Chapter Twenty Eight: Guns, Heroin, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc.

(Art looking a mite like a member of the Legion of Substitute Clancy Brothers)

I turned down a Cadillac ride to Seattle with Art Bergman and a one-time muse of Guy Maddin. The prospect of a cross-border raid (to which my not-yet-ex was pointedly dis-invited) led by the man who’d screamed out his response to the musical question, “What is your reason for entering the USA?” with the chorus; “Guns and Her-o-i-i-in!” was unnerving. I’m not opposed to celebrity-stalking or name-dropping but the set-up stank, so to avoid becoming an unwitting drug mule or a voyeuristic tag along, I declined.

It was 1991 and it was what must have been, by the standards of Art Bergman’s career, a good year. He’d released a stinging, yet wide-appealing, self-titled album that got the push from Polygram (even the terrible music store where I worked got a play copy). Those used CD shops of Vancouver (of the type that sprouted up across North America in the 90’s) were full of used Art Bergman play copies that he’d pawned himself – but his name was still spoken of reverently in critical circles. While Art sang on Bound for Vegas that he was “a never-was trying to be a has-been on the comeback trail,” he was being lauded as “Canada’s Paul Westerberg”. He shared a gruff vocal style, an unflinching honesty and a crippling addiction with Westerberg but rather than cleave to a mid-western rock n' roll style, Art adhered to the gutter junkie-poet archetype of Jim Carroll and Lou Reed. John Cale even produced his debut solo album –though Art supposedly hated the results. (For more Art history see one of MRML’s most Googled posts. And Here, here and here)

Art built a reputation for furious live shows (I saw Poisoned rip through a set at Verna’s a tiny basement club just outside of Winnipeg’s notorious Murder’s Half Acre) where he honed the songs herein; “Remember Her Name” with it’s heart-chilling chorus that pays to tribute to Marianne Faithful, the tortured ballad, Guns and Heroin and the vindictively catchy pop song that is “If She Could Sing”.

“God’s got an answer in that jukebox

I pick the wrong song every time.”

Take this ride with Art (the former-muse spoke well of him) to find out how often he chose the exact right song.

Download

This album is not available in stores at any cost; it exists only in MRML’s hard drive. It was cherry picked from the following out-of-print releases: the Poisoned e.p., Crawl With Me, Sexual Roulette, What Fresh Hell is This? and Vultura Freeway.

The only Art that is clearly in-print would be the K-Tels/Young Canadians compilation No Escape which is available here