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Music

Don Pyle

When Don Pyle launches his first book, Trouble In The Camera Club, on Wednesday (May 4) at the Garrison, he’ll be surrounded by friends. A collection of photographs that the producer/musician (Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, Black Heel Marks, etc) took at concerts from 1976 to 1980, the book documents the local and international bands that played Toronto’s stages and also captures a teenage music fan’s participation in that burgeoning scene.

“I had to resist – and consciously draw back from – making it a history book or the story of any one of these bands,” Pyle says over sandwiches at the Lakeview. “That would require a lot of research and would be, like, a second book. But the text was enjoyable for me to do. It was great to organize my thoughts.

“I wanted to put things in context and describe my experience and the environment this music and my photos happened in, as well as my experience coming into this scene.”

Close-ups of legends like the Ramones, Debbie Harry, the Runaways, New York Dolls and his childhood idol, David Bowie, are among the book’s most striking elements. The fact that Pyle was only 14 to 18 when he was getting into these shows is another.

“Did you wonder where my mother was?” Pyle jokes of the freedom he had to enter licensed venues like the Horseshoe and the late, lamented Turning Point. “I was so lucky that I was big and could get away with it. There are more and more restrictions all the time. Over-policing of everything puts a real damper on the growth of society.”

The launch features performances by three-quarters of the Sadies, Teenage Head’s Gord Lewis, Fucked Up’s Damian Abraham, Fifth Column’s Caroline Azar, Brutal Knights’ Nick Flanagan and many others, plus Don Pyle’s Out-Of-Focus Slide Show and an interview conducted by Treat Me Like Dirt author Liz Worth.

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