Randy Pandora
Feature: 10.2
Life
Discover one of Canada’s most influential and intriguing punk icons wandering around Vancouver’s DTES.
“I never left music, music left me.” Randy Pandora sweeps aside his long steel-coloured hair and describes the terrible beating that left him with a brain injury and forced him to leave the music scene. When punk was defining independent music in the late 70s, Randy Pandora was the statuesque and fiercely intelligent frontman for The Generators and Exxotone. A few years later his memory was gone. Familiar faces became the faces of strangers. Memorizing lyrics and performing live was suddenly impossible. Music may have left him then, but it never forgot Randy Pandora. He’s a living legend hiding in plain sight. You could pass him on the street, distracted by your headphones, and never realize the influence he’s had on the music in your ears. But the moment you do see him you catch the posture of a performer, the charisma of an intellectual, like fragments you’ve seen before in a dream. In fact, Randy is no stranger to your subconscious. The sound and culture he helped pioneer is what music is made of today…”
