Around the World With Mr. Chi Pig

By Chris Walter

The world loved Mr Chi Pig and his band SNFU, but fewer people knew that the man was also an accomplished artist. Rarely without a pen in hand as he toured the globe, his imaginative doodles and lyrics bared the inner workings of a unique and byzantine mind. Later, when the singer's declining health made touring difficult, he turned to art full-time, producing an abundance of simple yet instantly identifiable canvasses for excited fans worldwide. From his early days as an emerging artist and musician to his premature death in July 2020, this is a cautionary tale of the iconic artist who will live forever in our hearts and minds. Contains many full page photos of Chi's inimitable artwork.

Note: This book includes fewer photos than the print version, but contains more than than two extra chapters of text. As well, most of the images in this book have never been published.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 6, 2024
• ISBN: 9781927053416

Chris Walter

A hope-to-die drug addict, Chris Walter began writing full-time in 1998 after realizing that his life up to that point had been largely meaningless. His first published novel, Punk Rules OK, went mostly unnoticed but inspired him to take a DIY approach to the game. With help from his partner who worked at a printing shop, he launched GFY Press and began to write, publish, and distribute a steady stream of novels and music biographies. Incredibly, he found a small measure of success. After kicking drugs to the curb in 2001, Chris expanded GFY Press to include unschooled troublemakers Simon Snotface, Stewart Black, Drew Gates, and Ali Kat, drawing further criticism from the established literary industry. More than thirty-two titles and twenty-four years later, Chris Walter and GFY Press remain unrepentant and committed.

Book preview

ONE

I first met Mr. Chi Pig in 1981 when I toured with the Nostrils as their roadie. My duties for the Winnipeg punk outfit included loading and unloading the van, fixing whatever broke onstage, and fetching beer when it needed fetching. They call roadies ‘techs’ these days but there has never been anything glamorous about the job. Nonetheless, I was there even when highly intoxicated, lugging heavy gear with barely a complaint and offering my professional advice on every topic under the sun. I was also very good at drinking whatever they were foolish enough to leave in the fridge. The poor guys never seemed to realize where it was going—or at least that’s what I thought until everybody started calling me ‘Hook.’

Conquering the world seemed easy enough but apparently we had to leave Winnipeg in order to make that happen. Consequently, the Nostrils arranged a mid-April show in Edmonton, which they dubbed ‘Alternative Easter.’ We were all fans of Stiff Little Fingers and loved the song ‘Alternative Ulster,’ so the play on words was apropos. The big day finally arrived and the guys stood around drinking beer and cracking fart jokes as I struggled to cram everything into the rented van. Stocked with such essentials as beer and maybe a change of clothes, we hit the road like an invading horde of heathens. Edmonton wouldn’t know what hit them.

The trip west was dead boring, the smell of bad feet and stinky pits making it even worse. We were barely three kilometres out of town before we started fighting over the music. Singer Bruce Hallett settled things by commandeering the tape deck and playing the Beatles non-stop just to be a dick. Besieged by three-part harmonies and twangy guitars, the atmosphere in the van was almost mutinous by the time we arrived. The cold and the usual lack of money might have been contributing factors, or maybe we just didn’t know how to tour. Global domination already seemed like more trouble than it was worth.

After much consulting of crumpled paper maps, we somehow found our way to the Spartan Men’s Club, which was a derelict hall in the wrong part of town. The sketchiness didn’t register with us because without exception every punk venue we’d ever seen was a run-down shithole, well known to police and infested with vermin (and I’m not referring only to the guests). We loaded in and stood around looking dumb as the local punks arrived. I was a bit unnerved because they seemed bigger and stronger than the typical Winnipeg punk rockers. It wasn’t until later that I learned that many of these sturdy Edmontonians worked in the oil field—occupations that built muscles and gave them a distinct physical advantage over the rest of us. The Diefenbakers opened and I don’t recall how they sounded but, I do remember watching the riggers in the pit beating the hell out of each other with malicious glee. I wanted to bring them back to Winnipeg to help in our ongoing war with the local rockers. Those slimy longhairs would cringe in terror when they saw the Edmontonians coming.

I was standing around waiting for the Nostrils to play when one of the smaller guests came over to say hello. With his black brothel creepers, spiky black hair, dark blue socks, skin-tight latex trousers, and layers of studded belts and wristbands he looked as if he’d stepped from the cover of a UK punk album. I don’t remember if the slightly Asian-looking dude introduced himself as Chi Pig or Ken but I’ve always known him as Chi Pig. Standing five-foot-one and weighing maybe 110 pounds with a case of beer in each hand, I figured he was either fleet of foot or totally insane. Chi’s manner of dress wouldn’t be considered extreme these days but back then he was a fist magnet for every jock, redneck, and construction worker in town. I admired his bravery and thought he looked great.

A noisy blast of feedback ended any further conversation as the Nostrils hit the stage. The kids gathered around and suddenly I was worried that maybe they wouldn’t like the Nostrils—a band they’d never seen nor heard before. Luckily, they responded favourably to Bruce’s songs about kicking people in the head and thrashed about even more energetically than they had for the Diefenbakers. Things were going swimmingly until an enthusiastic audience member jumped onstage to sing backups. Unfortunately, bassist Jim Simm assumed the hapless kid was looking for trouble and punched him in the head a few times. Nobody else attempted to join in the fun after that and the guys made it through the rest of the set without further incident. They even got an encore.

I was offloading gear from the stage when I saw Jim talking to Chi Pig. More than just his duds, there was something about the guy that made him stand out from everyone else. Later, when we were driving away, Jim told us that Chi had asked for his autograph, which caught everyone off guard just a little. Bruce was particularly baffled. I mean who asks the bass player for an autograph? I’d be willing to bet that only happened to Jim once in his entire lifetime, said the singer some forty years later. Nevertheless, Chi got his autograph and departed just as the organizers began using those long folding tables to push everyone out the door. I wouldn’t see the mysterious Mr. Pig again for more than a year.

TWO

Punk rock became hardcore and the new bands were faster and more aggressive. Although hardcore was already on the decline in places like New York and Los Angeles mostly due to excessive violence, it was just getting started in places such as Edmonton, Calgary, and Winnipeg. For whatever reason, the bloodshed in Canada was never as extreme as it was in the States, which allowed our scene to grow. Most of the first wave of Winnipeg punk bands—the Psychiatrists, Discharge, Torn & Frayed, and Rockets from Space among them—had died off, but Lowlife was still around and so were a few others. Lowlife blew my socks off when I saw them for the first time in ’79. By then the Nostrils had also formed and I hung around until they pressed-ganged me into becoming their roadie. They even encouraged my brother Jamie and me to start our own band, the Vacant Lot, with Jim Simm’s younger brother Norm on bass. We were terrible but it was great fun.

Punk venues were hard to find in any Western Canadian city. The Spartan Men’s Club was still the main spot in Edmonton, and dive bars such as the Ambassador and Park Hotels were the closest thing they had to punk clubs. Calgary had the Calgarian Hotel and the National, Winnipeg had the Marion Hotel, Wellington’s, and the Royal Albert, and Saskatoon had several halls that hosted punk shows, often to their regret. Media misinformation had steered kids into thinking it was ‘punk’ to trash rented halls, so most of them were only good for one or two shows. A lack of clubs notwithstanding, the hardcore bands continued to proliferate. Down Syndrome was Edmonton’s premier hardcore band at the time, but as 1981 turned to 1982, a new band would step forward to challenge them.

I was unaware of Live Sex Shows, an Edmonton band that had come into existence when Chi Pig, Brent ‘Bunt’ Belke, and Marc ‘Muc’ Belke teamed up with drummer Ed Dobek and bassist Phil Larson. Chi was already in Live Sex Shows when I first met him, but I obviously wasn’t paying attention if he’d mentioned it. Nor was I aware that Brent, who’d shared singing duties with Chi Pig, had quit because he hated being the frontman. The die had been cast, however, and Marc and Chi searched for a way to move forward. Like many bands before them, they fixed the problem by dissolving the original outfit and starting a new one. This left them without a rhythm section, and they tried several candidates before finding drummer Evan ‘Tadpole’ Jones and bass player Jimmy Schmitz. With Chi Pig as lead vocalist and Marc on lead guitar, Brent rejoined on second guitar and SNFU was born.

I was very involved in the hardcore scene and it was a great time to be alive. The powerful new music made me feel as if I were part of something very special—something that had never happened before and could never happen again. The hardcore bands around the world ranged from amazing to horrible and never had there been so many songs about nuclear war and Ronald Reagan. The message was strong at first but eventually morphed into semi-parody as countless groups rehashed those themes ad nauseam. Even so, hardcore lyrics were better than the sappy shit on the radio and the songs were caustic blasts of thunderous drums and raging guitars. Some groups managed to rise above the clichés, taking the genre to explosive new levels. I loved the anger and the energy.

Wellington’s was all fine and dandy but Winnipeg gained its first punk-operated club when the Triple A Doghouse opened in the spring of 1983. The building, which of course was in the roughest part of town, had previously housed the auto parts distributor Triple A Radiators, but we stole the ‘A’ from them because we were anarchists. Nostrils singer Hallett was one of the culprits responsible for bringing the new club together: The Doghouse was set up as a collective, with rotating volunteer workers. Door money was split evenly between local bands because fuck hierarchy, he said. The club was a dream come true, and I loved the place for the near total freedom and the lax attitude towards liquor and drugs. My buddies didn’t bother to ask for ID, and kids of all ages were welcome. Although no booze was sold on the premises, the organizers encouraged everyone to bring their own and nobody was ever searched. Not just that, but although the bands usually ended around midnight, the club stayed open until the wee hours so guests could get high and dance all night. Oh the fun we had.

I was excited for the Youth Brigade, Stretch Marks, SNFU and Last Gasp show on July 30, 1983. Everyone was eager to see SNFU if only to find out whether they were as good as people claimed. SNFU went up soon after I arrived and I was shocked to see that their singer was the diminutive punk rocker I’d met in Edmonton more than a year earlier. He recognized me too and although we didn’t speak until later, he acknowledged me with a bob of his spiky head. With a bang the band instantly came alive. Chi was all over the place and so were the rest of the members, jumping and flying around like they were being electrocuted. I was so stunned that it took a moment for me to realize that my former bass player Jimmy Schmitz was up there with them. He’d barely moved at all when he was in my band, Pissed N Broke, just a year earlier, but now he was leaping all over the place as if he had springs on his feet. Not just that but he also seemed to have learned how to play. This was a shock.

I was still standing there minding my own business when Mark Sickbee from the Stretch Marks came out of nowhere to knock me flying. I was so awestruck by SNFU’s furious assault that I’d forgotten I was in the pit. Then Norm was there and it was time to dance or die. I shook my head and swirled around with the rest of the pack, elbows and heels flying. Hollywood had ruined the term ‘slam dancing’ so we didn’t call it that anymore but balance, strength, and yes, even grace were important if you wanted to do it properly. With the music in my ears and the blood pumping in my veins, I let the energy take me away to a place where nothing else existed. What did it matter if I lived in a vermin-infested dump with sketchy people coming and going day and night? Who cared that I had no food in the fridge nor a six-pack to my name? The amplified mayhem was a sonic tonic for my bruised and dysfunctional brain.

The only person able to escape the maelstrom was photographer Doug ‘Humidity’ Humiski, who stood up front calmly snapping shot after shot with his fancy camera. The rest of us had an unspoken agreement to give him space, even going so far as to ward off rookies who might have otherwise banged into him. Other photographers were not afforded the same clemency.

The songs flew past and the pace never slowed for a second. It was all a noisy, mind numbing blur of crashing drums and snarling guitars, fronted by my strange little friend who had more energy than anyone I’d ever seen. I couldn’t make out many of the lyrics but some of them caught my ear. One seemed to be about women not being on the menu and condemned sluts like me but I liked it anyway. Another involved cannibalism and was very catchy with an instantly memorable chorus. Both were food-related, which seemed a bit odd from a lyricist who weighed so little. Frequently, Chi would propel himself high into the air by pushing off from the kick drum with his right foot, almost hitting a fishing net draped across the ceiling. Our local bands were also highly kinetic but none of them got the airtime that Chi Pig did. I was already spoiled for great bands but there were moments when only the drummer was still touching the stage. This was something magical.

Then, just like that it was over and I stood there trying to process what I’d just seen and heard. The Stretch Marks and Youth Brigade would have to work hard just to maintain the level of excitement and energy. Although SNFU wasn’t quite in the same league as those bands yet, what would they be like if they stuck around for a while?

I wasn’t feeling well the next day, which was no surprise. Although I can barely recall the show, SNFU and Youth Brigade must have played the Doghouse again the next night because I’ll never forget the party afterwards. I do recall leaving the club in someone’s car bound for an address on the West Side. Maybe the buses were still running because other guests showed up not long after we arrived. It was early morning by then, but the nasty punk rock was soon blaring at top volume and the place was jumping. More than a little drunk, I sipped my second last beer and watched Chi Pig enter the room, blithely ignoring a sexy punker girl who was desperately trying to get his attention. I’d been with her before and he was missing out on a good thing, or so I thought. Chi walked over, beer in hand.

Hey! Great show tonight! I said, feeling somewhat depleted by my exertions. But who taught Jimmy how to play bass? He was useless in my band. I was useless too, but that was beside the point.

Chi grinned. As before, he was decked out from head-to-toe in his punk rock splendour—a moving target for every meathead around. I don’t know if Jimmy really knows how to play but at least he learned how to jump! He took a measured sip of beer. Seeing you reminded me of that Nostrils show in Edmonton. That was fun.

Yeah, that was fantastic. Those riggers are crazy! I said, thinking back to the event. The punks here aren’t strong enough to hit that hard. Well, Mark and Norm maybe, I added, reconsidering. So, what’s it like in Edmonton? Do you get a lot of exercise running for your life every day? I get chased too but I’m thinking Edmonton might be even worse for that sort of thing.

Chi laughed. Why would anyone chase a towering beanpole with bleached super short hair, ugly ripped shirt, and black leather pants held up with a heavy chain? Is that barbed wire wrapped around your boots? And where did you get those spurs?

I got them from a cowboy, I mumbled, trying to remember where I’d stolen them. We talked a bit more, and I was about to ask Chi why he’d wanted Jim Simm’s autograph but decided I didn’t really care. I still had to walk home later and thought about leaving but cracked my last beer instead. Although I didn’t know much about Chi in the beginning, he was funny, smart, and dark. Those have long been my favourite things.

Someone dragged Chi away and I stood there for a minute before wandering into the hallway, where Billy ‘Shoe’ was telling another one of his wild stories. The craziest thing about his tales involving police chases and bloody fistfights was that they were usually at least partly true. Shoe, who had temporarily moved to Winnipeg from Edmonton with several friends known as the Dirty Boys, sold weed and used cars when he wasn’t in jail. I think he’d worked in the oil field like many of his pals and he was certainly built for it. Wide and stubby, Shoe had a terrific right cross and could drop most fools with one shot. Like the rest of us, the man had been drinking steadily since Friday and was in full party mode. We laughed and shouted, so drunk that we didn’t even need more beer. Wait—of course we needed more beer.

Suddenly, there was a sharp rap at the door, a knock so forceful that we just knew it had to be the cops. I’ve since forgotten who lived there but it wasn’t our job to answer the door so we just stood there waiting to see what would transpire. The cops knocked again and now it sounded like they were using nightsticks instead of their knuckles. Shoe stepped up to the door. FUCK OFF! WE’RE NOT HOME! he shouted, enjoying himself. He seemed to relish confrontations with cops and had the criminal record to prove it.

WINNIPEG POLICE! OPEN UP! came a bossy shout from outside.

GET LOST! Shoe yelled. As far as he was concerned the police had no reason to bust up our little party. The neighbours could suck it.

The pounding resumed but now they were rapping directly on the door’s window, which soon shattered. A nightstick attached to a cop’s arm came through the hole trying to hit someone or something. FUCK! said Billy with alarm. It was only a matter of time before the cops unlocked the door from within, so Billy ran into the living room and returned with a large stuffed armchair, which he shoved into the gap where the glass had been. Now the cop’s arm was pinned between the window frame and the chair as he continued to wave the nightstick, reminding me of a birthday boy trying to hit a piñata. The only problem was that we were the piñatas.

FUCK YOU, PIGS! Shoe bellowed again, trying to hold the chair in place. Me and two other guys finally stepped forward to help, but the police forced the door open and swarmed into the house. All hell broke loose as the cops jumped on Shoe, who disappeared under a sea of blue uniforms. Suddenly it was time to go.

Fleeing the hallway, I almost ran into Chi Pig. He wasn’t freaking out but he looked concerned. What the fuck are we gonna do? How do we get out of here? he asked anxiously. Shouts and screams rang out from the other room. The party was over.

Fucked if I know, I said, watching several guests run for the basement stairs. Let’s go down there! I couldn’t see how that would help but I was fresh out of ideas. Why we didn’t just go out the back door I’ll never know.

Chi needed no further encouragement and we dashed down the stairs. The people in the basement were no longer drunk and rowdy. Rather, they looked like they wanted to go home. This isn’t good, said Chi, worriedly.

The cops don’t seem very friendly, I agreed, searching for a way out. The police would obviously look in the basement and although we technically hadn’t done anything wrong, it wouldn’t be the first time the cops had punched me around for no reason. They didn’t like punkers very much.

Then I noticed that one side of the basement had three small windows about chest height that I might be able to force open. Let’s try one of these! I said to Chi, my