Argh Fuck Kill: The Story of the DayGlo Abortions (40 page)

Three encores later, the battered and bruised fans began to limp from the venue. Plow, who, along with his other duties, also worked the merch table, was startled to see a young man with serious facial injuries stagger towards him. “Here’s this kid who got the shit kicked out of him by the band, and not only does he stay for the show, but he drops seventy-five bucks at the merch table!” exclaims Plow, still trying to understand what it means to be a diehard fan of the DayGlo Abortions. They are a breed unto themselves.

The new CD was selling well, and the boys were pleased that
Holy Shiite
sounded even better than they’d hoped it would. Blurton had done a fine job of mixing. With only three days off in two months, the tour was gruelling and, as always, the band seemed to stop in every little town with a population of more than 5,000. Why did the kids keep coming year after year? Even Cretin couldn’t understand the band’s longevity.

Next stop: Fredericton, New Brunswick. The show was a blast, but the band learned that the authorities on Prince Edward Island had forced the venue to cancel the show, which was to have taken place the next day on September 11th. This date obviously had special meaning to the band and would have fit the theme of their new album perfectly, but the spoilsports in PEI may have feared that the boys would embark on a punk rock jihad of their own. At any rate, the bar owner in Fredericton hired the DayGlos for an extra show, so the night wasn’t a total loss.

After that, the band hit Moncton and Quebec City before reaching Montreal. The show at Foufounes Electriques was as packed as ever, and madness was in the air. Mr. Plow, who had been telling audiences that Bonehead was his father, got up and did his profane acoustic act to scattered applause and the odd catcall. Those who actually listened to the lyrics could be seen laughing hysterically. Sip Yek Nom were up next.

Sip Yek Nom (monkey piss spelled backwards) were a peculiar and politically-incorrect band that were a little too original for the average punk rocker. While French punks could appreciate the cheesy organ that Sip Yek Nom used to unique effect, the rest of the country didn’t really know what to make of them. “Half the crowd would go out for a smoke when they played. They just didn’t get it,” Mr. Plow recalls. Sip Yek Nom dared to be different, and for that they paid a price.

Gymbo did not burst spontaneously into flames, but Foufounes Electriques had recently installed a new PA system and the mix was excellent. “I’ve never heard the DayGlos sound that amazing. Everything was dialled just perfectly,” Mr. Plow recalls. Sadly, this success was followed by a terrible run of bad luck for Jesus Bonehead.

Rylan Goudreau of Sip Yek Nom explains what happened next: “After the show, everyone was getting loose and drinking beer as the place closed. People were leaving, and Bonehead was hanging out at the bar when, unfortunately, somebody ripped off his backpack. Not such a big deal, unless you happen to have all the money you’ve made on the tour in the backpack, which he did. Out of fear of infuriating The Cretin, Bonehead swore us all to secrecy. The next day, after a vigourous search of the streets, cold reality set in. With everyone’s head hung low (except Murray’s), we drove to the next show in St. Hyacinthe. As we rolled into town, we decided to pull over and buy some fresh fruit. Bonehead chose a nice big orange and, while reaching for some change, got stung on the finger by a wasp that had crawled into his pocket. The cry of Bonehead could be heard for blocks, and he was very concerned that the wound would hinder his drumming abilities. We found the venue, which, of course, was on the second floor. While carrying our stuff up a long flight of stairs, I accidentally hit Bonehead’s elbow with a box of merch. At this point, Bonehead was pushed to the edge, so he grabbed a slice of pizza and tried to relax in a private booth. Resting his head on the wall behind him, he took a deep breath. One can only imagine what thoughts were passing through his head at that time. Perhaps he was wondering how to tell Murray about the backpack, or perhaps he was wondering if pepperoni was the right choice—that maybe he should have gone with the Hawaiian. Whatever it was, his concentration was suddenly broken when a speaker mounted on the wall above broke free and landed quite squarely upon his skull.”

Jesus Bonehead somehow got through the show and his luck slowly began to improve. He didn’t give Cretin the bad news for several days. Naturally, the guitarist was very upset but the tour continued, and it was fortunate that Mr. Plow still had the merch money from Montreal. For the stalwart DayGlo Abortions, who had survived worse disasters in the past, this was just another bump in a long and often tortuous road.

The band hit every stop on the way home. Road-weary and exhausted, they finally reached British Columbia and began the long haul up the icy highway to Roger’s Pass. With Mr. Plow driving and Bonehead riding shotgun, the van struggled to climb the mighty mountain range. Cretin didn’t think that bad road conditions made the drive interesting enough, so he took a handful of magic mushrooms and laid down on a bench seat. Plow, meanwhile, was busy trying to keep the van from sliding off the mountain. White-knuckling it all the way, he crept along, focussing intently on the slippery highway ahead. Jesus Bonehead also stared fixedly at the road, as if his additional concentration would somehow stop them from sliding off a cliff. The light snowfall became heavier.

Then, like a spectral wraith in sunglasses, Cretin rose up behind Plow and Bonehead. The guitarist gazed out the window at the falling snow, silently taking in the sheer cliffs and the precipitous road ahead. “Wow,” the singer said at last. “I dunno if it’s the mushrooms or what, but it looks to me like a buncha snow is falling!” Bonehead and Mr. Plow just looked at each other and shook their heads. What was there to say?

As summer slowly turned to fall, Cretin’s marriage to Angie continued to deteriorate. Part of this was due to financial concerns, which made even small problems seem bigger than they really were. Cretin worked part-time when he could and played every available gig, but was often short of funds. Under pressure to provide for his family, he was beginning to feel the strain.

Despite the money problems, there were bright spots in Cretin’s life as well. The bond he had formed with his oldest daughter Paris made him feel that he was doing something right. Even though the girl had dropped out of school to become a famous punk rocker, Cretin was not unhappy with her plans. Other parents would have flipped, but the patriarch accepted the news with stoic aplomb. “Paris became my sidekick and protégé for about six-months or so,” says Cretin, as if this were the sort of thing every father wished for his daughter. To most, the situation might seem like the stuff of reality TV but, for Cretin, his daughter’s goals seemed perfectly logical. What famous punk rock dad wouldn’t want his offspring to follow in his footsteps?

Under Cretin’s careful tutelage, Paris progressed rapidly. The teenager had an ear for music and learned the guitar without much difficulty. Instead of teaching Paris “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” Cretin instead showed the girl how to play “Into the Void” by Black Sabbath. More incredibly, Cretin demonstrated the song on the piano and Paris transposed it onto the guitar herself. After that, the capable pupil quickly learned the Beatles song “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).” “She was phenomenally talented,” Cretin says proudly.

Money problems continued to plague The Cretin.
Holy Shiite
was selling well, but he hadn’t received any royalties. Not just that but, according to Cretin, Bonehead and Rancid Randy withdrew an offer to work with them at Old Nick’s, leaving the singer desperately broke. Christmas came and went, but there was no joy in the Acton household that year. Cretin and Angie were still fighting, and the situation would only worsen.

Cretin’s foul mood may have been a contributing factor when trouble at home boiled over just days after Christmas. According to Cretin, Paris and Angie got into a heated argument that culminated with Angie drawing back her fist to strike the teenager. Paris retaliated with a solid right-left uppercut combination that knocked her mother to the floor. “Paris had been trained by her brother Justin, and she’d been boxing behind the school at the railroad tracks at lunchtime for money,” says Cretin. Then, because he’d promised to kick Angie out if she got violent again, the DayGlo frontman sent his wife to her mother’s house in a taxi. “I had to draw the line somewhere,” he explains. “We just couldn’t keep going the way we were.”

Touring was the last thing on Cretin’s mind, but the DayGlos had already agreed to return to Australia. Cretin decided to go ahead with the plan, just so he could keep all the money to help make up for
Holy Shiite
royalties he still hadn’t received. “I figured those guys could go fuck themselves, but now I wish that I’d stayed home,” he says with the 20/20 accuracy of hindsight. The rest of Cretin’s fragile world would soon come crashing down.

As the singer tried to pick up the pieces of his shattered life, the DayGlos prepared to tour. Paris had been talking about changing her surname so hers would be the same as her father’s, whereupon the patriarch joked that he wanted to change his last name to “Fuck You Pigs.” The night before he left, Cretin had those words tattooed on his belly. “I went upstairs and showed Paris and she laughed and laughed. I told her I loved her, and that I’d be back soon. Everything was going to be all right.”

Though they rarely went that long without playing a show or two, the boys had not rehearsed in nearly three months. Gymbo arrived from Toronto and the DayGlos managed to squeeze in three or four practices before travelling to Vancouver for a show at the Astoria Hotel on January 26th. Wendy Thirteen had been evicted from the Cobalt for code violations, and the Astoria was her new venue. The high-energy show was as crazy as usual, and Gymbo poured Jack Daniels instead of beer into the mouths of thirsty fans, just to make sure they were extra drunk. His plan worked, and no one seemed to notice that the boys were a bit rusty. What did it really matter?

After drinking all night, the boys slept for a few hours before setting off for a show in Whistler with SNFU. Willy and a friend got lost on the way and arrived a bit late. “The place was fucking packed, and Chi Pig was just as weird as I imagined he would be,” recalls Willy Jak. Whatever could he possibly mean?

From Whistler, the band doubled back to Vancouver Island for a show with Alcoholic White Trash in Nanaimo. The next day Willy, Cretin, and Bonehead took the ferry to Vancouver. Afraid that Bonehead or Gymbo would be turned back in the United States, the band stopped over in Hong Kong instead of LA. The DayGlos finally landed in Sydney, Australia on February 9th, 2005, after twenty-three hours in the air. Because the bandmembers went their separate ways at customs and pretended not to know each other, Nigel, disguised in a grey wig and a frumpy old dress, was able to surprise them all separately. “That guy is a freak!” laughs Gymbo.

Despite the hilarity of seeing Nigel in old lady drag, reality set in for Cretin when he called Paris from the airport. The guitarist was shocked when Angie answered the phone. His estranged wife informed him that Paris was locked in a psychiatric hospital and wouldn’t speak to anyone. According to Cretin, Angie had taken everything worth taking from the house, even the dog. Not just that but, after plundering his marijuana crop of mature buds, Angie told her husband’s parents about the grow show, and they in turn called the cops. Now his youngest daughter Mekare was with Angie, who was in the process of filing restraining orders against her musician husband to prevent him from seeing his kids. In one fell swoop, the guitarist lost everything he held dear. Gymbo remembers how Cretin reacted to the news: “He went into the music room and sat in the dark with a big bottle of booze listening to death metal. We left him alone because there was nothing we could say or do.”

Despite this devastating turn of events, the band proceeded with the tour. The first date, with Vicious in Brisbane, felt empty because the club was so large, even though there were a good number of unruly fans in attendance. The boys were gratified to learn that the kids already knew most of the songs from
Holy Shiite.
The DayGlo Abortions were truly internationally famous.

From Brisbane, the band toured down the Gold Coast, with Vicious travelling in a separate vehicle. The gig that night was much better than the first, even if it had been billed as Vicious’s last show ever. If the Australian punks were anything like their North American counterparts, they would play many more “final” shows. Marketing ploys are useful everywhere, not just in Canada.

Cretin tried to get on with it, but kept thinking about his daughters. How could he win them back? To supplement his income, Cretin sold Lummox CDs and a live DayGlo Abortions CD, which featured Blind Marc and John London on drums. That way, Bonehead would not be able to lay claim to any portion of the profits. Cretin now felt that being a DayGlo meant every man for himself. “I needed money too,” he says, explaining his newfound entrepreneurial spirit.

The band celebrated several days off with a barbecue at Gordo’s, whom the band had met on a previous tour. When Nigel cut himself on a broken beer bottle, he taped a plastic bag over his wounded hand that quickly filled with blood. Nigel and Willy skated to the store, causing citizens to gawk openly. “The scene was straight out of
Suburbia,”
recalls Willy Jak. Cutting through a field on the way back, they bumped into a hornet’s nest, suffering a number of stings in the process. And this would not be Nigel’s last mishap.

The relationship between Gymbo and Cretin continued to sour when the stocky Portuguese told an associate not to score more speed for the guitarist. “Cretin was fucking pissed,” recalls Gymbo. Under attack, Gymbo began to berate Cretin over his marriage to Angie, describing in detail the destruction the relationship had caused. The singer shrugged it off and defended his drug use. “He was trying to tell us that speed isn’t harmful, but we’d just laugh at him,” Gymbo claims. Be that what it may, but Gymbo was not endearing himself to the DayGlo hierarchy. The repercussions, when they finally came, would change the group forever.