CHRISTMAS WEEK - New Year's Eve Toronto 1977

This has been an interesting year for nostalgia. The year 1977 loomed large as a result of the book I published ( Treat Me like Dirt by Liz Worth ) concerning the 1977 Toronto punk explosion. A lot of people I'd mostly forgotten about suddenly were front and center, quibbling over incidents and details, revising facts to accomodate mythology and jockeying for position in an intangible hierarchy of power and, in fact, if I hear the phrase "my legacy" one more time this year, I'll probably explode.

I have discovered through this book experience that memories are both subjective and invective.

My own dilemna in terms of this "legacy" business is that I created a voluminous amount of creative work prior to 1977 (dating back to the late 60s, in fact) and an even more daunting Everest since 1977. I used to try to keep track of it all but the cross-cultural and omni-media (print, TV, radio, live performance, web, etc) representations are just too much and now - I just throw everything in a box to sort out later ("later" meaning sometime in the next 20 years or so).

Knowing that it is all sort of somewhere is somewhat comforting and sometimes it's fun to reach in randomly and pull out a nice memory like this one, from 1977 in fact.....

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NEW YEAR'S EVE (Queen and Bathurst, Toronto, 1977)

I'd like to say

how crazy you are

but that's kind

of hard

what with your

tongue down my mouth

and all

right here

in the middle of traffic

waiting for a bus

actually, any bus

that'll take us

somewhere away from

all these drivers

waving and giving me

the thumbs-up sign

"yeah, uh, thanks!"

She's really cool,

I know,

that's why I'm here

ralph alfonso

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