Stephen Lee Canner's Page

As mentioned in the last post, in September of 1983 Dave d'Eath and I found ourselves with a gig at a WQAX Street Dance but no band. We'd been improvising sort of post-punk guitar/bass/vocals stuff, sometimes with the help of tape loops and radio static, and had thought that it'd be interesting to do some of this stuff live, so this gig was the perfect chance. I called Nathan Sturm, at that time still living in the dorms at Ashton, pitched the idea to him and he agreed to play drums. On the day… Continue

I neglected to mention in Part 1 of this story that sometime in the fall of '81 someone in the dorm had lent me a mainstream magazine (can't remember which one now) which had a big article, complete with photos, on this new scene in LA called "hardcore". It was a bit sensationalistic and focused on the violence but it fascinated me. I read the article three or four times, gleaning info on bands I'd never heard of like X and the Germs. I later started connecting the dots and realized that I actua… Continue

I thought I'd take a break before doing the final Too Cool saga entry, and inspired by Steve B's "Pre-Bloomington" blog would post something about the days leading up to punk rock followed by the story of Your Real Dad. I don't really remember exactly when I heard the term "punk rock" but I was a very avid reader of Creem and watched the few music TV shows we had in the 70s pretty religiously so my guess is it could've been as early as '76. Back then though I had no context to put it in, but I… Continue

When some people first saw Too Cool in the 80s their first response was "hair band". Yes, we had long hair, but that was arch and intentional. We were trying to set ourselves apart from what everyone else was doing in the punk/indie scene and it was natural for us to gravitate back towards some of our original influences. In some ways that backfired, though. When we looked at ourselves we saw a band drawing on the spirit of The New York Dolls, 60s garage rock, and early 70s glam. When others loo… Continue

By 1985 Garry Finley and I had been talking for several years about putting together an over the top NY Dolls inspired band. We both came from a punk rock background (dating back to the original days of '77/'78) and by the 80s we realized that though we still liked a lot of current punk bands that it had pretty much been done, so we wanted something different. We had made several false starts at having a working band dating back to 1982, first trying to resurrect his high school band The Nipples… Continue