Surfin’ Bird #3

I possess more than a few fanzines, some even from countries besides my own, but I’m pretty sure Surfin’ Bird #3 from late 1979 is my only punk-era Canadian fanzine. Aside from Denim Delinquent and The Pig Paper, I personally don’t know of any others (?) from the pre-punk and punk interregnums. Well, I’m delighted to have this one from Verdun, Quebec in any case; it reinforces strongly what I felt when I was the merch guy for the band Claw Hammer in 1993 during their gig in Montreal: “Whoa, this is like being in a foreign country” – something I really don’t feel in Toronto or Vancouver at all. 

Case in point, their local scene(s), aside from punk bands like Teenage Head (who give the best interview by far in this one) and new wave acts like Toronto’s Martha and The Muffins, are wholly unknown to me. You might have known about the Canadian band Heaven 17 – not to be confused with the English synth-pop duo – but I sure didn’t. Maybe you’ve been a lifelong fan of Segarini and the 222’s and Lorne Ranger and know all about a Jam knock-off band called The Mod, but Surfin’ Bird #3 has provided me with my virgin voyage with all of them. In Verdun and in Montreal, it appears, the battle lines between punk and new wave are not finely drawn; rather it’s disco that is drawn & quartered as the enemy, even as bands that we’d know later as danceable disco-esque hitmakers like Men Without Hats (!) are written up here. 

It’s funny, when I was really young, maybe a year or so after this magazine appeared, I’d buy copies of Billboard Magazine in suburban San Jose, CA and ogle the charts they’d have in the centerspread called “Hits of the World”. It would list the Top 25 in places like New Zealand, or Australia, or England, or Canada. Because the US charts were just so godawful in 1979/1980 – Toto and Donna Summer and Rod Stewart and “Escape (The Pina Colada Song) etc. – I’d look at what was going on in the other English-speaking countries and wonder deeply what Split Enz or The Flying Lizards or Martha and The Muffins sounded like. This was the era when my new wave and punk curiosity was so incredibly high that I’d sit by the radio, scanning the FM dial for stations from San Francisco, and I’d write down the titles of anything that sounded like it might be part of “the new wave”. The very first song I wrote down was Lou Reed’s “Vicious”, so I was spot-on. Not long after, it was Martha and The Muffins’ “Echo Beach”, which most certainly was.

Anyway, here at Surfin’ Bird there’s a sense of a gaggle of big-city individuals (Verdun is a Montreal suburb) taking an us-against-the-world approach to defending and furthering the merits of their scene and worldview, and even if it means driving to Toronto for shows, that’s what needs to be done. Thankfully The Ramones show they’ve gone to is in Montreal, and they score a quickie interview with Dee Dee after the show. He doesn’t say anything outrageous or drugged and they’re left with a “wow, what a great guy, and his wife was so nice too” afterglow. And underscoring the vast metaphorical distance between the US and Canadian borders at this time, they’ve excitedly gotten their hands on the Rock and Roll High School soundtrack, but the film isn’t playing anywhere yet. I did get to see that pretty early and thought it was one of the funniest things I’d ever seen – my mom even loved it, and we’d watch it on cable repeatedly. 

The Surfin’ Bird crew receive a supportive letter to the editor from Al Flipside as well, and this pleases said editors greatly, as they’re already avid Flipside readers. They had every reason to be proud without it, as their newsprint mag and this 3rd and final issue is well laid-out and tightly edited (as these things go), packed with photos and certainly not lacking in unjaded enthusiasm. The very first issue of Surfin’ Bird from 1978 is available here for you to peruse and download should you wish to do so.