So my homeboy Gene Champagne from Teenage Head, and more importantly, The Killjoys made a post on Facebook offering two free tickets to a show of his with his solo project, Gene Champagne And The Unteens.  The tickets weren’t free however.  In order to acquire them you had to tell him what he referred Gord Lewis to as in the documentary, Picture My Face.

Well I didn’t actually know the answer to that.  So I went and watched the doc on Youtube.  

I loved it.  They did a good job of playing with the drama of Frankie’s death and how it affected tone wolf, Gord Lewis.  It’s even sadder watching knowing the guitar god would barely survive his mental health odyssey only to succumb to it in a different atmosphere, still by the hand of mental illness.

I do have a couple of gripes.  There weren’t nearly enough testimonials from other punk rock celebrities whose lives were impacted by the greatest rock and roll band of all time.  I would have liked to see more about Marky Ramone’s involvement with them.  He did a fucking record with them for crying out loud.

I feel like Gene got fucked over a little too.  Gene came from successful Canadian rock royalty in his own right.  Picture My Face isn’t about Gene, but I think his involvement with KIlljoys (the band that made me pick up bass) entitled a nod to the drummer’s origins.  There was also no mention of Dave Rave’s era of fronting the band while Frankie was still alive.

This is not all to say the documentary still isn’t one of the better rock docs out there that exist.  I loved it.  I find myself incandescently emotional over Gord’s struggle with mental illness because it hits very fucking close to home.  But the fascinating part is that getting back on the horse seemed to be the best therapy for both of us, if not the cure.  That I can relate to as well.

So here I am misty and reflective.

Oh, and I learned what it was Gene referred to Gord as at about the hour mark.  I’ll let you see for yourself though.

Fucking Gene.  I don’t know if his post was a clever way of promoting the documentary, or his upcoming show which I now have two free tickets to.

Regardless, I’ll see y’all in Hamilton.

Watch the documentary, Picture My Face, here.