We caught up with Toronto based journalist Sam Sutherland to discuss his new book Perfect Youth: The Birth of Canadian Punk:
In the book you call yourself “a child of the ‘80s who clearly fetishizes ‘70s punk.” I was just wondering what got you interested in this era in the first place?
Yeah, I was born in ‘85. I think there’s a natural inclination when you listen to genre like punk and it’s the same if you’re really into impressionist paintings or zombie movies or whatever. You dig as deep as you possibly can into the thing you’re obsessed with. You want to find the originals of the thing that you love so when you listen to punk that means going back and listening to bands from the early scenes in New York or LA or London. For the longest time there wasn’t really any books or movies about the scene in Canada, it just seemed impossible to learn anything about what happened in our own country. So six years ago I started working on this book and since then there has been a tremendous amount of coverage. I think it’s amazing that all this great music is finally getting the attention that it deserves.
What was the first band that got you into punk?
Well I’m a really, really cool guy and the first “punk” band I listened to was Blink-182. The good thing about those bands back then, bands like Blink-182, Green Day and The Offspring, is that they there were always talking about the classics. Like Blink would always mention the Descendents, which gets you into Black Flag, all the stuff that happened in DC and the early New York punk bands. I think that’s a really important thing about popular punk bands and it’s something that people my age sometimes forget. No one starts off listening to Television, you have to start somewhere. So for me, Mark Hoppus and Tom Delonge, thank you very much.
I understand that the book began as a class project at Ryerson. Did you major in journalism or something else?
Yeah, it was Radio-Television Arts and for my last year I didn’t really want to do a video project or anything like that, mostly because I didn’t want to work with anybody. I ended up writing a paper and doing interviews, which was basically the genesis of this book.
Were you already familiar with the bands that you covered? Or did you end up discovering most of them throughout the process?
There was definitely a lot of discovery. I was a fan of Teenage Head, the Pointed Sticks and D.O.A. who are some of the bigger bands in the book. But one of the best parts of putting this together was finding all of these new bands. I didn’t know much about what was happening in Ottawa, Regina or Saskatoon. And when I was putting this together I learned about some great bands that maybe only recorded two songs, but they were fucking awesome. The Bureaucrats from Ottawa have a song called “Feel the Pain” that I think is as good as anything the Pointed Sticks ever did. Finding out about a band like that and the Extroverts from Regina, it was incredibly rewarding because now you have all these new favourite bands.
What was the easiest thing about putting this book together?
I think in a vague but really important way, just being exciting about it every single day. This project was huge, it took me six years. You kind of have to be psyched on it every single day that you wake up or else you will never, ever finish it. It takes so much energy, so much time, so much effort. The reward is intangible, it’s not a bunch of money or universal acclaim. For me these are bands that I love and even though working on this was difficult, it was also exciting and it was always in interesting process I was happy to take on every day.
What was the hardest thing about putting this book together?
Without a doubt I think the most difficult thing was just narrowing it down and figuring out which bands to actually write about. If you tried to write about every band making music during that time in Canada you’d end up with an encyclopedia that would stretch out over multiple volumes. It sucks because when you’re the one making those decisions, you know you’re bestowing a level of importance on some bands. So when you don’t include another band you’re worried that it’s sort of like saying that they didn’t matter, which isn’t necessarily true. There are people who I interviewed for the book, but never made it in because the interviews didn’t fit with the story I was trying to tell. You’re telling the story of other people’s lives and it was really difficult to make those decisions when I loved the band and talking to those people. But at the same time I did not want to write a book that’s 3000 pages, I wanted to write a concise story about the era. You just kind of hope in the end that people don’t think you’re a huge jerk.
I know it’s probably hard to pick, but does any interview stand out to you in particular?
I’m sure I do. My favourite interview was with someone who gave secondary stories and that was Duff McKagan from Guns N’ Roses and The Fartz, which was his old punk band. I was covering SXSW for work and I just sort of mentioned to him that I was working on the book. He lived in Seattle and I knew he was familiar with bands from BC like the Pointed Sticks, D.O.A. and the Subhumans. He just goes off talking about Teenage Head, D.O.A. and all these bands and I’m just thinking ‘I’m talking to Duff McKagan from Guns N’ Fucking Roses right now.’ That kind of sticks out in my head because I was just hanging out in Austin, Texas with this guy who was in music videos I watched as a kid. And we were just talking about some punk band from Hamilton, Ontario. That just completely blew my fucking mind.
Did you have the chance to do any traveling for the book?
Unfortunately with anything punk related there’s not a ton of money so most of the interviews were done by phone. I drove up to Hamilton a lot which is about 45 minutes outside of Toronto. A lot of the other cities I’ve had the chance to visit previously. I wasn’t able to go to Winnipeg to talk to anybody in person, but I’ve been there before and was able to check out the Royal Albert.
Lastly, would you ever consider writing another book about some of the more recent eras of Canadian punk?
Yeah, absolutely. I’ve spent most of my life since high school until today writing about music, specifically punk, and specifically trying to champion different Canadian bands. There’s a lot of other stories that still haven’t been told here. It’s kind of crazy how much is in the book, but how much more is still left on the floor. I think a lot of the second wave Canadian bands are incredible and fascinating. You’ve got a band like The Nils from Montreal, who was an influence on everyone from Superchunk to the Goo Goo Dolls. And you’ve got a band like Propagandh,i who formed in the ‘80s and is one of the greatest skate punk/thrash punk bands ever to grace the face of this fucking Earth. I loved putting this book together and I’d love to do something to follow it up in some capacity.
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Rise Against - 05.22.13