Jud was one of my brother Tommy’s many nicknames. We used to call him Tommy Hunter, and then shortened it to Hunter. While visiting a tourist attraction in Victoria, ‘Judge Hunter’s Haunted Mansion’, we started calling him Judge Hunter which got shortened Judge, then Jud. We thought it was a cool sounding band name, The Judds came along much later.
Jud consisted of Paul McKinnon (lead guitar & vocals), Jay Schick (bass guitar), Tommy ‘Jud’ Gogo (drums & vocals) & me (lead vocal, guitar & electric piano).
My late great buddy Paul McKinnon and I decided we were going to be the next famous “John and Paul Mc” rockstar pairing, we formed the band when we were about 15. We recruited our buddy Jay who didn’t actually play at that point, he was just a good pal who coincidentally many people thought was a Gogo because they thought he looked like a Gogo. Paul and I thought he looked a heck of a lot like Glen Buxton from the original Alice Cooper band, a big bonus. So I bought a $50 pawn shop bass and tried to show him how to play it.
In our search for a drummer, we invited several kids our age to come over to play. Most of them, well all of them, needed quite a bit of prompting on how the songs went, so I would go get my little brother Tommy to show them. Tommy was still playing ice cream buckets with wooden spoons, he didn’t have a drum kit yet, but he was able to teach these boys who were five years older than him. Finally it dawned on us that Tommy should be the drummer, despite being just 10, and our parents bought a drum set.
Mom and dad… they were awesome, so supportive of us, not just getting us instruments but letting us play whatever music we wanted, whenever we wanted, for as long and loud as we wanted. Amazing, because we were pretty damn loud. Tommy became completely obsessive about so many different instruments! He would go nuts about saxophones, then cellos, bagpipes… on it went. They couldn’t possibly keep up with him with all those instruments so they waited until he obsessed about one certain thing for long enough, that’s when they got him the drums. I might have been pretty persuasive, I needed a drummer after all.
I wish I had better photos, I do have some that I just can’t put my hands on at the moment. But here is one from a dance Jud played in Port Alberni (circa 1975) me & Paul with Paul barely visible (Photo likely taken by Paul’s sister Tricia McKinnon). The second photo is of Tommy, with Jay in the background, In our family home band room basement. This was 1980 when we were forming our band Graphics, and Jay popped in for a visit though he was no longer in the band. That’s our new bass player also in the background, Drew Lindsay. Third photo is Tommy and me rocking out at our cousin Jeanie‘s wedding, I’m guessing 1976 (photo by our uncle Tommy Gubbels) like most of the photos we have from those days, our faces are hidden behind our long hair as Tommy’s is in this one. Written by John Gogo October 2022
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