The great turnout was really no surprise. The Bunchofuckingoofs have a reputation that goes well beyond their music, and are a key piece to Canada's punk history, which Morton first documented in 1989 while working for the NewMusic.
Dirty, Drunk and Punk is light on editorializing and heavy on quotes from the major players in the Goofs' cirlce. Beautifully laid out and full of photographs, it's part coffee table book, part contained chaos.
I had the chance to sit down and talk to Morton about the making of Dirty, Drunk and Punk. There was so much to talk about that I'm making this one a two-parter.
Liz Worth: Let’s start with the obvious: why do a book on the Bunchofuckingoofs?
Jennifer Morton: The Goofs are just a great, great story, like a great Toronto story. It’s almost ficition. You can look through the book and go, "this can’t be real. This is unbelievable. This is outrageous."
And I love that they actually ended up by being outside of society and rejecting mainstream society, they ended up creating their own world, their own sense of family and their own rules and their own way of living, which most of them are pretty loyal to to this day.
And also, what initially really attracted me back in 1989 for NewMusic, was that they were such a creative group. They did t-shirt printing, they did their own tattoos, they had the band. And they were political.
And the other thing about how creative they were is how they lived. They actually built forts that you couldn’t get into. The cops couldn’t get into, skinheads couldn’t get into. Booby-trapped, you know? So you’d get electficied if you came late at night.
And they’d decided to live in these lofts, before loft living, where they built their beds so high so their dogs could sleep underneath and the shock grates that went around and locked the beds at night, so that they could have a bed whenever they felt like it. It wouldn’t be clean but it would be theirs.
Kensington Market was the most ethnic mix in the city to live, and they were accepted here and protected it, it was their home and they were safe and no one came here to threaten them, really, and they could do their own thing. Back in the day the cops weren’t on bicycles going up and down the street patrolling it, so it was really their thing, like Fort Knox.
It’s kind of cool. It’s cool that they ever got a place to live. Today, I don’t think you could be a Goof.
LW: I’ve never thought about that, whether you could duplicate it now.
JM: First of all, rent in Kensington is too expensive, and I don’t think you’d find a landlord who would rent to 20 guys, ha ha ha. If you want to run a boozecan 24-hours a day your chances would be pretty slim.
LW: At your launch, and also in the introduction of your book, you used the word “infiltrated” in talking about getting into the Goofs circle to document their story. That word makes me think of being on the outside – did you feel like an outsider when you first started interviewing them?
JM: Well, yeah. I didn’t go to a ton of punk shows growing up. I’m not mainly a follower of music. I’m older. I’m not older than Steve – Steve’s older than me, ha ha ha –
LW: - We’ll make sure we get that on tape –
JM: So I do feel like an outsider. I felt like media scum, sort of, in 1989, and really found that having a camera was tricky, especially in terms of how much they would let me in.
Doing the book, I thought I’d be able to get a different story that I wasn’t able to get in 1989 and actually have them talk openly to me, which I think I got, and I think obviously it’s a different time for them and they wanted to tell their story.
But I definitely feel like I am an outsider. I didn’t hang at the Fort. I didn’t go to the boozecan; even after meeting them they wouldn’t let me in at night.
LW: Oh really?
JM: Yeah. I didn’t have anybody really in that scene to say I could tag along behind. It’s funny, I have four brothers and one of my brothers said, “I went to the Fort and I was scared,” ha ha ha.
And most people, like Rick McGinnis, who hung around the Goofs all the time and is in the book a lot, he said the other day he never went to the Fort after 7pm, and that’s a guy who was in the scene.
So yes, I was definitely an outsider, but they’re my friends now.
LW: So how did you gain their trust in the beginning?
JM: In the beginning I was always doing the underground beat. I started slowly and hung around.
LW: So you didn’t just show up one day with a camera, then.
JM: No, and I’m pretty aggressive on that front, usually, but I approached Steve [Goof] first and once I got his approval I was pretty much in.
And for the book, it worked out really well because I came to the Market to look for him. It took me about a week to find him; I hadn’t seen him in years, 10 years, and I thought I’d do a photographic essay on him, to follow up.
And then he said he wasn’t really sure what was going on his life. In hanging out with him, he started showing me he’d kept everything; Steve is an archivist. He has everything. When I realized everything was so well-preserved, these incredible photographs, I started thinking okay, there’s a book here.
LW: Did you feel like you were rebuilding trust, and gaining new trust?
JM: The question about trust is interesting because it was gained by giving me the next guy’s phone number, that kind of thing. I even called a couple people who lived at home and their mothers even said, “Does Steve approve?” and they wouldn’t pass the message on if he hadn’t.
Everyone’s always concerned about Steve’s approval: did he know I was doing this, was he on board.
Once the thing was really rolling and really happening then people felt comfortable and started providing me with phone numbers, but it was a little bit of information at a time.
Stay tuned for Part Two of my interview with Jennifer Morton when we talk more about the process behind her new book, and whether she would ever let her daughters hang out at Fort Goof. In the meantime, you can learn more about Dirty, Drunk and Punk at http://www.dirtydrunkandpunk.com/
post the other half NOW!!!
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