BERGMANN'S ART

The Toronto Star
Friday, September 2, 1988
By Craig MacInnis

"I'm in Regina," reports Art Bergmann. "The town Canada forgot.

"I don't know. I think it's the murder capital of Western Canada. There's something deeply ingrained that's wrong here . . ."

The Prairies Have Eyes? Death In The Dust Bowl? Saskatchewan Zombies? Only Bergmann knows for sure, and he's not telling. And why should he?

A little paranoia can be a good thing. It fuels the singer's mordant wit and it flows through his songs like blood through a spring-fed stream.

A wily old veteran of Vancouver's post-punk scene - including stints with such brilliant bands as Los Popularos, Young Canadians and Poisoned - Bergmann recently went semi-legit when he signed a deal with Toronto independent, Duke Street Records.

The resulting album, Crawl With Me, is a quiet and disturbing masterpiece, blending conventional rock constructs with quietly desperate lyrics that chip away a veneer of normalcy to reveal a world of rot, corruption and no hope.

"Would Jackson Browne like this record?" he asks himself. "I have no idea. I would hope so.

"We seem to attract a weird assortment of people. I can get along with hookers, bikers, ministers, lawyers . . .

"I would think there's something in (the songs) that appeals to everyone. Death."

Lest this sound too morose for your tastes in pop music, understand that Bergmann isn't near as moribund as his self-analysis would suggest.

Rollicking along at a breakneck pace, songs from Crawl With Me might actually seem upbeat if one weren't aware of the problematic subject matter. In "Final Cliche" it's the death of an overburdened middle-class son; in "Empty House" it's the ugly, hidden side of domestic bliss. In a deep, looming voice, he croons: "Won't you come home/ To my empty house/ I'm all alone/ Except for my former spouse . . ."

Produced by former Velvet Undergrounder John Cale - who also quarterbacked debut sessions for Squeeze, Patti Smith and The Stooges - Crawl With Me is Bergmann's "cleanest" effort to date. For one thing, you can actually make out the lyrics, verboten where Bergmann comes from.

"I like it . . . in hindsight, I like it," he says. "But at first I was shocked, to tell you the truth. It was so clear!"

During recording sessions at Toronto's Manta Studios, Bergmann didn't have much time to chat with Cale, whose own music had a fairly big influence on the Vancouverite.

"He had some great stories to tell about Patti Smith having great punch-ups in the control room, but we only had two weeks to do it, so we basically went in and stared each other down."

Bergmann and his band - bassist Ray Fulber, drummer Taylor Nelson Little and singer-keyboardist Susann Richter - will appear Wednesday at Lee's Palace and will open a week from today for 54-40 at the Concert Hall.

It's one of the first cross-country tours, he admits, that hasn't been a complete disaster - and part of the credit must go to Duke Street.

"A lot of those independent tours, you're out there spinning your wheels, you have no backing, it's absolutely hopeless.

"But (Duke St.) has given us a full commitment for at least three albums. If the first one doesn't sell, they're not going to throw you on a shelf and just write you off.

"They treat me like a juvenile delinquent sometime, but it's been pretty good."

It's been good onstage, too: "There's only been one klunker and that was the first show in Calgary. By the time we get to Toronto, we should be smoking."