I saw little Mikey the other day - he was in a 7 Eleven in El Paso laughing with Elvis, but they jumped in a cab before I could...
A lot of people have said a lot of shit about Mike Nitemare (Nightmare) aka Michael Mulroney. True, the first time I saw him we were playing a rockabilly new years eve in Chinatown in 1981 with Buddy King and the Motion (later as Mr Pink and Dying to Be Violent) in some apartment-wide happening. Mike’s brother Raymie furtively slashed our PA speakers because they weren’t allowed to play.
And true he did tell me that when he first moved to Vancouver with his wife (who he described as a snuff movie queen) they used to go to the Luv Affair and she would pick up some guy, go his place, drug him, and then Mike would show up and strip the joint bare.
He was a robber. That is what he did, but he never robbed his friends. He was no backstabbing thief. He was always trying to make my life easier by selling me stolen stuff and he always gave me that funny look when I said 'no thanks Mike - I couldn't be creative on someone else's pain and loss.' I think that's why he liked me - because I passed a certain test. But everyone else from photographers to hairdressers, stayed solvent and made money with his clandestine supply route.
When I asked him why he did that crap he told me that he was a 'little unruly' when he was young and his aunt placed him in the experimental shock treatment program in Toronto in the late sixties. There were financial compensation settlements years later but it was too late. Mikey was loose.
Then when I continued berating him he would get all nasty and tell me that he knew who the real dirty criminals were. He claimed that he just robbed businesses that covered their losses with insurance claims. Then he would tell me about a certain record store owner in Toronto who distributed and was involved in the making of snuff movies. Murdering young people for entertainment.
Before punk rock he was in experimental theatre… using the name Mike Nightshade but some reporter got confused while masturbating in bed and called him Mike Nightmare. The name stuck because it fitted the fantasies of the sleazy Toronto of that era.
And the stories abound of his stupidity – but doesn’t everybody deserve a few Pete Cleaver moments in this life – like the time he broke into a wedding reception the night before the event and drank all the booze and then passed out. A lot of angry men kicked him like a football the next morning.
But Mikey could tell stories. Like the time he got James Brown and Iggy Pop's autograph on the same matchbook. About the time he wrestled with Alice Cooper over a bottle of whiskey. About seeing Reg Presley of The Troggs half dressed backstage in his 'yellow stained underwear.' About the times his wife would hire guys to kill him.
He would say "I knew she had a hit goin,"in his throaty gangster drawl"cuz when the door was kicked she always rolled up in the matress. So I would get up and take the shotgun out of the goof's hands and beat him over the head with it." With Mikey there were two kinds of people only - the Goofs and the Solids.
He was a singer and a story teller. Not a screamer and never a whiner. He stood square on his feet and moved like a boxer. He was a real artist. He is legendary because be was (or is) the real thing. A walking cliché and true life loser with a comic book brain.
They said he died so many times. Is he really gone this time or is he sitting in a prison cell somewhere trying to figure out how to smuggle in some smack?
I met the band in Benny’s basement studio on West 7th in the mid eighties and before we had our first beer Mike told me I could trust him and then he asked if I needed to buy a ghetto blaster.
The first show was on Halloween at the Helen Pitt gallery in Gastown with two pro boxers hired as body guards flanking Mike who was performing with two broken legs – one from jumping from the third floor on a downtown building with loot and the second from dancing drunk on one leg
We played a few shows and then he went to prison for six months. When he was released we had a whole bunch of new tunes and did more gigs and some recording sessions and then he just when it was kicking in – whammo, he was back in the joint for another stretch and so we worked more new material.
He would always come out of the joint swearing to live the clean and powerful ninja life, just having a ‘half a pint’ down at the Railway Club and the by the time we got to the first gig he would be in full swagger – snortin’, whackin’ and guzzlin.
The last gig we played was with The Scramblers at the Town Pump with Berge 'Kickasso' Tasjian sitting in for Alex on guitar in a leopard skin body suit and knee high white cowboy boots.
We were shooting a movie and UBC film students were everywhere. A hot summer night. Sweat and beer. Rock and Roll. The film kids set off a a strobe light to enhance the effects as we shot off a cannon filled with glitter and pillow feathers as Mike pulled out a gun and pointed it at the tourists while talking about women’s boxes as Dave the manager was screaming something about ‘you'll never play here again’ as Dave Slave blew the dust off his
Satanic Bible on the side stairs.
Kickasso got into a fight with the bouncers and then distracted them by smashing right wing rock promoter Bruce Allen’s plate glass window doors and ran around the corner, jumping into a into a taxi for the perfect getaway. He made it home and phoned in a bomb threat to the Town Pump and was taken out by a SWAT team a little while later.
Mike was arrested throwing stolen TVs off a bridge onto passing cars and went back to prison.
So mommies and daddies - don't give your kids shock treatment or Ritalin - just hug them and give them food or little Mikey might come back to haunt you.
-Von Maniak
excerpt from The Life & Times of Ernest Scavenger
