, unlike Toronto's other major post-secondary institutions (the University of Toronto and Ryerson University), was located far outside the downtown core, on the northwestern fringe of the city. With popular local concert venues like Lee's Palace, Sneaky Dee's, the Rivoli and the pre-gentrified Drake Hotel a good hour-long commute away, York's music-loving misfits congregated around its campus-radio station, CHRY. Along with Danko, the early '90s CHRY contingent included future CBC Radio personality Matt Galloway, Sadies guitarist Dallas Good and Stephe Perry, frontman for local hardcore heavies Countdown to Oblivion and a correspondent for notorious American punk zine Maximum Rocknroll.
Compared to Ryerson's CKLN and the University of Toronto's CIUT stations—which functioned more like public broadcasters, with seasoned non-student DJs and talk-radio programming—CHRY boasted a small 50-watt signal that could barely be heard downtown. However, its relatively limited reach allowed the station to be more adventurous in its programming, with a particular focus on the grotty American indie rock that was oozing overground in the wake of Nirvana's mainstream insurrection, on labels like New York's Matador and Crypt Records, Chicago's Touch and Go and Minneapolis' Amphetamine Reptile imprint.
At the time, Canada's major record-label subsidiaries—all of which are based out of Toronto—were seemingly signing up every local indie-rock band they could find, with the hope of discovering the next Nirvana in their own backyard. But CHRY, despite its geographic remove from the downtown music scene, was a fervent champion of those post-hardcore/noise-rock Toronto bands that even the drunkest A&R rep wouldn't touch, like the prog-punk powerhouse trio Phleg Camp. The station provided the perfect environment in which Danko could sate his burgeoning musical appetite for all things ugly and heavy.
DANKO JONES I was already starting to get into crazier shit like the Melvins and Dinosaur Jr. and Butthole Surfers; before the whole grunge explosion, I was already onto Nirvana and Tad and Mudhoney. But when I finally reached CHRY in the fall of '91, everything exploded—I got into the Jesus Lizard and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Pussy Galore, which were bands I had only read about. Back then in Toronto, it was hard to find these albums, and I didn't do mail order. Every single free moment I had between classes I was at the station, listening to records. I'd stay there till late sometimes, until no one was there.
CHRIS ILER (former CHRY DJ, founder of Fans of Bad Productions Records): I used to co-host a radio show called Fast & Bulbous on the Spot at CHRY in Toronto with Stephe Perry. Danko was also a volunteer at CHRY, and he would hang out there like a lot of us, preparing for our shows and basically obsessing over music and devouring the music library. Many of us would later join bands, start zines and labels or promote concerts.
DALLAS GOOD (the Sadies): I think I only hosted one show one time on CHRY. It didn't go as well as I hoped.
MATT GALLOWAY (former CHRY DJ and NOW magazine music critic; current host of CBC Radio's Metro Morning): The great thing about CHRY was our music director and station manager at the time, Gary Wright, was a black dude from Birmingham who had the biggest hip-hop collection in the city, but also loved reggae and loved indie rock and loved jazz and folk and blues. He made it very evident that it didn't matter who you were or what you liked—you could fit in at that station. And the cool thing was people would mix it up: the guys who did the hip-hop show before me would be interested in whatever crazy seven-inches I brought in; the blues guy would be checking out the hip-hop stuff because he was interested in what was being sampled ... like the university itself, CHRY was a pretty diverse place.
As the [noise-rock] scene was starting to develop in Toronto, there was nowhere else that was really playing that kind of music. But once you established that you were a place where people could actually get airplay, then people were really supportive and bands would come up [from downtown] and do interviews in our studio, and the station would host concerts downtown.
DANKO JONES I was never part of one scene—I tried to soak up as much music as I could possibly could. I'd go see a Killdozer show under the Drake Hotel and then the next week I'd be at some basement show in Hamilton [Ontario, located 40 minutes west of Toronto], watching some straight-edge kids beat the shit out of each other, and everyone's wearing vegan shoes. But Phleg Camp was a band I definitely gravitated toward locally. I was more into the local metal scene—bands like Malhavoc and Sacrifice—but there was a time when I worshipped Phleg Camp. I thought they were the best band in the world.
However, when it came time to pitch his own show to the CHRY brass, Danko suggested a program concept that would allow him to indulge in a secret, but no less important, formative obsession.
DANKO JONES Comedy is something that's always been underlying in the band and in my life that I've never really talked about. The comedy [obsession] has been there since I was in grade school—I got Robin Williams' Throbbing Python of Love, Cheech & Chong's Let's Make a New Dope Deal and, obviously, Eddie Murphy's Delirious. And I used to listen to the Sunday Night Funnies on CHUM FM, which introduced me to Steven Wright. I listened to Steven Wright's I Have a Pony in Grade 7. For a kid who was 12, and whose sense of humour hadn't fully developed—because you're still in slapstick world—it forced me to analyze his jokes at an earlier age than I think most do. I didn't get a lot of the humour when I first heard it, but I wanted to understand why everybody was laughing.
Like, it was easy to get Eddie Murphy because he said "fuck" and "dick," but Steven Wright was different.
And then there was Bobcat Goldthwait and Sam Kinison. And in the '80s, there was the stand-up explosion—all these people who are huge now, like Ellen DeGeneres and Norm Macdonald, were on these late-night weekend shows, like An Evening at the Improv. To this day, for me, there's rock 'n' roll and then there's comedy. And there's people who get that comedy is on the same level as rock 'n' roll and there's people who don't. I'll talk about Nick DiPaolo and Nick Swardson in the same way I'll talk about Sonic Youth and Slayer. But I never had the balls to be a stand-up comedian—I think it's the hardest thing.
MATT GALLOWAY I was sitting on the couch in the CHRY production studio with the music director, and Danko showed up and tried to pitch this show. It was like a comedy show—a novelty show but with music. It was so bizarre and so left-field and so unusual—we kind of smiled politely and nodded and almost laughed him out the door. We were terrible authority figures. Good on him for coming and doing that, but he was kind of a no-hoper when he came in initially.
With his comedy hour–hosting dreams cruelly kiboshed, Danko would eventually co-host the tastefully named Seminal Load on Sunday nights from 11 p.m. till 2 a.m.—a thankless time slot, but one that granted him the freedom to kill time however he saw fit, whether it was spinning Kyuss' Welcome to Sky Valley in its entirety, or conducing hour-long on-air interviews with Detroit psychedelic funksters Big Chief. And the show provided Danko with an outlet through which he could assert his deep-seated love of metal at a time when college radio was ruled by the slack-rock stylings of Pavement and Sebadoh.
DANKO JONES We had a hellish time slot, but it also enabled us to fuck around on the air and play whatever the hell we wanted. I was probably stoned for most of the show.
STEPHE PERRY (former CHRY DJ and former member of Countdown to Oblivion and One Blood): Danko and I both did radio shows up at CHRY; in fact, Danko reminded me that I gave him orientation on the broadcast board. My first impression was that he was very quiet. I wasn't sure if I was any good at orienting him on the station equipment, but a few years later I found out he was given a show. One day, I heard that Danko was working on what he called a "KISS-u-mentary." He was armed with a tape recorder, going around amongst the student body asking people for their most memorable moment involving KISS. By the end, he had 18 hours worth of tape, which I think he aired in six consecutive weeks of programming.
MATT GALLOWAY At the same time, Danko was also making these prank phone call tapes, which was some of funniest shit you could ever imagine.
STEPHE PERRY I think the genesis of the Danko Jones idea came from that series of prank phone calls that he used to make. He made cassette copies and sold them at [downtown Toronto record store] Rotate This. I bought a copy. He called High Liner Fish and pretended he was Captain High Liner, demanding his likeness be removed from the packaging. He called a clown [acting] as a clown and creeped her out by wanting to be her friend. He called a dating phone line and pretended he was a girl until he got kicked out. And there was an unreleased tape of a series of calls with a music focus. These are the ones I wished I had heard: calling up magazines and pretending he was Henry Rollins and only demanding to do a phone interview if he could limit his answers to poetry responses.
MATT GALLOWAY [The tapes were] so weird; they were so not your typical crank call. You'd listen to it and laugh and laugh ... but you'd also be thinking, "Why would you do this? How would you think up that you're going to punk somebody in this way?" Everybody thought he was super high.
CHRIS COLOHAN (formerly of Cursed and Countdown to Oblivion; currently with Burning Love): I still own and listen to that prank-call tape at least once a year. Possessed teenager phoning the Jews for Jesus hotline and quoting Master of Puppets in a demon voice as they try to actually exorcise him? Fucking timeless.
STEPHE PERRY This is when we all realized that Danko was a serious talent. I think [the prank-call tapes] is where he learned to develop a stage persona and where Danko Jones was probably hatched.
While the prank-call tapes allowed Danko to showcase his comedic talents, the handsomely attired, loud-mouthed entertainer audiences now know would take some time to emerge. His first attempt at fronting a band was with the short-lived, Ween-inspired concept act the Dapper Dan Trio, actually a duo formed with old high-school friend Paul Ziraldo. However, upon recruiting drummer Josh Rossett, they radically shifted course, reemerging as a pummeling, stern-faced, post-hardcore trio called Horshack—that is, until Danko and Ziraldo reverted back to the duo formation once again to become blues-punk scrappers the Violent Brothers.
DANKO JONES With Horshack, we were trying to do this Phleg Camp-meets-Jesus Lizard thing.
DALLAS GOOD Horshack was pretty directly influenced by Phleg Camp—I think that's fair to say. Of all the indie-rock bands in Toronto [in the early '90s], Phleg Camp were by far the best players.
PAUL ZIRALDO (former member of Dapper Dan Trio, Horshack and the Violent Brothers): That sound became something easy to grasp onto, because it was just around. I thought the music scene then in Toronto was the most alive: there was Phleg Camp, the Satanatras, the Leather Uppers, Life Like Weeds, Rugburn—a lot of good music.
DANKO JONES Horshack started playing Sneaky Dee's on all-ages Sundays, and the booker Lou [Klein] liked us, and he started getting us gigs opening up for these B-level bands, like Wool, Glazed Baby and the Lunachicks. And then we opened for the Jesus Lizard and Girls Against Boys at the Opera House in October '94. I begged [Toronto promoter] Elliott [Lefko, now with Goldenvoice/Coachella] to put us on that bill for months, and he put us on, like, three days before the fucking show. And we were going to open up for the Unsane but we broke up before the actual date. I guess you could say Paul and I broke up with Josh—Paul didn't want to play this kind of music anymore, he wanted to play rock 'n' roll.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Too Much Trouble by Stuart Berman. Copyright © 2012 Stuart Berman. Excerpted by permission of ECW PRESS.
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