Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Liz Worth: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1854

Episode Date: February 24, 2026

In this 1854th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with Liz Worth about her life in music journalism, her definitive book about Torontos' punk scene, poetry, tarot card reading and so much more. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, Nick Ainis, and RecycleMyElectronics.ca. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail].

Hi, I'm Liz Worth and I'm making my in-person Toronto Mike debut. An important distinction. Welcome to episode 1,854 of Toronto Mike. An award-winning podcast proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery. Order online at Great Lakesbeer.com for free, local home delivery. in the GTA. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh.

Homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palmapasta in Mississauga and Oakville. Visit palmaPasta.com for more. Fusion Corp's own Nick Aienes. He's the host of Building Toronto Skyline and Building Success, two podcasts that you ought to listen to. Recycle MyElectronics.c.c.a.commiting to our planet's future. means properly recycling our electronics of the past. And Ridley Funeral Home, pillars of the community since 1921.

Joining me today, as she said, making her in-person Toronto mic debut. That's an important distinction, but it's Liz Worth. Hello, Liz. Hello. Tell me about the T-shirt you're wearing. Oh, it's a Psychic TV t-shirt.

Do you know Psychic TV? No, like I'm trying to... Where did I miss Psychic TV? So PsychicTV was a Genesis Peoridge project, and Genesis Peorridge was a really important person, founded the band Throbbing Gristle, and the neo-folk pioneer. I have so much to learn, Liz. That's why you're here. You're going to educate me, because I'm looking at it, it's like pop culture remixed, or I don't know how to describe it, but like Ronald McDonald, but it's not, it's like, warrior to Mario. It's like, I'm not sure exactly.

It is a bootleg shirt, I must admit, but I thought it was a pretty good one. It's a pretty good one. Yeah. Do you have any room for new tattoos or are you filled up there? I do have some room. I have some room. Okay. Do you have any, like, tattoos in mind, any new ink that you're planning to get at some point?

Oh, I haven't been tattooed in a few years because my husband and I bought a house. And that kind of changes your plans a little bit. And your husband is an FOTM. Mm-hmm. Okay. Who is your husband? Uh, Ki-ray Poppitz. Okay, that's a fun fact for the listenership.

And Kiery, who made a new movie, like a love letter to Hamilton, a cool new movie called Junkie Run. Or Junkies Run? Junkie Run. Junkie Run. I knew that. But he put David Bronstein on the show. And David never showed. And he kept texting me.

He went to a deli or something. I can't remember. A deli. Oh, the bagel place. The bagel place. The bagel place. And then, you know, he'd say, I'm here. there and he'd be like an hour late and he'd be like, okay, I'm almost at Islington.

I just basically told him, I don't have time to do this now. You're like two hours late. So I'm just venting with you. That's fair. I heard all about this. Okay. So you heard about this. But my point was that your husband was like an emergency guest just so I could bitch further about that. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing about Kiwra. He's all good sport and he's always willing to help out. He came out. But I think from now we just refer to him as a husband of Lizworth is what we do here. Okay. So more of these names will come up later.

Do you want to crack open a fresh can of Great Lakes beer with me? Okay. So what do you got? You got a light logger. And we'll do it at the count here. So three, two. Okay. Cheers to you.

Cheers. So I have, because during the winter months, I've fallen in love with what's called fighting weight. It is like octopus wants to fight, but a lighter version. And I've been told it's like, almost gone.

Like, this is going to be gone for the season because it gets replaced by the Sunnyside session IPA. So I'm enjoying one of the last cans of fighting weight before I switch to Sunnyside, which will be nice, because that means warmer weather is on the way. Okay, okay.

So enjoy. Enjoy. And you can take home to you and share some with Kiri maybe, but I have some fresh craft beer that will go home with you. Okay, thank you. So I know you is like the punk chick.

and we'll talk about, you know, a little bit about treat me like dirt and some live events you're having and all of that. But when you're like, we're talking in 2026 here, when you're just listening to music for like, I don't know what you're doing. Maybe you're on the go train. Maybe you're on a walk, whatever. Like what kind of music would you gravitate towards in that private time? That's a great question. I think that I'm fairly, maybe I'm not that eclectic. I don't know.

I listen to a lot of music from the 80s. Some of my favorite bands are Talk Talk, The Cure, Tears for Fears. But I love, when I talk about punk music, I'm usually, for me, I gravitate toward first wave punk. So I love the damned, the clash. I'm going to see the damned for their 50th anniversary. concert in April. So, yeah, I mean, a lot of the stuff that I like tends to be from specific decades.

It's not that I don't listen to newer music, but a lot of the newer music that I listen to also tends to be influenced by the 70s, 80s, early 90s. I also like the Beach Boys a lot. They're one of my favorite bands. So those are the things that I tend to circle around most. What about 90s bands? Like, do you, if you're going to listen to 90s music, is there a particular artist you'd gravitate towards? Oh, Alice in Chains.

It depends. You know, Smashing Pumpkins, their first two albums are, I think, incredible. That's Gish and Simey's Dream, right? Yeah. Yeah. Silverchair also had a really great first album. Right. Is that the one of Tomorrow on it?

Mm-hmm. Okay, that was all over the, all over New Rock Radio, for sure. Have you listened to that album recently? I owned it. I owned it. Is that the one with, is it Anna's song? I'm like, okay. It's a long time ago. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I think you're on the right track. Yeah. So that, that album, if you listen to it now, it really, really holds up. I remember thinking at the time, unfairly to them, I think, that it felt a little bit like they were like Australian Nirvana. Like, it just felt a little Nirvana-esque. Which is good, but that, it just felt like maybe it was too soon. and maybe I should revisit it.

I see. I see. I mean, there was, that was the sound at the time. You know, that really, the heavy, the heavy and then the soft and heavy and the soft again. But they were also so young when that album came out. And if you think about them being in high school and that's their debut album. I, you know, I wasn't doing anything at that level in high school. No, no doubt.

They were, I remember they were like 16 or something. I remember a very young band. Yeah. But there's, please tonight. I'm now singing songs from Silver Chair as they come to me here. But let me ask you, so I just bought a ticket this past weekend. I bought a ticket, like a lawn ticket at what's now called RBC Amphitheater. Did you know that, Liz?

Of course it is. I know. So I bought a lawn at the RBC Amphitheater for Broken Social Scene metric and stars. Okay. So many of the members of these bands have been over. I like all three bands quite a bit. But this sort of led me down, like, not a rabbit hole, but I started reading up on Metrick a bit.

Because I just seen, what did I just see? I just saw the, not for the first time, but I just saw the documentary, meet me in the bathroom. And like Metric is mentioned in there as like part of that scene, but I was reading this interview of NME and it was with Emily Haynes from Metric. And she said, I got quotes for you.

You ready, Liz? I'm going to try to be a music journalist in the show. Okay. By the way, how's the beer tasting? I need to take a step. Take a sip. I'll do the talking. You do some sipping.

Okay. This is a quote from Emily Haynes, NME earlier this year. So these are 2026 quotations. She says, the band met in New York, but we got our start in L.A. And then later,

she sort of talks about how they were sharing a loft with the yeah, yeah, yas, coming up with the strokes. And in my opinion, Liz, I'm not trying to cause any trouble,

but it seems like Emily is scrubbing Toronto from her, like official American or official international bio. Like we all know, like Amy Milan's been over here. Like Amy Mulan and Emily Haynes are best friends at Atopical School of the Arts. And metric forms in Toronto in like the late 90s.

And then there's that whole strokes thing happening in New York. But like, what's that about? Are you asking why people erase Toronto from their past? Yeah, but do they not realize that people who know better are going to read the bio or read the interview? That's interesting. Yeah, that's an interesting one. I think that this is, and I can't speak for individual artists on how they want their

bios to go. But there is something about Canadian artists who make it outside of Canada. And they start to be perceived as American artists. If, say, they're going to New York or L.A., you think about someone like, Neil Young, you think about the weekend. I think they have transcended their Canadian status in a lot of ways for their fan base outside of Canada. People aren't looking at them and thinking that they're Canadian. We still do. But I don't know if that's often how they're being identified. And it's a challenge for us here, I think, because there is, there's not always a lot of support for Canadian art on a whole. And

our country doesn't have the best reputation of documenting its history or archiving its history. And so I also understand why artists have to align themselves elsewhere too, because sometimes it does seem like you get bigger support when you leave home. No, I get that. Like, yes, of course you're right, Liz. But like, so this, I mentioned Meet Me in the Bathroom, because we're going to talk later about treat me like dirt. Did you ever read that?

It's an oral history of punk in Toronto and beyond. You ever read that one? I actually haven't read it. Is that true? No. I mean, yeah. Okay. You read it in dribs and drabs.

I read it in various, various, various, various, various revisions. Obviously, I'm kidding, everybody. Lizworth is the author. Okay, that was a little joke there. But okay, so meet me in the bathroom. This is about the early 2000s New York explosion with, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, and the strokes, and there's a few bands kind of caught in that one.

LCD sound system. There's a lot of stuff going on there. But I also recently revisited a fairly recent doc about broken social scene, which is the title I can't remember. Do you know the name? What's the name of the, do you know the name of the Broken Social Scene documentary? I can't think of it. I'll Google it in a minute. I'll Google it. So I recently watched that

and it's really Toronto and it's kind of rad. Like a lot of these people I've met, a lot of these people have been in the basement, but to see how this scene was happening and these people were just this collective formed. And I mean, Emily Haynes and James Shaw are like part of this broken social scene collective. And it's

like pre-meat me in the bathroom time. Like late, like 98 or whatever. We'll say 9899 or whatever. So like this whole quote, this, I mean, I'm going to move on from this.

Don't, that's not why you're here, Liz, but you're the first guest since I got enraged by this. So I bought the ticket. Love all three bands actually. And it's,

again, it's a lawn. It was like 60 bucks or something. But which I used to, I think only five, no, not five, maybe like 10 years ago I would have said,

60 bucks. I'd be freaking out over 60 bucks. And now it feels like you're getting it for free or something. What's up with concert ticket? Yeah. Yeah, 60 bucks is kind of the bottom,

on the bottom of the line now, right? Bottom of the line, unless you get, I got a Who tickets. Who, who? I got a Who ticket for 1111 because it was a pizza pizza promotion. Oh, that's fun. That's fun. Again, no, I got to get my, like,

I do a lot of trips to that neck of the woods for the exhibition or TFC or for concerts at the amphitheater. And I typically bike there, but if I'm going with my wife, we take the go. And I feel like not that one, because I know I bike to the Who, But there are multiple times this past summer where I got on the go train to head to Mimico, and you and Kiri were on that go train. Yeah. Well, we were also at the Who Concert, the one in September, right?

Yeah, that was a good show. Yes. Yeah, we're always going to something. At least twice, I can think of, but it's interesting to me only because I rarely take the go. Because I bike, but at least twice, we were leaving C&E grounds, and there's Kiri and Liz Worth. So I guess I'm just here to say that we've documented that the James Shaw, or Jimmy Shaw, if you will, and Emily Haynes, they meet and start making music together in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. And this quote, the band met in New York, and we got our start in L.A. It seems to me like we are going to Americanize metric for the populace who buy tickets.

That's all. I see. I don't think it's cool. I see. Okay. And you, because we're going to get to know you better. and we'll talk about some events you're hosting and we'll talk about treat me like dirt

and there's a whole other part of your life I want to ask you about but I'm curious if you could just maybe just do a little bit of your music journalism history because I know at least one FOTM Cam Gordon he worked with you in some regard somewhere along the way like can you just

I'm not saying you get to read your CV or anything but just help me understand a few of the spots where we might have read Liz Worth's stuff kind of leading up to treat me like dirt. Yeah, I mean, I will start answering this with saying that I started working on Treat Me Like Dirt in 2006. So 20 years, almost 20 years ago. Okay, so how old were you, 20 years ago?

I'm 89. No, but you're young. Yeah, I was 24. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah, so I was 24 when that started. And I was just out of journalism school. I had been waiting, I'd been looking for someone for a book about the history of Toronto.

punk and I kept thinking that somebody was going to release one and my college job was working at a chapter store and I would when every time I was on shift I when I had time I'd browse the shelves and I'd I don't know I had this delusion that someone was going to publish this book any minute it was missing right like you you identified a missing link if you will where is the definitive book on Toronto's punk history that's what I was looking for and it never showed up and so in my final year of college. I was really, again, kind of obsessed with this idea of this history and I wanted to so badly read about it and know what had happened. And so when I finished school, I had to do something with my life and I had decided that if no one came out with a book about this by the time

I graduated that I was going to start doing the research on it. And so that's what happened. And before that, I was writing for magazines like Exclaim. I weekly are. IP. I was, you know, I was doing a lot of freelance already and it was essentially working as a freelance journalist throughout my last year of college. And, and I continued to do that while I worked on Treat Me Like Dirt. And so I hadn't necessarily set out to be a music journalist. I, you know, I was interested in a lot of different things and a lot of different types of writing. But music was always something that I gravitated towards. It was always a really big part of my and I think that there are, those of us who grow up on music, we tend to overly identify with the music

we listen to as well. So I think if you grow up as a kid who loves hanging out in record stores and you love collecting all the band t-shirts and you go to shows, you can't help but be shaped in some way by the bands that you listen to. And so I think that it was just an organic process that I started to become a music journalist because that was something I was really excited about was music. Yeah, that's a subject matter. You had passion in the belly for. And were you always a good writer? Like was this, like was writing something that came naturally to you? I mean, good writer. When I look back at, you know, it's like looking back at anything you write in high school, you got to start somewhere though. But yeah, writing was something that I think I had more of a

proficiency for than other things. I was not, my math skills, my science skills were always terrible. there's no way I was ever going to pass a math class in high school. And so as you do, you know, you lean into the things that you are good at. Sure. And yeah, writing was something I was always interested in. I used to make zines when I was in high school as well. It was in the 90s and zines were, zine culture was at a peak then. And yeah, so it was something that I felt I could put my energy into.

Okay, well, that makes sense. So now we've had you, you're interested in writing and you're passionate about music. but what is it about, I'm just curious, because you're younger than I am, spoiler alert everybody, and this era of punk that you'll end up writing about and treat me like dirt,

which, by way, I'm going to give you some kudos right now that it's excellent, it's thorough, and I can't believe you started writing that thing when you were only 24 years old. Thank you.

That is amazing. Thanks. You ever jump back and kiss yourself? You know, a lot of, I've done certain things in my life where I look back and I think, how did I, you know, how did I do this,

how did I pull this off? but so much of what I've done is just operating on pure blind faith and sometimes obsession as well. Just this almost compulsion to act on an idea and that's where Treat Me Like Dirk came out of. Because you'd think somebody who was there would write it. Right? Because we're not going back that far.

What are the years covered typically? Like is it 77 to 81? What years are we talking about? Yeah, we're looking at 76 to 81. Like there are people who were there that you'd think would have filled in this crack and cover this important part of Toronto music history. But you're literally like, if it doesn't show up in this damn chapters by this date,

I'll fuck it, I'll do it myself. Yeah, I, it was, you know, it was an idea that I'd circled around for so long. And there had been people who had made attempts at writing a similar book before. Those projects just hadn't been completed. And it is, it is a really hard thing to do to put a book together, especially when you're interviewing people. I think that a challenge for people who are there is that it's harder to be neutral about things. That's a good point.

Yeah. And I've seen over time how much infighting can happen within a scene. It can be really hard for people to put their feelings aside about other people as well. And throughout my process of not only researching this book, but continuing to talk about this book all these years later, I have seen a lot of people who will challenge me on how much attention I've given certain bands or certain artists. You know, one in particular is the band the vile tones. They get talked about a lot. They were a band that I had been already hearing about before I started my research. They were one of the bands that I think helped me find out about

Toronto punk in the first place because people were still talking about the vile tones. And there was a perception from some people from within that scene that the vowel tones already had enough attention. And so how dare you write about them on so many pages of your book? How dare you talk about them so often when there are other bands that haven't had as much attention? But this is also usually coming from people who had bands who thought that they should be at that same level, right? And so I think those things become hard if you're trying to write a book, but you're coming at it with that kind of. kind of mentality. You have to let that go and you have to be able to be really objective and say what is important here to focus on first and also to remember that there can be more than one

book. Right. So this begs the question because you're, you know, these people who give you guff because you, maybe there's too much bile tones in their opinion. But now I need to ask. So in this in this timeline, because we must disclose the aforementioned filmmaker Kiri Papoots, am I saying Papoots right? Every time I say it, I were. I'm doing it wrong. He just says it as Pappets. Really?

Not Papoots? Kri Papoots. Well, I'm going to talk to him. He'd change it to Pappoots. I've been saying Pappoos. He doesn't correct me. Like, it would take, just say, hey, Mike, it's Pappets. He has a, his name, it gets all kinds of pronunciations.

And he just, he's at a point where he just rolls with it. Yeah. You know, he should do what Sharon and Madonna did. Just be Kiri. Just be Kee. I don't know any other Kieries. But then people are going to call him Kair, anyways. Oh, he gets that, or Kyrie or Kira.

Right. Yeah. Kiri Pappets. Okay. But let's disclose, who is your father-in-law, Lizworth? Chris Hate from the Vile Tones. Okay, so when in this timeline do you start dating the man I just learned is actually Kiri Pappets?

Yeah. So Kirae and I, I knew Keri's dad first because I had been interviewing Chris for Treat Me Like Dirt. And Chris would talk about his son who was in film school. And at the time, Ki-Rei was working on a documentary that was part of a school project that went into some of his personal family history. And his dad was saying how proud he was of his son for putting these things together.

And around that same time, Colin Brunton, who did a really great and important documentary called The Last Pogo. Which I have over here on DVD. It's a great documentary. If anyone wants a piece of Toronto history, you got to check out Colin's, work, but Colin had started to do a follow-up to the last Pogo called The Last Pogo jumps again,

which was about everybody who had been at the last punk show at the horseshoe in the late 70s. And so that documentary happened to come about around the same time I started working on Treat Me Like Dirt. So Colin and I were thinking of the same thing at the same time. And he ended up bringing Kieray in to help him on this project. And so Kier and I, because. of our timing with everything, we would often be the two youngest people in the room, talking to all these first wave punk people and document, we were documenting this history, but we really have a behind the scenes and an experience that no one else has.

And so we would talk to each other about it. And we didn't start dating right away. I actually interviewed Ki-Rei for an article for the Toronto Star. I wrote a profile about him about his work on documenting his father's history and and everyone adjacent to that. And we just got to stay friends for a few years. And then it was around the time Treat Me Like Dirt came out that we had started dating. But it was a slow build, to be honest.

Sure. Yeah. But I wonder if these people who are giving you the guff, if they're also, like, you know, pointing out the fact that you married a Pappets and Chris Hade is actually a Pappet. Yes. So they use that, they throw that at you as that, oh, no wonder there's so much vile tones. You're literally now a member of the Vial Tones family. I see. I mean, like, how can you be objective if you're falling in, I won't make a assumption but you're falling in love with the son of Chris hate bassist for the vile tones.

Well, that's, you know, no one's ever asked me that before. I hadn't, I hadn't really thought about that. But again, my book was done by the time Kiri and I started dating. Yeah, that's, don't let the facts mess up people's messaging here. They're not going to, they're going to assume that it happened during the writing. Well, you know, Chris, if you, if anyone ever had the chance to really meet Chris, he has no ego about this stuff. And he's not one of these people who's pushing for attention or pushing for some kind of legacy around this. You know, he was a musician before the violtones started. He was a little bit older than a lot of the other people in that scene. He had been in bands with John Hamilton who had joined the diodes, but they

had records. Him and Chris had records out way before anything happened within Toronto punk way before that scene started. And they were really career musicians. And I think that that is how Chris sees himself. He continues to be musician. That's been a big focus of his life. And he, I think that he sees these things as important and that the vial tones were a really fun time in his life.

But for him, it's not his whole identity. He moved on to other things afterwards. And again, he had, he had a career before. Right, no, good points, good points. So I have an idea here, but I want to just let people know that this is your in-person debut. You're in the basement for the first time. Is it everything you hoped it would be? Oh, even more.

Wow. Good answer, okay, good answer. And I want to let people know that if you want to hear Lizworth's voice, which is, sounds great in the headphones, by the way. You can hear it, but it was a Zoom. It happened in, I said that so negative. It was a Zoom. But it was June 2025, and it was episode 1,713. And in that episode, I'll just read what I wrote at the time.

Mike chats with Liz Worth. And that's your real name, Liz Worth? Because it sounds to me like a, is there a comic book character? Maybe it's a fictional comic book character or something. Similarly named? Yes. So this is going to blow your mind if you want to know. Okay.

So that was the Maryworth comic, but my mom's name was Mary. And her maiden name was Cherry. So she was first Mary Cherry and then she became Mary Worth. Wow. So she has me beat on names, I think. Okay. It sounds like a handle, Liz Worth, right? It sounds like you fictionalize a handle.

No, it's my real name. It's my real name. Okay, so here's what I wrote. Mike chats with Liz Worth, author of Treat Me Like Dirt, an oral history of punk in Toronto and beyond, and Kiri Pappets, who is credited on Colin Brunton's The Last Pogo jumps again and whose dad was in the vile tones

about the legacy of punk pioneers, Stephen Lecky. I got notes, I'll tell you, I did get notes from people. who thought we were too tough on Stephen, but I actually listened back, because I don't want to be too tough on anybody, especially if they just passed away. I felt it was fair,

and I felt it was completely fair, and I want people to know if they want to hear us talking about Stephen Lecky after he passed, and kind of understanding the legacy of the vial tones, I thought you were the best person to have on the show, and you and Kyrie are on that episode, and it's, again, episode 1,713, and now you're in the basement.

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I mean, I think, the thing with Stephen that people have to understand is that Kira and I have a different perspective, again, on Stephen than other people might. And I have my own experiences with Stephen. You know, there is something that happens sometimes when someone dies where we almost want to soften their reputation. And I understand that, but Stephen courted a specific type of reputation as well and you have to understand that it's it's also when you are very hard to be a

female music journalist I and when you're a female music journalist I people speak to you very differently than they do if they were speaking to a guy doing an interview and when I was working on treatment like dirt Stephen could go all kinds of ways with me and he you know I think I've been I've been very fair to him all along, because I could, I could say things that would, would be a lot more honest. But I think that, you know, for me, Stephen is, he is an important person in the history of Toronto Punk. And Ki-Ray and I never deny that. But at the same time, he could, he could be, I mean, am I allowed to swear? Like, he could be an asshole. Yeah. Stephen could be such an asshole. You know, I'd be sitting there interviewing him from a.

book and again I was you know 24 25 when I'm meeting these people and these are people I look up to and and he would you know at some point he would start to look at me and he'd start to talk about women and I always got the impression that Stephen didn't have you know he liked women he wanted them but he didn't really have a lot of respect for them and you know he'd say things like you know you've got another five years on you and then your looks are going to start to go wow right like this is the kind of stuff that I was working with but again you have to put your feelings aside when you're a journalist because you have to be in service to the project that you're doing. You know, I could have had things like that and said, I quit, I give up. But I felt this book was really important to do. But that's the kind of stuff that I had to deal with from Stephen as well. So if Stephen ever had any issues with how people have spoken about him, I think that he and whoever wants to continue to defend him also have to look at how he treated other people because there are a lot of stories about Stephen where he's not really

being a great guy. I literally only wanted your perspective and Kerry as well. because his dad's Chris Hade, if we haven't mentioned that at all. And that's what you guys delivered. So I would say it was, I'm my opinion, and I'm the one who published the damn audio, it was fair. And I did go back and forth with one person in particular. Oh.

You want to guess? I, I, there's, the list could be quite long, so I'm not going to guess. That's a safe. And again, I actually, I had Karen Bliss over recently. And it did get me thinking about like, because, you know, my perspective is like, oh, I'm a straight white guy. You know what I mean? Like, what is it like to be a woman in music journalism?

I mean, well, I mean, you look around and you don't see that money, right? And I think that, I don't know if that's part of it. It's funny, you know, I've started a substack recently and I noticed there are a lot of guys hop on the substack and that's totally fine, but there's something about music where I think it does tend to feel like a boys club in some ways sometimes. And I'm not sure why that is. particularly punk. I guess so, but there were a lot of women in the early scene and punk is never just about music. It's it's about so many other things. It's about the writing. It's about the photography. It's about the style. It's the aesthetic. So there's a lot more happening and women have always been big contributors to punk history. But it is it is tough to write about music when so many men are in

the industry. Because again, people speak to you differently as a woman. And sometimes I think that there can be an advantage to that to you where people can be a lot more candid. With women, they sometimes feel more comfortable opening up in interviews. But at the same time, I think people are also a lot harder on women. They tend to look at us as people who do something for fashion. They look at us as people who are not sincere in what we are going after or that we are not as intelligent as they are. So somehow we can't understand music in the same way. You know, there are, there are these perceptions that you start to become aware of. And again,

you sometimes have men who speak to you in a certain way that would not happen if they were talking to a man in an interview. That's a good point. So I tease that I had this idea and we're going to do it right now. But I do just want to take a quick second to tell you, or maybe ask you off the top, because I know Kiri's been down here. Did he bring home a lasagna? He did, yeah. Okay. Did you eat the lasagna? Yeah, we did. Okay. Did you enjoy the lasagna?

Yeah. Just make, I'm checking, I've got a checklist here. Okay, great. I'm checking all these things up here. Okay, therefore, I am honored to give you another frozen lasagna that's in my freezer right now. Thank you. And it is courtesy of, and I know you're from the West. So it's Mississauga and Oakville where you find Palma Pasta locations.

Although I should point out, I'm seeing a lot of Palma Pasta in Longo's. So I know here in South Atobico, there's. longgos and you can get a palma pasta there. So I recommend you go to palma pasta.com. You'll love their lasagna. It's just the best. And you're bringing one home with you, Liz. Thank you so much.

And I'm also going to give you, because I know you're like an amateur seamstress. I don't know why I threw amateur. Sure. Sure. That sounds fancy. I mean. I'm married to my wife.

But she'll make like a shirt for me or something. Like she'll go to a fabric store. orange of it. And I'm like, oh, wow, like, this is like pioneer times or something. This is amazing. Like, I think it's amazing. And she identified as a seamstress. So I'm like, oh, and I saw you in social media. I can't remember. Maybe Instagram or something. And I'm like, oh, like, you do this up-cycling. Yeah. She does the upcycling too. And I'm like, oh, you know, Liz Worth, a seamstress. So I'm giving you, I think it might help a seamstress. Okay. I'm long-winded way of saying, maybe you'll benefit from this measuring tape. Oh, yeah. That Ridley Funeral Home would

like you to have. Thank you. And Ridley Funeral Homes podcast is called Life's Undertaking, and we're going to record a new episode tomorrow. Thank you, Brad Jones. And I'm also going to record on Friday a new episode of Building Toronto Skyline with Nick Iienes. And we're also launching a new show that Nick has called Mike versus Nick left versus right, but it's not as obnoxious as it sounds. It's just a civilized chat about this world from different perspectives. And thank you, Nick Ienis. And last but not least, Liz, if you have like a drawer or a room full of old cables, old devices, old laptops, old electronics, is it possible you have such a drawer or closet? I do.

You're not going to throw that in the garbage, are you? No. Good. I was going to jump across this table, and I was going to be very angry because those chemicals will end up in our landfill. Write this down, okay? Recyclemyelectronics.ca.ca. Go there, put in your postal code, and find out where you can drop all that off to be properly. recycled. Is that a good idea?

Yeah. Pausing for the affirmation. Okay, so Liz, here's what I want to do. Again, I love that you're here and I'm excited because I have upstairs a copy of Treat Me Like Dirt. And at the very beginning, you do this, I think you call it cast of characters, but these are the people that you talk to. Because it's, like, what's that called? Oral History?

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I know these things. But I actually say, okay, Mike, document every cast of characters in the book, treat me like dirt, which I highly. recommend to music fans everywhere. And in alphabetical order,

everybody who is an FOTM, that means friend of Toronto Mike, that means they've been a guest on my program. You're now an FOTM. Well, you were already an FOTM because this is your in-person debut. It's true. We go way back.

We go way back. And some of these names might allow you to promote like live events because you're doing the Punk Talks series. Yes. And some of these names,

these FOTMs are going to allow you to talk about that as well. Okay? So I'm going to say the name. And I just need a little bit from you, maybe like your experience with them, who they are, and et cetera.

Oh gosh. You're asking me to go back really far here. You can also say, you don't have to say much. Don't wait. This is not a trick question at all. Because the first name, which I think is a good name,

considering what I know about you, Liz Worth, which is everything my crack research staff has gone deep. Ralph Elfonso. Ralph Alfonzo was an Fonzo. was an FOTM and alphabetically he's the first cast of characters and treat me like dirt. What can you tell me about Ralph Alfonso? I mean, I can tell you a lot about Ralph.

Ralph's a really important person. Yeah, Ralph is a really important person in terms of Toronto punk history. He managed the diodes. He helped start the first punk venue, the Crash and Burn, which was a very short-lived venue in the city, but an important place in terms of the story. He was a photographer as well. so he had a lot of images that he captured from that time, which is really important. We need people who are documenting things as they're happening.

But Ralph is also an interesting person because he's a poet as well. And he has this whole, whole beatnik thing going on. And it's cool. And I like that because he's not just about punk. He's not about one thing. He expresses himself in many different ways. He is an amazing designer. He's the one who designed, treat me like dirt.

So if you appreciate that layout that he did, that book was, you know, it is, I know it's a lengthy one, but it would have been well over a thousand pages without Ralph's, uh, uh, thinking on doing the double columns. He put all the photos in there. It was, you know, it's a really great looking book. And he, he's a really talented person. Ralph's also been an important person to me because no one was going to publish this book at first. It was impossible. I couldn't find an agent, couldn't find a publisher. Some people had expressed interest in, in looking at it, but they didn't really understand the oral history format, which was a a bit concerning. And then sometimes some publishers would come back and they'd say, this is really

interesting, but we don't see a market for it. We don't think we're going to be able to sell it, which was also concerning because I thought, no, this is going to be a thing. This book is going to take off. I had so much faith in it. And Ralph was, he had a record label and he said, if no one takes it, I'll do it. And so Ralph ended up being the original publisher of Treat Me Like Dirt. It later got licensed to ECW Press, who I'm also really grateful for. But Ralph was the, he was the one who really helped me get this out there. And that was so important. So thank you, Ralph.

Wow. I need you. We all need you, Ralph. Rob Pruse, not a punker, Rob Pruse, okay. New Wave, we'll call him New Wave, Rob. He's, was with spoons. But who's also, again, I got to promote something. I love the spoons too.

Okay. So all the hits, all the glory days I call it. keyboards were Rob Pruse. And I have an event. I haven't been promoting it very well. I should start promoting my event and you should promote all your stuff too because Ralph

might tie it in this next name. It's funny how it all worked out alphabetically actually. But May 21, May 21, 2026 if you're listening in the far off future. At the Elma combo, I have a an event. Like I'm going to be

on stage for like 75 to 90 minutes and I'm going to deliver something and you're going to enjoy you damn it but i have joining me on the stage will be rob pruss because there are musical cues in what i'm going to be spitting into a microphone and keyboard or piano prodigy rob pruss will be uh tickling uh the keys uh i don't know if it's made of ivory anymore but i hope not actually but he's going to be on stage with me and he calls himself my paul shaffer but if any of this is of interest to you and i hope it is buy a ticket now go to Toronto mic.com and click Elmo gig at the very top and get tickets for you and a loved one and come to the Elma

combo to see me on May 21st. That sounds exciting. It is exciting, but what you're doing is exciting. So is Ralph Alfonzo at all involved in the Punk Talks series. He is, yes. So the Punk Talks series is, this is the 50th anniversary of Punk. Punk started in Toronto in 1976. Of course, there were threads leading up to that. I know every, all the record collectors are like, well, you mean, what about this? I know, I know. I can hear you already. But if we started in 1976, we got to start it somewhere. So I, so we're using this as a 50th anniversary and we've been doing these panel discussions in Toronto at Peach Berserk in Parkdale. And Peach Berserk is a really awesome silk screen studio run by Kingie Carpenter. We just had the first panel there on this past Sunday on February 22nd, where Chris

Hate was there, as well as Linda Lee from the Curse and Cleave Anderson from the Battered Wives, Blue Rodeo and many, many other bands. Cleve's been in all the bands. Well, save your Cleave talk for the next name alphabetical. Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself. But Ralph, Ralph is coming to the event on March 22nd, and he'll be joined by Don Pyle, as well as

Kee Ray Papitz. They'll be talking about the documentation of this history. You know, they're all on this list. Well, it's a little club to be part of, apparently. So, yeah. So what day is that again? It's Sunday, March 22nd. It's at 2pm. We don't have a lot of tickets left at this point. You can go to my website, Lizworthauthor.com. Click on punk talks and you can get a ticket for that one there. And, you know, that initial fear you were referred to where we don't know if this will sell. That's interesting to me because when I, I just met somebody for coffee and, you know,

born and raised in the GTA, this punk scene in Toronto is a black hole. I don't know if that's the right term. a black box, an unknown, to a lot of people. Yeah. Like, sometimes I wonder if you took 100 random people on the go train or whatever, and you, ask them, you know, the vile tones, like, how many out of that hundred are going to be like, yeah, I know the vile tones? I mean, true, but you could, I think you could also say that about a lot of the UK punk bands or the New York punk bands to you.

Like, if you say, you know, have you ever heard of television? You know, most people don't know who Richard Hell is, but those who do, that's a huge deal, right? You're right. That is true. Those who do know they need to get their myths on a copy of treatment. That's right. And, you know, punk was, it was always an underground movement. It still is, it still has that obscurity to it.

But the thing about punk is it's kind of funny because the bands might not always be household names. But there are so many aspects of punk that have become mainstream. When you look at fashion these days, everybody looks like they're dressed from the late 1970s. And it's been like that for the last 20 years. And they sell so many Ramones T-shirts. Yes. Yes. And there's a lot of, there's also a lot in terms of how DIY culture runs now in Toronto, in terms of, you know, in the 70s, a lot of bars and venues were not in service to art.

They didn't exist because they wanted to host bands. They existed to sell drinks. And what they needed was bands to come in and play cover songs so that people would hang out and have drinks. but people didn't want to hear original music. Now we almost have this sense of entitlement that if a bar exists and there's a stage that they're going to book our band, right? And people do open venues with that in mind. In the late 70s, it was a lot harder for you to just have a garage band and try to get a gig somewhere. A lot of these people broke those doors down for that type of culture that we see in Toronto everywhere now. Absolutely. And because I realize, I'm going to have you here for six hours.

I know. This is a long list. No, but this name will spend a few minutes. Some of these you can just do one sentence on. But I do want to spend a minute with Cleve Anderson because you just drop that name. So he's the next name. Cleve Anderson's been in the basement. And you pointed out, Cleve Anderson,

what a name for a bed. Although Steve Lecky's name, because I was talking to this woman today about the punk scene. And I realize as I'm talking is like, oh, how like offended she might be by these sane Nazi dog and saying battered wives. Like it's an unbelievable. it's just hits very differently today.

But tell us a bit about Cleve Anderson again. Right. Right. So Cleave was in a man called Battered Wives. He was also in Tyranah and then went on to play in Blue Rodeo later. Cleave has also been a really important person for this scene because about, I mean, around the same time I was working on Treat Me Like Dirk. Cleave started getting people together in a band called The Screwed. And they would play a lot of the old Toronto punk songs as well as other cover songs by

other first wave punk bands. And those shows were really fun. And I think that Cleave has been an important catalyst for the city in terms of reviving interest around Toronto punk music, but also in building community around this. Because when I started working on Treat Me Like Dirt, a lot of these people had not talked to each other in decades. And it was also, you know, Facebook existed that at the time, but these people were not on Facebook yet. It was still, Facebook was still a thing where, you know, it was, it was for college and university kids mostly. And so, you know, this was, we were trading phone numbers back and forth to put people back in touch with each other. And I think that Cleave has been one of those people who's a great

connector. Everybody likes Cleave. He's a very likable man. Yes, very, very nice. And it is funny when you think about him being in a band called the battered wives. But the, you know, they, they always maintain that that name was, was obviously not condoning violence. No, no, it's like Nirvana's rape me, right? It's like meant to be, I think it's meant to be subversive, like, like, like, like, ironic somehow. Like, it's not, yeah, nobody thinks that band is condoning, beating your way. It's not, it's not about taking things literally.

And that that was the thing about punk was that if you took it too literally, then yes, it would feel like, like you'd be clutching your pearls. Right, right, right. And I think that was part of it, yes. Well, it was meant to be shocking, right? Mm-hmm. And, like, yeah. And it's very easy to shock people as well.

And getting easier. It's always easy. Yeah. I'm again, one more name that we might spend a bit more time. Some of these names are one sentence. Okay. Don't be dismayed here.

You're in good hands. Okay. Colin Brunton. So you mentioned Colin because he did work with your husband on the last Pogo rises again. I will tell the listenership, he's back in the basement next week. There is an episode all about Nash the Slash with everybody, a number of people. involved in the new documentary, and he'll be here for that, Colin Brunton, because, yeah, he's behind the new Nash to Slash documentary.

So, and he, just maybe briefly, you've already touched quite a bit on Colin Brunton, but a moment on Colin Brunton. Yeah. FOTM, Colin. Yeah. Yeah. Again, you know, Colin's one of those people who, he made, he made this really important document of the scene.

And when I was working on Treat Me Like Dirt, it was really hard for me to find any information about punk from an archival perspective. A lot of the old articles that you could find that the media had covered or news coverage of punk was very critical of it. And the media in Canada treated a lot of what was happening as though they were kind of making fun of these young people who were expressing themselves. They didn't really see it as anything that had historical importance to it. And so it was really hard for these bands to be taken seriously in the media.

and because of that, we have this, we have this big gap in terms of what happened. It was really hard to piece these things together. But thanks to the last Pogo and also thanks to some of the people who are making fanzines, like the Shades Magazine, for example, that George Higton and Sheila Wallinash were doing. These documents became so important to have access to you. When you watch the last Pogo, you can see what it was like to be at one of these shows. And we have to remember that now we all have cameras. in our pockets these days, but cameras were not that common in the late 70s.

This type of equipment was not something that everyone had easy access to you. And so it took a lot of foresight to think, I'm going to go and I'm going to document this. I'm going to tape it. I'm going to make something out of it. So thank you, Colin. Absolutely. Thank you, Colin. And one more point about not taking it seriously the scene.

Part of my issue was I'd watch like a TVO doc about teenage head or something. I got this tea champagne gave me my teenage. I am. Drum sticks, I might use them. But like, I'll be watching a doc

because I'm fascinated by music history, particularly in Toronto. And it would be maybe from some, someone, one of those big events where there was a riot

or something like that. But you'll be watching and you'll see a guy will walk by and you'll have the punk hair and the denim jacket. And you'll have a swastika. Yeah.

Like, I don't, then I still, then I know, I understand of the time, I still don't quite understand like the name like Nazi dog and the swastika. Like I don't,

and I think that mainstream media would kind of disregard the scene possibly as, just based on the fact that here we are in the 1980s and there's swastikas. Fair. And I think this is an important thing to talk about because, you know, Stephen, yeah, he had this name, Nazi dog. And the violtones, you know, some of the lyrics he wrote for violtone songs also were Nazi-themed.

And the other guys in the band were not really comfortable with that. It wasn't something you didn't see, you know, Chris Haight didn't adopt a similar moniker, Freddie Pompeii, their drummer motor mic. And then even as that lineup changed, you didn't see these other guys take on that same kind of persona. You didn't see them wearing swastika. So it wasn't really common across the vile tones as a band on a whole. It was really Stephen.

That was really Stevens thing. And you didn't see a lot of it in the Toronto scene. You did see some of it coming out of the UK with bands like Susie and the Banshees and Susie Sue would with a swastika as well, but it wasn't something that was across the board adopted by everybody who was part of that community. And a lot of people who I interviewed for Treat Me Like Dirt

looked back on that, and those who did sometimes adopt some of those symbols or played around with that imagery, they felt really embarrassed by it now. But the thing about Stephen, he never downplayed it. And I've looked for interviews since in updating some of my own perspectives

on these things and I could never find anything. And if anyone sees something out there, please send it to me. But I've never been able to find anything where Steven said, you know what, that was wrong. There was an interview I remember he did for Vice magazine. And the writer asked him about Nazi dog. And Stephen said something, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but he said, you know, it's a cool name.

Right? And that was in 2010. Yeah, he never, he never played it down. And I think, again, you know, there's a lot of time to kind of look back and say, I could see how that would hurt people. I could see how that might keep certain people away from my music. I could see how that might be uninviting for people who might be curious about punk,

but then they see that and they think, oh, no, right? So, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a, that is a, it's part of the story, right? It's part of the story. Words and all, as we say. I think, I think it's an important thing to look at and talk about, yeah. Okay, two names, and one is the next alphabetical, and then I'm bringing somebody up because I want them together. but a moment because we talked about the last Pogo.

You can't talk about the last Pogo without saying something about the Garees. So Gary Cormier, who's next alphabetically, and then I'll take Gary Top and pair him with Gary Cormier. Yeah, yeah. Two really important people. Again, you know, when we're talking about how music was being booked at the time in Toronto,

the two Gairies are the ones who had, they had this different vision for how music could be. They, I think they, you know, they're really ahead of the curve. in terms of how they were booking bands and how they were looking at music. And, you know, it's thanks to them that bands were able to start to bring some of their original music into bars and venues.

Was it easy? No. But did they keep doing it anyway? Yes. Well, you know, I've had extensive conversations with both. And that sounds like the secret formula was,

we only book bands we fucking like. Like that to me, that simple. little sentiment. Like, we're not booking this band because it'll sell tickets. You know, I'm booking this band because, uh, wait a thing. I, I know this is true, but I believe, uh, the joy division was booked for, uh, the edge.

I want to say, uh, of course, that tour never happened because of the tragic suicide, Ian, but, uh, yeah, that, like, yeah, they, they booked bands that they liked. Yes. Okay. So we love, uh, the Gary's here. And then again, you don't have to say anything about these two because everybody knows these two, but Mark Gain and Martha Johnson are both, uh, in your book. Yeah. Yeah, Martha and the Muffins. Yeah, you know, they're one of those bands that I,

when I started working on Treat Me Like Dirt, I didn't know what direction it would take, really, because I didn't know who I, who I would be able to find. I wanted to find as many people as possible, but I didn't, I couldn't conceptualize the actual number of people I would end up interviewing. And they were two of the first who I chatted with. And I thought that originally, I was operating under an assumption that Martha and the Muffins would take more space in the book. But I realized as I talked to them and as I talked to other people that what they were doing with their music was a little bit outside of what was happening with some of these other bands like the Ugly and the Forgotten Rebels and Teenage Head. And so, yeah,

so I didn't quite have as big of a thread with them as I originally thought that I would. And sometimes that's how things go. But a really important band for Toronto, really great people. shout out to Echo Beach. And yeah, sweethearts too. Yeah, they're both great. Here's a name. I was excited to talk to this gentleman,

Blair Packham, introduced me to him, and I got Blair Martin on the show. So Blair Martin, there's not a lot of interviews, but you got them, I got them. Maybe we're the only two. Who knows? Okay. Yeah.

You can say a word about Blair, but then I'll give you the next name too because I think it's more relevant to what you're doing with the punk talks series. But Don Pyle is next. Yeah. So Blair, I mean, Blair, what an incredibly articulate person. So it's, it's, it's, it's, you sit there, Blair talks and you feel like you're,

you're getting a history lesson. It's great. Don, also such an important person, uh, on so many levels, you know, he was a younger person who was involved in the scene, another photographer, someone who was documenting things as they were happening, who, who, I think, again, had this foresight to recognize that something was going on. but who also went on to be a musician to you. And also, you know, today has also become an author and has his own book on Toronto Punk

and has a new book coming out this spring. So, yeah. And shout out to Kids in the Hall, because if you've seen an episode of Kids in the Hall, you've heard some Don Pyle. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay.

David Quinton. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think, well, I know him as David Quentin Steinberg. so it depends how you bill them. But David Quentin, what can you say about David Quentin? Yeah, David was in the mods and another really interesting band out of Toronto. And David also went on to play with Stiv Bader's, which I always thought was really cool because I've been a fan of Stiv Bader's since high school.

One day I went to Goodwill and Mississauga, and I found a whole bunch of the Lords of the New Church records there. And I didn't know what it was at the time, but I thought the records looked cool. and I brought them home, and that was my discovery. Yeah. And now he's a lawyer to rush. Yeah, he's an entertainment lawyer now. Yeah, and in the last Pogo jumps again. He talks about that, how, you know, he, yeah, he got to a certain point where he,

he has a great quote. He didn't want to be middle age sitting in a bar, being excited about his demo tape. So, but not that there's anything wrong with that. A couple other, like, to tie things together, we're going to cook of gas here. But he's also the drummer. in the newly reformed jitters, Blair Packam's band. I just mentioned Blair, yeah.

And before Rush got back together, I heard a rumor they're going to play the Juno's. Oh, okay. I want to help me spread it? Okay, I've been spreading it like crazy. I hope it happens because I'm going to take full credit for it that the ref, you know, new drummer obviously, but the Rush that is touring is going to be playing the Junos

in Hamilton next month. But Alex Lifeson had a project called Envy of None, and the drummer for that band is David Quentin. Okay, last two names. I'm holding these drumsticks. Dave Rave.

Yeah. Yeah, so Dave Rave has been part of the teenage head camp. And also a great person, really interesting person, has had a career outside of Canada as well, but remains active, yeah. Do you think, you know, you said some people thought you spent too much time in the vile tones? Yeah.

Do you think maybe Is it possible Dave Rave presents himself as a member of teenage head back in the day when he was like adjacent? Well he was he was part of teenage head back in the day.

Is he like okay I'm honestly legit confused like because it sounds like he's part of the camp but not necessarily in the band. He's been, you mean he's stepped in as their singer but

but he also but he also has he also has his own career as a musician too. Sure. Yeah. That's fair. I have a question for you from Jim Moore, who bassist for Rusty.

Mm-hmm. Do you have any Rusty in your collection? Yeah, I saw, I used to love Rusty. When, you know, that was, yeah, when I was around 14 or so, Lee's Palace used to do these all-ages matinee shows on Sundays. And I remember going down to see Rusty at two in the afternoon with my friends.

and that was, yeah, that was a lot of fun. Yeah, because they were getting a lot of play on much music at the time. And it was exciting. You know, it was exciting to have a band like Rusty where you could see them, you know, see them on TV and then go downtown, see them live. That was part of that. There was a really great Canadian indie rock thing happening in the mid-90s. And, yeah, Rusty has a special place in my youthful memories for sure.

I will just say that, what was I going to say? there that, oh yeah, I wanted to tell you that fluke is now available, like for the first time, flukes on vinyl. Oh, wow. Because apparently Scott McCullough is going to bring me a copy. Okay, great. But Jim Moore says, ask her, that's you, Liz, why teenage head never rose above being a bar band. This is Jim Moore, remember, okay?

And ignore, this is interesting caveat. He goes, and ignore the car crash story that set them back with David Bendeth having to fill in. Because we've all heard the car crash story. but yeah answer jim's question there um i don't know i mean i think that teenage head did pretty good i i you know i was it's tough it's tough with a lot of these bands because especially for me coming at it from from someone who's coming coming into this you know decades after the fact one of the things i really had to you also rely on was who had recordings and there were a lot of bands that never recorded anything or if they did it was just 1.45 that, you know, and some of those things are impossible to

get on collectors markets. They go for, you know, a few hundred bucks, right? So, you know, Teenage Head was one of those bands that I always thought did pretty well. They had a lot of albums out compared to their peers. And when I talk to people about my book, or I mentioned that I've done this project, Teenage Head is often the bands that people mention first because Teenage Head played in everyone's high school. And so there's a certain generation of people across Canada who got to see teenage head in their most formative years. And when you can expose someone to a band in their teenage years, those are the bands that we remember the most because they do really set something into our identity. And so I always thought that teenage head really rose to the top. You know,

is there room for, was there room for these bands to reach an even higher level of potential? Sure. I think there are a lot of circumstances that we're working against some of these bands as well, being in Canada. It is really hard to be a Canadian artist. I think that there can also be sometimes interpersonal things that are going on within bands. But by and large, I think that they're one of the bands that did have the most success when we look at this collection of artists. I think you're 100% right. I think if you went to an average music fan in this country and you said, can you name a Canadian fan? punk band, teenage head would be, I think, referenced the most. Yeah. So the Jim Moore speaks for Jim Moore. But he has an interesting second question for you, which is unrelated to teenage head. He says, in his opinion, again, I'm just reading Jim's words. No, I love these questions.

Amazing that Stephen Lecky became such a legend. He never really ever toured or played outside of Toronto. He was really good at creating myths. This is Jim Moore from Rusty speaking. Yeah, yeah, yep, yep. I totally agree. and I think that this goes for a lot of the Toronto bands as well is that they didn't tour extensively extensively.

And again, if you look at teenage head, they went on the road, right? Forgotten Rebels, too. They've played elsewhere. And Forgotten Rebels have a, you know, have a fairly high level of awareness, I think. Surfing on heroin is one of the first songs I think about when I think about. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, and again, another band that had, you know, they had recordings. They had Bob Bryden behind them, too.

really early on. So, but with Stephen, yeah, you know, he didn't, he didn't tour. And, and he was really good at playing the media, and he wanted that, right? He wanted that attention. I think, you know, it's interesting when you talk about Stephen and the mythology around him, I was saying earlier that the violtones were one of those bands that I would hear about before I could really find anything out about Toronto punk. And, you know, living in Toronto at the time, I would hear stories about Stephen from people who ran stores on Queen Street or tattoo shops.

I mean, he had a reputation even then. It wasn't music-related always. It was just, you know, there would be anecdotes about him around town. But he was, you know, he was someone who was being talked about even then. Yeah. And we're still talking about him. And we're still talking about him. Again, you know, to, you know, think about sometimes the people.

people who are like, oh, you're being hard on Stephen. Like, no, trust me. Trust me. There are stories about Stephen, and a lot of it is his own doing. He was a grown man. He can take responsibility for his actions. So of all the FOTMs you talked about for Treat Me Like Dirt and the cast of characters, there's only one left.

And he's the only one on this list who is no longer with us. So Bob Segorini. Oh, yeah. Bob. Yeah. You know, it's been a, it was a long time ago that I chatted with Bob. I went to his house when we did his interview. I remember he was great.

He had a really lovely partner. I remember we sat around his table. He wanted to make it a big thing. Like he, you know, he wanted to have dinner. We wanted to chat. It was very, it was nice. Bob was a cool, cool person. Yeah.

What's that song? I want to, I want to dance like Fred. I think I have the words wrong, actually. No, later when I listen back, I'll say, Mike, come on. how did you script? I want to be like that. Anyway, he produces this song. It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter. But Bob's like when he says something, one of the saddest lines I've ever had from an FOTM ever. Satest lines ever, because he needed teeth work. He needed dental work done. And like really badly, actually.

And I was chatting with him and he said, you know, if chorus would stream the Edison twins, I could get my teeth fixed. And for some reason, it's just the way he articulated, the way it struck me, I still think about that line when I think about how we tend to glorify

the musicians we listen to like they're all driving around and they're all living in mansions or something and Bob Segreini tell me if Chorus would just stream the... Because he did the theme song to the... I didn't know that he did that. Here come the Edison twins.

Wow. I'm going to sing the whole thing for you. But if chorus would stream the Edison twins he could get his teeth fixed and I think, okay, that's what I think about when I think about, Because we're not talking about the weekend, and we're not talking about rush, and we're not talking about Brian Adams here. But a lot of these artists we're talking about, that's kind of the line I think about with chorus, with stream, The Edison twins, I could get my teeth fixed.

Yeah, I mean, this is one of the reasons why I've stayed so dedicated to, you know, to sharing about this history. you know, not that I can not that I can change anyone's material reality, right? If, you know, if I could, I would love to. But it always was curious to me that we, you know, especially from a punk perspective, that when we talk about punk in Canada, we know so much about the sex pistol,

so much about the Ramones, we know all about the New York scene, the L.A. scene, the London scene. The clash. Exactly. And that we had our own scene here, our own movement and, No one cared about it.

No one did anything about it. We could have had, you know, these bands could have been on that same level, right? We could have had the same thing. And, and, and it just, it passed by. And I find that really unfortunate. And again, there are a lot of, a lot of variables that you can't always account for in a music career in terms of, who makes it and how much success they have. Well, part of it is avoiding substance abuse, right? Like a lot of, you know, something like what happens.

to this artist and then, oh, the dirty truth is that they became addicted to drugs or alcoholism, and that can really derail any profession, be it music or otherwise. Yeah. And, you know, art takes everything out of you, right? Enough but Art Bergman. It takes, you know, it takes a lot. It takes a lot to do this. And Kirae and I, also being artists, you know, we have, we navigate that all the time as well, right?

we, you know, we don't, we don't have regular jobs. I don't have a salary. Everything that, you know, that I make from my writing goes back into my writing. I bring my books to all kinds of events. I have to pay for those books. I have to order the inventory. I have to pay for spaces at markets and things, but I keep bringing this work out to people. I, you know, I've, it's, again, it's 20 years on. I'm still talking about this. It takes up a lot of my personal life. Um, but it's important. And, and, and, and, And I think that that's also a, it's a hard road to navigate because you do end up making a lot of sacrifices. Sometimes they're emotional. Sometimes they're spiritual. Sometimes they're material. I totally get it because like we're my job. I'm a sole proprietor of a business and I'm the only one work in here at TMDS as I look at the logo. But I also have a spouse who has like one of those old fashion jobs.

Like she works for a bank, right? And I haven't had this chat today. But it's it's got to be tough when you're. both, you know, eating what you kill. Like, it's got to be tough for you. You know, I don't think that we could do anything else. I had, I had jobs. I haven't had a full-time job since 2015. And I, you know, I don't, the hard thing about it is I don't have time, right? I don't have time because, because all of these other things also take up so much of my time.

And so I have to find other ways to make this life sustainable. But it is hard and it is also scary because things add up. And you really have to be mindful of the realities and the practicalities of life. It's a huge risk. And I think that, you know, not everyone is made to function in that regular society. 100%. 100%. And conversely, not everybody is watching. to be an entrepreneur.

Right. Like so, which is just the, the, the, reflection of that. But, uh,

I know that, you know, we talked a lot. I know I don't, you came over here, but it's, so it's Lizworthauthor.com. That's where people go,

right. That's right. And of course, you know, I keep talking about treat me like dirt and oral history of punk in Toronto and beyond.

And, uh, I know that since that came out. Cause that, what year did that get released again? It was in late 2009. Yeah, right.

So we're talking in 2026. And that's all I want to talk about. what an annoying host of a podcast this is. But, you know, when I dig into Liz Worth, there's a whole world. I'm curious about a couple of things. One is poetry. Yeah.

And the second one is, because I know nothing about this, but I know this is a passion of yours. And I hope I don't butcher the tarot card reading. Tarot. See, I knew I'd butcher it. That's all right. I can't even say Pep, Hutz.

I'm working on that. And I notice, you know, Liz Worf, that's the brand, too. Don't be tempted ever to be. become a Liz Puppets, okay? Lizworth is the brand. All right, tell me, so, so you're more than just music journalism and covering our punk scene. Even though everybody should get themselves to the punk talks series and, you know, more. It sounds like I want to go.

And I will say Parkdale, I bike it often, but I saw Kiri's not the movie, he just made, the Hamilton one, the one before that, you'll know the name of it better than I will. The last porno show? No, the one after that. Oh, always had a nice time. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not, you know, Keri, that's not the best title because it doesn't, that title, I struggled to grab it.

But I, I so loved that documentary film. And it was like, that was to me, like, okay, a love letter to Parkdale. These are the characters. And I thought it was just stellar. I know that when Allen's Yide came over, I wouldn't shut up about it. Like, I'm just like, you know, telling anyone who will listen. I just thought it was beautiful. So, okay.

So, where are we going? It's up to you. I need to know a little bit about your poetry, but I also need to know tarot. The Tia Island. Tarot cards and what that means to you and your involvement in that world that was a black box to me.

Yeah. Yeah. What are you wondering about both of these things? I can talk. Okay, so I know. I know what poetry is. Yeah. English major from U of T here.

Okay. But you've published poetry. Yep. So you've always been interested in poetry? Yes. Yes. poetry was one of the first things I started writing. Again, when I was in high school, I was obsessed with Anne Rice.

It was the 90s, so I was obsessed with Anne Rice, and I would write all this really bad vampire poetry and put it into zines. And that was fun. But poetry was also really important to me. And I, you know, again, I got exposed to poetry through a lot of my interest in music, through people like Patty Smith or writers like Kathy Acker, where there was always this big crossover between poetry and literature and music, bands like television as well. And I was thought that was so fascinating because to me, it taught me that certain subcultures are so much more than just the music or just the fashion that you see on the street. And so I thought, wow, you know, you can be,

punk poetry, you can be a, there's goth poetry, it's cool. I thought it was cool. So yeah, I, I always had, you know, had an aim to build a career as a poet. I don't know how much of a career as a poet. It's really practical. But that's always been a big... You've got to be Leonard Cohen to have a career as a poet. Yeah. I mean, it is, again, it's a tough road. But it's, for me, it's always been an important one. And so, yeah, so that's always been a big focus in terms of my writing. And after Treat Me Like Dirt, that was my next book was a collection of poetry. Is that emphetamine heart? Amphetamine heart. Yeah. Yeah. And poetry is actually when you look at, at the books I've written, poetry takes the majority of my publications that way, yeah. More than just a punk here going on here. But here's the one.

So that one I understand, and I just wanted to talk a little bit about amphetamine heart. And I actually have a question for you on the live stream. So this is a late break. I'll get to that. After we talk about tarot, maybe I, like,

like what? I know a bit about it. I guess this is, is it like predicting futures? What is tarot card reading? It's a great question. Yeah. So tarot,

so just a little bit of a moment of context. So my mom, Mary Worth, she was really into readings. And she had all kinds of beliefs. She had seen UFOs. She had lived in haunted houses. She would take me to psychic fairs when I was a kid and get my palm red and stuff like that. So my mom really opened me up to all of these things. And because I, and I just say that because people sometimes are raised in a way to believe that these things are evil.

Right. Not evil, but maybe scams? Scams too. Yeah, but there can be, there can be issues with that for sure. But I was always exposed to it in a way where I thought this was, this was what you could do, right? This is what people do. It's, that it's a practice. It can be a profession. And so my mom really legitimized that for me. And so that was always a big part of my life. And when I was a kid, I taught myself how to learn how to read playing cards one summer. And when I was in high school, I had tarot cards and things like that. So I was always really interested in those things. And in all kinds of different. aspects of the occult. After Treat Me Like Dirt came out, it was a really difficult time for me because that book was done and I missed it. I missed it so, so deeply. I didn't know that you could mourn a project and I wasn't, yeah, and it was a really, it really threw me for a good long while. It also was challenging because I was seeing people react to it. And sometimes people were mad.

They'd say, you know, why didn't you write about my band more? Or how come I only have five quotes and this guy has 20 quotes and there were all these petty arguments all of a sudden being directed my way and the things that I thought people would be really upset about in the book at least they didn't express to me it was all this other stuff I didn't I didn't think about right I was thinking I didn't know you were going to count how many quotes you had like as a journalist you're not thinking about those things at all right you're just looking at the story yeah yeah you're looking at the story and and I had intended to do a sequel uh to focus on some of the bands I didn't have as much space to get into you, but the way some of these people were reacting, I thought,

I need space from this. I can't. And I went to an astrologer because I would just walk around the city and be like, what am I doing with my life? I felt like I had opened up this black hole for a while with putting treatment like dirt out there. And I was just really, I missed it, but then I was also feeling like I wanted to get away from it. And it was a really conflicted time. And I went to this astrologer. And he started talking about tarot cards. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, And I thought, oh, wow, you know, I hadn't thought about that in so long. Like, and it reminded me of all the stuff my mom and I used to do when I was younger and and all these other things I had forgotten about or put aside because treat me like dirt was

so all-encompassing. And when he said that, it was almost like someone had, was handing me a glass of water that I didn't know I needed. And I thought, wow, yeah, I'm going to learn how to read tarot and like, I'm going to really do it well this time. And I didn't think that I was going to do it professionally. but it was similar to treat me like dirt. After a while, I just got obsessed with it.

And I wanted to go deeper and deeper and deeper. And I studied tarot for about seven years. And that world was so different from being a music journalist because there are so many more women in the tarot world as well. And it really gave me this antidote to this very masculine energy that I had been in where, again, people would say things like, oh, you know, your looks are going to go in five years, Right? All of a sudden, you know, you get into the tarot world and, and you do, you have these much softer experiences. People are not, they're not as superficial. There's a lot more mindfulness. And I really needed to be in that space. And it was really helpful for me to be able to balance out these two worlds that, but now I have, I have both hands in. And it really helped me to come back to music journalism in a way where I feel like I, I have grown. I've grown a lot as well. as a person, but I also have a much, I'm much more grounded in who I am. So tarot helped me a lot

with that. And over, over that time, I also started to be able to work as a professional reader and teach classes and help other people find that too. And that's, that's really how I've been able to sustain myself as an artist as well. Okay, so you have books out there about taro? Yeah. Going beyond the little white book, a contemporary guide to tarot, that's 2016, and the power of taro to know taro, read taro, and live taro. That's 2019. You teach tarot. It's fascinating to me how, like, if I had to, let's the polar opposite of punk.

It might be tarot cards. I don't know. Like, it is an interesting yin-yang thing going on. And it is fascinating to hear you tell. Like, it sounds like, I don't know, I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but because you're here. But it was the journey, not the destination. Like, to me, you have this project.

It's a passion for so long and you did such a thorough, great job on it. and then you birth it and now it's out in the abyss and you get the reaction and it's done and it's almost like I can almost you describe it very well but it's like oh what next who am I what?

You know, taro is like that glass of water you described and then after a while you can come back because you're clearly back because you're hosting these punk toxin series so you have come back after that diversion to taro and you can have both worlds going

Yeah, and, and, you know, coming back really happened over the last few years, because there were times when people would ask me to do things like this, and I would say, no, I wouldn't talk about Toronto punk anymore. I didn't want to talk about treatment like dirt anymore. There was a time when I was, I was truly distancing myself from it. Right. But over the last few years, I've opened up again to these discussions, because I started to realize that this is a really important history for people.

And what started to happen was I would go to, like, punk rock flea markets in Hamilton, for example and bring my books and people would come up to me and they'd say you know treat me like dirt means so much to me and and they were younger than I was I was like what is happening like this book is really it really has had the life that I wanted it to have and in that it's it's found its way into people who are not part of the scene and and that's really who I wrote the book for was for people who were not there for people like me who were looking for that and people would come up to me and say thank you for doing this. And I thought, I can't, I have to be true to this. I have to be true to what I committed to you all those years ago. And, and it is an important document. And I also started to think,

because you can't take anything for granted in publishing. I started to wonder, you know, what if this book falls out of print? What if ECW decides they don't want to print anymore? What if publishers can fold as well, you know, knock on wood, nothing. No one's going anywhere. But you never know. And I started to have to think about that to you. What would I do if, if I had to take, this book back into my hands, would I reprint it myself if I had to? And I realized that I would. And so just in sitting with that on my own, I thought, you know, this matters to me just as much as it did when I started. It hasn't always been the easiest undertaking. But I think that for, you know, for all of the ups and downs it's brought, I would absolutely do it again. And, and I do think that it's important to

keep this alive. When we film, and maybe I'll need your husband's help on this, because I haven't filmed anything. Although I had a, just the other day, I was driving. I had a gig in Richmond Hill. I had to record some stuff. And I was thinking I should write a screenplay. This was the thing. I'm going to write a screenplay.

And I'm like, I don't know. Where do I begin? Okay, maybe I need to talk to Kyrie about this. But when we make the biopic about Liz Worth, okay, I just had a combo last week, was it? Dave Bedini came over. And it was the 90th, that week was the 90th, heavenly birthday for Stomp and Tom Connors.

and we were talking about Dave Bidini's role in his comeback in the 80s when he comes back. And speaking of the horseshoe tavern, okay. So essentially in the biopic of that scene, I envision like Dave Bidini, you know, he finds Stomp and Tom out in Ontario, somewhere in Ontario, he finds him, and he goes to Stomp and Tom and Tom, and he's like, we need you, right? We need you. And Stomp and Tom and Tom has to come back because, you know, people like Dave Bidini need him back. And I'm saying, what happened to you and you're doing the tarot cards or whatnot?

not at a trade some show or something, you know, and some young person comes to you and says, Liz, we need you. We need you to come back and spread the word about the Toronto punk scene and beyond. We need you. So welcome back, Liz, where.

Thank you. I'm going to have a great, it's going to be a great scene, okay. I'm going to, you know, treat me like dirt. Okay. Here's a question that came in on a live stream. And then I have a question about the borough you're sitting in right now. But the question

from Tobias Vaughn. And Tobias Vaughn loved this guy. I moderated this, when Gary Taup put out his book at the Red Room at the Masonic Temple. I was the moderator talking to Colin Brunton and Kormier and Topp and all this stuff. And I looked in the crowd and I saw Tobias Vaughn there. He's the real deal. He's got a

copy of Treat Me Like Dirt in his collection because he sent me a picture of it earlier today. And he's on the live stream. His question is this. A bit later than 77 to 1981, what does Liz think of the place of band fifth column in Toronto post-punk history and zine culture? Their recordings are next to impossible to find. I will now put up my hand to say,

I hope you know what we're talking. I actually don't know fifth column. So do you have anything to say to Tobias Vaughan about fifth column? Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure, I'm not sure all the extent of what, what I could say. I had a fifth column CD. I don't know if I still have it though Now I should look I interviewed Caroline Azar for Treat Me Like Dirt And because

Because it These you know that that first way of seen Was very formative for a lot of those bands That came out of Toronto in the 80s And for a band like fifth column To see bands like The Curse and the B girls Where there were women getting on stage Right

You know taking control of their own creative paths that was very, again, very important. And fifth column, I always, I was perceived them as a band that was, that was continuing that spirit on. Yeah. Okay. There you go, Tobias Vaughn. Good to see you on the live stream.

So I'm just going to close because I know you're now living like west of the city. Yeah, I live in Hamilton now. An undisclosed location. Okay. So Hamilton. Yeah. And that explains all the go train interactions I'm seeing here. But did you grow up in Atobico?

Yeah. I, so this, so, you know, you're talking about Stomp and Tom Conners, right? So my dad, my mom was from South Atobico. My dad moved to South Atobico when he was 17. My grandmother used to live several blocks away from where we're sitting now. She also moved here from Nova Scotia. And my dad got in a fight with Stomp and Tom Connors up the street from here at a house party. So there you go. A little Atabico lore for you. On your way out, you're blowing my mind at this worth here. So I'll, When we go to the Toronto Tree, and I hope you show off the T-shirt. Like, I know it's cold out, but you might have to take one for the team here. Okay. Because we're going to take a photo by Toronto Tree, and I want that T-shirt in there. I don't get the frostbite for the photo.

But that's a fun fact. So you are an atobico girl. Like, what high school did you go to? I went to Lakeshore, which was also down the street from here. Okay, well, that's my... So I should just move into your house, basically. Well, shout out. Lake Shore Collegiate is in New Toronto.

The forgotten neighborhood nestled between. between Long Branch and Mimico. New Toronto. That's where we are right now. That's right. Okay. And Don Pyle, just to bring it all around

to sell the Tobago, he's involved with a band, new band that I quite like, called Long Branch. I love that name. Yeah. Don Pyle, so Long Branch. It's my time someone did that.

I'm going to start a band called New Toronto, but it's very confusing because we have a Toronto. You know, it's a big city. And the whole idea of New Toronto, like a lot of people are confused. It's not good for SEO and many other things. Whereas Mimico, that's like a unique identity, long branch. They got a unique identity.

New Toronto. We got like a, we got some work to do here. But now that I know the Stomp and Tom fought your dad, who won the fight? Well, I think I'm going to take my dad's side for sure. I think it was about a woman. It's always about a woman. You didn't have to say anything. Okay.

And you were great. And I got to say you're kind of a throwback. Like, and even though I have a few. years on you, you're an inspiration. Oh, thank you. Because you're, you've got that punk ethic. Like, you're making it happen, you're doing it. You're not waiting for something to fall out of the sky.

You're creating the content that people like me seek. And in a smaller way, I'm trying to do the same fucking thing. You're doing it. I'm trying. You are Toronto Mike. That's true. Not new Toronto Mike. I'm Toronto Mike.

I'm working on it here. So thank you, Liz. Thank you. And I love this very much. And, you know, you did that very thorough oral history of our punk scene, but we have a lot of scenes. Yeah. You just go to the next scene. Barclay does that.

I do have to get on something else. I agree. Let Michael Barclay eat your lunch over here. Come on. Thank God he hasn't gone back in. He can't touch the punk scene because you did it. But there's a lot of ground to uncover. Do you think you'd ever make a return trip to the TMDS basement?

Oh, of course. Beautiful. Don't forget your lasagna. Don't forget your beer. Don't forget your measuring tape. And that brings us to the end of our 1,854th show. Go to TorontoMike.com for all your Toronto Mike needs. But Liz is Lizworthauthor.com.

Go there and maybe get her to teach you the tarot card reading. If that's your cup of tea, I hear you're very good at it. Thank you. Whoever said that. I never heard that. I'm assuming so. You're good at everything. Much love to those who made this possible.

That's Great Lakes Brewery. Here's some brush for you in the background. Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, nicayini's recycle my electronics.c.a. There's some Mr. dress-up for you. Ridley Funeral Home. See you all Thursday

when my special guest is actress in former Philadelphia cream cheese angel. Linda Cash. Linda Cash makes her Toronto mic debut. See you all then. There's some Gino Vanelli for you. Why don't you do a book about Gino Vanelli? It's not a bad idea.

Someone's got to do it. It might as well be you. Might as well be you. See you all Thursday.