For The Love of Art

City's 'wildman' down on the farm

2008-01-07T19:52:00.000-08:00

Vancouver rock legend Art Bergmann found fighting arthritis in Alberta

The Vancouver Sun
Saturday, June 2, 2007
By John Mackie

Art Bergmann answers the phone, hears my voice, and mutters the perfect Art Bergmann greeting.

"The last time you talked to me someone died. So who died this time?"

No one, in fact. It's just that the arts editor of the Vancouver Sun wants to know whatever became of Art Bergmann, Vancouver's legendary new wave singer-songwriter and wildman, after a decade or so out of the limelight.

The answer is a bit of a shock. The 54-year-old Bergmann has arthritis in his hands, and doesn't really make music any more, because it's too painful to play guitar.

"It's gotten really bad in the last six months," he says.

"It started in my hands, my hands are all gnarled up. Now it's in my spine, I can't walk too good. Apparently it's just going to get worse."

The other shock is where he's living. After a decade in downtown Toronto, Bergmann and his wife Sherry Decembrini have spent the last year-and-a-half living a rural life on a small farm in Airdrie, Alta., a half hour north of Calgary. Sherry's sister lives up the road, and they're looking after the place for someone who moved away.

"I'm surrounded by 100 acres of wheat," says Bergmann.

"We have 10 acres of decaying old farmyard, with tons of skeletons on it."

Given his past, it's amazing that Art's not a skeleton himself. His songs were filled with references to drugs and guns and all sorts of bad stuff, and a lot of it came from first-hand experience.

Bergmann claims to have been clean and sober for a decade. But he admits his boozing and drugging got pretty bad in the late '80s and early '90s.

"Climbing up an apartment building wall to rip off my neighbour, that was probably my dumbest move," he says.

Really?

"Yep. On Main Street there."

That's when you knew you had to get out of town?

"No," he snorts. "But that was near the end. No, I just went on tour and decided to stay in Toronto for awhile. Of course, I never got enough money to move back."

Twelve years later, he still doesn't have enough money to move back. He probably never will. Which is ironic, because Art Bergmann symbolizes Vancouver's musical underground as much as anyone.

His first brush with fame (or infamy) was with the K-Tels, a new-wave power trio that was renamed the Young Canadians after K-Tel threatened to sue. As a solo artist, he put out a quartet of critically lauded albums on major labels, and even had a semi-hit with the poppy Faithlessly Yours.

But he never made a commercial breakthrough, and after 1995's What Fresh Hell Is This?, he was dropped by Sony. Since then he's been in the musical hinterlands, surviving by doing odd jobs and working at a Toronto restaurant called Rancho Relaxo.

Last year, DOA's Joe Keithley reissued a Young Canadians compilation CD, No Escape. It seems to have found a bit of an audience in Japan, where for some strange reason Vancouver new wave bands from the late '70s have achieved cult status.

A filmmaker named Susanne Tabata is also apparently working on a documentary of Vancouver's punk/new wave era. She recently showed up in Airdrie to interview Bergmann, with DOA's Randy Rampage in tow. (Bergmann laughs that Rampage cut quite an image in small-town Alberta, with his hair dyed a colour not found in nature.)

Now comes news that Bergmann's former bass player Ray Fulber is working on a CD of some demo tapes Bergmann made in the mid-'80s with producers Bob Rock, now one of the biggest producers in the world, and Paul Hyde.

Rock's demo recording of Bergmann's searing rocker My Empty House helped Art nail his first big record deal, with Duke Street Records in Toronto. But when it came time to record an album, Bergmann went with former Velvet Underground member John Cale as producer instead of Rock.

In retrospect, it was a rather dumb move, passing over a young local guy who was about to become red hot internationally for an aging 1960s legend whose glory days were well behind him.

"[Cale] just came and collected his 35 grand [fee] and drank tea and played squash, and that was about it," says Bergmann.

"Got a bit freaked out at Ray, I think. Or all of us, actually. We were in the midst of some psycho-sexual drama. Here's a quote from John Cale: 'I was fighting the demos all the way.'"

Fulber feels the Rock demos are infinitely better than Cale's production.

"When I play it for people they go 'Wow man, if this would have come out, Art would have been a household name,'" says Fulber, whose son Rhys is in the Vancouver acts Front Line Assembly and Delirium.

"He does a version of Junkie Don't Care and the solo is just unbelievable, beyond anything that ever made it to [record]."

Fulber now lives a relatively tranquil existence running a studio on the Sunshine Coast, where he lives with his longtime girlfriend, Bergmann's former keyboard player Suzanne Richter. In tandem with drummer Taylor Little, they were the band on the best Bergmann solo albums, Crawl With Me and Sexual Roulette. Lyrically it was Bergmann's darkest period, with twisted songs like My Empty House (about a murder-suicide), The Hospital Song (inspired by a girlfriend's overdose) and Dirge No. 1 (about a cocaine addict threatening to go on a murderous rampage).

But it got so crazy, the band imploded.

"I remember the last gig we played together," recalls Fulber.

"I think we got like six grand or $5,500 for one set. The next morning Suzanne had a meeting and said 'I'm not going to stay around and watch one of you guys die.'"

She quit, Fulber quit, and Bergmann soldiered on as a solo artist, with records produced by Toronto's Chris Wardman. The Duke Street label went bankrupt, so he moved to Polygram for his third album, Art Bergmann, and then Sony for his fourth.

Bergmann had a powerhouse manager in Sam Feldman and tons of champions in the music biz. But the lack of an American or European record deal probably killed his career. He was probably a bit over the edge for mainstream success, ala Bryan Adams but probably could have done okay selling a few records here, a few there.

In any event, he didn't have either a major label deal or a manager when he made his last recording, an acoustic "unplugged" record (he calls it "defanged"), Design Flaw. It was released in 1998 on the small Toronto label Other People's Music. In 2000, another small label, Audio Monster, released Vultura Freeway, a CD issue of another excellent 1984 demo tape.

Alas, there isn't likely to be much more original Art Bergmann stuff, and not only because of the arthritis.

"I quit doing drugs and alcohol in '95-'96, and haven't written much since then," he says. "I killed my muse, I guess."

But he still has his fans, like Bob Rock.

"He actually called me out of the blue, Bob Rock," says Bergmann. "About a month ago."

What did he have to say?

"Just that he loved my writing as much as James Hetfield's [of Metallica]."

Reached at his home in Hawaii, Rock says he's "always willing to chat about Art Bergmann.

"Continually wrote great songs, and never really ... the potential that was there, they never really achieved it. I think Art personally had some difficulties, as we all did when we were young. Some people move beyond that, and some people get stuck in that. Maybe unfortunately that's what happened to him.

"But the songs don't go away, and his brilliance doesn't go away. And you know what? He was a really great guitar player. I play his stuff all the time, I've got the re-released stuff, and he's a great guitar player. Had a great sound and a distinct style, which is so hard to have these days."

Rock has reunited with his old bandmates in the Payola$ for an album and a summer tour.

Another Vancouver new wave act, the Pointed Sticks, recently reunited to do a small Japanese tour, and Buck Cherry of the Modernettes also did some Japanese dates.

Asked if he would reform the Young Canadians for a Japanese tour, Bergmann doesn't sound all that enthusiastic. For one thing, Young Canadians bass player Jim Bescott was killed in 2005 in a truck accident. Then there's Bergmann's arthritis problem.

"But make me an offer," he deadpans.

"I've been trying to sell out for years, but nobody's buying."

10 Classic Art Songs

2008-01-07T19:50:00.002-08:00

The Vancouver Sun
Saturday, June 2, 2007
By John Mackie

1. HAWAII

The Young Canadians' biggest hit, with an incredibly infectious guitar line and chorus that simultaneously mocks and celebrates taking a mid-winter holiday in the sun. Makes prominent use of the 'f' word.

The chorus was a favourite saying of Ross Carpenter, a Bergmann friend and musician from White Rock, B.C., who claims he wrote much of the song. Bergmann says he can't remember Carpenter playing him Hawaii, but acknowledged Carpenter by belatedly giving him a co-writing credit on the Young Canadians' No Escape CD when it was released.

2. DATA REDUX

Anti-war rocker with one of Bergmann's best guitar solos and fabulous production by Bob Rock.

On No Escape.

3. DON'T BOTHER ME

A brilliant pop song about being dumped.

On No Escape.

4. MY EMPTY HOUSE

Savage rocker about a man who gets laid off, goes nuts and shoots his wife. Inspired by a rash of murder-suicides that hit B.C.'s Lower Mainland in the early 1980s in the wake of the Social Credit government's restraint program.

It was recorded several times, but the best version is on the Poisoned cassette produced by Paul Hyde and mixed by Bob Rock.

It may be reissued on a CD Ray Fulber is working on, with the working title The Lost Art of Bergmann.

5. INSIDE YOUR LOVE

Scorcher from the John Cale-produced Crawl With Me album on Duke Street, with an incredible guitar solo.

Available as a download on iTunes. There is also apparently a Bob Rock version that's even better, which may or may not be on The Lost Art of Bergmann.

6. THE HOSPITAL SONG

Lovely pop song about an OD, with the immortal line "maybe later we'll get together and have a relapse."

On the Sexual Roulette album on Duke Street, also on iTunes.

7. DIRGE

Psychotic Led Zeppelin-esque number about a cocaine fiend threatening to go on a murder rampage.

On Sexual Roulette, iTunes.

8. GAMBOL

One of Art's wildest rockers, with a great lyric about living on the edge.

On Sexual Roulette, iTunes.

9. FAITHLESSLY YOURS

Art's radio hit, with a wonderful descending melody line.

On the Polygram album Art Bergmann, which is currently out of print.

10. REMEMBER HER NAME

Powerful, slow-burning number about a sordid affair by a woman who looks like Marianne Faithfull.

On Art Bergmann, currently out of print.

Back in action: John Armstrong and the Modernettes

2008-01-07T19:50:00.001-08:00

North Shore News
Friday, December 22, 2006
By Greg Potter

Meeting your idols can be tempestuous affairs.

People admired from a distance tend to mutate horribly when you get too close. Public facades are not meant to be pried open because the reality lurking beneath ain't always pretty.

Vancouver writer/author John Armstrong, a.k.a. singer/songwriter/guitarist Buck Cherry, discovered this the hard way when his band the Modernettes backed up former -- New York Doll Johnny Thunders at Gary Taylor's Rock Room in 1981. Thunders, who would die of an apparent methadone overdose a decade later, was Armstrong's greatest guitar hero short of Keith Richards. Perhaps fittingly, JT ended the club date by trying to steal Armstrong's prized 1957 Gibson Les Paul TV from the dressing room (ignoring the word "Modernettes" splattered across the guitar case in blazing red letters).

Whether karma or coincidence, Buck Cherry had been one of my idols at the height of Vancouver's highly influential punk scene, circa 1977 to 1982. In 1986, he joined my band Lost Durangos. After a show at the Savoy one night, he stole my guitar. Maybe that's what idols are supposed to do.

I mention this purely in the interests of disclosure. Though I'm ostensibly plugging the return of the Modernettes (Richard's on Richards, Dec. 29) with a brand new album (tentatively titled Buck Like Me) and a forthcoming Japanese tour (seven shows in four cities in March), I'm writing about the John Armstrong/Buck Cherry I've known, admired, played with, worked with, drank with, fought with, been tossed out of bars with, and still remain friends with after a quarter century of questionable lifestyle choices that would have slain lesser mortals.

Having celebrated his 50th birthday last summer, Armstrong has mellowed (in as much as his temperament will allow), eased up on the drink (within reason) and flushed the drugs (before they flushed him). He co-owns Paramount Recorders with ex-Pointed Sticks keyboardist Gord Nicholl and produces his own music when not recording others. His brutally frank and funny 2001 book, Guilty of Everything, has been optioned by filmmaker Patrick Carroll, and he recently delivered Wages, his second set of "memoirs" (as he calls them), to publisher Rolf Maurer at New Star Books.

DOA leader Joe "Shithead" Keithley has reissued Get It Straight, a superb 25-song Modernettes' compilation on Sudden Death Records. The CD includes tracks from 1980's Teen City EP, 1981's Gone But Not Forgiven LP and 1982's View From the Bottom EP, plus assorted demos and live recordings. Its success in Japan prompted the tour, predicated on using the name "Modernettes." Thus, a reunion it is not; more like a resurrection in name only, as Armstrong -- in the guise of Buck Cherry -- is the sole founding member. Rounding out the quartet are former members of the Philharmonic, wholly half his age: guitarist/vocalist Adam Sabla, 25, bassist/vocalist Hayz Fisher, 27, and drummer Ryan Betts, 23.

"There was never any intention to play the old songs or call the band Modernettes, but that was before the offer to tour Japan," says Armstrong, perched in front of his studio mixing console in cowboy boots, black jeans and a black Western shirt with white piping, elegantly wrinkled. "I really would like to retire the name gracefully, but one thing this band has never been accused of is decorum or grace.

"When I first met Adam," Armstrong continues, "he told me his favourite guitar players were the Sex Pistols' Steve Jones and the Beatles' George Harrison. We share a love of melody and feedback, often at the same time -- not an approach you find too many players in favour of. How could I not love playing with these guys? They're great players, there's no temper tantrums, they just show up ready to play and have a blast doing it. When we're not playing, we hang out together. They're my illegitimate children, really. It's heartwarming. Disney should buy the rights."

Sabla, who grew up in Toronto, confesses that he'd never heard of the Modernettes before being introduced to Armstrong. Upon hearing the Get It Straight CD, "I really took to it," he says. "Sometimes you have friends in bands and you listen to their CDs to be polite, but I really liked this stuff."

With acts such as the Stooges and New York Dolls reuniting after three decades with younger members replacing dearly departed ones, the age difference is irrelevant. "I think people have gotten over that," says Sabla. "Rock'n'roll today is so postmodern, it doesn't matter anymore. The only difference is that John was around when it was happening, whereas I only started reading about it and going to used record shops as a teenager. But I don't look at it like he's 50 -- he's John and he's my friend."

Armstrong feels like he missed "the awkward years" from 30 to his late 40s: "The age when, if you keep at it with music, people start saying, 'Aren't you a little old for this foolishness?' But if you bugger off at 30 and show up again at 50, they have to be a wee bit more polite in deference to your advanced age. I'm counting on it -- as a matter of fact, I'm insisting on it. And I'd also like you to give me your seat on the bus."

I first experienced the Modernettes -- Armstrong, bassist/vocalist Mary "Jo Kopechne" Wichar and drummer John "Jughead" McAdams -- at the Helen Pitt Gallery on Halloween night 1979. The lasting impression is one of leather jackets, polka-dot shirts, leopard-print miniskirts, fishnet stockings and gloriously catchy pop songs played loud and fast. It was like the Archies on crystal meth, or maybe the Partridge Family if Danny Bonaduce had had it his way.

"I started playing when I was 18 and did my first gigs in White Rock that same year, 1975," says Armstrong, who was reared in Surrey and a member of the Monitors and Active Dog prior to the Modernettes. "Back then it was very pure. No one had any dreams of making a living playing music -- if we got drunk, stoned and laid it was a successful engagement. Being in a band was like being in the best sort of gang."

But when the Modernettes had records out and had a following, the fun declined.

"Once you have managers and a record company, things turn to shit in a real hurry," says Armstrong. "Suddenly people start seeing dollar signs -- if only they can get you to stop saying what you think, or enjoying yourself. I remember the head of PolyGram flew out from Toronto to see us and was quite shocked that I was smoking onstage. We were playing the Railway Club, for chrissake, which was like playing my living room -- he's lucky I was wearing pants!

"It didn't take long for all those concerned to figure out that I was completely unsuited to being a member of the music industry. What's funny is that all of my friends who tried to accommodate labels and managers got reamed horribly. I mean, the sort of horror stories you associate with old bluesmen being conned out of every copyright and royalty for a pack of cigarettes and a soda."

Among others, Armstrong is referring to singer/songwriter Art Bergmann and Pointed Sticks' keyboardist Nicholl, with whom he escaped the outer-lying districts and headed for Vancouver in 1977. Friends from high school, they were drawn together by mutual interests, not all of them popular with the big kids on campus.

"Gord and Art taught me to play guitar," says Armstrong. "We lived in the same uninhabitable apartments and houses, starved and drank, wrote songs, discovered punk rock and moved to the city together. We didn't really have a choice about becoming friends -- we were the only people we knew who liked the same shit. We all thought glam was the first good thing to happen since the British Invasion and we hated hippie music. That was enough to get you tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail back then."

They fared little better in Vancouver. On April 23, 1978, Armstrong and Bergmann -- clad in black leather jackets, black jeans and sporting short dyed hair--were attacked in the West End by two carloads of Lynyrd Skynyrd-types. The pair were kicked and pummelled mercilessly, and Bergmann suffered a broken jaw. The story made the "Crime" section of the Vancouver Sun. It was far from the last time John Armstrong's name would turn up in the city's "newspaper of record."

Following the 1983 breakup of the Modernettes Mach II -- a more musically adventurous outfit that, with guitarist/vocalist Randy "Valentino" Carpenter and drummer Ian Noble, combined Television's guitar interplay with Gram Parsons's proto country-rock -- Armstrong and Wichar, now man and wife, quietly set up housekeeping on the East Side. Armstrong worked for a video distributor and began freelance writing for Vancouver Magazine and the Georgia Straight. By 1987, he was a working journalist at the Vancouver Sun.

I was sitting in Armstrong and Wichar's living room (watching a porn video that Armstrong was reviewing for a wank mag) when he got the call. I was enlisted to drive him to the Pacific Press building at Granville and Seventh for his first day on the job. "I guess I'm a 30-year man, now," he said. Amazingly, he lasted half that long.

"It was just a really bad marriage," he says of his 15 years at the Sun. (In fact, his marriage to Wichar headed for the rocks shortly after his hiring.) "The editors were aghast at everything I was proud of. I remember being told to write an obit for Chris Farley. It came screaming back to my desk with a note saying, 'The Sun would never publish such a vile, ugly piece of writing.' I thought it was warm and touching. Like they say, 'We had a failure to communicate.'"

In 1990, a bout with cancer took him off the job for about a year. I was hired as his replacement in the Sun's features and entertainment department. "One man's cancer is another man's job," he quipped at the time. When his mop of jet-black hair fell out during chemotherapy, he began calling himself, "the third Jake," owing to a more-than-passing resemblance to Jack Nicholson.

The early 1990s is remembered as a kind of golden era for the Sun's features and entertainment department. Though mocked by cityside hackers as "The Toy Department," the section boasted some of the best writers in Vancouver. By the mid-'90s, however, a parade of inept and inconsequential managerial drones had sent morale plummeting. Before long, Armstrong was petitioning for a buy-out.

The end came swift and sure when a sub-editor rewrote one of his stories in simple-sentence paragraphs, known in the newspaper racket as "dumbing it down"; i.e., for the benefit of readers who might be tight on time or short on smarts. Armstrong snapped and very nearly crowned the sub-editor with a computer monitor, deciding at the last moment to put it down and proceed immediately to his doctor's office. The Sun's management fast-tracked his buy-out.

"That pretty much sealed the deal," he says. "I didn't really want to end up being a front-page story in my own paper. I don't know why it's such an evil place to work, but the atmosphere is just . . . Christ! They have to lock up sharp objects."

Leaving was like being released from prison. "I didn't get a new suit, but they paid me to leave so I could go somewhere and buy one. I think everyone concerned was happy to see me go - I know I was."

It was around this time that author/journalist Terry Glavin, another former Sun staffer who had bolted the fold, introduced Armstrong to New Star Books publisher Rolf Maurer. "I remember Terry calling attention to the fact that this guy could write like an angel who had got a good price for his soul," says Maurer. "When you're a fan of good writing, there's a certain pleasure to be had in watching somebody at work who knows their way around a typewriter. John has absorbed a lot from the writers he's read over the years -- echoes of Raymond Chandler and Jim Thompson are obvious -- but he's developed a voice that is distinctively his own."

Guilty of Everything (published by New Star on Glavin's Transmontanus imprint) met with unanimous praise -- eliciting both shock and mirth from reviewers -- and was nominated for a B.C. Book Prize. Armstrong arrived at the ceremony after draining several pitchers of margaritas with artist, musician and longtime pal Jim Cummins (a.k.a. I, Braineater). The Globe and Mail duly reported that, while Armstrong didn't win, he fell backwards out of his chair and landed on the floor, sending a dessert plate sailing across the room. "I don't get out much," Armstrong sniggered when I later asked about the incident.

The book prompted filmmaker Patrick Carroll to option the rights. "It made me laugh," says Carroll, "and I thought it would make the kind of movie I'd want to see -- a cross between 24 Hour Party People and American Splendor." An outline is being pitched to potential co-producers, and Carroll hopes to premiere the finished product at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival.

Meanwhile, there is the new album, a Vancouver-only edition which will be available at the Dick's on Dicks show. With basic tracks cut in two days by Armstrong, Sabla, Fisher, Nicholl and New Pornographers' drummer Kurt Dahle, the CD features such raucous and melodic new tunes as Doll Hospital, Wisteria and The Ballad of Sal Mineo. Older songs to be included in live sets include underground classics Rebel Kind, Confidential, Red Nails and Suicide Club.

"Sex, death, love, loss, regret, guilt -- there are only a few topics, anyway," says Armstrong. "I have a broader experience at 50 than I did at 20 but, for good or ill, I come to about the same conclusions. I was either pretty bright then or else I'm quite dim now."

Through it all, he has been -- to some of us, at least Buck Cherry. Even when cheesy L.A. glamsters Buckcherry appropriated the Chuck Berry spoonerism (without bothering to do a name search), Armstrong held his ground and was rewarded with a hefty settlement from the band's label, Dreamworks. "It was the first time I'd ever made any real money from music," he says.

And though he still complains to those of us who were around at the time that, "it still hurts when I sit down," he bears no ill will toward the industry for which he remains "completely unsuited."

"A woman from the CBC interviewed me and asked if I was bothered by the fact that the Modernettes have such an incredible reputation yet were so unsuccessful," Armstrong says with a chortle. "Unsuccessful? I stalled off any kind of regular work for years, travelled around the continent playing music with my friends, made records, got free drugs, liquor and every kind of sex -- by my lights it was a roaring success. What more do you want -- breakfast in bed?"

Why not? I already got my guitar back.

Muretich lived, loved music scene

2008-01-07T19:49:00.003-08:00

Outspoken Herald rock critic, 54, loses battle with cancer

Calgary Herald
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
By Heath McCoy

You never knew quite what you'd stumble upon when paying a visit to James Muretich.

When word spread last April that the mercurial Calgary rock critic was terminally ill, stricken with a brain tumour, people around the city were stung by the news.

Always a boisterous, extroverted soul, Muretich had kept an unusually low profile in recent years -- certainly since his fast and furious days as the Calgary Herald's rock reporter throughout the 1980s and '90s -- and many of his friends had not seen him for a long while. But so many wanted to reach out to the man.

Would he shake hands or bite 'em? Nobody could be sure. It depended how Muretich was feeling that day, really. It wasn't much different when he was healthy. And so some paid him a visit and others stayed away.

One Herald reporter made the journey to the 11th floor of Foothills Hospital on a Friday afternoon in April. Rather than finding Muretich confined to his bed, or taking medication, the visitor witnessed his former colleague storming out of the ward, bags packed, grumbling bitterly about the doctors.

"They're treating me like I'm already dead," Muretich growled. "I've got things to do."

"Can I catch a ride home?" he asked.

Anybody who knew Muretich had to laugh at the story. It was so like him. Razor sharp. Tough. Obstinate. Full of life. That's how he'll be remembered.

Muretich, who was coaxed back to the hospital that same night, died at home this past weekend. He was 54.

Muretich was raised in Montreal, where he earned a BA in theology and philosophy at Concordia University before attending the University of Western Ontario where he earned a masters degree in journalism. After a short stint as a court reporter in Peterborough, Ont., Muretich moved to Calgary in 1979 where he worked as a rock critic for the Calgary Sun (then called the Albertan). He came to the Herald in 1983, where he stayed for the next 19 years.

For two decades, Muretich was the voice -- with a capital V -- of Calgary's music scene, both in the Herald and on TV where, in the mid-80s he hosted his own community access music video show -- FM Moving Pictures -- on Channel 10. Muretich also had his own show on Calgary's campus radio station, CJSW.

In a conservative city, writing for a family newspaper, the hard-living writer managed to be Calgary's version of Lester Bangs, the gonzo rock critic for Creem magazine in the 1970s. Muretich might not appreciate the comparison, having once snarled at this writer: "I could write circles around Lester Bangs." Humility was not James's thing.

Nevertheless, Muretich, who described his freewheeling style of rock journalism as "surfing on chaos," lived and breathed the Calgary music scene.

He was so ingrained in it that when he married his second wife, Sally, in 1995, the nuptials were performed at the legendary and now defunct rock club, The Night Gallery, with rocker Art Bergmann as the wedding performer.

Muretich made a sizable impact, promoting the Calgary music scene to the rest of Canada and providing gutsy, insightful, sharp-witted commentary on the rock world at large for Herald readers.

There's no better way to pay tribute to Muretich than to hear stories about the man from the people he touched.

Rest in peace, James.

Jann Arden (Calgary based singer-songwriter; Juno award winner)

"James was so bold and forthright and . . . well . . . odd. (At first) he kind of scared me, to tell the truth. His bald head and numerous twitches and quirks made him a force to be reckoned with. He made me nervous. (But) over the years I was so proven wrong. You cannot judge a book by its cover, not his book, not that man. He was warm and sensitive, and very open about his life and his pain.

"James has done a number of kind-hearted stories about me over the years; one in particular has always made me laugh. . . . James came to my parents' home in the mid '90s to interview them for a piece he was doing about my Living Under June album. He plowed through a few probing questions concerning my youth and my wild years in the bar scene . . . My mother, at some point, asked James if he'd like a drink. Whoops. He did indeed. . . He went on to polish off an entire bottle of really horrible cheap whiskey. My mother said it was one of the most entertaining nights of her life! She told me that he made them laugh and laugh at all his crazy stories. Mom said he cried a couple of times, told them that he loved them and that he loved me. Well, I loved you too, James my dear. You wrote like you lived."

Maurice Ginzer (concert promoter, former owner of Kaos Jazz and Blues)

"I remember when he came into my club on 17th Avenue when we were primarily doing jazz and shifting into blues (mid '90s). It was one of those nights where there was a really staid, super-conservative audience and James walked into the place and we had a drink. He listened to the band, it was Jack Semple, and he called it immediately. 'This is a performer. This is phenomenal!' Then he leaned over to me and said 'But what's wrong with this crowd?' As he had a few more drinks, he became quite vocal about it! 'C'mon! We gotta get 'em going. Don't they know what they're listening to?!'

"A couple more tunes went on and he had a couple more scotches and finally he said: 'I'm gonna throw some life into this party.' So he walked up and started talking to this attractive woman. It looked like she came straight from the office. She was in a two-piece business suit, a little uptight maybe. . . .

"There's James in one of those T-shirts where it was cut off at the arms. He was gritty and rough looking . . . and he got her up dancing. . . . I think it was one of the first times anybody danced in my club!

"From that point on, the club became a pretty happening spot."

Tom Bagley (Calgary artist and rocker)

"When he came to town, this was a different place. There wasn't all the bands there are now, but he always supported this little underground scene. . . . When I started Forbidden Dimension he came over to my house with a photographer, I lived way down in the suburbs with my parents. . . . He came over and did the interview and left, and as a joke he left a condom on the kitchen floor. We're this very suburban family, right? But my mom one-upped him. She said: 'Oh, James left his hat.' They thought he was this wild guy, but they appreciated him because he was always promoting their boy."

Kerry Clarke (Associate producer: Calgary Folk Music Festival)

"I remember James taking part in a CJSW funding drive. He announced that he would take off his clothes, the more money people gave . . . until he was naked. And he really was naked there in the booth. There were a few squeamish people around who were quite shocked. . . . But it really helped pump up the funding drive." (Incidentally, naked James stories abound in Calgary. Accounts still make the rounds of him running around a number of rock festivals, the folk festival, and even the Ship and Anchor wearing only a Speedo).

Tom Cochrane (Canadian rocker, Juno award winner)

"There's a song on my upcoming album (No Stranger) partly inspired by (James) called White Horse. We as musicians run into you (rock critics) in the course of business and promo tours and stuff, and the first line of the song says 'I didn't get to know you all that well.' But I knew him enough to know he was a pretty generous guy and he believed in music. If it didn't solve all the world's problems, it could definitely ease the pain. He really believed that. . . .

"He and I had a lot of disagreements over the years, but I really respected his opinion. . . . Because you knew he sat down and listened to the music hard. That's why I would take him very seriously. . . . He respected honesty in art.

. . .

"One thing about James, he lived life to the fullest. He probably pushed the envelope more than a lot of musicians I know. . . . I always tipped my hat to the guy and I think I'm going to go drink a glass of wine for him in a little while. Scotch? Yeah, I might have a scotch, too."

Young Canadians reissued, expletives and all

2008-01-07T19:49:00.001-08:00

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.

Jim Bescott, Singer-songwriter, 1953-2005

2008-01-07T19:48:00.000-08:00

Art student and filmmaker turned bass player was a founding member of Vancouver's new-wave K-Tels

The Globe And Mail
Friday, October 7, 2005
By Tom Hawthorn

VICTORIA -- The bassist Jim Bescott was a founding member of the K- Tels, a seminal new wave trio from Vancouver. In late 1978, Mr. Bescott approached guitarist Art Bergmann of suburban Surrey about forming a punk group. Mr. Bergmann had been in a band called the Shmorgs, which included future MLA David Mitchell, now a vice-president at the University of Ottawa.

With Barry Taylor on drums, the K-Tels debuted at a gig in Vancouver billed as the Valentine's Day Massacre in 1979. Shows at a Gastown art gallery called Gambado's and at the Smilin' Buddha Cabaret on skid row became legendary for the K-Tel's energetic performances.

"Bescott had the same onstage intensity Art did, veins bulging in his neck and temples, and sweat flying," John (Buck Cherry) Armstrong wrote in his 2002 punk memoir Guilty of Everything. Those venues opened the doors for rival bands, many of which had been banished from others halls because of police harassment or petty vandalism.

Mr. Bescott is credited with having first considered the Smilin' Buddha, which had once been home to visiting African-American jazz and blues greats. The small room on East Hastings Street became a punk mecca famous for its beautiful neon sign and infamous for a giant Slavic bouncer named Igor.

The K-Tels joined DOA, the Subhumans and the Pointed Sticks as fan favourites as punk and new wave found a Vancouver audience as manic as the music. As proof of popularity and superior musicianship, especially considering punk's do-it-yourself ethos, the K-Tels won the city's annual Battle of the Bands showcase in 1979.

The K-Tels' Hawaii became an instant underground classic. A rousing surf- punk tune with a guitar riff ripped from the Hawaii Five-O theme, the notorious lyrics include a dozen uses of a common expletive. An extended-play record featuring the song quickly sold 2,000 copies. The rush was created by word of mouth, as no commercial station dared play the song.

It was during an outdoor show at Simon Fraser University that the K-Tels were served legal papers from K-tel International. The Winnipeg-based record label demanded $50,000 in damages for violating the goodwill of their name. At the time, K-tel was known for frantic television commercials pitching household gadgets as well as album collections of "dynamic," "explosive," and "electrifying" hits.

Barely able to feed themselves let alone finance a legal battle, the trio briefly called themselves the X-Tels before settling on Young Canadians. The band released a single and two EPs -- Hawaii (1979) and This Is Your Life (1980) -- before breaking up.

The end was hastened no doubt by the stresses of living in close quarters on the road with no money. The take after a two-night stand at the Hong Kong Cafe in Los Angeles was a paltry $6 U.S. -- to be divided among the three members.

Mr. Bescott, who also sang, wrote several of the band's songs, including Automan, No Escape and Just a Loser .

James Patrick Bescott moved to Vancouver from San Francisco with his family in 1967. He graduated from Kitsilano High School in 1972, by which time the neighbourhood for which the school took its name was already famous as a haven for hippies and draft dodgers.

While attending the Vancouver (now Emily Carr) School of Art, Mr. Bescott won a national film prize. A Night in the Movies won the best animation award at the ninth Canadian Student Film Festival at Montreal in 1977. His movies were shown at festivals in Canada and the United States.

As a singer-songwriter in the early 1970s, Mr. Bescott joined Riff Raff, a band he named, which took as its gimmick frequent changes in costume as well as musical style. The group performed a four-set show: greasers, Beatles, psychedelia, and glam rock.

He later played with a hippie collective that billed itself as the Band of Love Angels, in which 13 members on a variety of instruments created a crescendo of folk and reggae notes in one of the last statements of Kitsilano flower-power.

The Young Canadians opened for such bands as XTC and the Boomtown Rats, whose Irish singer Bob Geldof had worked briefly at Vancouver's underground newspaper, the Georgia Straight. Mr. Bescott also played with Bang Bang, which opened for the Clash.

He remained a presence in the Vancouver music scene, performing in recent months at such mellow Kitsilano venues as the Naam vegetarian restaurant.

On Aug. 4, a night-time fire gutted his mother's heritage house on Macdonald Avenue. She fled barefoot and both lost nearly all their possessions. Mr. Bescott was photographed retrieving a guitar from the ashes at daylight.

He was killed a few weeks later in a bizarre accident at a nearby supermarket. Police believe Mr. Bescott tripped and fell beneath the wheels of a slow-moving tractor-trailer truck delivering groceries. He died at the scene.

A CD of Young Canadians' material titled No Escape was released by Zulu Records in 1995. Joe Keithley, of DOA and Sudden Death Records, will be reissuing the CD later this year.

Jim Bescott was born on July 7, 1953, at San Francisco, Calif.

He died on Aug. 31 in Vancouver. He was 52. He leaves a brother, Robert, and his mother, Catherine, known as Kay.

OLD SCHOOL

2008-01-07T19:47:00.002-08:00

The Edmonton Sun
Sunday, June 27, 2004
BY FISH GRIWKOWSKY

WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS? (1995)
Art Bergmann
Epic
5 out of 5 stars

"There are no absolutes to human misery, things can get worse."

Don't I know it, brother. Don't we all. But I suppose they can improve, too. For example, there's a reason that Art Bergmann showed up four times on the big list of Canadian bests. That and a cup of coffee, I suppose.

He was and perhaps still is a terribly underrated performer, and this is my favourite album by him. It's a devastating portrait of fear, addiction and hopeless love, full of electric angst and dark, rolling piano.

He opens up telling us, "I just wanted to be good like the Beatles in Hollywood," then gets into a really heartfelt acoustic ballad called Buried Alive, where some cigarette-smoky girl tells him, "my whole life's a crime." Then, for levity, a couple drugs songs, Guns and Heroin and Some Fresh Hell, an Iggy Pop nightmare rocker propelled by vicious bass and a crazed circus organ.

Heavy stuff, but this guy spent enough time in the belly of the beast to earn his position as a loco, bored rock star in Hard Core Logo, a role he as much lived as played. Wherever you are, Art, I hope you're doing fine. If not, don't forget, there are no absolutes to human joy, either.

Damned but never forgotten

2008-01-07T19:47:00.001-08:00

The Hamilton Spectator
Thursday, April 5, 2001
By Glen Nott

Art imitates life. Life imitates art. If this was a competition, Art would win.

Art Bergmann, that is.

Assembled in one storied room in downtown Hamilton Saturday night will be, to borrow a Johnny Cash line, the mud, blood and beer of Canadian rock 'n' roll.

This is a group that can count scars on scars -- drugs, disease, Daniels (Jack), debauchery -- but none can count higher than the 46-year-old Bergmann.

Not that he'd want to. Bergmann's not really a numbers person. But here are some interesting ones:

1954: Born in British Columbia to Mennonite parents. Grew up in Surrey.

1977-'84: With bands The Schmorgs, the K-Tels, The Young Canadians, Los Popularos and Poisoned, helps create the West Coast punk scene.

1984: Bergmann's first solo album, Crawl With Me, produced by John Cale of The Velvet Underground, is released and goes gold in sales in Canada.

1989: Juno award (yep, they caught up) for most promising male vocalist for his work on the legendary album Sexual Roulette. The single is Faithlessly Yours.

1990: Plays role of burned out, gun toting rock god in Bruce McDonald's stellar road film Highway 61.

1993: Kicks heroin addiction, an experience that translates into another album, 1995's What Fresh Hell Is This?, a phrase borrowed from Dorothy Parker.

1997: Moves to Toronto.

April 4, 2001: Gets a day off from his job at Rancho Relaxo, a happening restaurant and nightclub in Toronto.

Bergmann and his band don't play out often, which makes this show that much more special.

"I played a show with Teenage Head in Estevan, Saskatchewan in the '80s," he said. "And I really love Tom (Wilson's) stuff."

Like all the best gutter-dwelling music giants -- the Paul Westerbergs, Iggy Pops, Tom Waits -- Bergmann keeps making music that is fresh and original, and far from the grasp of mainstream.

"I've never been stuck in the spiky hair days," he says. "I say play four chords, even five. People always fault me for my complex arrangements, but I get bored."

He listens to radio, but doesn't often like what he hears.

"I listen to 102 (The Edge), but most of the music sounds the same. There's no humour, and there's got to be humour.

"Dark humour, though."

There will be plenty of laughs Saturday, not to mention some remarkable history on display. Gord Lewis, Steve Mahon and Jack Pedler will serve as a sort of house band.

Wilson and Tim Gibbons will sit in with them for some Florida Razors and Shakers material. Later on, the Head will play with singer Frankie Venom front and centre.

Lewis has had the lads together for some practices, and things have gone swimmingly.

"I'm getting calls from Detroit and Buffalo about this one. It's basically sold out," said Corktown booking agent Dan Quinlan. "Somehow the word got out. It's the who's who and it's pretty neat."

And somewhere weaved into this mix will be the night's emcee, Toronto rock pioneer Nash The Slash. Awesome.

The Corktown Tavern -- where only the furniture is plastic.

He has a gig in Hamilton, then Toronto, and then another one hundreds of miles north of Calgary.

Yes, Texas born bluesman Sonny Rhodes, safe and plump from a winter away from the road, is back and criss-crossing the world in the name of, well, travellin' and playin' and singin'.

Rhodes, a legend of the pedal steel guitar sound and its unlikely marriage with the blues, plays the Hudson (233 King Street E.,) tomorrow night. Cover for the show is $15.

Tonight at the Hudson, it's One Step Beyond. Jazz guitarist Jake Langley is in on Saturday night. Cover for those shows is $5.

Sonic Unyon recording artists Sianspheric play Raven (69 Augusta Street at John Street) tomorrow night, and will soon be releasing a new album, titled The Sound of the Colour of the Sun. Expect it in June.

On Saturday night at Raven, Hamilton's FLUX A.D. and Dale Morningstar of The Dinner is Ruined combine for the best double bill of the weekend in these parts.

Morningstar, incidentally, had a big hand in Gord Downie's recent trip down poetry lane, the album and book Coke Machine Glow.

Downie, of course, is the dancing guy with the funny thing in his ear for The Tragically Hip.

Richard Baxter is a drummer. Boy, is he ever.

The Quebec musician has made an album, Baxter's Drum World, which features his world-record 115-piece drum kit.

The album is all drums. There are African tribal beats and a bongo duel, and the final two cuts are the the cat's whiskers for drum solo enthusiasts -- The Jazz Ghost of Buddy is a five-minute, 20 second solo on a four piece kit, while Percussion "Krock" Soup is almost 18 minutes of solo work on the full kit.

Need to know

What: Damned But Never Forgotten, a massive rock 'n' roll review

Who: Teenage Head (Gord Lewis, Frank Venom, Steve Mahon, Jack Pedler), Art Bergmann and Band, Tom Wilson, Tim Gibbons, Nash The Slash (emcee), Dave Byngham, Buckshot Bebee & The Sapphire Fly Band, and Spoiled Rotten

When: Saturday, April 7. Doors open at 9 p.m.

Where: Corktown Tavern, 175 Young Street, downtown Hamilton

Tickets: $10 in advance at Dr. Disc, Rave Records and the club, or $13 at the door

Too cute for cutting-edge Bergmann

2008-01-07T19:46:00.002-08:00

Calgary Herald
Thursday, September 7, 2000
by James Muretich

Art Bergmann
Vultura Freeway
Rating 2 out of four stars

These mid-'80s, rescued-from-dust-in-someone's-vault recordings from the beginnings of Art Bergmann's solo career show just how far the icon of the Canuck rock underground has come in the intervening 16 years. Bergmann buffs will no doubt treasure rarities like the title track and the usual articulate venom the king snake can summon with ease.

However, the bouncy rhythms in vogue at the time, one of the sins of new wave-electropop, sap a lot of the righteous anger that seethes within these songs. It's too cute for the kind of cutting-edge Bergmann gives naked to the world.

For Art fanatics (all three dozen of us). For others, check out What Fresh Hell is This or play Sexual Roulette.

1984: Rear window

2008-01-07T19:46:00.001-08:00

Vancouver Sun
Thursday, June 8, 2000
By Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

In May 1989, my clematis montana 'Rubens' was in bloom. Art Bergmann arrived on his 10-speed, all suntanned and sweaty in a muscle shirt. He had never looked so good. I served him some iced tea and then asked him to pose under the clematis. It occurred to me that he looked like Julio Iglesias, but with hair.

The reek of rotting onions was overpowering as my daughter Ale, 14, and I climbed the stairs of a warehouse on Railway Street and Gore one late evening of another May, in 1984. A makeshift recording studio had been installed on the fourth floor. Bergmann and friends, the cream of the best alternative scene rock bands of the day (among them my friends Gord Nicholl, Randy Carpenter and Nick Jones) were recording 10 songs. Carpenter had called me with the tip that my favourite Bergmann song Yellow Pages -- "Sticking knives in our backs and giving it a twist'' -- was on for that evening.

Not having grown up with rock 'n' roll, I belatedly shared with my daughter the teen thrill of hearing a great song, over and over. It was fun watching Bergmann play guitar and Carpenter and Jones on back-up vocals. The recording engineer, Cec English, seemed to be impervious to all the excitement as he methodically and unemotionally flicked switches. Only later did I find out that he was in great pain. The night before, he and Bergmann (fuelled by an over-consumption of Jim Beam) had kicked a police car outside the Oasis Club. English had a broken foot.

Later in 1984, I photographed Bergmann at the "Snake Pit,'' a house on East Broadway and Renfrew that he shared with Tony Baloney and other musicians. One of the resulting photographs is from what I would call Art's "wasted Keith Richards period.''

But I prefer to remember him as he looks on the cover of the CD Vultura Freeway, available now at audiomonster.com and soon in music stores. Those 10 songs that I had heard back in 1984, until now available only on the original cassette, have been lovingly brought back by local rocker Chris Houston and Audio Monster's Greg Corcoran. When Houston asked me some months back if I had "happy photos of Art,'' I thought of Bergmann under the clematis on a hot afternoon.

Borrowing from the title song, Vultura Freeway (up there with The Clash's London Calling for a song meant for driving fast on a hot summer day), "it's not summer but it's hot today,'' you can bet that it will be hot tonight and Friday when Bergmann performs at the Marine Club.

Songs presented in all their naked brilliance

2008-01-07T19:45:00.000-08:00

Calgary Herald
Thursday, March 16, 2000
by James Muretich

Art Bergmann
Design Flaw (Other Peoples Music-EMI)
Rating: 3.5 out of four stars

Canadian singer-songwriter Art Bergmann's 1998 acoustic gem, Design Flaw, may be a little easier to find in stores the second time around since it's being distributed through EMI Music. No one dives into the quagmire of sin, drugs, death and desire with such poetic passion as this Vancouver-bred rocker and on this disc, armed only with an acoustic guitar and occasional help from legendary guitarist Chris Spedding, Art's songs are presented in all their naked brilliance. This puts faces and feelings to the individuals who swim upstream against society's mainstream values. Still a cult figure "in the garage'' after more than two decades, Bergmann is the Canadian Ray Davies of the dispossessed.

STATE OF THE ART BERGMANN

2008-01-07T19:44:00.002-08:00

The Edmonton Sun
Friday, November 13, 1998
BY FISH GRIWKOWSKY

You can see the evidence of a million drinks on his face, hear as many cigarettes in his voice. Dropped by his label more times than most of us have fingers, Art Bergmann phones collect from some bar or other in Toronto and still, an inspiration to any of us who dare complain about anything, carries on.

"I've never been brave enough to off myself," he says with a smile you can hear. "I learned how to live it up all too well."

One of our country's foremost underground heroes, he even got a Juno in "better" days. ("It should have been a highlight, but it wasn't," he admits.)

Bergmann has, however, found light in his latest label divorce, a true Canadian optimist in the face of the snowstorm. "I'm an independent," he says, slowing down the last two syllables, making himself sound like a trophy. "I was really bummed for a while. Then I realized: no middleman.

"I could do whatever I wanted. Here's to that."

Like a lot of indies, Bergmann has the whole world in front of him again. All he needed to do was put the pen in his hand again and invite the muse. Trouble is, the muse was on holidays, maybe left in some bar somewhere, or a trashed hotel room.

"I've had a writer's block for a couple years," he laughs halfheartedly. "So my buddy Peter Moore suggested doing a live album. Recording it, it didn't come across."

Another low point? Turns out no. "Peter said, 'Let's do it in my kitchen,' he's got a complete recording studio in there, and so we did."

The result is Design Flaw, another in a long line of emotional projects following up the days Bergmann used to sing about his empty house, Marianne Faithfull or about tears about a mansion shooting chickens in Bruce MacDonald's Highway 61. Mostly just the singer and his acoustic, Bergmann tours through his old songs like Faithlessly Yours with a sad, sombre voice. He's joined by a ghostly electric now and then. The man even covers an old Gram Parsons tune, aware of the connection between himself and the doomed Byrd.

This, well, slowing down, taking it easy ... is this the end of Art Bergmann as party animal? Is he going straight and clean? "What the fuck for?" he laughs. "There's lots still left in me. I don't know what happiness is, necessarily, but I think the reason we're alive is to come to terms with that. I'm getting to the point of almost a reliable income again. I'm making a living. I don't want anything else any more."

Art Bergmann plays Rebar tomorrow night, tickets at the door. Show up early to avoid the downstairs lineup, but show up!

End-of-the-road movie for a generation

2008-01-07T19:44:00.001-08:00

The Toronto Star
Friday, October 18, 1996
By Peter Goddard

Hard Core Logo

Starring Hugh Dillon, Callum Keith Rennie, Bernie Coulson, and John Pyper-Ferguson, screenplay by Noel S. Baker, based on the novel by Michael Turner, cinematography by Danny Nowak, directed by Bruce McDonald. At Canada Square and Eaton Centre.

Forget the Vatican's banks, the far side of the moon or the left side of Bob Dole's brain. No place on earth contains more mysteries than the interior of a band's tour van - a space Bruce McDonald in Hard Core Logo, makes into a rolling metaphor for Life As It Is and other Really Big Ideas.

Logo is a classic rock flick, equidistant in spirit from Don't Look Back, Spinal Tap and Weekend by Jean-Luc Godard. With a hot soundtrack and cameos from the likes of Art Bergmann, it's also a somewhat nostalgic finale to Vancouver's great punk scene as well as to McDonald's trilogy which began with Roadkill and continued with Highway 61.

Hot nostalgia? Exactly. No other kind's possible for the late '70s and '80s. Hard Core Logo gets revved up when the band's on stage, but elsewhere McDonald and screenwriter Noel S. Baker remind you of how all the energy is beginning to slip away. This is also an end-of-the-road movie for a entire generation.

Inevitably, the more historically inclined critics will like to align it with another tradition - that of Anglo-Canadian "road" films - or "river" films, like Bill Mason's Paddle To The Sea - best defined by Don Shebib's Goin' Down The Road.

(Quebecois filmmakers have always seemed less inclined to hit the road, unless that road headed south - like in La Floride, say. But - wait on there. How could I have forgotten the seminal Molson's commercials we're now seeing, with those swash-buckling, funny-speaking coureur de bois looking for the big brewski in the sky?)

In truth, only the truly innocent and/or R.E.M fans might think one of these rented, rolling hell-holes is about getting a bunch of greasy rockers from gig to gig - in real life or in this flick's gritty approximation of it.

Anyone who's ever spent any time in one - and three minutes is about all you need - will instantly remember the unique rock van smell; a combination of petrified pizza bits, clothes unwashed for six months, cheap booze, cheaper sex all coated with the furry residue from inexpensive drugs.

But like all road flicks, the distance covered in Logo is the one between the guys who are forced to live together in their beat-up Gruman delivery truck - "the goat van," they call it - as the band heads east from Vancouver for a few farewell gigs across the prairies.

Joe Dick (Hugh Dillon) is band leader as well as lead singer and lead jerk. In short, he's hard not to like even if he's scamming everyone at least part of the time. (Dillon, who also appeared in McDonald's Dance Me Outside and looks uncannily like the punk Bruce Willis thinks he is, also happens to be singer/songwriter for the Headstones.)

Billy Tallent (Callum Keith Rennie) is the Keith Richards to Dick's Mick, the suave guitarist who may be the only one in the band who might have a future in music - well, an extra month or two. He and Joe go way back together and they can't forget it, despite their best efforts.

Then there are band members Pipefitter (Bernie Coulson) and John Oxenberger (John Pyper-Ferguson) who, like Elvis. have long ago left the auditorium. For them, the van ride along endless two-lane blacktops to gigs where no one shows, particularly the man with the money, is tantamount to having the mob call in that favor it's owed.

There is, of course, more than money involved. There's the cadaverous, punk legend Bucky Haight (the cadaverous and superbly eerie Julian Richings) who Dick just must visit. The few ghostly moments the script gives Haight amount to a small part but Riching is so dead-on right in it - and, yes, the key word here is dead - it almost takes over the entire film, which is something considering how strong the rest of the cast - particularly Dillon - is.

Finally, there's the strangest character of all, Bruce McDonald (played by the hirsute but otherwise well-cast Bruce McDonald), who's busy recording all of this for a movie despite his characters' insistance he go take a long walk off a short dock - or something like that.

But even here, you feel the tug of McDonald's own past and his on-going penchant for shooting movie-within-movies (consider his early short, Let Me See.)

Screenwriter Noel S. Baker has provided some of the funniest and deftest writing Canadian moviemaking has heard in years. But it can't hide the bitter-sweetness just below the surface.

Bergmann living down his reputation

2008-01-07T19:43:00.002-08:00

Canadian rock legend tries a mellower sound

The Toronto Star
Thursday, October 15, 1998
By Ben Rayner

Knock around any business long enough and you'll be rewarded with a Reputation.

Such is the honour of Art Bergmann, who - after something like 35 years in the rock 'n' roll maelstrom - is definitely in the running for CanRock iconhood, albeit on a modest scale.

And that Reputation precedes him: One of those punk-before-there-was-punk guys. Surly. Unpredictable. Record-label nightmare. Drugs. Bit of a nutter, really. Etcetera.

This blinding autumn afternoon, though, Bergmann - perched, smoking and slightly flu-ridden, on a stamp-sized College St. patio - is not the miasma of rock legends I'd been led to expect. Just a perfectly likable, if slightly rumpled and curmudgeonly, middle-aged ("I'm 400," he says) musician.

"It's amazing. People make up stories and badmouth me," says Bergmann, mumbling into his coffee. "I've never missed a show, I don't think.

"I'm a consummate professional."

A smirk. But seriously, he adds, he'd prefer to cede his walking-disaster title to someone who can pull it off with a little more enthusiasm than he's willing to muster these days.

"I like to sit back and watch the younger guys now," he says, "See if they can pull it off."

Bergmann - who's been grinding out snarling, hard-edged rock songs since he began his career during the early '70s with Vancouver bands like the K-Tels and The Young Canadians - should buck a few more expectations with the release this week of his new album, Design Flaw.

A collection of songs he's penned over the past decade (plus a cover of Gram Parsons' "Sin City"), it was recorded acoustically in Toronto producer Peter Moore's kitchen last year, with guitarist Chris Spedding dropping a few electric textures into the mix.

The record gets a proper unveiling tonight when Bergmann performs with Spedding at Rancho Relaxo (300 College St.).

"It's a little dreary," Bergmann says of the album. "It's 4 a.m. music."

Design Flaw's unplugged approach grew out of the sporadic acoustic sets Bergmann performed over the past couple years, during an extended sabbatical from the music business.

Although he's never really enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with any record label, Bergmann hit the wall when Sony Canada dumped him after 1995's acclaimed What Fresh Hell Is This? - especially since the disc snared a Juno for best alternative album.

"I just decided to quit everything for a while, quit the business for a while," recalls Bergmann, who was eventually lured to Ontario from Vancouver to play some low-overhead acoustic dates.

He never left.

"I came out here for a couple of shows and had no reason to go back," he says. "So I said to my wife: 'You feel like being Gypsies for a while?' "

At one point, someone suggested Bergmann record one of his solo shows, and the seed was planted for Design Flaw. The album - which is being released on punk-reissue label Other People's Music - contains older material, in part because he wanted to do a career overview. But Bergmann's distaste for the music industry had effectively sapped him of the desire to compose any new songs.

"I'm starting to write now, thank God," he says. "I thought it was gone - I killed a couple of Muses for a while.

"The whole destructive lifestyle was best for me. My best stuff came from a hangover."

The acoustic-troubadour thing is temporary, says Bergmann, who pledges to return to full, caustic, noisy form once he scrapes up enough cash to bring his band back to Toronto.

"I'm going out west right away," he says. "I'm going to meet up with a couple of members of my band and play a few shows - get really loud for a couple of weeks. Then hopefully I can afford to get the guys out here.

"We'll see if I can prance around like a fucking gigolo, like Steven Tyler. God, I hate that shit. Go away."

End of era with Pump's passing

2008-01-07T19:43:00.001-08:00

Club reigned as city's most important venue for live rock

The Province
Sunday, July 13, 1997
By Tom Harrison

People who don't smoke don't drink and they're cheap, too.''

For years, this quote from Joe McLean, blown up and framed in glass, hung on a brick wall of the Town Pump. It referred to the end of the Pump's experiment with a smoking ban and was put up as a reminder of a hard lesson learned.

The smoking ban lasted for only a few months in 1991 but it made the Town Pump the first club in Canada to try such a policy and made national headlines. As McLean, then one of its owners, so eloquently noted, it didn't make the club any money, however, and after weeks of terrible business the ban went down and the quote went up.

It's a brief era in the Town Pump's almost 15-year history that Bob Burrows would prefer to forget, even if it does illustrate one of the strangest of its many phases.

Burrows, who is one of the current owners, shut down the Pump in May, bringing to an end its reign as Vancouver's most important rock club.

It's reopening as Sonar, a dance club, is no less symbolic for what it says about entertainment trends and the state of live music. In the week since the dramatically renovated room has been open, Sonar has been pulling in the crowds and making money the way the Pump never did in its dying days. Yet Burrows got into the business by booking live rock 'n' roll and has a close attachment to the Town Pump.

"I was the one who started booking bands there,'' he says. In 1983, the Town Pump was a Gastown restaurant that usually featured a house band doing current hits. For a while, owner Alan Achilles brought in Top 40 cover bands but when this didn't work, Burrows booked original rock into the 420-capacity room.

"At the time, I was working with Simon Gunn and Frank Weipert and we were booking bands like that rockabilly band from Scotland -- the Shakin' Pyramids -- and The B-Sides and David Raven and they all were making a lot of money, but no one was coming for the Top 40 bands,'' he said.

WEALTH OF ACTS

The Town Pump provided a venue for an emerging post-punk/new wave community and a wealth of diverse touring acts. It became a stepping-stone for local acts that had graduated from the smaller Railway or Savoy and were on their way to the Commodore Ballroom. Headlining the Pump on a weekend also was a mark of status. It meant the act had built its own following, often by playing to a near- empty house on a Tuesday, or sharing a bill with three other acts on a Wednesday.

"The Town Pump probably paid out more money to local bands than any club in town, including the Commodore,'' Burrows says. "If you could draw, you could make five grand a night. I remember giving Art Bergmann $4,000. I think that was more money than he'd seen in his life.''

The Town Pump became the place for such battles of the bands as Spotlight '85 and later the annual Demo Listen Derby and an important room to showcase for record labels and the business.

But Achilles' other ventures were not doing well and threatened to drag the Pump under. After a time in receivership, the 68 Water St. address was bought by Ray McLean, who turned the management over to sons Dan and Joe in 1988.

That began a new era, post-Expo 86, of good local acts and an astounding array of U.S. and international recording acts.

"My big focus was the local bands,'' Burrows says. "At one time, there were 10-15 local bands who could sell the place out any time.''

He can think of only one these days -- the Matthew Good Band -- and notes that there aren't many touring bands that are worth booking either.

Yet there was a time when the important bands coming out of Seattle had played the Pump well before Seattle began its grunge era. Nirvana played there; Pearl Jam's first Vancouver date also was at the Pump. The list can be extended to No Doubt, Counting Crows, The Wallflowers and many others for whom the venue was a springboard.

"One day, John Teti (a Sonar partner) and I were reading a Rolling Stone that had an issue listing a poll of the 100 best live acts and just about every one one of them had played the Pump,'' says Burrows.

A highlight reel might include a drunken shambles of a night by The Replacements, a stunning display of guitar mastery by the doomed Danny Gatton, the revelatory musicianship of the Dave Thomas Band or the regular excellence of David Lindley.

For my part, I've got plenty of good recollections of playing there with my band Bruno Gerussi's Medallion (later Little Games) and a not-so-good recollection of singing Sweet Jane, drunk and off key, with local musicians at the 1995 Medicine Ball charity for the Children's Hospital.

MEMORIES SAVORED

For his part, Burrows enjoys memories of the early appearances of Fishbone and Red Hot Chili Peppers but "the highlights always were the Beat Farmers shows.

"Meeting people who were on their way down was much more interesting than meeting the ones on the way up. Donovan, Hank Ballard, Albert Collins -- Albert was a really cool guy. Etta James -- she scared the hell out of me.

"The best years were probably '93-'94-'95,'' he says. "

But, as music tastes and economic forces began to take away from the live music business, the Town Pump became vulnerable to a love/hate relationship that had developed. The club attitude could be arrogant, even bullying at times, not only to patrons but to the talent. It also was in bad need of renovation.

"I knew I had to make a change,'' Burrows says. "I didn't know what it was going to be but I knew a change was coming or the club wasn't going to be around any longer.''

The club is still there but the Pump is gone . . . along with Joe McLean's opinion of non-smokers.

TIMELINE

1983: The Town Pump is a Gastown restaurant that starts booking live acts in the evenings. Owner Alan Achilles tries to make a go of it with Top 40 cover bands; his plan flops, so booking agent Bob Burrows gets the nod to bring in original rock.

1985: By the mid-'80s, the Pump's a hit and becomes the site for such battle-of-the-band performances as Spotlight '85 and the annual Demo Listen Derby.

1986: Expo 86 is the turning point for the Pump, followed by a string of successful shows that emphasize local acts.

1988: After a brief period in receivership, the Pump is sold to Ray McLean, who turns management over to his sons Dan and Joe.

1990-91: Seattle invades the Pump with Nirvana, Pearl Jam and grunge.

1991: The Pump becomes the first rock club in Canada to adopt a no-smoking rule. This lasts only a few -- highly unprofitable -- months

1993-95: The Pump's busiest years. Bands include Counting Crows, Wallflowers, No Doubt, Stone Temple Pilots and more.

1996: Business starts to fade.

May 1997: The Town Pump draws its last draught.

July 1997: The Pump reopens as Club Sonar, Vancouver's first large-scale, state-of-the-art electronica club.

Dark sentiments run through singer Art Bergmann's music

2008-01-07T19:42:00.001-08:00

The Kitchener-Waterloo Record
Tuesday, April 8, 1997
By Nick Krewen

If Art Bergmann ever becomes prime minister, his first piece of legislation would undoubtedly enjoy unprecedented public support.

"I'd declare a statutory holiday," says the veteran Vancouver singer and songwriter. "It would loosen up everyone and we'd communicate better. Then it would be time to set all the budgets. People would actually get jobs that they're happy with."

Obviously Bergmann's party line is a different remedy from what political leaders such as Mike Harris and Jean Chretien envision for this country, but the former singer and co-founder of the punk rock group Young Canadians feels a little levity could go a long way.

After all, he suggests, Canadians have a dark sense of humor. And it's a type of humor you'll find on all four of his rugged albums, including 1995's brilliant What Fresh Hell Is This?

"I call it realism," says Bergmann, who performs solo at Mrs. Robinson's Wednesday night.

"Canadians have a black sense of humor. You know how Iggy Pop and Lou Reed often have the blackest kind of lyrics? It's the stuff of which novels are made."

Caustic wit

Dark sentiments run deep in Bergmann's music, but his slurry vocals and caustic wit always offer an unexpected detour to the truth. The song Sexual Roulette's message as an anti-AIDS theme is delivered with the surprising proclamation "This is my body/I'm doing time/Are you giving me something/I'll get in five years time."

On Buried Alive, Bergmann equates a breakdown with Humpty Dumpty imagery: "All the King's horses/All the Queen's men/Couldn't put me back together again."

Sometimes poignant, sometimes a satirical menace, Bergmann is a Canadian original: a surreal Stompin' Tom Connors. It's a comparison of which Bergmann approves.

"Stompin' Tom Connors -- he's a great songwriter, storyteller. I find that very flattering," says Bergmann, who tells his interviewer that he's "449" years old.

"I think that's what I'm trying to do with these solo shows. I admire great old country artists like Johnny Cash -- that's what I'm trying to get towards with the acoustic thing. It's not a bunch of rock 'n' roll songs."

Bergmann is hoping to take the intimacy of the live experience with him into the studio shortly to release an independent solo acoustic album. He says a fullblown band album -- hopefully on another major label -- will follow before year's end.

If he finds a label -- and he reassures that there have been some talks -- then Bergmann will have moved to his fourth label in five albums. There are no guarantees. Even winning a Juno for Most Promising Male Vocalist for What Fresh Hell Is This? didn't prevent Sony Music Canada from dropping him.

"I wish I had a long-term commitment," laments Bergmann. "Every time I switched companies, my record would be quietly shelved and that's that. We'd talk for a few months, and then they'd lose interest."

Enfant terrible

An admitted drinking problem also played havoc with his efforts to get ahead, earning him a reputation as an enfant terrible. Although he's been sober for a few years, Bergmann resigns himself to frustration with his prior skeletons.

"I've kind of realized I'm stuck with it," Bergmann sighs. "Although I know much more terrible infants than myself."

He also denies that alcohol enhanced his creativity, although he freely admits "I got a lot of great songs from hangovers."

However, that's all behind him. Art Bergmann says there's only one thing he's concerned about these days: building a healthy career.

"I just want to raise my profile, raise the stakes and go forward."

Art Bergmann

Where: Mrs. Robinson's
When: Wednesday
Tickets: $5

Twenty Years in the Underground: Vancouver's proto-punk Art Bergmann finally gets to Halifax

2008-01-07T19:41:00.002-08:00

The Halifax Daily News
Friday, April 4, 1997
By Andy Pedersen

Even a Juno Award couldn't stop the inevitable for Art Bergmann. Shortly after Canada's pioneering punk won the country's top music prize for alternative rock last year -- for his Young Canadians record, What Fresh Hell Is This? -- his record company, Sony, stopped returning phone calls.

"They wouldn't tell me a god-damned thing for six or eight months,'' says Bergmann -- who performs in Halifax for the first time this weekend -- from his Toronto crash-pad.

Not even a terse letter?

"My lawyer had to beg for that, even.

"Before we finally got that, all I knew about it was rumor. They just left me twisting in the wind out there in Vancouver.''

Lots of famous Canadian acts have had deal-ending fights with a major label. Bergmann has had three. Through the course of his tumultuous, 20-year career, the hard-living punk has split with half of the world's six major labels: MCA, Polygram and, most recently, Sony.

"My mother thinks that's my fault,'' he says laconically, sounding as though he's fighting a cold.

There are plenty of people out there who would be inclined to agree with the 42-year-old's mom. Much like his songs and his music, Bergmann is an explosive, uncompromising and, some would say, troubled character. His heroin and alcohol abuse is as well-documented as his offstage, vitriolic antics.

"I don't trust people who don't drink,'' he states. "But all those stories are things out of my past that I use in my songs, but that all the journalists try to pick up on.

"But I don't think I've ever really had a serious problem.''

Likewise, Bergmann refuses to take the blame for his rocky label record.

"I'm not saying that I can't be nasty, but I don't put the boots to anybody until the knife's been twisted into my back,'' he says. "All my moves are strictly defensive.''

For example, he insists the Sony deal fell apart because he wasn't racking up the sales numbers the label had hoped for.

"The explanation, when I finally got one from them, was simply that I wasn't making enough money quickly enough,'' he says. (Just after signing Bergmann, Sony rep Michael Roth told Billboard magazine, "Art deserves to be heard. He's the real thing.'')

The Polygram deal frayed, Bergmann says, when the label refused to pay for a cross-Canada tour. All he says about the Duke Street/MCA deal is that "it was hopeless from the start.''

Thrice bitten, Bergmann is now shy. He swears he'll never again be tempted into a major-label deal.

"I just think these big labels have a problem marketing something that's real,'' he says. "It's hard to put the music I make into some niche.''

Aggressive, guitar-driven power punk probably doesn't miss the mark by too much.

But unlike groups such as Green Day and Offspring -- which both rode a pop/punk mix to the top of the charts a couple of years ago -- Bergmann's tunes are faithful to his punk roots, and harder to sell for it.

You won't find many catchy riffs or memorable hooks in his sonic blasts; and when you can decipher the lyrics, they probably won't put a spring in your step.

"They tell you there's no such thing as luck until you're so f---ed up you need a lawyer to come unstuck,'' he sings in Beatles in Hollywood. Or in Ms. Jones: "She's got the phone hooked right in my mainline. She gives me a loan. She's a walkin', talkin', shatterin', chatter-box jones.''

Deciphering those lyrics has become easier of late. Whether it's because he's growing up, has no choice financially, or simply because it's what he wants to do, Bergmann has been developing a solo, acoustic show.

"It's been working,'' he says. "People can hear most of the words that I'm singing, and it gives me a chance to break off and tell the audience where the songs are coming from, what their influences are.''

Filling a stage by himself took some getting used to.

"Actually, it was really scary the first couple of times I did it,'' he says. "Having a band is like having a facade, a mask almost.

"And to strip all of that away is like being naked. And since all of my songs are pretty honest -- brutally honest, sometimes -- it makes you feel even more vulnerable.''

Even acoustic, Bergmann dips into his vast song catalogue and pulls out tunes that were born and bred among ragged and frenetic punk-rock instrumentation. But even stripped down, he says such classics as Our Little Secrets and Guns and Heroin still work.

"I'm hoping that shows like these will help establish me as a songwriter in people's minds, instead of just an old punk,'' he says.

He promises some new tunes. They're tunes that he's written especially for acoustic treatment; a change in focus that is yielding surprising results.

"Lyrically, these things are more brutal than anything I've ever written,'' he says. "They're scaring even me.''

Not surprisingly, one of the songs he has been working on is about the music industry. "It's called Hung Out to Dry. It's pretty bleak.''

Bergmann is so taken with the acoustic shows he is going to record an acoustic album later this month. (It will be produced by Toronto's Peter Moore, who has worked in the past with the un-punk Cowboy Junkies).

"It's going to be a pretty sparse record compared to my others,'' he says. "It'll have songs from the past 10 years and some other weird stuff. Maybe a Beach Boys song. Maybe some Van Morrison. Just to show people my influences aren't always what they might think.''

A voracious reader (sometimes devouring as many as five books a week), Bergmann also has publication on his mind.

"I've got this idea to work on a book about my 20 years in the underground,'' he says. "It'll be full of stories and vignettes and graphics and photos from the rock 'n' roll side of my life. I'm just trying to get some seed money together to do it.''

Told that he'll be facing off with Bob Dylan for audience attention tonight, Bergmann laughs. "I'll do some Dylan covers if that's what people want to hear.''

Art Bergmann performs with The Skydiggers tonight and tomorrow at The Birdland Cabaret in Halifax. Showtime is 10:30 p.m. Tickets are $11 -- $9 in advance.

Nowadays, Bergmann directs his own career

2008-01-07T19:41:00.001-08:00

The Hamilton Spectator
Thursday, February 27, 1997
By Bruce Mowat

The last time Art Bergmann was in town, he was accepting a Juno award in the Best Alternative Album category for his 1995 opus, What Fresh Hell Is This?

That was just short of a year ago. As of late, dame fortune has been a downright witch to the 43-year-old veteran songwriter, whose recording career of 20-odd years was interrupted in November when he was officially dropped by his label.

"For eight months (after winning the Juno award) I was kept in record-company limbo," recalls the Vancouver songwriter, who gives his age as "443 (give or take 400) years old."

"But you know, it's just as well. I should have stayed independent all the time."

Bergmann speaks from the point of view of someone who has spent the better part of his career working as an independent artist, starting with the punk group, The Young Canadians.

That group's entire output is, ironically enough, still readily available on a 1995 compilation CD released by the Zulu label.

"They did an amazing job with that," says Bergmann. "They managed to get material - transferred from video tape - from both our first and last shows."

"They've got stuff on there I had completely forgotten about."

Back then, Bergmann recalls pumping out new songs almost every day. These days, the writing process is considerably slower

"I'm lucky if I can come up with one song a month that I'm happy with," he says.

"The thing is, I don't want to end up repeating myself. And that's difficult to do."

Over the past few months, Bergmann has been performing as a solo acoustic artist, something he started doing when it became apparent to him his back-up band wasn't going to stick around someone without the backing of a major label.

These, however, aren't your standard garden-variety unplugged shows.

During these shows, Bergmann makes a point of not only giving the audience an overview of his career, but also detailed dissections of the songs in question, sometimes explaining mid-way through the performance what in-jokes and musical references are alluded to in the song's melody and lyrics.

There's also a sprinkling of covers from the artists that shaped Bergmann's music, including selections from the songbooks of Neil Young, Gram Parsons, and The Replacements.

"Working with a band disguises who you are," says Bergmann, of his acoustic shows. "When you do it alone, you're up there naked."

NEED TO KNOW

WHO: Art Bergmann, Chris Houston
WHEN: Saturday night. Show starts at 10.30 p.m.
WHERE: La Luna, 228 King Street W. in Hamilton.
TICKETS: Admission is $5 at the door.

Twice as brightly, half as long

2008-01-07T19:38:00.000-08:00

The Province
Sunday, November 3, 1996
By Mike Roberts

He's been called an enigma and a genius, arrogant and unreliable. He's been spotted in soup lines and dumpsters; holding court in the classiest lounges and most exclusive music-awards parties.

And he's had more record labels than I've had hot dinners.

Bottom line: Vancouver's Art Bergmann writes some wickedly intelligent tunes and when he's on fire up on that stage, boy, does he burn.

Twice as brightly, for half as long; or at both ends? Pick your cliche, it's sure to apply to the smash-and-crash musical career of this local legend.

I ran into the 43-year-old tunesmith at Roughcuts & Soulrippers, a weekly jam session he's hosting at The Gate (1176 Granville St.) Monday nights. A strange gig for the solo-minded Bergmann, but a gig just the same. Rent's rent, he'd say.

Bergmann's career has been hard to follow. There were the early punk outfits -- The Shmorgs, the K-Tels, The Young Canadians -- followed by the dodgy solo career. Independents. Polygram. Sony. An up-and-down roller coaster of brilliance and excess that has left him, for the moment, without a record label and in serious need of a capital infusion.

Enter Toronto's TMP (The Music Publisher) and something that smells a little off to me.

TMP is a publishing and production outfit that "develops'' Canadian musical talent (Jane Siberry and Murray McLauchlan are on its roster). It entered into negotiations with Bergmann last month for the rights to his back catalogue.

"Suffice to say, (TMP prez Frank Davies) offered me a $1,000,'' says Bergmann, barely concealing his disgust with the paltry bid for a 135-song back catalogue.

"I didn't even dignify them with a response.''

A case of taking advantage of a guy when he's down? Frank Davies doesn't think so.

"He was looking for some help personally and all of that, financially and everything, and we thought we may be able to help. It was just a pity it never came to pass,'' says Davies from Toronto.

"Unfortunately he didn't own the rights he thought he did. Which was very disappointing, actually, to us and I think to him, too.''

Davies says the price an artist's publishing rights commands depends on name value and success level.

A thousand bucks for Bergmann? I'm sorry.

"I really wouldn't want to . . . get into detail on that 'cause that really would be Art's sort of private business and I wouldn't like to do that,'' says Davies of the deal's price tag.

The deal is off the table so whatever the details were, they've been lost to the scrap heap of Bergmann's failed deals. Still, when a guy like Art tells you he's been offered a $1,000 carrot stump from some TO outfit, you don't know whether to feel outraged, or merely sad.

B.C. boasts several Juno winners

2008-01-07T19:37:00.000-08:00

Vancouver Sun
Monday, March 11, 1996
Entertainment

HAMILTON -- The following is a list of this year's Juno award winners announced Sunday night.

ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR

Shania Twain

BEST-SELLING FRANCOPHONE ALBUM

D'EUX, Celine Dion

ALBUM OF THE YEAR

Jagged Little Pill, Alanis Morissette

SINGLE OF THE YEAR

You Oughta Know, Alanis Morissette

FEMALE VOCALIST OF THE YEAR

Alanis Morissette

MALE VOCALIST OF THE YEAR

Colin James

BEST ALTERNATIVE ALBUM

What Fresh Hell is This?, Art Bergmann

SONGWRITER OF THE YEAR

Alanis Morissette -- (co-songwriter Glen Ballard)

GROUP OF THE YEAR

Blue Rodeo

INSTRUMENTAL ARTIST(S) OF THE YEAR

Liona Boyd

BEST NEW SOLO ARTIST

Ashley MacIsaac

BEST NEW GROUP

The Philosopher Kings

COUNTRY FEMALE VOCALIST OF THE YEAR

Shania Twain

COUNTRY MALE VOCALIST OF THE YEAR

Charlie Major

COUNTRY GROUP OR DUO OF THE YEAR

Prairie Oyster

BEST CONTEMPORARY JAZZ ALBUM

NOJO, Neufelt-Occhipinti Jazz Orchestra

BEST MAINSTREAM JAZZ ALBUM

Vernal Fields, Ingrid Jensen

BEST DANCE RECORDING

A Deeper Shade of Love -- Extended Mix, Camille

BEST ROCK ALBUM

Jagged Little Pill, Alanis Morissette

BEST SELLING ALBUM (FOREIGN OR DOMESTIC)

No Need to Argue, The Cranberries

BEST VIDEO

Good Mother, Jann Arden (Jeth Weinrich, producer)

PRODUCER OF THE YEAR

Michael-Phillip Wojewoda, End of the World (Cock's Crow), Waltons

Michael-Phillip Wojewoda, Beaton's Delight (Hi, Are You Today), Ashley MacIsaac

BEST RAP RECORDING

E-Z on Tha Motion, Ghetto Concept

BEST CLASSICAL ALBUM: SOLO OR CHAMBER ENSEMBLE

Alkan: Grande Sonate/Sonatine Le Festin d'Esope, Marc-Andre Hamelin, piano

BEST CLASSICAL ALBUM: LARGE ENSEMBLE OR SOLOIST (S) WITH LARGE ENSEMBLE ACCOMPANIMENT

Shostakovitch: Symphonies 5 and 9, Orchestre symphonique de Montreal, Charles Dutoit, conductor

BEST CLASSICAL ALBUM: VOCAL OR CHORAL PERFORMANCE

Ben Heppner sings Richard Strauss, Ben Heppner, tenor, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Davis, conductor

BEST CLASSICAL COMPOSITION

Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, Andrew P. MacDonald "I Think That I Shall Never See...''

BEST CHILDREN'S ALBUM

Celery Stalks at Midnight, Al Simmons

BEST REGGAE RECORDING

Now and Forever, Sattalites

BEST MUSIC OF ABORIGINAL CANADA RECORDING

ETSI Shon "Grandfather Song,'' Jerry Alfred and The Medicine Beat

BEST RHYTHM AND BLUES/SOUL RECORDING

Where Do We Go From Here?, Deborah Cox

BEST ROOTS AND TRADITIONAL ALBUM -- SOLO

Hi, How Are You Today?, Ashley MacIsaac

BEST ROOTS AND TRADITIONAL ALBUM -- GROUP

Gypsies and Lovers, The Irish Descendants

BEST BLUES/GOSPEL RECORDING

That River, Jim Byrnes

BEST GLOBAL RECORDING

Music for Africa, Takadja

RECORDING ENGINEER OF THE YEAR

Chad Irschick, O Siem (This Child), Susan Aglukark

BEST ALBUM DESIGN

Tom Wilson and Alex Wittholz, Birthday Boy, Junkhouse

HALL OF FAME

David Clayton-Thomas

Denny Doherty

John Kay

Domenic Troiano

Zal Yanovsky

WALT GREALIS SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARD (INDUSTRY BUILDER)

Critic's Choice: Bergmann's music is a Nelson Algren novel with drums and guitars

2008-01-07T19:36:00.003-08:00

Vancouver Sun
Saturday, November 25, 1995
by John Armstrong

Lou Reed has said his albums are intended to take rock music into the world of grownups, working the same themes as Hubert Selby and Raymond Carver.

In that context Art Bergmann's music is a Nelson Algren novel with drums and guitars, and the Vancouver singer/guitarist will be playing his latest chapters tonight at the Gastown Music Hall. Tickets at the door.

Those who saw Bergmann's performance at the Commodore show a month ago, filmed for the new Bruce McDonald movie, Hard Core Logo, heard a reinvigorated Bergmann at ease enough to perform his punk-era hit, Hawaii, unheard on stage since 1981.

Bergmann getting back to gigging

2008-01-07T19:36:00.001-08:00

The Toronto Star
Thursday, October 14, 1993
By Jennie Punter SPECIAL TO THE STAR

Besides splintering into countless subgenres and then evolving into something palatable to the masses, the punk rock movement kick-started a bunch of great literate songwriters at the dawn of the '80s.

In Canada, Vancouver's Art Bergmann is often hailed as our "punk" legend, although the noises he makes are far too eclectic to slap on such a simple label.

Lately, the songwriter has been getting his act together since being dropped by his label last year.

Art Bergmann, his third album, came out in late '91, got some great reviews and some good air play. But sales didn't match expectations and Bergmann found himself living "a life of bondage in Vancouver" with no tour support.

"I got signed by these companies, then I'd hear things like, sorry you can't tour, sorry the time isn't right," says Bergmann, in town to play some dates with his new live band, including Friday-Saturday gigs with Lowest Of The Low at Lee's Palace.

"You think things will happen when you sign to a major label, but the opposite happens. Hopefully, that's over now. It's a huge relief for me.

"Maybe it's my own fault, I don't know. Things happen for a reason, I suppose.

"I just look at artists I admire, they never made it until they were dead . . . or 50."

But Bergmann isn't waiting around for that.

"I've got a really hot band together and we've been playing around town," he says.

"I wrote a couple albums worth of material and threw them away. This has all happened since May, because before that I wasn't doing anything. I was sitting around because I really didn't know what to do. I mean, I didn't want to make any more demos, or get another Canadian record deal."

For his current gigs, the live band - which includes members of Vancouver's Dead Surf Kiss and Stigmata - is sticking to Bergmann's catalogue.

"We haven't managed to learn any new stuff," says Bergmann, "mostly because what I want to do with the songs in the studio is kind of complicated."

Besides performing material from the last album - and Crawl With Me and Sexual Roulette (both on Duke Street) - Bergmann is also cranking out songs that were never released.

"There's a bunch of great tapes I own . . . stuff before Duke Street that I recorded with (producer) Bob Rock and Paul Hyde.

"It was a band called Poisoned at the time. We dropped the name because of that other horrible band."

Bergmann plans to hit the studio before Christmas, armed with a guitar case full of paper he's been scrawling ideas on.

"I actually started my musical life on piano, but I don't use any instrument at all when I'm writing. The new stuff I'm writing now is just on pieces of paper, and I'm putting down on paper how I think things should be approached in the studio.

"There are so many guitar bands now, guitar bands that detune on purpose, so that's unfashionable. So what am I going to do? Maybe just go in there and walk on the guitar."

So you want to be a rock star

2008-01-07T19:35:00.000-08:00

Montreal Gazette
Sunday, August 29, 1993
By Greg Potter

VANCOUVER - Countless books, articles, audio tapes and videos have been produced with the good intention of providing self- help for aspiring rock gods.

This is yet another - and it won't help you, either.

In fact, the only advice you really need is this: "GOOD GOD! DON'T DO IT!"

But that would make this article far too short.

With that in mind, we offer an easy-to-understand, 10-step primer for anyone toying with the notion of becoming a professional musician.

Some of these tidbits are culled from personal experience (a.k.a., bitterness, vicariousness, malice, etc.) as a one-time musician and now an entertainment writer.

More importantly, we relay advice from those in the business. Here goes:

LESSON NO. 1: Talent Helps

Though Milli Vanilli cut classes the day this lesson was taught, it's generally not a bad idea to pawn yourself off as being at least semi-talented.

This can be accomplished in a number of ways. Lying, of course, is the easiest and sometimes the best.

On the other hand, you might want to actually develop your skills. Bill Clinton, for example, neglected his saxophone. Look where it landed him.

"You can't just say, `I want to do this because of the money or the fame.' You have to have some sort of a talent for it," said Randy Bachman, formerly of the Guess Who and BTO, now a solo artist.

"You have to enjoy doing it. When you hear about any `overnight success,' there's five, 10, 15 years behind that, whether you're a musician, an actor or an athlete."

But beware. Not everyone thinks it's worth putting in all that time.

"Don't bother," advised singer/songwriter Art Bergmann, who, despite three critically acclaimed albums, can barely pay his phone bill.

"Stay at home and play piano for your mother. You'll have a rapt audience for life."

LESSON NO. 2: Choose Your Weapon

Generally speaking, play the instrument that suits you best. And please, if you can't sing, don't.

It is true, however, that a bad voice doesn't mean you can't be an influential rock vocalist. Look at Bob Dylan or Iggy Pop. You don't have to be comprehensible, either.

"I wanted to be a lead singer, you know, and write songs, you know, and la de da," is how Iggy Pop fondly remembers his career choice.

"I had been a good drummer, but that's not being a singer, right?"

Whatever.

LESSON NO. 3: Leave Your Makeup At Home

"Image is something you work on after the fact," said Kim Blake, publicist for Bruce Allen Talent, the agency that has broken such acts as BTO and Bryan Adams.

"The most important thing is writing a great song and nothing more."

"It really doesn't matter who you are or what you look like," Bachman agreed. "That's been proven by Boy George, the Barenaked Ladies and guys like BTO who are great big construction-looking guys."

LESSON NO. 4: Find Help

Now that you've got your song, you're going to want to record a demonstration tape so the major-label record companies can listen to it (maybe), get excited about it (if you're lucky) and heave it in the trash compactor (most likely).

Blake receives hundreds of demo tapes a week at the Bruce Allen Talent office.

"I don't even open them any more. Anything we listen to has to be solicited. It has to come from a label or an entertainment lawyer. There's so much crap."

Independent releases are another route. Though more costly ($5,000 is more or less the bargain-basement total cost of producing 1,000 CDs), they present a complete package.

Indies helped spark interest in acts such as R.E.M., Nirvana and Guns N' Roses.

BUT: "Being realistic, I'd say that maybe one or two per cent of artists putting out indies ever get signed by the majors," said Zulu Records owner Grant McDonagh, who has released and distributed dozens of Vancouver indies over the years and currently has Coal, Perfume Tree and Lung on his roster. "Independent means do-it- yourself, from promoting the album to setting up tours. If they think we're going to do it for them, it's not going to happen."

LESSON NO. 5: Say `Cheese'

Thanks to MTV and MuchMusic, recording contracts have to figure in additional costs for video production.

MuchMusic vee-jay Terry David Mulligan suggests that new bands with no dough hook up with young film-makers from art schools.

"These are people who have access to camera and film stock and are looking to enter the world of film," he said.

And what does TDM look for in a rock video?

"A lack of cliches," he said. "Please, no more babes, no more grimacing like you're having a bowel movement when you're playing your guitar."

LESSON NO. 6: Schmoozing the Media

Now that you've got your product, you're going to want some ink.

When dealing with music writers, repeated phone calls, belligerent demands and accusations regarding their parentage and/or sexual preferences will not win your way into their heart.

Personally speaking, cash works better than compliments and free booze works better than pithy quotes you stayed up all night rehearsing. Just kidding.

Seriously, regardless of how many people are in the band, send the one person - two at the most - who are semi-articulate, relatively candid and somewhat humorous.

Don't lie about your past or say stupid things like, "This one was inspired by Coleridge."

LESSONS NO. 7 & 8: Get a Bus / Toss the Contract

Travelling 5,000 miles through the dead of winter in a station wagon with four people you can't stand is not fun.

What? You're trying to save money, you say? Ha! Virtually every tour - except those by top-selling, established artists - loses money.

Cars break down, equipment explodes, clubs close, somebody OD's, you name it.

But the most common misconception for first-timers on the road is that signed contracts are actually valid. Try suing a club owner in Halifax for the $150 you needed six months ago to get back to Montreal and you'll know what I mean.

LESSON NO. 9: Scoring the Big Deal

There are countless musicians out there hopelessly convinced that once you sign a record deal, your troubles are over.

Think again, Jim. Your troubles are just beginning.

"A break-even point in Canada nowadays is platinum," said Dave Chesney, director of national marketing for Bumstead Productions and former marketing rep for Sony Music Canada.

"As we all know, all the money the record company gives you is recoupable and they're the first ones to get paid."

In essence, what Chesney is saying is that you must sell 100,000 albums in this country to clean off your debt to the label before you see a red penny.

No matter how much your mother loves you, she's not going to buy all those records.

LESSON NO. 10: So Where's My Cut?

Well, congratulations. You've finally made it. Singles on the radio, videos on MuchMusic, albums on the charts. All you need now is that Porsche 911, beach house in Malibu and American Express gold card.

"Yeah, right," said singer/songwriter Mae Moore, who recently released her second major-label album, Bohemia.

Two albums on a major label? That's two Porsches, right?

Ha!

"I'm on my second record with a major label and I've got $30 in the bank," Moore said. "I rent, I don't own a car and I just got a TV this year."

Boys in the bando

2008-01-07T19:34:00.002-08:00

Vancouver Sun
Saturday, January 9, 1993
By Malcolm Parry

LONG ECHOES . . . "It's nice to be working on something that doesn't involve naked women for a change," said Jorge Alejandro "Alex" Waterhouse-Hayward whose exhibition of nearly-made-it rocker Art Bergmann opens at the 56 Gallery, 156 West Hastings, Jan. 15.

The nudes are by way of a disciplined hobby. In the working world, corporate and celebrity photographer Waterhouse-Hayward handles annual reports, glossy-magazine editorials and the likes of a fully clad Premier Mike Harcourt (the official portrait). On Tuesday he will shoot B.C. Gas head Bob Kedlac.

Buenos Aires-born Waterhouse-Hayward (in the Argentine navy he was nicknamed Conscripto Waterclo, meaning "toilet") has photographed Bergmann since 1979 with such bands as the Young Canadians (formerly the K-Tels), Los Radicos Popularos and his own Poisoned. The singer/guitarist taught Sun reporter John Armstrong (aka Buck Cherry) how to play, and also worked with punk rocker Dave Schmorg who metamorphosed into a political author and provincial-Liberal house leader David Mitchell.

Bass player Tony Bardach, who also accompanied Bergmann, now owns the 56 Gallery.

Look for legendary promoter and album compiler Bud Luxford to outbid the pack for Waterhouse-Hayward's photo of the 1981 "Budstock" showing virtually everyone involved in Vancouver's then-active alternative-music scene.

Maybe the fame that inexplicably has evaded him will finally come to Bergmann, who currently has no recording contract. Next Thursday, his steps so far should be well documented by 35 photographs and many times that number of fellow travellers.

Long time coming, but Bergmann signs with Polygram

2008-01-07T19:34:00.001-08:00

The Vancouver Sun
Saturday, June 8, 1991
By Greg Potter

IT'S BEEN a long time comin', but local singer/songwriter/guitarist and all 'round swell guy Art Bergmann has finally tied the knot with a major label, the blushing corporate bride being Polygram.

Negotiations in Toronto "went pretty quick" last week, says Bergmann, who notes that manager Sam Feldman "did all the talkin'. I didn't have to do a thing."

Bergmann, who released two highly acclaimed albums, Crawl With Me and Sexual Roulette, for the ill-fated Canadian label Duke Street, says that after all these years (remember the Schmorgs, Young Canadians, Los Popularos, etc.?), "it feels pretty good - but it's kinda late, isn't it guys?"

With his third album (working title: The Moist, Dark Thing Is Beautiful) all but completed, he returns to Toronto this coming week to finish mixing the tracks with producer Chris Wardman (who likewise produced Sexual Roulette). A rough mix of the album confirms that Bergmann's penchant for striking melodies, inventive song structures and thoughtful wordplay remains intact.

Longtime fans will recognize a rework of God's Little Gift from Poisoned, his 1984 solo cassette debut. And if cuts such as Marianne Faithful and Faithlessly Yours don't become chart-topping hit singles, radio programmers the world over should have their kneecaps smashed. The album is due out late in July.

Meanwhile, Art's acting debut in Bruce (Roadkill) MacDonald's hilariously twisted Highway 61 should hit Vancouver for the Film Festival in September. Bergmann plays a deranged, chicken-hunting, frozen-yogurt-machine-owning rock god who resides in a Memphis mansion with his catatonic girlfriend.

Juno whoop-up

2008-01-07T19:33:00.000-08:00

In which our irrepressible and undeniably hip music scribe JOHN MACKIE schmoozes with the movers, shakers and just plain heavy drinkers at the post-Juno hi-jinks

The Vancouver Sun
Thursday, March 7, 1991
By John Mackie

So, like, Sherri Decembrini of Nite Moves was telling me how Leonard Cohen (thunk!, the sound of a name dropping) reminded her of Art Bergmann (thunk!) and could I maybe introduce him to her?

So, being like me and Len (thunk!) are big pals from way back (I talked to him once in person and once on the phone) I says sure, and taps old Len (thunk!) on the shoulder. Being ever so frightfully civil, he turns around and apologizes ("I'm sorry. Did I bump into you?"). I assure him everything's cool, and introduce him to Sherri. He smiles, she melts - the highlight of her week of non-stop schmoozing at the Juno Awards.

Rain City was schmooze central the past week, as planeloads of fast-talking music biz types left their speaker phones and ulcers back in Hogtown for the Big Do out west. Downtown hotels like the Wedgewood, Hotel Vancouver and Four Seasons reeled and rocked 'til the wee hours as the movers and shakers shimmied and shook and drank drank drank. 'Twas the biggest music biz whoop-up since CBS Records held its international convention here a couple of years back, a convention where I got to party with Pia Zadora and Cyndi Lauper (thunk! thunk!).

Me and Sherri and Suzanne Vega (thunk!) were among 120 revellers invited to an intimate Do in Leonard's honor Saturday night at Cafe Splash. Clad in our best black-on-black attire (what else would you wear to a Do for Leonard Cohen?), we feasted on chicken and steak and salmon, and glugged a few gallons of champagne.

Afterwards, we piled into cabs and '64 Ramblers to catch some of the multitude of gigs that Music '91's Labatt's Canada Live Festival had booked into the Town Pump, Commodore and 86 Street for the week. (I had to use surreptitious means to get into some of those gigs - my name was stroked off the guest list at the sold-out Tragically Hip show Friday, presumably because I've questioned some of Music '91's dealings.)

The Labatt's Live Fest was a mixed success. There were some great shows (Barney Bentall and the Legendary Hearts, Kashtin and the Tragically Hip, all at the Town Pump), though the attendance for some gigs wasn't quite what Music '91 had anticipated: Juno winner Celine Dion, for example, had to move her showcase from the Orpheum to 86 Street.

The big problem I had with the Labatt's Live Fest, though, was its concept. Big Bad Bruce Allen, loud manager of Bryan Adams, has taken me to task for questioning the provincial government's $300,000 to $400,0000 subsidizing of the Junos, 'cause it offered locals a chance to "rub shoulders" with the powers that be in the Canadian music biz.

I hate to be logical, but putting big-name national acts in every major venue in Vancouver throughout the Juno period virtually ensured that no local acts had the opportunity to "rub shoulders" with Mr. and Ms. Big through a live showcase. D-U-M-B.

Bearing that in mind, I'd have to say the highlight of the entire Juno week was an "anti-Juno" underground superjam Sunday night at the Smash Gallery featuring some of our city's finest unsigned talent (Chris Houston, Howard Rix, Herald Nix, Alex Varty, Ziggy Sigmund, Brian Goble, Jon Card) and the legendary Randy Bachman. It was raw, it was raunchy, and when former DOA and Subhuman Goble howled out the lyric to American Woman over top of Bachman's classic riff, it was one of the great moments in Canadian rock history.

Hey, and it didn't cost the government one cent.

Bergmann wildman

2008-01-07T19:31:00.002-08:00

The Vancouver Sun
Thursday, May 24, 1990
By John Mackie

"Schmoozing" is music industry-speak for pressing the flesh at industry gatherings, adding that personal touch to the hype surrounding your new album, tour, or career. Even the king of Vancouver's musical underground, Art Bergmann, went back to Toronto this year to schmooze it up and promote his new album, Sexual Roulette.

But Art will be Art, and by the time the dust settled, the 36-year-old rocker found himself at the centre of post-Juno gossip. At a Blue Rodeo showcase, he leapt up on stage, screamed "one fucking chord!" and led the band through a "spontaneous" rap song before falling over. After he left the stage, he tried to show his appreciation by throwing a flower to the band. Problem was, he tried to yank one out of a plastic flower arrangement, and wound up splattering the flowers and the planter in which they sat all over the place.

At one point, he allegedly entered the women's washroom and ripped off a stall door. At another party, he "thought everyone should go home" and so "threw a TV off the counter face first." And every time he saw a certain ultra-hyper MuchMusic veejay, he screamed: " 'You got some dope?!!' at the top of my lungs."

All of which raises the question: is it true they're scared of you in Toronto, Art?

"So I've been told," Art mutters, sipping on a double rum and Coke. "They're wimps, they're wimps, the whole Canadian music industry is a pile of whussies. Honeymoon Suit. Alotta Miles. It sounds like one big fucking beer ad, it's disgusting. And all these heavy metal bands with their cynical ploy for radio play with their ballads - come on. They call me cynical.

"People are so scared these days," he adds. "Everybody goes: 'It's so alternative!' Whatever happened to Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon? The music of '66, '65 when radio was great - it was mean and nasty, coming out of garages."

"Mean and nasty" are two words that spring to mind when you spin Bergmann's latest opus. Producer Chris Wardman gave Bergmann full rein to go nuts, and he did, producing an intense album of unrelenting musical savagery and gripping lyrics.

The title track, Sexual Roulette, deals with sex in the age of AIDS. The blistering rocker Gambol is about gambling with your sanity. The lovely balladry of Sleep masks a rather devious variation (not quite suitable for print in family newspapers) on standard pickup lines.

But the heaviest song of all is Dirge #1, a Led Zeppelin-style number about a strung-out acquaintance of Art's who threatened to go on a murder rampage in Toronto's Kensington Market.

"I think he was undergoing severe cocaine psychosis," explains Bergmann. "He thought every black person was a coke dealer, and he was going to go out and kill them 'cause he'd been ripped off so many times."

Overall, the album seems to be even darker and more twisted than his first album, Crawl With Me (which dealt with, among other things, incest, murder/suicide, and junkies). But Art seems surprised by the observation.

"You think so? Isn't it funny? To me, I'm just another stand-up comedian," says Bergmann, who, wild stories to the contrary, is normally quite soft-spoken and civil. "The jokes . . . some of them just go 'fwooooom' over people's heads. Some people take everything so goddamn literally. I'm in a really stupid business."

As an example, he brings up The Hospital Song, a poppy little number with the addictive hum-along chorus, "maybe later, we'll get together and have a relapse."

What inspired The Hospital Song?

"I got this girl in deep, deep trouble one time. She came in a cab, left in an ambulance."

A true story?

"Everything is true. We're makin' movies here!"

Sexual Roulette should satisfy the long-time fans who were dismayed at John Cale's (somewhat tame) production on Crawl With Me. Going into the studio is always hard for Bergmann ("I hate the whole recording process: it's like making me go inside out or something"), but working with Cale proved to be even more excruciating than usual.

"I can listen to it now," says Bergmann of the first album. "When we were doing the mixes in Toronto, I'd go home and pull my hair out. John wanted to get some kind of weird atmosphere, I think. But his atmosphere and my atmosphere are probably two different things . . . mine's a bit filthier. He was not interested in guitars in the least. I'm a big proponent of rhythm guitars, two of them going as loud as the snare drum, eating their way through the tape."

Crawl With Me was recorded at the Manta sound studio, and wound up costing a cool $120,000. Sexual Roulette was recorded in two weeks at Commercial Drive's relatively low-budget Profile studios, and only cost $15,000. "The thing is, you can record in any studio, in your living room, as long as you've got a good engineer who knows what he's doing," he states. "Make the songs go on tape as loud as possible, and then make them claw their way through the speakers."

The album was actually finished last summer: release was delayed while the tape was shopped around to American record companies. Nothing's been confirmed yet, but there has been definite interest, and it could well see a Stateside release in the next couple of months. (One rumor has Bergmann's label, Duke Street, being bought by Miles Copeland's streetwise IRS.) In any case, Bergmann will be touring Canada with the Pursuit of Happiness in June (he's now being co-managed by Pursuit manager Jeff Rogers), and will open for Midnight Oil and Hunters and Collectors at UBC's Thunderbird Stadium June 26.

Bergmann's "influences" range far beyond music. "For Dirge, I wanted to write a song as scary as the movie Dead Ringers. I came out of there high as a kite, I'll tell ya." He's also been reading Zola, Bukowski, and Phillip K. Dick. His favorite singers are Howlin' Wolf ("that's evil comin' out of those speakers") and Iggy Pop (the inspiration for Bound For Vegas). But don't ask him about guitar players.

"Fuck, I hate guitar players. Hate them. They're a dime a fuckin' dozen. I hate lead guitars: I like two rhythms goin' full blast."

Who's his favorite rhythm player, then?

"There is only one, isn't there? The guy who invented it, Keith Richards. And Paul Westerberg. I like the way these guys record mistakes: that's when things happen. That's why I hate so much of this heavy metal shit. All the distortion is cleaned up, it's smooth, like opera now. Fuck off."

Madness or Art?

2008-01-07T19:31:00.001-08:00

The Calgary Herald
Thursday, May 17, 1990
By Alison Mayes

If a sex-and-violence record labeling system ever comes into force in Canada, they might as well slap a warning sticker right over Art Bergmann's mouth.

While other songwriters cruise life's well-lit avenues for inspiration, Bergmann lurches through its alleyways and sniffs around in its gutters.

"If I wasn't in music I probably would be into some weird form of terrorism or something," admits the Vancouver bad boy. His new album Sexual Roulette confronts such messy horrors as AIDS, madness, drug-addled knife fights and suicide by razorblade and hanging.

Yet it's intelligent, darkly funny and you can dance to it. And the ex-punker who snarls this stuff against gritty, guitar-driven rock 'n' roll is no empty-head banger.

Articulate, well-read, troubled by human suffering, he writes lyrics that grope for answers in a hostile world. Take, for instance, the references to Nazi atrocities on both the new album and his 1988 debut, Crawl With Me.

"One of the most lasting images of the 20th century will be that Holocaust," he says by telephone in a nicotine whisper, "and it bugs me every day just to feel I'm related to those people who did that. It just overwhelms me; I don't know how or why anyone could do that to somebody else."

Listeners who would prefer to avoid "depressing" topics aren't on Bergmann's wavelength. "You gotta face facts sooner or later, and the basic fact is death for all of us," he says. "I think it's something everybody thinks about...and I think there's a lot of humor in there, myself, when you face these facts and learn to laugh at them."

Bergmann, who says he wishes he could believe in God, grew up digging the Stones, the Kinks, the Who and the Sex Pistols while being raised by "really religious" Mennonite parents outside Vancouver.

At one point his family ran a church-sponsored foster home. "I'd hang out with all the juvenile delinquents and go out and do LSD with them," he remembers, "and get in supreme shit."

He managed good marks even as he was taking strolls on the wild side and dating girls he describes as crazies and psychopaths. After high school he continued his "research" of the social underbelly and played with bands including the Schmorgs, the K- Tels, the Young Canadians, Los Popularos and Poisoned.

What's the lure of the street? "Down at the bottom things are really black and white. People have to do certain things to survive.... Like the guy from My Empty House (on Crawl With Me), he shoots his family, you know, and I find it much more interesting than a basic love song that's been written 40 times."

It was a Bergmann demo recorded with Poisoned in 1984 that caught the attention of John Cale, co-founder of the Velvet Underground. Four years later Bergmann found himself recording Crawl With Me with Cale producing. Though the album was well received, prompting comparisons to Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, there were complaints that the singer's angry power had been sanitized in the studio.

"I don't think (Cale) was that interested in guitars, which is sort of my main forte - rhythm guitars really loud," Bergmann says. "I was intimidated by doing a first album in a strange city...and then John Cale walks into the whole recipe, and he's a pretty influential figure.... I let him sort of take over, which I shouldn't have done."

For Sexual Roulette, Bergmann relied on his instincts and found an easy rapport with producer Chris Wardman (Chalk Cirle, Neo A4).

"Half the songs were written before we went in the studio, but the other half I tried to leave open and just go for a feel. I think you should record what happens right there on the spot."

The title tune is a confrontational look at the risk of AIDS: "This is my body/ What's on your mind/ Are you giving me something/ I'll get in five years' time?"

Other tracks conjure up a Barfly-style watering hole ("Just a couple of flies/ On a lowly cowpie"); a hospital room where one unstable lover contemplates unplugging the other's life support system ("Maybe later/ We'll get together/ And have a relapse"); and a rock band's tacky expedition to Vegas ("Wayne Newton doesn't want us to be late.")

Bergmann notes with some amazement that "weird heavy rock" radio stations are playing the crazily upbeat Bound For Vegas. Radio has generally been hesitant about his material.

"The programming and record company people in Canada are just too chicken; they're just music chickens," he sighs.

A notoriously uninhibited live performer (he hinted that a tour with The Pursuit of Happiness may be in the works), Bergmann says he tries to maintain the edge - the unpredictability and danger - of genuine rock 'n' roll.

"Rock 'n' roll is like a big battle for me between good and evil, and that's the way it should be. Rock 'n' roll is instant gratification - or it should be on a good night anyway."

Bergmann finds straightforward venom in the dregs

2008-01-07T19:30:00.001-08:00

The Gazette (Montreal)
Saturday, April 28, 1990
By Mark Lepage

Art Bergmann
Sexual Roulette
Duke Street

There's a drunkard, a wife-beater or a psycho on every big-city street, and Vancouver's Art Bergmann writes and sings as if he's met them all - and liked them.

Bergmann only sounds like a certifiable rock 'n' roll Section Eight. Sexual Roulette, his second album, is a punishing, scabrous journey through the dregs of humanity. It also happens to rock with a fearsome intensity.

Sexual Roulette is Barfly committed to vinyl, a cautionary tale for the '90s that celebrates its own ugliness. Bergmann picks at emotional and psychic scabs with a neurotic's obsessive glee, alternately wallowing, raging and howling at the moon.

He starts with a savaging of rock 'n' roll itself in Bound For Vegas. Set to brutal music, the lyric revels in the seamy fat-Elvis underside of rock careerism, all the while pounding the message home with straightforward venom: "I'm a never was / trying to be a has-been."

The catalogue of grotesqueries includes AIDS, madness, suicide, assault, racism and drug addiction. But the record is worthwhile for Bergmann's guitar alone. It's an unrepentant grunge-machine fused from the shards of every great punk 'n' roll band of the last 20 years, back to the Stooges and the Velvet Underground.

Through it all, through the churning riffs in Bar of Pain, the primal scream of the title track, and the black humor of The Hospital Song ("Maybe later / we'll get together / and have a relapse"), Bergmann sounds apocalyptically angry.

"I'd rather straddle / this razorblade / than sit on that fence," he asserts in the grinding Gambol. Bergmann is out on a precarious limb, notably in the merciless Dirge No. 1, but he sings and plays as though his life were at stake.

Art puts snarl back in rock

2008-01-07T19:29:00.000-08:00

The Province (Vancouver)
Monday, April 16, 1990
By Tom Harrison

Art Bergmann reaches for his cigarettes on the coffee table, lights one up, considers what he's going to say.

"Rock and roll is just one big career move now," he observes. "You go to school, go to classes, you go to rock conferences - it disgusts me. Alannah Myles gets a number one record in the States and she says, 'It's my job.' Well, I thought the idea of doing this was to avoid having a job."

One listen to either of Art's two albums, Crawl With Me or the new Sexual Roulette, confirms there are a lot of things that disgust Bergmann. If you thought he was p.o.'d on the first one, you ought to hear the Chris Wardman-produced sequel.

You will. Bound For Vegas, the first single, already is bound for airplay at every self-respecting rock station across the country, but there is more - lots more - to Sexual Roulette.

The best real rock and roll to be released by a Canadian act this year, it has put back the snarl of guitar that John Cale removed for his production of Crawl With Me. While Cale's strategy let the songs shine, the prettified ugliness wasn't what Bergmann's fans wanted or others, who knew Art only by reputation, expected.

"John Cale, I think, was looking for atmosphere, but my atmosphere is filthier than his," Art says, bemused. "Wardman was good; he and I agreed on everything. We kept all the bubbles, squeaks and farts from the amplifiers. We had the attitude that things sound best just before they blow up."

If Wardman (producer of LPs by Chalk Circle and NEO A4, demos by Tragically Hip and The Pursuit Of Happiness) has returned to Art and his band of Susann Richter, Ray Fulber and Taylor Nelson Little their sound, Bergmann has delivered songs that bristle with excitement and spray the blood of humanity all over the carpet.

Consider the title track, a song about a serial killer whose murder weapon is AIDS that has Art screaming aloud his fear of being the next victim; the heavy-lidded despair of the characters in Bar Of Pain; or the psychological games people play daily in the song Gambol that prompts Art to volunteer that "I like to gamble with my sanity."

Insanity is well represented on Sexual Roulette, not only in Gambol but also in More Blue Shock and especially Dirge No. 1. Some people claim to be on the street; Art Bergmann is there every day, bottling not only its life but its stink.

Dirge No. 1 was written after several days of hanging around Toronto's Kensington Market, a densely-populated cultural enclave with its share of crack houses.

"I was staying at a friend's place," Bergmann recalls. "He was undergoing severe cocaine psychosis and thought every black man was a drug dealer and he wanted to kill them all."

It's no wonder that Art is a fan of poet-reprobate Charles Bukowski and black humorist Louis Ferdinand Celine, whose work has armed him intellectually to play the devil's advocate, and also to see a purpose in the "wild and vicious mood swings" that have made Art's club dates legendary for their unpredictability and palpable danger.

If these characteristics make Bergmann the closest heir to Iggy Pop, then good, great, hallelujah: The cavalry has arrived. It was a line from an Iggy Pop interview that inspired Bound For Vegas and it is an Iggy-like sense of humor (in Hospital Song, Swamp Food Thing and the Velvet Underground steals of She Hit Me) that tempers Sexual Roulette's seamier obsessions.

Art Bergmann's background - soft-spoken prodigal of a nice family of German origin from Surrey-White Rock - also parallels that of Iggy, who was born James Osterberg in Michigan. And, much to their families' distress, both men have made their music a model of their lives.

"My mom says, 'Art, write some nice songs,' " Art Bergmann states, smiling fondly. "I say, 'Mom, Jesus lived with whores.' "

Great! Bergmann gets down in the gutter again

2008-01-07T19:28:00.002-08:00

The Vancouver Sun
Saturday, April 14, 1990
By John Mackie

Art Bergmann
Sexual Roulette (Duke Street)
4 out of four stars

Now, this is more like it. Art turns up the grunge on his second platter for Duke Street, howling like a wild beast and scorching on the gee-tar.

Lyrically, he's down in the gutter again, detailing the sordid affairs of murderous junkies, sexual deviates and general on-(or over)-the-edge lunatics.

The Zeppelinesque Dirge # 1 is truly disturbing, while the Hospital Song will have one and all singing along to the irresistibly poppy chorus, "maybe later, we'll get together and have a relapse."

And there are several more killers to choose from, including the hard-hitting Gambol, the lovely (and warped) ballad Sleep, and the rollicking Bound For Vegas.

Exceptional.

Pumping life into corpse of rock 'n' roll

2008-01-07T19:28:00.001-08:00

The Ottawa Citizen
Friday, March 30, 1990
By Greg Barr

Art Bergmann isn't sure why he scares people.

"Actually, I'm the biggest suckhole in the world," a rather sleepy Bergmann confessed into the phone this week. "I just write about subjects that everyone thinks or talks about, but some people just don't want to hear it."

When the former Vancouver protopunker released his debut album Crawl With Me in late 1988, it was a tough sell. The moody atmosphere, created by former Velvet Underground mentor John Cale, was a disturbing backdrop for ditties about sexually-abused women, among other dark subjects.

Though working with Cale was too intimidating, Bergmann says working with producer Chris Wardman for the second album, Sexual Roulette, was quite inspiring. One reason was that Cale wasn't into guitars, and Wardman, guitarist with Go Four 3, most definitely is.

"I'm lucky I got a second chance. But this (album) is more me," he said. He hopes it might release his alternative-label chains.

The lead-off cut, Bound for Vegas, captures the roadhouse spirit of the Rolling Stones's Route 66. Bergmann said it was inspired by a TV interview with Iggy Pop, who noted how sad it is that every entertainer's reward for staying in the business to age 50 is to play Vegas.

(She) Hit Me is full of fuzzy T. Rex and Ronson-style riffs. It's controlled spontaneity, Art's personal quest to pump some life into the beer-drenched corpse of rock 'n' roll.

And to make sure the guitar sounds stand out, a second axeman, Michael Joy, has been added to the touring band, opening for National Velvet at Porter Hall Saturday.

As for the lyrics... well, Art still seems awfully upset about a lot of things. Dirge No. 1 is sludgy industrial punk, describing a "vision of pain" when he nursed a coke-addict friend through seven nights of insanity.

The album closes with Deathwatch, recorded in the studio in the wee hours of the morning, just Art and his acoustic guitar doing that psychotic Dylan and Jack Daniels thing. Those personal demons still have Art in a vice-like grip.

"I get total solace in spending the time creating my music. Then once that's done, the performance is the only thing I have left. All of the hanging around waiting for the next show is very detrimental."

Bergmann rocks on explosive edge

2008-01-07T19:27:00.000-08:00

The Toronto Star
Thursday, March 29, 1990
By Chris Dafoe

In the notes to his anthology album, Decade, Neil Young wrote: "This song put me in the middle-of-the-road, so I steered off into the ditch. The ride is a little rougher, but you meet more interesting people there."

Vancouver's Art Bergmann might offer the same observation. Over the past dozen years, Bergmann has made his mark writing songs populated by the denizens of the ditch: junkies, hustlers, strippers and would-be rock stars, the sick, desperate, strange and crazy.

Although well-known on the West Coast for his work with bands such as the Schmorgs, the Young Canadians, Los Popularos, and his own Poisoned, it wasn't until 1988 and the release of Crawl With Me that the rest of the world found out about Bergmann. Produced by John Cale and released on Duke Street Records, it was a surprisingly polished effort that earned Bergmann a Juno nomination as most-promising male vocalist and another for the video for "Our Little Secret".

Now he has returned with Sexual Roulette, a darkly funny, blistering slice-of-life on which Bergmann applies his mordant wit and throat-shredding vocals to matters such as AIDS ("Sexual Roulette"), cocaine psychosis ("Dirge No.1"), living on the edge ("Gambol"), and the desperation of an aging rock and roller ("Bound For Vegas").

Produced by Chris Wardman and featuring a band - keyboardist Susann Richter, drummer Taylor Nelson Little, and bassist Ray Fulber - that the singer has dubbed Showdogs, Sexual Roulette is nasty and raw, closer to how Bergmann sounds live than the Cale-produced effort.

Bergmann is in town this week to both launch the record and to open for the Tragically Hip on Friday night at Massey Hall.

He laughs dryly at the observation, but there are more than a few spots on Sexual Roulette that seem to teeter on the brink of an explosion. That explosiveness, combined with his apparent fascination with the flip-side of life, has lead some critics to wonder about the sources of his material.

"There's a bit of autobiography there," he says, "although you'd have to take the songs line by line. Sometimes I'll make up a character or play someone I know. And obviously things have to be embellished a bit. But the nastiest bits are usually true."

Art Bergmann's funny Juno joke

2008-01-07T19:26:00.002-08:00

The Toronto Star
Friday, March 10, 1989
By Craig MacInnis

In case you're wondering, Art Bergmann hasn't bothered to prepare an acceptance speech.

The Vancouver punk veteran, who performs at Lee's Palace Monday and Tuesday, is nominated for a Juno as Most Promising Male Vocalist (and another for his video to "Our Little Secret").

This is rich. In a category whose nominees include fresh-scrubbed mainstream stars like Jeff Healey and Colin James, Bergmann has about as much chance as a punk at prep school.

"It's pretty funny," he laughs drily from his Winnebago, parked somewhere between here and Winnipeg. "I liked (Pursuit Of Happiness singer) Moe Berg's comment on the Junos: 'If I was into awards, I'd be a curler.' "

Then again: "I like the word 'Promising' because it keeps you young . . ."

Indeed, Bergmann has been showing promise for more than a decade as the frontman for various West Coast bands including Los Popularos, Young Canadians and Poisoned.

His debut solo album, Crawl With Me, was his first stab at semi-legitimacy, although it retains the darkness and pessimism one would expect from an inveterate cynic.

And, like most cynics, he's only too happy to mingle with the hoi polloi and trade recipes with the Canadian Establishment. That's why he'll force himself into a tuxedo and take his rightful place at the Junos Sunday night at O'Keefe Centre.

"I wouldn't miss it for the world," he gushes. "If I'm lucky, I may even get to meet (Midday co-host) Valerie Pringle. She's really perky. We're all big fans of hers."

Bergmann, meanwhile, can't help but notice that his Juno nominations have upped his desirability with the mainstream media, which have normally gone out of their way to ignore him.

"It's so weird. I was just in Winnipeg and all these people are so friendly now - radio stations that used to hang up when I called . . ."

Juno nominees Ottawa-bound

2008-01-07T19:26:00.001-08:00

The Ottawa Citizen
Friday, March 10, 1989
By Greg Barr

Moving into the mainstream music business meant something new for Vancouver rock singer Art Bergmann: minding his manners.

Bergmann's debut album, Crawl With Me, came crawling out of the gates last fall, ultimately selling about 20,000 copies. He explored the sleazy, closed-door goings on of modern suburban life, notably in the song Our Little Secret, a song about a sexually abused woman, nominated for best video at Sunday's Juno Awards.

It was a tougher sell than the record label expected, maybe because of the content, perhaps because of Bergmann's parched-throat delivery, which you can hear for yourself Wednesday at Barrymore's ($5 advance).

''I never realized how polite I'd have to be,'' Bergmann gasped into the phone during an interview this week, during a break from his milk-the-Juno-nomination tour. ''But I have a foot in the door (with the first record). Now I have to pry it open.''

Bergmann promised scarier stuff for a new album in late summer, including a love song to a terminally ill girl, in which our hero debates whether to pull the plug.

Asked about his own Juno nomination as most promising male vocalist, he chuckled, ''It's nice to have the recognition, but whether I win or not doesn't matter. It's my chance to dance with the big boys.''

Barney Bentall doesn't want to dwell too much on his inclusion on the fan ballot sheet for the 1989 Juno entertainer of the year award, along with the likes of Bruce Cockburn and Leonard Cohen.

Fighting a bout of laryngitis on the phone Thursday from London, before departing for two-day stop in Ottawa _ including a show Saturday at Barrymore's ($8 advance) _ Bentall said he really doesn't ''want to get worked up about winning or losing.'' The Vancouver rocker with the boy-next-door appeal will also be presenting an award, with pop singer Candi.

He's more concerned, at the moment, about next week's release of his band's gold-selling debut album in the U.S. and Europe. With Toronto bands Pursuit of Happiness and Cowboy Junkies getting a great reception stateside earlier this year, perhaps another Canuck will get the same reaction. He'll just have to keep his ego intact.

''You work on that,'' he said. ''Believe me, there's enough humbling experiences on the road to bring you down again.''

BERGMANN'S ART

2008-01-07T19:25:00.000-08:00

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."

DEMON ROCK: The dark visions of Art Bergmann

2008-01-07T19:21:00.000-08:00

The Vancouver Sun
Saturday, July 9, 1988
By John Mackie

'Checking out the limits of human behavior is a pretty dangerous game," says Art Bergmann. "Flirting with insanity, flirting with dangerous, slimy people just for something to write about . . . I sometimes feel like I'm using people, using people's deaths for a song."

Welcome to the twisted world of Art Bergmann, chronicler of life at the bottom of the social scale. Murder, suicide, incest, junkies - no subject is taboo for the 34-year-old king of Vancouver's musical underground. The darkness of his lyrics is matched by his music, driving, passionate, savage rock and roll that explodes through his raw, gut-wrenching vocals and fiery, piercing guitar playing. "It's as if he claws at the guitar when he plays it," says producer John Cale, who has just helped Bergmann to his first big record contract.

Bergmann's lyrical obsessions and musical intensity reflect his life, which has been lived dangerously close to the edge until just recently. He has had his battles with the bottle, and knows more about drug abuse than Nancy Reagan. "Yeah, I've taken it too far," says Bergmann of his self-destructive lifestyle. "I've played with it, and it's played with me. But I've always had the power to turn it on or off."

His songs and lifestyle created a reputation for unpredictability that endeared him to fans and critics but scared off the Canadian music industry, which likes its artists to come in neatly designed, controllable packages. And as the years went by and he still was unable to bust out of Vancouver, his music grew even rawer, his lyrics even darker, compromise be damned.

"I was like in a tunnel, digging the wrong way," says Bergmann. "The songs were, 'ah, what can I write about now - ah, here's one, further, further, somewhere left of nihilism.' "

But last year he hooked up with manager Sam Feldman, a respected figure in national music circles who has looked after the careers of Doug and the Slugs, Headpins and Trooper. With Feldman's solid industry contacts, Bergmann scored a deal with Duke Street, the Toronto independent label that signed and nurtured Jane Siberry and Chalk Circle. Former Velvet Underground member John Cale signed on as producer, and Bergmann entered Toronto's Manta Sound studios in March to produce his first full length solo album, Crawl With Me.

The result was released this week, and should finally establish Bergmann as Canada's answer to Lou Reed, Paul Westerberg or Graham Parker. Producer Cale stripped the songs down to their hard core, which has its down side (there aren't as many guitar solos as long-time fans would like) but does a great job of putting Bergmann's lyrics and melodies front and centre.

And no Canadian rocker has ever written songs like Art Bergmann. Our Little Secret uses a light, bouncy pop arrangement (complete with la-la-la backing vocals) to disguise a warped little tale of incest. "The song is kind of weird, 'cause it's like the brother talking (to his sister) about his secret, and they're lovers or something," explains Bergmann. "That's how I figured it out, anyway."

Crawl With Me is "your basic love song, with a few religious and drug references thrown in." My Empty House is a riveting rocker about a victim of the Social Credit government's restraint program who's laid off and loses everything, then snaps and shoots his wife. "I just tried to identify with the man who did it, does it, the man who would do it, the man in that frame of mind. Ever thought of shooting up a shopping mall at Christmas?"

Twisted lyrics

Death is a recurrent theme in his lyrics - "I think everybody thinks about it every day. Dying. Worms. I've chosen life. Remember that great scene in Under The Volcano, Albert Finney? 'I choose Helllll!' God, that's scary" - and sometimes, the lyric gets so twisted Bergmann doesn't quite know what they're about himself ("the Most Wanted Man In Town, I think I'd better send that to Charlie Manson, I think he could explain it").

His subject matter is a far cry from Bergmann's childhood in Cloverdale. "I had a very happy childhood," he recalls. "I don't know what happened." His parents were God-fearing Mennonites, but young Art grew up agnostic ("I like using a lot of religious imagery, (but) I don't believe any of it - I was taught all of it, it's like voodoo to me").

Inspired by the sounds of the '60s on the radio, he picked up the guitar at 13, about the same time his parents began to run a foster home in Abbotsford and Bergmann discovered it was more fun to be a bad boy than a good one. "I used to go out with these crazy juvenile delinquents and do acid with them and stuff . . . come home and catch hell from my parents. 'Don't smoke dope with those kids!' Fistfights in the kitchen . . ."

His initial forays into music were with the Mount Lehman Grease Band and the Shmorgs, legendary in the Surrey/White Rock area for their raunchy music (the Mount Lehman Grease Band's big hit was "a paen to masturbation") and their wild parties (former Modernette Buck Cherry recalls one evening ending with a young man jumping onstage nude to lead the band through Jumping Jack Flash). In a bizarre turn of events, Bergmann's main cohort in the Schmorgs, David Mitchell, quit music and went Socred, releasing a rather flattering biography of former Socred Premier W.A.C. Bennett a couple of years back.

Bergmann quit music for a year after the Shmorgs broke up (the band did release an album posthumously), but when punk rock hit in 1978, he jumped in, head first. He formed the K-Tels, a brilliant trio that recorded two classic EPs and one single during the heyday of the punk era. The band changed their name to the Young Canadians after K-Tel International threatened to sue. "They wanted 50 grand in damage to the goodwill of their name. I figured we could have won in court, but it would have taken about four years and a million bucks to win, so we ceased and desisted."

His next band was the punk supergroup Los Popularos, which had all the makings of a great band, but never really jelled. After three years he went solo, and he has been fronting his own band ever since. "It's such a heavy burden to take control, but that's what I eventually had to do, 'cause I was never satisfied with the way people's voices projected," he says. "I don't think I'm a great singer, but I know how to sing my songs the way nobody else can."

It was Bergmann's songs that first caught the ear of producer Cale. In Vancouver to work with the Scramblers, someone flipped a Bergmann demo tape in the car tape deck as Cale was on his way to the airport. By the time they reached Richmond, Cale had decided to do the project.

Nervous breakdown

"There is a strong streak of humanity in what he was singing about," says Cale, who wanted to bring out the "variety" in Bergmann's songwriting. "There's depth there . . . something that will give him longevity."

Cale also helped convince Bergmann to tone down his lifestyle, which was in one of its wilder stages immediately prior to the album sessions.

"It's like a nervous breakdown on that tape," says Bergmann. "It sort of all came to a head with this album. People convinced me that I don't need to live the way I lived for a long time any more, waking me up . . . I had sort of hit the wall, hit the bottom trying to make this record.

"I realised that I've got enough material to last me the rest of my life, I don't have to feel that (awful). The cynicism in my marrow was pretty volatile at the time. I feel pretty good about myself now . . . I'm actually almost happy."

Record companies finally discover Art Bergmann

2008-01-07T19:19:00.000-08:00

The Vancouver Sun
Monday, July 27, 1987
By John Mackie

Well well well. Art Bergmann finally seems to be getting the record company attention he deserves. Manager Sam Feldman reports Art's latest demo tape has piqued interest in a whole slew of labels - Polygram, Capitol, Enigma, CBS and Duke Street - with the bulk of the interested parties from the New York and Los Angeles wings of said companies.

Feldman "doesn't think there will be a problem" getting a contract with a label - a couple are in the process of drawing up contracts - and that he's looking for a deal where the label will go "the long route" with everyone's favorite local underground sensation.

Bergmann captured at his wildest, rawest best

2008-01-07T15:35:00.000-08:00

The Vancouver Sun
Saturday, January 3, 1987
By John Mackie

Poisoned (self-titled)

Whoa. Art Bergmann and Co. have released a limited-edition (500 copies) four-song tape, and it is amazing. With crystal clear production courtesy of Bob Rock and Paul Hyde of Payola$, Bergmann is captured at his raw best, screaming his head off whilst spraying a burning wall of power chords and savage solos from his guitar.

The centerpiece of the tape is (Won't You Come Home To My) Empty House, a tale of poverty, murder, remorse and anger that will go down as one of the Great Moments in Canadian music history. Musically, it's a soaring guitar rocker; lyrically, it's a harrowing slice of life in mid-'80s British Columbia, told through the eyes of a poverty-stricken man who's just shot his wife.

"They said that things would be all right after a couple of years of restraint," wails Art, "but the kids aren't getting any younger and for me it's much too late. I got married in a fever/ I'd sooner kill ya than leave ya/I'm thinkin' maybe that we should move/ Starin' at you across my living room.

"When things go wrong to the right/ When things get worse pick up a gun/ But things for me just got weird/ I think I shot the wrong person."

Bergmann has outdone himself this time, coming up with a song to rank with the best of emotionally-charged artists like X and Graham Parker. It's available, while quantities last, at Zulu and Track records.

-30-