"Dirty, Drunk, and Punk: The Twisted Crazy Story of the
Bunchofuckingoofs", a new book that traces the history of Toronto's most notorious punk band, has hit book shelves to
rave reviews. The book, researched and written by Torontonian
Jennifer Morton looks at how the Bunchofuckingoofs grew into the stuff of legend after
establishing Fort Goof, a series of club houses, speakeasys, music
venues and squats that took over Kensginton market in the early 1980s.
"I
grew up in the Goofs era, saw them several times at venues like Larry's
Hideaway, went to a few late night booze-cans at Fort Goof, and had a
good friend who dropped out and more or less moved in with them for a
while, and Dirty, Drunk and Punk feels like a true and real account of
the band and their weird, storied, anarchic, nihilistic history."
"The
thing that made the Goofs such a force was their blend of
out-of-control, violent insanity (they'd smash TVs on stage, open beer
bottles with chainsaws, dive off Fort Goof into the mountain of empty
beer cans in the back yard, get into chain-fights with Nazi skinhead
raiders) and their strong ethic of mutual aid, compassion, and social
justice. Crazy Steve Goof, the band's founder and non-leader, ran for
city council twice, led a campaign to get hard drugs out of Kensington
Market, and took in waifs and screwups by the hundreds."
"Dirty,
Drunk and Punk's story is told on a backdrop of photos, gig sheets,
fliers, news clippings and other detritus and ephemera, artfully
collaged behind text that has the screw-you madness of punk band
fliers. Morton interviews the Goofs, their friends, their enemies, the
law, their hangers-on (even my friend who ended up living with the
band), and develops a kind of collective memoir of the band and the era
they represented� Dirty, Drunk and Punk is a fantastic trip through the
story they made for themselves."
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Boingboing