Disavow your Vow Smash Your Sacred Cow---Art Bergmann-What Fresh Hell is This---It's Boxing Day in Canada!

I wanted to do a Canadian Post for Boxing Day, originally I was going to do a long overdue post on the Dishrags. But you know what? I realized that I've amassed 6 Art Bergmann albums without having a post on him yet. Well, I haven't listened to them all either.

So I've changed my mind. Sorry Dishrags--but your time will come. Jade Blade has got to be one of the best punk names ever.......

So I'm listening to a pretty great but extremely dark album from Art Bergmann, one of the most original and talented Canadian musicians you could listen to. The album is What Fresh Hell is This?, and it won the 1996 Juno Award for Best Canadian Alternative Album. But how many people have heard this one South of their border?

Create a Monster and Eat it Too......

Bergmann is probably best known for leading the K-Tels and Young Canadians from the early Punk days of Vancouver. You can see him in the documentary Bloodied Not Unbowed, one of the best made scene documentaries around. The Young Canadians/K-Tels compilation on Sudden Death Records is mandatory punk listening. Back in those early days he was probably the musician that people thought would break out. Well, sadly that did not come to pass. But let's get back to Hell.

But its pretty amazing that an album with such self-confessional desperate jaded gritty vitriolic poetry could get such mainstream acclaim. I couldn't really imagine an album like this winning a Grammy. Musically the album is a fairly melodic rock album (he's a pretty great guitarist), but the listening to the subject matter sort of like pulling off  a scab to reveal a whole other world that I'm fortunate not to have lived. Harrowing songs, right on the edge of things, kind of like Lou Reed. But its Art Bergmann and he is in his own Hell, not anyone else's. This music is just too personal, edgy, like Curt Cobain's---this is not about simply being an entertainer, it's breaking down the boundaries between generalities and the personal. I feel like I know too much now, like a voyeur.

Just from the outset, with the song Beatles in Hollywood, he sings about the contrast between idealism, innocence and the music business and its corruptibility, but it seems to be equally about fighting demons. But whatever it means, it is a seriously miserable place to be in.

The songs on Fresh Hell have titles like Demolished, Buried Alive, Some Fresh Hell, Dive. It gives you some idea of the subject matter. The song Contract is probably one of the more vicious songs about the music industry you could hear. "I dig my own grave for you, be a slave for you", he sings.



Guns and Heroin is an epic sounding ballad on the album, replete with cello by Anne Bourne.
What a powerful song this is!



Art Bergmann is an artist well worth getting acquainted with, and What Fresh Hell is This? is probably a good place to start. But most of his albums are available at reasonable prices, with the exception of Vultura Freeway. The Lost Art Bergmann  came out in 2009, but that seems pretty impossible to get today.

He's been playing shows again recently, the reviews so far seem to be mixed, but hopefully better times are coming for him. One listen to What Fresh Hell is This? and you'll wonder why you didn't hear about this album 10 years ago!

No Internet! No Cel Phones! No PC'S!--Bloodied But Unbowed---Historical Documentary of Vancouver Punk Scene now on DVD!

Bloodied But Unbowed is a highly entertaining documentary movie by Susanne Tabata, chronicling the Vancouver punk scene of the late 70's /early 80's. And now it's available on DVD!!  For $10.00!!! Go to www.thepunkmovie.com. Excellent product for a cheap price. The collectors 3-DVD version is sold out; they only made 150 of them, unfortunately. I held out and found myself out of luck last month. Luckily I managed to win one on Ebay. The single disc is still worth double what they are asking. If this project is successful, maybe more film makers will be encouraged to make more films like this.



This is a white hot, intelligent, humorous look at a special scene that like a lot of punk scenes, came and went in a short short period. And while things that happened there paralleled the trials and tribulations of other scenes, as in the early days places like Vancouver were islands in a mainstream ocean. Hell, they were an island in their own city! These days all bands are alternative, so this is something a lot of people probably don't understand. That punks had to travel in groups in order to risk getting mauled by complete strangers.
But the Vancouver had its own unique qualities, and that had to do with the unique personalities of the musicians.

A big part of this movie of course is D.O.A. and the Subhumans, excellent bands who are more hardcore punk. But the documentary includes a variety of bands, showing the diversity and experimental nature of the scene. In other words there was a high level of musical tolerance in those days. It wasn't like certain styles were considered verboten then.

One of the biggest problems was finding venues where punk rock was accepted, one of which was the Smiling Buddha, which seemed to be a bit of a dump but nonetheless a haven for the new sounds. Of course one of the problems was that places got wrecked, so there was not going to be a second booking. There is a lot of historic footage in the film, plus loads of contemporary interviews with many of the Vancouver groups and also American musicians of the era who performed in Vancouver and were fans of the music. San Francisco and Vancouver were very much kindred scenes with a lot of similarities. Dead Kennedy's Jello Biafra and The Avengers' Penelope Houston have a lot of insight on the subject, as do Southern Californians like Black Flag's Henry Rollins and Circle Jerk's Keith Morris.

In addition to the above mentioned bands, there are interviews with Pointed Sticks, the amazing pop punks, Tim Ray, Jade Blade of the Dishrags. You have interviews with Buck Cherry and Mary Jo Kopechne of the Modernettes. Kopechne speaks with a great deal of candor about her punk experience. On the one hand, getting involved got her into a community, because she was going in a bad direction earlier. On the other hand, some of the things that happened to her in that period are absolutely harrowing. It's no wonder that she is disillusioned about the old days. As tough as it was to a punk rocker in those days, it was triply tough to be a female punker. You also have an interview with Art Bergmann of the K-Tels/Young Canadians, one of the most talented artists of the era, who unfortunately did not find the success his ability merited.

One of the most intelligent, engaging interviewees is Gerry Hannah of the Subhumans. Later on you find out that he was an extreme environmental activist, one of the Squamish Five, who did some pretty serious stuff. They blew up a factory building parts for cruise missiles and also a power plant. He did five years hard time out of a possible 10. Today he still holds strong convictions, but is contrite about how you go about achieving goals. Another one of the cautionary parts of this movie is the destructiveness of hard drug use. A lot of people who could have been in this were not around to do it.



I highly recommend this movie. By viewing this movie, you get a good idea of what things were like in those days. And the interviews are insightful and funny. It puts a face on the great music we listen to today. A lot of the recordings of these bands can be found on Joe Keithley of  D.O.A.'s music label, Sudden Death Records. It's great that classic Canadian punk music like The Modernettes, D.O.A.,K-Tels/Young Canadians, and Pointed Sticks and the landmark Vancouver Complication comp are readily available today. But check out this documentary sooner than later. I think you will really enjoy this. Kudos to Susanne Tabata and all involved in the making this important movie.