How a labour of love led to a new documentary about the indie music scene in St. John's
Mark Cumby and Krissy Holmes revisit the 1990s music scene
It was, as they say, a scene.
In the new CBC documentary On the Edge, Mark Cumby takes audiences back to a specific place and a specific time: St. John's, in the early 1990s. It was a city where a lively indie music scene was matching the energy of grunge from Seattle, and feeding on the music of other cities, too.
Cumby, a video producer with CBC in St. John's, combed through archive footage, photos and, yes, lots of posters, and tracked down musicians and others who shared — and rushed — stages back in the day.
Speaking with St. John's Morning Show host Krissy Holmes, Cumby shares how he captured the raucous scene that emerged in St. John's, his memories from his teenage years, his inspirations, and the people who left such a strong impression.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: How long have you been working on this?
A: A long time. I first started thinking about doing it in 2017. Now, that's not saying I've been working on it since 2017, but I started picking and poking at it.
What was it like for you? How do you remember this scene as a teenager yourself?
Well, thank God there [were] no smartphones because we didn't take pictures — well, you know that's the time period that we first met.
Yeah, it was.
So you were there. I got up to all kinds of no good. And this scene was a huge influence on my musical interests and my thoughts on life and art and music.
OK, can we just acknowledge this, too, right off the bat? The word "grunge" was kind of a cringe word, I think, in the St. John's scene. Why do you think that was?
Yeah, it is interesting. In the documentary, Brian Downton does mention that — Brian is the drummer for the band Potatobug — and he does mention that. And it is true.
I think it's true even globally. It seems any time that you do hear someone says the "grunge" scene, an immediate reaction is, "Yeah … we're not really grunge." But you are.
There were a lot of bands on the go back then. A lot of those bands were playing all-ages shows. I mean, just give us a scene-setter.
The LSPU Hall was kind of … the main hub of all-ages scene at that time.
We had — I'm just going to name a few — Potbelly, Potmaster, Potatobug, Hardship Post … did they move to Halifax?
Hardship Post did start out here and did relocate to Halifax, yeah.
Right, and Halifax had its own scene ... [there was also] Lizband, Ched, Bung.
We would go to a Bung show and go, "Oh my God, that was a rock 'n' roll moment there."
And then eventually Bucket Truck.
So those would have been some of the bands that were kind of inspired by, you know, these bands that we were talking about.
And so many more. What was your band's name?
Oh my God, you don't wanna talk about it. I did have a band. Well, that's what happens, everyone was inspired, because you'd see people that were not very much older than you that were up there doing it and it seems so cool.
And there were people that were just a little bit older than than you that you could bump into in the Cocamanga Cafe. Do you remember that?
That's right.
You know, you could bump into people there and so everyone ended up, "Well, I can start a band, too," you know? And then you ended up playing the show with people that you've kind of looked up to.
Me and my girlfriends, we thought Natalie Noseworthy was the coolest thing. And she still is! And Liz Pickard, of course. Who were your favourite rock stars?
Well, it's evident by the documentary, right? I'm a huge Potmaster fan. So, Natalie and Jeff, Potbelly, the originators of that scene here locally, which is Jeff and Doug Jones, Tony Tucker. Huge fan of Ched and Potatobug. So that's why they're all in the documentary. It's a labour of love. It's a documentary about an awesome scene that I love. So, I just made what I want to see. I made it for myself.
Well, you made it for so many people because there was no social media at that time. I think there's a Facebook group now that's… what is it called?
Yeah!
Ritche [Perez] primarily runs that. Ritche and some friends.
Can we just talk about the crowd, even just mosh culture?
There was a guy at the time, Ian, you know who I'm talking about. So this guy at the time, because of an injury, he found himself in a wheelchair and he still showed up at shows.
And the craziest thing I've ever seen is looking out and seeing Ian crowd-surfing in the wheelchair. So like, everyone was passing around the wheelchair. It was crazy. And that will tell you the the level of dedication of the audience at the time. There was nothing going to stop him from getting in the mosh pit.
Could we talk about what was going on the radio at that time?
Fred Gamberg was an important person in the scene at the time. He was a music fan above all else. And he played in the band called Giver. Had a radio show called On the Edge — that's where the documentary steals its name from.
He was a promoter. He also was responsible for booking most of those shows that happened at the LSPU Hall and and the Loft and some of the other bars around town that did all-ages shows. So he was really important in getting the word out there and kind of making the scene. I feel that he kind of was the gel that brought everybody together.
He's the guy in that mural right at the bottom of the LSPU, right? On Duckworth Street.
A lot of people don't know who he is. But that was Fred and that's why he's painted on that wall down there because he was such an important part of this, I feel, an incredible music scene. The reason I wanted to make this doc is because of people like Fred that just have so much passion about the scene and that was infectious. So everybody kind of had that feeling too, that he caused that momentum.
I remember 1995 and rumours started spreading. Something happened to him. And then later that night it was on Here & Now.
It had that impact of somebody that you knew, that you spoke with all the time, that you hung out with, that passed away and in such a tragic kind of way. [Gamberg drowned while swimming at Flatrock.]
Who did you decide to dedicate this documentary to?
It's dedicated to Fred and Johnny Fisher. Johnny was also a member. He was, like, punk legend. I mean [there were] so many different bands that Johnny played in, but I grew to know him in Potmaster. One of my favourite artists from that time period. So it's for Johnny and for Fred.
What did you learn after you put all this together, Mark?
That it's truly unique scene. It was influenced by artists like Nirvana, Mudhoney, stuff that was coming out of Seattle at the time, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains. But, you know, when that's filtered through the societal and economic changes that were happening here, our culture truly got blended up into something that I don't think that you would find anywhere else.
There's a whole scene and a whole bunch of bands that not a lot of people outside of the the small microcosm that were there at the time know about. And I often would go on some tirade with somebody and say, oh, you've never heard of that? And I'm trying to describe to them what it was like at the time.
That was kind of really why I wanted to make it in the first place. Just to kind of show people here's what it was like.
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With files from The St. John's Morning Show
