Jim Bescott, Singer-songwriter, 1953-2005

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.