Memories of Fort Boogie
Posted on April 12, 2011 with 0 comments
In 1974, we were five teenagers barely out of our country high school in Mission, B.C., when we were plunged into the throbbing nightlife of Vancouver's seediest area's, the Downtown East Side, at the height of its decadence. How we ended up there is a whole other story, but we had all wanted to branch out beyond the hockey fund-raiser dances and the Legion Halls that we'd been playing in the Fraser Valley, and here we were, finally playing the Big City, at Fort Boogie.
In Dave Bidini's book "On a Cold Road: Tales of Adventure in Canadian Rock", John Cody remembers a few things better than I do:
Between 1972 and 1975, I played in all the strip bars in Vancouver. The third-rate joints. We accompanied the strippers, we played behind them.The best place was called Fort Boogie. On the outside, they had giant cartoons of Donald Duck whipping naked women and a thought bubble that said " Dance, girls! Dance!"
I had forgotten what the outside of the place looked like, but inside it was a dingy, incongruous mix of western fort and fake palm trees decors. I’m sceptical about it being “the best place”. Our job was to play our set while two naked go-go dancers boogied on either side of us. This attracted an audience of trench-coated masturbators, junkies and falling down drunks, and rendered the dance floor pretty well redundant. It was depressing to us, since we were used to hall dances, where the people came to dance and where the space in front of the band was always hopping, which was always energizing to us. The pay was miserable: 400$ for six nights a week, split between the five of us. And there was gas to pay from Mission into Vancouver every night.
There were some booths in the back where we used to take refuge during the breaks. On the floor I found a card that gave the bearer free entry to "any of the Syndicate's five clubs" and listing other Downtown Eastside establishments. Our manager (at the time known as Charles T.) was always joking about the "guys with the violin cases", with little concern for that we fresh-faced long-haired naive country rubes might find that worrisome.
Indeed, the breaks were more interesting than playing the sets. Our first stand as a house band came in the summer of 1974, and the street outside became a circus sideshow every night featuring colourful hookers, bright neon lights and the vigorous, entertaining law and order dished out by Vancouver City Police Sergeant Smith, who was the city’s answer to Kojak. Many nights he used to cruise into Fort Boogie, commanding the respect of the minions with his good-natured tough love policing style.
My brother Doug has a few memories :
“I remember how the police used to write on the strippers with those pens that only show up under black lights. (…)I remember finding a bloody knife under my car in the back, and I remember one night driving home and everyone dozing off with Leonard (Skye, our drummer) driving and waking to find us driving on the grass median beside the freeway because Len fell asleep, and him wrenching the wheel to get back on the highway, and then a short while later noticing car lights that were coming straight for us because we had ended up on the wrong side of the freeway. »
There were plenty of fights, but everyone was usually so drunk they’d hurt themselves before their opponent could hurt them.
I wasn’t much into beer at the time, so to keep up the energy I’d get a coffee at a sprawling, brightly-lit Steam’s Hot Dogs cafeteria that was practically next door, where people went to nod off on stools at tall, round tables. There were other bands to see on the Hastings Street strip, as well, and I especially remember a three-piece in an even dingier dive than Fort Boogie, playing a lot of ZZ Top. That was special in 1974, as Tush hadn’t even hit the airwaves yet, and these guys were pulling songs like “Francine” off the first three albums.
But the most memorable break-time past-time was the evangelical radio program that was recorded each night in a little chapel set up just upstairs from the Fort. There must have been a little notice on the door, which was tucked inside an entrance-way right next to the club. You climbed a long dark stairway to a sombre room filled with metal chairs in front of a make-shift stage and pulpit. We went up there a number of times, although I think it was mostly myself and Leonard who enjoyed taking in the fire-and-brimstone sermon and whispering little wise-cracks to each other. The atmosphere was so completely at odds with the den of iniquity we had just come from, and yet it was in its own way even more bizarre.
These fundamentalist Pentecostals were there to see healings, and to “sing in the spirit”, and healings they certainly attempted. The preacher and her assistant “laid their hands” on a Native woman that had been brought up those stairs in a wheelchair, and when they pulled her out of it she just flopped on the floor for several minutes before they finally put her back in. Another time one of the folks listening to the message spoke up and took issue with the minister’s interpretation of the scripture, and was forcibly ejected (as in dragged down the stairs yelling) while the rest of the group moaned in the spirit about a “disruptive demon”.
Len and I even felt the power of the laying on of hands one night, when the pastor seemed to figure out that we were mocking them a bit and called us up to the front. Dutifully we knelt in front of the stage and they prayed for the “devil to come out” of us. I must admit the drama of these strangers laying their hands on our heads and intoning grave scriptural pronouncements provoked a strong emotional charge.
But after that it was back to the naked go-go girls. It seems to me they didn’t strip, they were just always naked and dancing to beat hell. As if Donald Duck really was behind them with a whip.
In Dave Bidini's book "On a Cold Road: Tales of Adventure in Canadian Rock", John Cody remembers a few things better than I do:
Between 1972 and 1975, I played in all the strip bars in Vancouver. The third-rate joints. We accompanied the strippers, we played behind them.The best place was called Fort Boogie. On the outside, they had giant cartoons of Donald Duck whipping naked women and a thought bubble that said " Dance, girls! Dance!"
I had forgotten what the outside of the place looked like, but inside it was a dingy, incongruous mix of western fort and fake palm trees decors. I’m sceptical about it being “the best place”. Our job was to play our set while two naked go-go dancers boogied on either side of us. This attracted an audience of trench-coated masturbators, junkies and falling down drunks, and rendered the dance floor pretty well redundant. It was depressing to us, since we were used to hall dances, where the people came to dance and where the space in front of the band was always hopping, which was always energizing to us. The pay was miserable: 400$ for six nights a week, split between the five of us. And there was gas to pay from Mission into Vancouver every night.
There were some booths in the back where we used to take refuge during the breaks. On the floor I found a card that gave the bearer free entry to "any of the Syndicate's five clubs" and listing other Downtown Eastside establishments. Our manager (at the time known as Charles T.) was always joking about the "guys with the violin cases", with little concern for that we fresh-faced long-haired naive country rubes might find that worrisome.
Indeed, the breaks were more interesting than playing the sets. Our first stand as a house band came in the summer of 1974, and the street outside became a circus sideshow every night featuring colourful hookers, bright neon lights and the vigorous, entertaining law and order dished out by Vancouver City Police Sergeant Smith, who was the city’s answer to Kojak. Many nights he used to cruise into Fort Boogie, commanding the respect of the minions with his good-natured tough love policing style.
My brother Doug has a few memories :
“I remember how the police used to write on the strippers with those pens that only show up under black lights. (…)I remember finding a bloody knife under my car in the back, and I remember one night driving home and everyone dozing off with Leonard (Skye, our drummer) driving and waking to find us driving on the grass median beside the freeway because Len fell asleep, and him wrenching the wheel to get back on the highway, and then a short while later noticing car lights that were coming straight for us because we had ended up on the wrong side of the freeway. »
There were plenty of fights, but everyone was usually so drunk they’d hurt themselves before their opponent could hurt them.
I wasn’t much into beer at the time, so to keep up the energy I’d get a coffee at a sprawling, brightly-lit Steam’s Hot Dogs cafeteria that was practically next door, where people went to nod off on stools at tall, round tables. There were other bands to see on the Hastings Street strip, as well, and I especially remember a three-piece in an even dingier dive than Fort Boogie, playing a lot of ZZ Top. That was special in 1974, as Tush hadn’t even hit the airwaves yet, and these guys were pulling songs like “Francine” off the first three albums.
But the most memorable break-time past-time was the evangelical radio program that was recorded each night in a little chapel set up just upstairs from the Fort. There must have been a little notice on the door, which was tucked inside an entrance-way right next to the club. You climbed a long dark stairway to a sombre room filled with metal chairs in front of a make-shift stage and pulpit. We went up there a number of times, although I think it was mostly myself and Leonard who enjoyed taking in the fire-and-brimstone sermon and whispering little wise-cracks to each other. The atmosphere was so completely at odds with the den of iniquity we had just come from, and yet it was in its own way even more bizarre.
These fundamentalist Pentecostals were there to see healings, and to “sing in the spirit”, and healings they certainly attempted. The preacher and her assistant “laid their hands” on a Native woman that had been brought up those stairs in a wheelchair, and when they pulled her out of it she just flopped on the floor for several minutes before they finally put her back in. Another time one of the folks listening to the message spoke up and took issue with the minister’s interpretation of the scripture, and was forcibly ejected (as in dragged down the stairs yelling) while the rest of the group moaned in the spirit about a “disruptive demon”.
Len and I even felt the power of the laying on of hands one night, when the pastor seemed to figure out that we were mocking them a bit and called us up to the front. Dutifully we knelt in front of the stage and they prayed for the “devil to come out” of us. I must admit the drama of these strangers laying their hands on our heads and intoning grave scriptural pronouncements provoked a strong emotional charge.
But after that it was back to the naked go-go girls. It seems to me they didn’t strip, they were just always naked and dancing to beat hell. As if Donald Duck really was behind them with a whip.