At Funky Winker Beans on Saturday, December 31

Chris Walter, author of Argh Fuck Kill: The Story of the Dayglo Abortions, tells me I’m a “brave man” for spending New Year’s Eve at Funkys. With bands like the Fuck You Pigs in the lineup (their T-shirt, with a picture of two riot police in flames, reads “I know pigs are people too… so are Nazis”), it sounds riskier than it is. The gangly Thrasherbalts bouncer outmans the odd aggressive drunk, and the closest thing to an assault I experience is when a besotted 20-something leaps across my lap to yell “Woo!” at the ceiling before plunging back into the mosh pit.

Walter is hard at work on his SNFU band bio, What No One Else Wanted to Say. He’s not present, but SNFU vocalist Mr. Chi Pig is, wearing a fuzzy grey pig toque. Chi tells the Straight that the prospective titles for the next SNFU album are either Never Trouble Trouble Until Trouble Troubles You (“It’s from a fortune cookie, same as the second album”) or Be The Best Asshole You Can Be (“My mom always told me that!”). Friends and fans cluster around him, as usual.

Dayglo Abortions frontman Murray “The Cretin” Acton also plans to record in the new year, with the 2012-friendly title being The Armageddon Survival Guide. “I’ve lived through a couple of Armageddons, so I figure fuck it, follow me, I’ll show you the way,” he offers from the merch table. The Dayglos’ set includes two of the most morally complex tunes in their repertoire, “I Want to Be East Indian”, which jams arguably racist and anti-racist sentiments side-by-side, and the anti-nationalist anthem “Proud to Be Canadian”, which ends in an act of Inuit sodomization. Cretin doubles his order at song’s end: “Make that two Eskimos, one above and one below—an ice cream sandwich of love.”

Jesus Bonehead’s successor, Blind Marc—surely punk’s best blind drummer—locomotives his way through songs with eyes wide open, except when sweat pours into them. Bassist Willy Jak wins audience-inclusion points by flipping his mike stand into the pit during “Drugged and Driving” so a female fan can sing along. The absence of rhythm guitarist Mike Jak (not present “because he fucks dogs”, Acton deadpans) only allows one to better hear the frontman’s tuneful, complex solos, which really get cooking during an instrumental take on “Black Sabbath”.

Best-dressed punk of the night is Warren Boyer, the singer for Bradys Problem, sporting a V-necked patterned dress that suggests a Masonic ninja. Gnarcoleptics singer Andrew Leitch vies for second place, looking like John Oxenberger in red long-johns. The actual countdown is presided over by Victoria’s Keg Killers, whose frontman—with close cropped hair and neck tattoos, he looks like a cross between Frankie Venom and Lee Ving—fills the last minutes to midnight with bad jokes, observing that Amy Winehouse has been clean for six months and asking the audience, “What did the kid with no arms and legs get for Christmas?” (The answer: “Fuckin’ cancer.”) Openers Blisterin’ Barnacles, meanwhile, outdo the Dayglos for offensive song titles. Think, “This one’s called, ‘In the Butt, No Kids’ ”.