Young Canadians reissued, expletives and all

Vancouver Courier
Friday, January 6, 2006
By Greg Potter

In 1980, use of the "f-word" in song was not only discouraged, it was outright forbidden by major label record companies and thought by many of the Perry Como generation to be grounds for lengthy prison terms.

Sure, Jim Morrison used to toss it around onstage after a few drinks, and more than a few parents snapped vinyl when Country Joe McDonald substituted the offending letters in the "F-I-S-H" cheer on the Woodstock soundtrack; but short of John Lennon's "Working Class Hero," the odd mating-ape call by the Who's Roger Daltrey and the deliberate shock value of the Sex Pistols' "Bodies," the word wasn't commonly employed by tunesmiths in search of something to rhyme with "truck," "luck" or "duck."

When Vancouver punk-pop trio the Young Canadians sputtered said word in the opening line of their underground hit "Hawaii"--and then repeated it in every chorus--it was apparent that some cog in the Greater Scheme of Things had been shaken irreparably loose.

The YCs, as they were known to fans--guitarist/vocalist Art Bergmann, bassist/vocalist Jim Bescott and drummer Barry Taylor--exploded onto the local scene with all the subtlety of a car bomb, a fact attested to by the recent re-release of the excellent No Escape compilation on Joe "Shithead" Keithley's Sudden Death Records. (Though almost identical to the long out-of-print 1995 Zulu Records' release of the same title, with liner notes by head-Modernette Buck Cherry, the new version has been remastered and resequenced with an extra track.)

Originally known as the K-Tels (a name dispensed with when the manufacturer of "original hits by original stars" albums and assorted slicing/dicing implements took umbrage), the Young Canadians, unlike most of their contemporaries, arrived fully formed as a tight and technically proficient unit.

Sound, image, chops, stage antics and songs, songs, songs were all in place before the threesome debuted at O'Hara's on Valentine's Day, 1979. To look at, they were not especially punk, or even punk's corporate cousin, new wave: Bergmann, forever in the throes of morphing from Nick Lowe melody meister into Keith Richards waste case, looked like a computer geek gone bad; Bescott, a former folkie, came off like an adrenaline-fueled bank teller; the hyperkinetic Taylor, meanwhile, dared to sprout facial hair at a time when beards were carcinogenically linked to Lindsay Buckingham/Don Henley-type behaviour.

The Young Canadians' music, however, swiftly enabled them to rise above the flotsam of fashion casualties. Played lightning fast, their songs--like those of Creedence Clearwater Revival a decade earlier--came off like one great single after another. Despite the novelty, frat-house nature of "Hawaii" (built around a jagged guitar riff nicked from the Hawaii Five-O theme song), the tune was instantly hummable, as were "Automan," "I Hate Music," "Where Are You," "Well, Well, Well," "Hullabaloo Girls," "Data Redux," "Just a Loser," "Don't Bother Me"--the list seemed endless.

Quintessence Records, one of the first Canadian record stores to found an independent label, quickly scooped up the lively trio and released 1980's 12-inch Hawaii EP (the first 500 copies included a bonus seven-inch EP, tossed into the sleeve because it bore the "K-Tels" moniker and therefore couldn't be sold as a standalone without the inventors of the Patty Stacker throwing a hissy fit).

Co-produced by the band, Quintessence-owner Ted Thomas and Payola$'s guitarist (soon-to-be mega-metal producer) Bob Rock, the EP sold well, garnered the band a spot on CKVU-TV's The Vancouver Show and led to the consternation of many an in-town DJ, who were deluged with request-line calls from fans and other drunken yobbos to play the title track so that everybody could snort, chortle and singalong with the expletive-peppered chorus. Needless to say, the track didn't get a lot of commercial-radio exposure.

It did, however, lead to the release a few months later of a second EP, This Is Your Life. A more mature, sonically riveting effort, it led to a U.S. tour backing (in fact, blowing the socks off) the grossly overrated Boomtown Rats. The YC's seemed poised to take on the world.

Instead, the end came sooner than anyone expected, in December 1980, with a four-night finale at the Lotus Gardens on Abbott Street. The band cited "record-industry indifference" for the split; in other words, the Young Canadians didn't want to sound like the Knack, the Motels or the Vapors, so the major labels didn't want to know about them.

In retrospect, it is difficult to believe that all of the wonderfully written, structured, performed and produced pop songs included on No Escape issued forth over the course of little more than two short years. Bergmann, of course, went on to become one of Canada's best and most underappreciated songwriters, producing a string of critically beloved major-label albums. Taylor went on to join Shanghai Dog and continues to play on occasion with Roots Roundup. Bescott joined the Actionauts, among other local outfits; he was killed in a freak accident earlier this year on Aug. 31, after being struck by a semi-tractor trailer in Kitsilano. He was 52.

Perhaps the most memorable Young Canadians' show was the one at the VECC in the summer of 1979. Sharing a bill with San Francisco's Dead Kennedys, the YC's raged as go-go girls danced and artist Jim Cummins action-painted an enormous canvas draped behind the drum kit. Or maybe it was the multi-act bill on a flatbed in Vanier Park, band members having Jackson Pollocked their white shirts and denims with fluorescent spray bombs. Or maybe it was the night the band inaugurated the Smilin' Buddha as the city's hell, the country's-- premiere punk palace.

If you didn't catch 'em then, you won't now. Except, of course, on No Escape, a respite unto itself.