: Punk History Canada Articles : : The Punks : : People : : Bios :

Punk Bio :: Tim Crow

Tim Crow: Red Tide, Suburban Menace, Censored Chaos, Holy Shit Fanzine, Youth Plague Fanzine, and Manifesto Productions

Victoria, BC, Canada                                                              1980-1986

Youth Plague was a very apt name. It perfectly communicated how hopeful I felt about the future of the Punk Rock scene, likening it to a disease that spreads faster and more effectively than anything else on the living planet. Like an amoeba living in a scientist’s lab, I dreamed at night of total proliferation. That dream developed into a consuming fever, that fever was shared by close friends like Jeff Helgason, Kenny Jensen, Derek Shaplowy, Jon & Dave Craggs, Chris Prohom and a few more who would form the nucleus of a larger group of friends (who would become known as “the Red Tide guys”) that would impact 80’s Punk Rock in Victoria, BC and on the West Coast of Canada in an unforgettable way. We all shared a love of ”Hardcore”….the Hummer of Punk Rock…utilitarian, stripped down, hard and fast… the jack-hammer of life pounded away in our heads as we drank lots of beer and took acid/mushrooms on as many weekends as we could find them (except for that period when we “went” straight edge a la Minor Threat!).

I loved the clothes, they were my real skin, the other that I shared with the whole of the human race and was not thick enough to protect me from my life before punk rock. I needed to be seen as a representative of this new way of thinking and being… even if it meant getting beaten up on Friday and Saturday nights by drunken men for looking “like a freak”. This was shared by many of my fellow punks in Victoria and around the world.  We only loved it more…

Punk Rock saved me from the isolation and pain of moving every year, due to a father’s military career, and later the divorce of my parents. Everybody I knew had one problem or another at home or at school.  I wanted to be involved in everything that happened in the punk scene so I wouldn’t have a spare minute to ruminate and suffer in my home/family/school life.

The first day I went downtown, having moved to Victoria, BC from Ottawa, Ontario in 1980 when my father was transferred in the military, I saw a real hard-looking punk guy, shaved head, ripped jeans tucked into black army boots, suspenders swinging rhythmically as he walked down Johnson Street. I was introduced to Punk Rock in Ottawa and had met guys like this before… I just didn’t know there were real hard punks like this in Victoria. He took a left on Government Street and popped into Richard’s Records. The guy was Dog (Doug) and I followed him into this little, funky looking record store and met Scott Henderson. 

I became well known in the Victoria scene for my gregarious nature, a nature that resulted in the Day Glo Abortions song “Kill Tim Crow” a few years later. I met a good friend in Scott, a guy who was passionate about the music, knowledgeable, and willing to help a young, aggravating punk kid (even though that kid made it really difficult sometimes…he was really good to me). I eventually lived with this scene icon and he once helped my head through his bedroom wall during a wild house party. He disconnectedly claimed, looking more like Emo Phillips at that moment than anyone I’ve ever known, someone had given him a pill that had made him angry. It was big and grey… the pill.

I started a band with Dan Speed and Paul Harris, two guys I had met at a small gig; we called ourselves Censored Chaos. Our only gig was a bit difficult because we failed to…have/get…a drummer. So, when it was time to play, we decided we needed to find a drummer. The Automatic Shock boys came to the rescue, as usual, and the gig went on and we played our smash hit “Violence in the Streets” (which sounded dubiously like “Wild in the Streets”…hey, whatta ya’ say… I loved the Circle Jerks!).

Censored Chaos was not long for this world; I was looking for guys who wanted to start a band more in the hardcore vain. Guys who wanted to sound more USA and less UK. I met Jon Craggs and Chris Prohom, while simultaneously starting Holy Shit Fanzine to combat the mountain of information found in Kev Smith’s Incest Fanzine and to satisfy my creative urges. Red Tide started as Suburban Menace with a practice in a basement in the far reaches of Colwood, but soon settled down with Ken Jensen as drummer and practice-house-provider.

By this time I was developing pen pal friendships with Al @ Flipside Fanzine (LA), Len Morgan@ Idle Thoughts Fanzine (a good friend and a great person…Rest in Peace Len!), Touch and Go Records (IL), Tim @ Ripper (San Francisco, CA), Forced Exposure (Boston, MA), Big Takeover (NY), We Got Power (CA) and many, many more. I was plugged directly into the fanzine editors’ pipeline and the mail flowed like oil! In the spirit of the times (and with the support of my friends), I became a one-man industry; Youth Plague Fanzine was born. This was the happiest time of my young life; my parents would be shocked and worried when, frequently, the Canada Post van guy would show up asking for Mr. Crow, my dad would go to the door in his navy uniform and they would hand him two huge bags of mail. They meant the other Mr. Crow (me!). The first time this happened my parents sat me down and talked to me like I was involved in smuggling guns! They were really concerned for my safety and alternately angry at my “strange punk rock behaviours”. “This Punk Rock stuff is going to ruin your life. Why can’t you be normal?” The bags were FULL of records, fanzines, letters, t-shirts, scene reports, stickers, cassette tapes, and a least 2 pieces of mail (daily!) from Baboon Dooley, rock critic! This was the precious booty of the fanzine editor and it came by the ton in the mail from the hundreds of other fanzine editors around North America and the various bands and companies that would ply us for free advertising by sending us free swag to review. The better the fanzine, the more stuff you received (it was perceived that there was more value to send stuff to the best or most popular fanzines). I received some great stuff in the mail!

Youth Plague Fanzine #9 was my triumph, my swansong.  I borrowed $500 from a girl at Mt. Doug High, my high school, to put it out… “it has a glossy cover” (which I wouldn’t shut up about until the end of time!!!); the cover featured the hardcore be-devil-locked stylings of none other than Jon Craggs, inside there was a telephone interview with Glen Danzig of The Misfits, scene reports from all over North America and a highly critical article about the Bad Brains infiltration of homophobia into our beloved scene (a la the Bad Boys, Austin, TX incident).  It was 24 pages packed with Punk Rock information, a good graphic look and attention to details. Having negotiated a U.S. distribution deal, 1,000 copies went out locally and throughout North America, Europe, Australia, NZ, South America…and even a few to Africa (I once received a letter from a kid living with his dad in the country of Chad in Africa), I was able to tell the world that we were here and what we were doing. It was thrilling to me, and to this day I can remember going home from school for lunch (I lived close to Mount Doug High)…the overwhelming, anxious anticipation as the mail truck slowly snaked it’s way down Hessington Street in Gordon Head, towards my house. I felt connected. I felt a part of something much greater than it’s parts…something more powerful than anything I could imagine, even more powerful than our obsession and preoccupation with Ronnie Raygun’s Star Wars and the US’s greedy corporate death machines.

On weekends we hung out at Vancouver House (later Cooke Street House, Hole in the Wall and every other house where punks lived, we could crash and drink beer!) and skateboarded or ran away from crazy, angry rockers. The people at Vancouver House were friendly, older guys like Dog (Doug), Randy Stroble, Scott Henderson, Craig and Paul Bougier would always have a beer to scam…and Vancouver House was a great, safe place to drink and smoke some pot while meeting really nice people (girls!) like Suzanne and her friends! We were too young for them to date, but, not too old for us to oogle. For a 16-year-old kid with spiked hair and ripped jeans this was heaven ‘cause they treated us like equals… this was the way the world was supposed to be! Punk rock, friends, beer and pretty girls! In retrospect, I was a pretty pushy kid (there’s some news!) and my friend’s and I ingratiated ourselves into their lives on the weekends. They were good people, in their 20’s, and the coolest people that could legally buy beer we knew (with their own house!!). We listened to music, slammed in the living room and generally caused chaos… we even had contests. I remember one “contest”, jumping off the balcony…then the roof…for beers! Good times. I think they just tolerated us (me) some of the time.

I started promoting shows under the name Manifesto Productions. I did about 7 gigs (a mix of out-of-towners and locals), and although I never reached the heights of promoting that Kev Lee and Clod Neon (Steve Sandve) did, my moment of triumph was bringing Really Red (Houston, TX) and Personality Crisis (Winnipeg, MN) to play at the OAP Hall along with Red Tide and other locals. I had an early curfew the night of the gig because the night before we got drunk and I got home 2 hours after curfew; I had to go home at 11pm...and I was the promoter! I went home pretended to yawn and went immediately to bed…waited….waited…and waited for the ‘rents to go to bed (11:40pm) then I had to sneak out of my bedroom by climbing down the front of our two story house, get picked up by Dan and Derek and get back downtown to clean up the OAP after the gig ends at 12 midnight. Dan then (1:49am) drove me back to Gordon Head, I climbed back up the balcony and into my bedroom. Phew!! Close call. I also remember the Youth Brigade/Social Distortion gig that Loris Corletto (the most unusual, yet reliable financial backer for all of my gigs) and Fred (who owned the Metropole where I worked for a time) got detained by the police…I was too young to detain…so these guys took the heat for me!

For Red Tide, time was our enemy, as was the case with the scene in general. After 4 or 5 years, a few tapes, an E.P (Kelp and Salal, Toxic Shock Records), an unreleased L.P and having reached our local hero pinnacle (having played shows with the likes of Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Pearl Jam, Really Red, Dead Kennedys, countless local shows with Day Glos, No Means No and everybody else who had a band) we played our last show (and the last show I promoted in punk rock world) at the Roxy Cinagogue. It was packed… and the crowd went wild! The final moment of our glory came to an abrupt halt during our second encore. As we played the beautifully gross cover “Boys in the Bright White Sports Car” (with Paul Wilkinson’s hilarious trademark falsetto piercing the hall), Nev from the Day Glos drunkenly fired off a fire extinguisher onto the stage and the show was over. A white cloud of near-toxic flour-type stuff spread quickly throughout the theatre. Coughing, hacking and choking people poured out of the theatre in panic, covered from head to toe in white extinguisher powder. Howie Siegel was pissed about his $85,000 movie screen that had become caked with the combination of beer from thrown bottles and extinguisher powder. The image is burned into my memory forever… Jon Craggs, Ken Jensen, Paul Wilkinson and myself, known as the band Red Tide, stepped off the stage and faded into time.

I loved this scene… and in retrospect I cared for all the people who were involved, even the one’s who didn’t care much for me. We always favoured a jerk punk over an asshole rocker! We were young and idealistic…we were still pure. Life got harder before it got easier, for me. I ended up doing a stint in rehab, overwhelmed by addiction to drugs and alcohol, and then had a host of adventures, jobs and travels before settling into a sober, rewarding professional sales career with a Fortune 500 company….and no, we don’t sell guidance systems for missiles!

RIP Kenny Jensen, Len Morgan, and Randy Long, and the rest not here to help us remember.

Your friend,

Tim Crow

©TEC February 13/2003 @ Halifax, NS (tim@rockworldeast.com)