Five Hundred

Time to talk old records again. You young motherfuckers out there without even a small record collection might want to go patch up your body armour or something.

One of the funnest of Dope City's old punk rock outfits were the Enigmas. Like their more notorious and more successful contemporaries, the Enigmas were keen to give their audience a laugh and a laugh went a long way to surviving the economic depression underway in the early '80s. If we did not have the laughs to get us through that time it would not have been the Squamish Five that made our crowd more evil than we already were: it would have been the Squamish Five Hundred. The laughs, best as I can remember, which is not too well, were provided by their outgoing singer Paul. He is the sexy ass motherfucker dancing in his kilt featured a couple posts back.

Paul was also one of the old punks who spent a lot of time stirring up the crowd when he was not on stage himself. I prided myself on my ability to get a crowd going as well and considered Paul a brother, a brother riot instiller. Punk rock without an apeshit crowd is every bit as boring as Pink Fucking Floyd.

One sunny day, a day I phoned the sawmill I was working in and told the boss (cough, cough, fuck you) I was sick, I ran into Paul riding a rattly old BSA. We ended up getting pretty wasted that day. I can still see us speeding across Bored Street Bridge at 90 mph on our bikes. I may not have been sick when I phoned in that morning but I was sure sick when I showed up for work the next day.

The record was released in 1983. The first song on it is Teenage Barnacle, one of the band's better songs. It begins with some bubbly sounds which I have just now realised must be the sound of a water pipe in action.

Great band, great record, great memories, great water pipe.