{"id":1709,"date":"2017-09-12T09:53:28","date_gmt":"2017-09-12T13:53:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/?page_id=1709"},"modified":"2019-11-26T12:47:59","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T17:47:59","slug":"the-dishes-open-up-qsw-to-new-music","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/the-dishes-open-up-qsw-to-new-music\/","title":{"rendered":"the Dishes open up QSW to new music"},"content":{"rendered":"

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[This is the fourth section of the blog post \u201chow the Queen Street West scene began, pt. 2: OCA bands\u201d<\/a>]<\/i><\/p>\n

On September 24, 1976, the Ramones played Toronto for the first time and blew people\u2019s minds. Seven months previously, the Dishes<\/a> secured a residency at the Beverley Tavern, which till that point had only haphazardly booked live music.<\/p>\n

At nine o\u2019clock a horrible country and western band would come on. I just realized, Wait a minute, we <\/i>could start putting on shows here. So I approached the manager and the Dishes started playing there in early 1976. [Steven Davey, quoted in Worth 2011: 36]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Ramones concert and the Dishes residency are equally important to the full-blown emergence of the punk and new wave music scene on Queen Street West, the former as proverbial inspiration, the latter as oft-forgotten precondition. In my last post I introduced the Dishes as a band whose suburban origins fit the pattern typical of the Thornhill sound. (The band\u2019s 2002 anthology CD reserves final thanks to \u201cthe long-suffering Farr family and Buttons the Boston terrier for the use of the rec room.\u201d) Here I focus on how they went further than any other Thornhill band before them to lay the foundation for Toronto\u2019s 1970s-80s music scene.<\/p>\n

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What QSW was like then<\/i><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve previously made note of the generally industrial character and largely immigrant population of the Queen Street West neighborhood that lay just south of the OCA. To get a better sense of the streets on which first art spaces and later music venues began to thrive in the second half of the 1970s, people who were there recall what they remember.<\/p>\n

The street was really bad to drive on because of the streetcars; it was all broken up, so most people who drove downtown would avoid it. [John Hamilton, quoted in Worth 2011: 34]<\/p>\n

At the time Queen Street West, where the Beverley Tavern was, there was a chicken processing factory next door which added to the ambiance of the place. People would be chopping the heads off chickens with the door open. [Ken Farr, quoted in Worth 2011: 37]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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The Beverley Tavern<\/p><\/div>\n

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Chicken processing factory next door to the Beverley Tavern<\/p><\/div>\n

Places like The Rex and the Bev were mostly habituated by older local gentlemen who’d smoke and drink the quart sized bottles of beer you could only get in bars. The neighborhood was decidedly working class at best in the 70s. There is a large public housing project situated directly north of Queen and west of Spadina. The Fred Victor Mission and The Salvation Army are also in the neighborhood. For good reason! [Scott Davey]<\/p>\n

I don’t remember, when I was first living there, it feeling hip. I just remember it feeling very student<\/em>\u2026 When I was a student, I was unaware of people having studios [around QSW]. I lived in a rooming house, and my studio was my bedroom\/studio. [Barbara Astman]<\/p>\n

And you know, the great thing about that new wave era in the late 1970s in Toronto is that vintage \u2014 all the clothes were available new, you know? They were old stock. You know, the vintage stores had bought out old stock from other stores. So you could get great clothes, cheaply. [Philip Monk]<\/p>\n

I\u2019d go on Queen Street and it was all greasy spoons, and the bookstore \u2014 the Peter Pan Bookstore, right next to where the Peter Pan Restaurant still is today. The Peter Pan Bookstore is one of those places where MacLeod and I went in 1968 to get Howl<\/i> and On the Road<\/i> and The Soft Machine<\/i> and books like that, that we liked to read. [Owen Burgess]<\/p>\n

On Queen Street at the same time, there was a big electronics store opened up called Arkon Electronics… And then there was Active Surplus, and then there was a computer store as well. So three places opened up on Queen West serving this sort of hobbyist\/emerging computing thing at the same time as the Queen West restaurants were opening and the clubs were just sort of beginning \u2014 speakeasies, places to play, new, you know, art collectives. Just all kind of started the same year, it seems\u2026 But still mostly, you know, furniture and appliance stores, you know, this kind of thing. Hungarian restaurants, bacon and egg places. [Ian Mackay]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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The Bev<\/i><\/p>\n

The Dishes can take considerable credit for launching the QSW music scene because they convinced the proprietors of the Beverley Tavern to take a chance on genuine up-and-coming bands. Live music would happen upstairs, while downstairs the \u201crubby\u201d bar (I learned a vivid new adjective in the course of this research) would serve the Bev\u2019s regulars.<\/p>\n

We had to start the Beverley. To play in this city anyway you had to be in the Musicians\u2019 Union to play, or so they told you, and you had to be represented by an agent if you wanted to play one of the eight clubs in town that put bands on. It was closed to us; there was nowhere to play. So when we saw Rough Trade<\/a> at Grossman\u2019s, and then they started playing Tuesday nights in a discotheque when things were normally closed, and then coupled with everything that was happening in New York, it made us say, \u201cWell, we\u2019ve got this place with cheap beer, and art students are a block away.\u201d
\nJohn Hamilton\u2019s first band [the Daily Planet] played at the Beverley before the Dishes did, but they were terrible. They played in front of an empty audience. They were sort of a half-bar band, like they played all covers and then they did a couple of their own songs. But they were long-haired and there was nothing new about them. But they did play there before the Dishes. [Steven Davey, quoted in Worth 2011: 37]<\/p>\n

You know, my father used to go to the Beverley, so it was always there. When I used to come home he\u2019d go, \u201cWhere did you stay out till two in the morning?\u201d Because Toronto closes at eight o\u2019clock at night, right? And I said, \u201cThere\u2019s this place on Queen Street called the Beverley Tavern.\u201d He goes, \u201cUpstairs?\u201d And I thought, Well, he doesn\u2019t hang out with the Dishes or anything. But he used to go there after work years earlier. [music writer Gary Pig Gold, quoted in Worth 2011: 37]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Dishes made an extraordinary splash among students, hipsters, artists, and young denizens for their clever, outr\u00e9 glam music and presentation, as well as their confident amateurism. By the time the Ramones concert in September 1976 lit the fuse for Toronto\u2019s punk explosion, many QSW scenesters had already received the message that they too could form a band and, with some luck, get a gig at the Beverley.<\/p>\n

The Dishes became wildly<\/em> popular. They were huge. I loved going to see those guys. I really did. I mean, I mixed sound for them a few times and stuff, but really, the band was just great. It was really, really good. They played well put-together sarcastic humorous stuff. I mean, any band that does a song about Richard Speck, the guy who mass murdered nurses and things like that \u2014 that doesn\u2019t sound so good coming out of my mouth now. Back in the day we thought it was really funny. [John Corbett]<\/p>\n

We played an entire evening to just John Corbett once! I asked him how he liked the show \u2013 he said it was great and we sounded exactly like we sounded in the rehearsal basement. So the entire audience was pleased that night. [Tony Malone]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n