F---ed Up's Damian Abraham Credits Sonic Youth / Nirvana Doc for Love of Music

Legendary bluesman Robert Johnson famously found his musical inspiration by making a deal with the Devil at the crossroads. F---ed Up's Damian 'Pink Eyes' Abraham found his musical inspiration at the considerably more commonplace confines of a local HMV where, as a 13-year-old boy, the future punk icon was turned on to a landmark 'alternative' music documentary about a European tour of two then-little known bands called Nirvana and Sonic Youth.

It boasted the ambiguously ironic title, '1991: The Year That Punk Broke.'

"I had a dark period between 8 and 13 when I didn't really like music," Abraham tells Spinner. "When I saw the film in the summer of Grade 8, it sent me over the moon."

Speaking shortly after introducing a rare theatrical screening of the film -- which, for legal reasons, remains available only on VHS -- at the Hot Docs film festival in his native Toronto, the notoriously outspoken and incredibly affable singer was so moved by his experience that he can still clearly recall the exact circumstances which lead to his musical puberty.


"It was a real transition period for me, I wasn't allowed to hang out with my old friends because they were drug addicts -- when I say drug addicts I mean they smoked weed. And I'd been arrested for shoulder tapping, which means you get someone to buy beer for you, so I took a job at [Toronto's inner city] Ryerson Sports Camp as a junior counsellor. There was another junior counsellor there named Nick who was obsessed with Sonic Youth. One day during lunch we went to HMV and he told me he check out the video and it blew my mind.

"All of sudden everything made sense. I mean, I was 13 so a lot of things were still very confusing, but culturally everything fell into place. Up until I saw that movie and heard that music in that context I don't think I really liked music that much."