This book attained legendary status for me. I knew it was out there, somewhere, like a cryptid, but library catalog searches turned up nothing or pointed towards Bruce MacDonald’s 1996 film or its related literature: including a graphic novel adaptation, and a 2011 film studies book. For years I’ve been checking whatever libraries I’ve had access to for this book and finally found that York University’s Scott Library has a copy, so, thank you for that.
Bruce MacDonald’s film adaptation of Hard Core Logo is great. His documentary-style drama of an aging, reunited Canadian punk band disintegrating into complete annihilation during a very short tour of the western provinces is possibly the best punk rock movie and one of the best Canadian films ever. I’ve watched Hard Core Logo many times. I love the film and while I recognize that the film represents sad and anxious grown men caught in the disappointing trap of the expectation of punk authenticity where their meager success is based on the requirement to project teenage angst, nihilism, and willful failure at all times, I also recognize that they’re a great band with great songs. Now I see where the songs come from.
It’s difficult, impossible rather, for me at least, to first see a film without it affecting my experience of later reading the text it’s based on. I began reading Cormac McCarthy novels because I loved the Coen Bros adaptation of No Country for Old Men, but it was a disappointment to read that novel with the screen images of its characters in my head. I experienced something similar with reading Michael Turner’s Hard Core Logo, but Hard Core Logo isn’t a novel in the typical way. Rather than narrating the story of the band’s short tour, author Michael Turner structured his novel as a series of notes and ephemera generated by the band during the tour, beginning with a letter requesting that Hard Core Logo play a benefit show, and ending with a want ad written by lead singer Joe Dick seeking bandmates after they broke up in Edmonton. Each page is a different text, one page is a contract to perform, the next are the lyrics to one of their songs, the next page is a page of bassist John’s tour journal or an interview with Billy Talent.
These documents come together to tell the story of Hard Core Logo’s reunion and rapid fragmentation over a period of a few days. The thing that stands out the most for me are the lyrics to the songs, they’re complete, the're the songs that are performed in the film, and they’re good. I love the versions of them that are performed in the film, and I love the DOA rendition “Who the Hell Do You Think You Are?”, because they’re great punk songs. Who is Michael Turner who wrote all these great lyrics for a band that doesn’t exist? I don’t know of him beyond Hard Core Logo but apparently he’s a poet and he was in a band called Hard Rock Miners that was probably pretty good if he was involved in the songwriting.