Art Bergmann's Kitchen Band - Kathleen Nisbet, violin, Paul Rigby, mandolin & guitar

The person writing this is not an expert or music critic. In 1973 my foreign students in an American School in Mexico City asked me if I knew who Alice Cooper was. My answer, a question elicited guffaws, “No, who's she?”

In 1975 my wife and two daughters moved to Vancouver. By 1977 I was working for Vancouver Magazine. There was a new (and first ever for the magazine) column in the magazine called In One Ear written by Les Wiseman who being a very good music critic was a snob. He told me that if I was to like anybody it had to be Lou Reed. And in Vancouver the only equivalent was Gary Cramer and his band The Works.

Gary Cramer & the Works

One of Wiseman’s first pieces, not an In One Ear column but a feature was called The Night of the Living Music. In 1979 (I believe) when he wrote this, Vancouver was crazy over canned disco. Wiseman’s article was about city establishments that offered something different, live music. I was to shoot it. One of the places (I was scared about going as I had read in the Vancouver Sun about constant police interventions) was the Smilin' Buddha on Hastings.

Left, Maddalena Di Gregorio - right my first photo of Art Bergmann

On stage was a tight and very loud three piece band, (warming up for the all female Dishrags) Art Bergmann, guitar and vocals, Jim Bescott, bass and vocals, Barry Taylor, drums. I did not know then but Wikipedia has confirmed that the Young Canadians (formerly called the K-Tels) was the first punk band to play in the establishment. They were the warm-up band to the Dishrags.

Dishrags at the Buddha

The Young Canadians was also the first punk band I ever heard. In one of those strange coincidences the woman appearing in that Art negative is Maddalena Di Gregorio, I had yet to meet her, but there she was at the Buddha. I  would photograph her many times for years after.

Within minutes of being there I found a place in a corner for my equipment and I joined the crowd to jump up and down (it was called pogoing). I could not believe the intensity, charisma and passion of its singer/guitarist Art Bergmann.

Young Canadians on Victoria Drive circa 1979

The sound, as loud as it was, made the lyrics quite unintelligible except for what for me is the quintessential Vancouver song, Hawaii. Had I bothered to hear the lyrics of Bergmann’s other songs (particularly my fave Data Redux) I would have had intimations that almost singlehandedly his lyrics were no different from the protest songs of the 60s and 70s. Looking back and in light of having heard (and this time around the lyrics were clear) Bergmann this last Sunday at the Vancouver Folk Festival I can see that he may have invented something that I call punk folk.

Data Redux - Young Canadians

Since that night in 1979 I have frequented as many concerts of whatever band Bergmann has fronted until the present.

With Wiseman as a mentor I became an amateur musical snob. And in his company listening to the Young Canadians at Gary Taylor’s Rock Room and witnessing the less intense (laid back I mean) but certainly no less interesting Gary Cramer and the Works I could see the attraction of this type of popular music that had an extreme Vancouver stamp. To this day I believe that my initial photographs of these two bands are my favourites and best (even if I had no real idea of what I was doing).

Since 1975 I have come to believe that in spite of all the charms and possibilities (and Vancouver has been kind to my photography via good money for it) this is a city of a restrained and almost cold modus operandi. I live in a desire for the warmth of my Latin America, of the ochres and browns of Mexico in the winter (not the cold cyan and greys of this city in winter).

But there are moments that for me vindicate my living here. One of them is the constant, dependable honesty of Bergmann with his music (and especially) and lyrics. He has been an unwavering beacon that to me (and Wiseman would agree) may have been rivalled with the intermittent, short bursts of unalloyed brilliance, passion and virtuosity of our departed ex-New York Dolls Johnny Thunders.

Wiseman and I would go to Thunders concerts (once here and a few times in NY) not to see if he would die of drugs or alcohol on stage as many fans did but to witness that raw passion.

Vancouver is a city with a troubling lack of memory. My little essay for the Vancouver Sun in November of 1998 reminds me that Bergmann and his band Poisoned played at the Orpheum. The Pretenders at the Queen Elizabeth? Naw, Bergmann at the Orpheum!

I can now wind this blog down by mentioning Bergmann's new band which I call his Kitchen Band. At one moment of the very intimate (and warm in spite of some loud four letter words) concert Bergmann indicated to violinist Kathleen Nisbet that she move closer to him. She mentioned that they usually played in a kitchen. I asked her later and she told me it was her kitchen.  With her amplified violin and Paul Rigby's fine (smaller that Bergmann's) guitar and mandolin the group sounded like a full fledged folk group. Except.

Except that Bergmann's voice (not like Lou Reed's or Gary Cramer's) with just a hint of singing/talking is a unique voice in Canadian music. The only parallel could be Neal Young's voice.

That one of the songs featured the word Catalonia and another was based on a Paul Theroux essay on cluster bombs simply told me that Bergmann reads and is up-to-date on the failing mechanics of our present world.

But in all that warm doom and gloom there was a silver lining. Bergmann sang one of my fave songs (and Les Wiseman's, too) The Hospital Song which ends with that wonderful: 

Maybe later, we'll get together and have a relapse

  A snippet of the Hospital Song on Youtube from this past Sunday

And with present current events I have this nagging lyric (loud in my ears) of Bergmann's Data Redux where he seems to say over and over

I fell in love with the enemy.

I know the song is about spies but I have been unable to find the lyrics. I once asked Bergmann about them and he answered something like, "They are dumb lyrics."

Bergmann with wife Sherri Decembrini

I love to look at that photograph of the couple in the kitchen. When I first photographed Bergmann on Victoria Drive he was scary, cold and remote. It was all a false front. He is a warm man who sometimes does his best to hide it. But we know better.