Art Bergmann, live at the Rickshaw, 2023: throwing gold

Photos by Allan MacInnis. There are much better ones to be seen - talk to Sharon or Gord or...

Note: since I first published this, I've tweaked it a bit. I may tweak it more yet. I hope it doesn't piss anyone off. (I've just finished my final tweaks).

There's been a slight element of chaos all four times that I've seen Art Bergmann, starting with the Poisoned reunion gig back in, what, 2009? (I never got to catch him in the 1980s or 1990s, and I gather even then, with his band at maximum tightness, there was a wild card element to Art's shows, often having to do with Art himself). 

The harrowing moments at that Richards on Richards show -- where it seemed like Art might collapse into the audience, or strangle Tony Walker out of frustration at having been left guitarless, or when the somewhat under-rehearsed band got a verse wrong on "Our Little Secret" and Art kinda screamed at them -- were more unsettling than last night's. But it's come to be an expected aspect of seeing Art live. 

You know his back isn't so good, for example, and yet twice when I've seen him, heedless of the risk of injury, he's reached into the front row to physically pull someone up from the pit onto the stage. At such times, as the words BAD IDEA flash in imaginary neon overhead, you imagine his spine going TWANG! and scattering around the room in bloody chunks. It doesn't happen, but afterwards, you're, like, "Phew, that could have gone badly." 

I was glad to see him taking a bit more care last night. Pushing past your limits, challenging yourself, digging deep into authentic emotion are all things Art excels at, but you don't want him to injure himself! 

Probably the tightest, most satisfying  performance of his that I've caught was the previous one at the Rickshaw, for The Apostate, back in 2017, and even that show had an element of mere anarchy, especially near the end, when Art basically relocated a big chunk of the audience to the stage by just such a means and conducted an impromptu jam session, where the chaos was actually worked in and orchestrated, became part of the performance, instead of a threat to it. What's the line from the film Performance? "The only performance that makes it, that really makes it, that makes it all the way, is the one that achieves madness"...?

While never going all the way to madness, such elements can make Art's shows challenging to review, to do justice to the genius and power of the man as a performer and songwriter (very much still in evidence, don't get me wrong) and be fittingly respectful of his position in Canadian music history, and yet note the times when the center seemed in danger of, shall we say, "not holding." 

Like, did Art flat-out forget a verse of "Entropy?" Fitting, maybe, for a song about things falling apart -- which is also, incidentally, my favourite song off his last two albums -- but when the third verse came around, he seemed to draw a blank on the lyrics ("we're lucky to die/ in our sleep"), sat silent for a second, then tilted back in his chair so we could no longer see his face. With Art semi-horizontal and no longer singing, the band locked into a slightly unsure-seeming vamp. I thought of the moment in Hard Core Logo when Billy "disappears" at the bar at the Niagara, while still sitting right there, and Joe is like, "Where's Billy? What happened to Billy?" 

I mean, it's a hell of a song, and it was sounding great, up to that point, but suddenly there's this moment of uncertainty, which is about when Art sat up to urge Stephen Drake (the other guitarist, I think  -- Paul Rigby was not present) to amp up the soloing a bit. I couldn't actually hear what Art said to him, but that's what it looked like, anyhow; Drake, while making a fine lead guitarist overall, was somewhat too tentative at such moments, though you can hardly blame him if he was a bit intimidated taking over from someone of Art's stature. Then Art returned to the song at a slightly later point -- "boats in the water, mouths full of sea." 

It was, in fact, a blip of less than half a minute, but such things feel much longer when you don't know what is happening or how long it will last. I felt nervous for Art (and his band) at such moments, though clearly not everyone did -- like the doofus who hollered "wake up" when Art tilted back; he was clearly on a different page. 

But last night was pretty goddamn great, regardless of such blips. All of Art's comeback since 2009 has been extremely unlikely, a gift from beyond the limits of what's reasonable to expect of an artist. He's pushed past some extraordinary circumstances and recorded some of his strongest material (I'm really not sure I want to relinquish Sexual Roulette as a high watermark, replace it with the recent albums, as people who say these are the best albums of his career do... but they're at least up there). ShadowWalk is an album I'm still working with, still haven't fully come to terms with, but I'm enjoying the experience. Sometimes albums -- like Bowie's BlackStar, for example -- come to you so heavily loaded that they're intimidating even to sit through, but a single listen to ShadowWalk mostly makes you want to flip it over and start at side A again. It works very well. 

I did shoot a bit of video, and thought that this was the best of the clips I got, a very crunchy "Christo-Fascists," the second song of the set, after a "Killing Sunday" opener that I wish I'd caught instead; the first few songs of the set were the strongest, I thought, though if my battery hadn't died, some of the later rave-ups were quite effective, too. 

After those first two songs, "Dirge No. 1" was one of two high points of the night, for me, then "Bound for Vegas," though that song seems almost like science fiction now, it's so far from Art's actual career trajectory post-1990, when it first came out. 

Of course there were a few other songs off ShadowWalk; "Raw Naked Monday," for sure, but I don't know that album so well yet; I think one of the others was, "Death of a Siren;" and the evening ended on a one-song encore of  "A Hymn for Us." He also did a song I don't know as well off Late Stage Empire Dementia (the title track?) and a song (did he describe it as "silly" or "goofy"?) that I didn't recognize at all, which might have been a totally new one -- it wasn't off any of the last few records, anyhow. It was fairly raucous and loose and upbeat but I don't know what it was. 

There was no Young Canadians (or K-Tels) material to be heard, despite some predictable, inappropriate shouts to hear the same. I love the Young Canadians and the K-Tels, but jeezus, folks, "Hawaii"...? Those songs just wouldn't have suited the eight-piece, jammy nature of last night's band at all, who at one point did a funky number called, if memory serves, "Soul Power," which I thought Art said was a Mitch Ryder tune (if you haven't read Guilty of Everything, the story about John and Art seeing Mitch Ryder live -- then getting jumped and attacked by head-up-their-ass gay-bashers in the west end -- is one of the most striking chapters). I can't find the original now, to post a link to ti (there's a "Soul Power" by James Brown, but I don't think that's it), but it was very fun, very unexpected, and the funky, soulful backup vocals from Aidan Farrell and Leo D. E. Johnson were perfectly suited. (Art's rhythm section, of Murphy Farrell, father to Aidan; Adam Drake, brother -- I think -- to Stephen; and Brad Ferguson on bass deserve the most praise, for keeping things anchored at the bottom end of things; I didn't get enough of a sense of what Dave Genn was doing on keys to speak to it, but I've seen other people single him out for praise, too).  

Bands that flourish on funky, soulful jams are not necessarily going to fare as well on tight two minute punk tunes. It's just a different thing. I mean, what does "Hawaii" look like when you arrange it for an eight piece band with two female backup vocalists, a drummer, a percussionist, a second guitarist, and keyboards? (I mean, maybe if they did a reggae version, threw a bit of Jimmy Buffett into the mix? Would you even want that? How daft to be requesting that song!). 

I think the band is now even calling themselves, maybe as a joke, "No Hawaii."

There were also people who apparently thought they were praising the band by shouting that they were "pretty good," as in, "That's a pretty good band you've got, Art!" ...as if "pretty good" were a term of praise; you gotta love it when fans become unintentional hecklers through sheer carelessness of language. 

Weird audience, I guess is the takeaway, there, but many people were absolutely reverent. (I fear that I have not been so, sufficiently, myself, but I might also buy a ticket to see him at Blue Frog in November). It was a hell of a night, one of those concerts that stays with you. If you  missed it, the Blue Frog beckons. 

Regardless of the absence of Art's earliest material, there were indeed some deep dives, going as far back as that first Poisoned EP from 1985. We got a "trilogy of terror" (or did Art say "house of horrors"? Something like that!) consisting of "Guns and Heroin," which I think was the earliest tune he did, and another high point; "Dirge. No. 1" and... uh, what was the song in-between them? Was that where he did "Beatles in Hollywood"...? There was quite a bit of dancing and exuberance from the audience, who clearly appreciated this material (there was a full lower level, but a closed balcony, maybe a bit fuller than the 2017 show. It could have been, in the best of all possible worlds SHOULD have been, bigger still, but I doubt Art has any complaints about the draw). 

Art quipped that the current tour would be the last time he did these darker, older songs, and would be stepping away from his more politically-edged material, to boot, saying he was opting for a life of love and peace. I'm dubious, there. He deserves plenty of respite, and I wish him luck and all the love and peace he can get, but from what I've seen of his nature, Art seems more in keeping, by character, with the old Nietzsche quote that, "In conditions of peace, a warlike man attacks himself."

As the end of the evening approached, we also got to hear a country-tinged "If She Could Sing" and, as a show closer for the main set, "Bound for Vegas," which I mention above and had named a couple of times in my mini-interview, but didn't actually expect to hear. It was a spectacular rave-up, a sonic orgy; Young Canadians songs would have been inappropriate for this band, but "Bound for Vegas" was ideal. My battery was dead, no evidence got recorded, but maybe someone else will post it? (Actually, Dirk Bently put a little bit of it up on Facebook...). 

I don't think we got anything at all off The Apostate or Songs for the Underclass (which appears to have manifested on vinyl! All his recent records were very reasonably priced and available in vinyl at the merch table). There may be one or two other songs that I'm forgetting. 

Through it all, the glasses made Art look a bit like Lou Reed, and like some versions of Lou, he was wearing makeup, even a bit of jewelry. I like my wife's speculation that some of this might have been Sherri's makeup or jewelry, but I don't know what the story is there. In fact, at the start of the night, Art had on a shiny, bejeweled hairclip -- you can see it in the "Christo-Fascists" vid -- that he eventually just threw into the audience as a souvenir for someone to take away. People scrummed to pick it up and someone came up smiling. It didn't look like a cheap trinket, and I think I even caught the word "gold."

You don't see performers throw gold into the audience very often.  

Of course, there was also a book launch, before the concert, for The Longest Suicide. I arrived as it was winding down, as people were asking where Art keeps his Order of Canada (The answer involved the words, "In a box"). Almost everyone who asked questions during the Q&A (featuring the new, skinny version of Aaron Chapman as moderator) or who made it to the front of the autograph queue afterwards thanked Art for doing what he does. For my own part, I didn't get to interact with him at all last night -- but I hope to have the chance to interview him again. 

Meantime, thank you, Art! (It was way better than "pretty good"). Toronto, take heed!