Who was she?
The following article, focusing on an ill-remembered, somewhat mysterious Vancouver street preacher who, with thanks to Godspeed You! Black Emperor, has been immortalized and heard far beyond her initial reach, is an adjunct to this feature in Montecristo Magazine. It consists of interesting outtakes and expansions, and more of my interview with Efrim Menuck. You might want to read the Montecristo piece first!
1. Altars in the Basement: Ashé Gallery, Candomblé, and Kink
There is absolutely nothing, as far as I can tell, that survives online about the Ashé Gallery, an Ifá and Candomblé-themed artspace that existed on East Hastings in the mid-1990s. If I hadn't gone there myself a couple of times, I don't know that I'd have been able to write about it with any confidence at all; luckily, I can serve as my own eyewitness. It's one of the most unique galleries I've been inside, a very unlikely one for Vancouver, and I've long meant to write about it, which is kind of funny, because I had no idea that I was going to do that when I began my research on the street preacher sampled by Godspeed You! Black Emperor (we will return to that band, and my interview with Efrim, in part 4 of this blogpost).
The article began a few months ago, when I put out a general call for informants on Facebook about a woman who appears to have been named Imogen, about whom I still know very little. I'm not even entirely sure that Imogen was really her name; Aaron Chapman, who was one of the informants, thought she was called Mavis -- but he was in the minority, with even one of his Odd Squad buddies saying he thought "Imogen" was right, so I went with the majority (but Chapman knew her, too, and remembers that she "was a pretty tough cookie. I mean, she was down there in the Pickton years. She was there on the street in that year around 1998/99 when the city had not only the garbage strike, but the HIV epidemic. That she was out there by herself preaching was kind of a wild thing." She also had the sense to go home after sundown, he remarks!).
Anyhow, as I say, this piece is a supplement to that article. People just interested in Efrim Menuck may want to skip to part 4, below. I won't judge you. But you'll miss some interesting things... beginning with Ashé. This photo is NOT from that space:
Sample New Orleans Voodoo altar taken from this site Understand: as a young weirdo in my mid-20s, I was intrigued by voodoo, in a cheesy "western tourist" way: I had a commercially-produced New Orleans Voodoo Tarot that I occasionally consulted, and had albums of voodoo ritual music that I would spin, trying to imagine what it was like for practitioners to be possessed. I like, then as now, the idea of possession, like the idea of being overtaken, "ridden" by the spirit -- not too far off what one finds in ecstatic Christianity, really, which also features dancing and being possessed, being overtaken by the Holy Spirit. Moshpits, too, have a bit of that energy --what's the lyric, "in the belly of the beast/ I shall be released?" Maybe it was all the acid I was taking back then, but being overtaken by the sacred seemed a fine idea, much much more interesting than the bland, incense-tinged sterility (and uncomfortable seats!) of the Catholic services of my childhood, where the songs lacked drums or incentive to dance and there was always an unhappy baby crying somewhere in the back. Flavoured with taboo and exoticism, voodoo seemed much cooler, much more exciting, much more ALIVE by contrast. And the idea of a religion with many gods, many spirits, each with a different role, a different aspect, seemed far more interesting and useful than the "one super-God" in the sky. I knew, really, nothing reliable about the religion -- random things filtered through horror movies, fiction, and stuff I'd grabbed from this source or that, pre-internet days -- and whatever it said in the book that came with my tarot deck; but on that first peek inside Ashé, I knew enough to recognize the altars for what they were.
From the New Orleans Voodoo Tarot
It still took me by surprise, seeing actual altars in the basement. It wasn't why I had gone to Ashé; I had gone there to a Bettie Page Social Club event with a kinky friend who was exploring the Vancouver bondage scene, and Ashé played host to their parties for awhile. I remember floggings in the basement, a leather-clad dominatrix stalking the room with a riding crop in her hand and a giant dildo strapped to her crotch, and a male attendee whose getup involved an abundance of clothespins, clipped to his naked skin in a pattern, framing his whole torso. He might have been nude except for the clothespins -- the big wooden kind, with metal hinges. I don't remember what anyone *else* was wearing that night, but clothespin-man sure stood out (they had a dress code that required at the very least formal wear, which was the option I chose, but encouraged fetish gear or nudity; I guess he combined both?).
But even with all the kink on display that night -- eyebrow-raising as it often was -- nothing interested me so much as the altars in the basement, where the whippings were taking place. I gawked at them -- the altars, not the whippings -- for quite some time, and believe I went back once on another occasion to inspect them further; I remember peering at them without the distractions of kink. They were beautiful, elaborate, and somewhat intimidating, each focused on a different deity (which I was thinking of as "Loa," at the time, but which I'm now told were "Orisha;" I am unclear of the difference). I couldn't have told you then what specific religion they connected with, but recall speculating that maybe they were Santeria, wondering if the space was being used for animal sacrifices, which is apparently also a feature of Candomblé (interestingly, I have not asked about that, in my interviews; you'd think I would have, but maybe I would prefer to leave that mystery unsolved? Read Georges Bataille on sacrifice, if the thought horrifies you -- there are some preconceptions worth questioning, there).
Exu Nazares in the early 1990s? Provided by Exu
Anyhow, I had always thought that Ashé would be an interesting space to write about. But I didn't realize until a few weeks ago that the space was 2/3rds run by two Facebook friends of mine, Exu Nazares and Cass King, and that it would suddenly become relevant in writing about a completely different aspect of "forgotten Vancouver" -- the Caribbean street preacher sampled on Godspeed You! Black Emperor's "East Hastings." I want to pick Exu and Cass' brains for more, to get as many stories as I can, but I don't actually have that many outtakes. In one, I remarked to Exu about how Imogen seemed a bit different from your usual Vancouver street preacher -- whom I associate with homophobia and an undue concern for people's sexual behaviour. Exu observed that, besides Imogen, he "had some interactions with a group of evangelicals on Granville as well... I printed up some Vodun tracts and I would stand with them while they were preaching damnation, handing them out to passersby. They hated me. LOL."
Since I wasn't clear on the distinctions, I asked about the word "voodoo," which he himself had used in describing the basement (the "voodoo electric underground," as he called it). Voodoo seems to be used as a catch-all for several different systems of belief. Having explained his own interest in Ifá and Candomblé, he responded by saying that "I sometimes just use the word voodoo to describe the rest but you are correct in that voodoo comes from the Dahomey tribe and even though it’s featured in films and popular culture of New Orleans, there are many more followers around the world of the various forms of Ifá that was spread around the globe through slavery."
That's about all I have from Exu, besides what already ran in the article. Cass King, meantime, noted that "the gallery was a group effort, but the altars were all Exu," whom she described as "a powerful artist. Very compelling." As for the gallery, she noted further that "we all lived there, of course -- as you do when you’re 23 in 1994 and nurturing the three skinny dreadlocks that you’re trying to maintain in your straight, blonde hair."
Neither Cass nor Exu could provide photos of the space, any more than they could provide photos of Imogen (though they were the main source for her name, so thanks!). Exu said that he did hire someone to document things, but the person tried to charge an outrageous fee and disappeared without providing the images. I'm pretty curious to see what Cass King looked like when she was 23, to be honest, with her three skinny dreadlocks, but she noted that those were "the days before cameras were omnipresent. Kinda glad for it actually."
Now that the article has run, I'm expecting more images will turn up! But I deeply love that writing this story answered not just one of my questions, at least in part -- who was the preacher-lady? -- but also, what was Ashé Gallery? I hope to learn more about both things in the future.
One detail that didn't make the article -- under his deadname, Exu also led the band
Windwalker. He only mentioned Technicians of the Sacred when we interacted, so that's what I used... but I figure some of my readers know Windwalker a bit better...
2. "Repent, Sinner": The Caribbean Street Preacher on "East Hastings"
I think it was Luke Meat who, some months ago, when I first started posting about trying to find information on "the Caribbean street preacher who testified in front of Woodward's", mentioned that some people were of a mind that she was also the "Repent Sinner" lady (the cards -- stickers? -- are well-remembered and collected by some, appearing all over Vancouver for a time). There's a still from
the Bocephus King video that clearly shows that she had those words on her cart, with the same telltale handwriting. But there is also speculation that she had mobility issues, so even Luke wasn't sure about that.
But Kelsey Parks, a fellow member of a Facebook group I belong to -- Vancouver Old School: Punk Hardcore Metal -- responded to one of my posts, fishing for information, and she associated her immediately with those two words:
"Repent Sinner" - I might still have one her signs. I was big into street art at the time and was really curious who was behind them. And then one day I saw her on the street with one of signs so I had to stop and talk to her. Discovering who was behind the signs felt like I solved a puzzle. I just remember she talked a lot about god and how we all have strayed from the path, and honestly I wasn't all that interested. I worked on the pot block and would see her almost daily. She was like a regular staple of the downtown core. I think sometimes she had a bell if remember correct.
I observed that Imogen seemed unlikely to be the person who spread "Repent Sinner" signs, because of her apparent difficulty getting around. Kelsey's reply:
I saw her with those signs all the time, sometimes she had stickers. She had mobility issues for sure. Maybe she had help. But she would be in all different parts of the city. Downtown Eastside was her usual spot, but I would see her around Broadway and Main, on Commercial, Granville area. I do believe it was her as she would talk about repenting in her street corner preaching quite a bit.
Since the Montecristo article is focused more on Imogen's preaching, I didn't really pursue this angle at length for that piece (though we did source a photo of a couple of variants from
the Paper Hound, with thanks to Rod and Kim; I believe you can actually see those in the shop, still?), but my favourite instance of her (?) activity in this regard is the stickering-over of a
Robert Dayton gig poster (incidentally, note that Robert has a booklaunch for
his book on Canadian glam on May 24th. Maybe we can chat more about Imogen then...). So again, some mysteries remain...
3. Jaime Clay and Encounters with Imogen
Most of the people who remembered Imogen had positive impressions, if slightly strange ones of her -- she was a weird fixture of the neighbourhood, testifying in her colourful, often incomprehensible patois; that was certainly my take on her. But some Facebook friends (I'll leave them nameless) immediately went to the word "crazy" to describe her -- "the old crazy lady who sat outside Woodwards." There is a clip linked in the published piece of what happened when
someone else tried to film her about her feelings about Gordon Campbell. But the story that runs deepest here, briefly mentioned in the Montecristo article, is that of Jaime Clay, who used the adjective "annoying" to describe her -- but did try to videotape her, when he was on the way to meet his wife Woodward's, where he had once worked, and where she worked still. His two young sons, aged 4 and 7, were with him, going to meet their Mom.
Clay had played saxophone and/ or guitar in a few Vancouver bands, probably most famously alongside Dave Gregg in
Private School, who are one of the bands of the time that have been reissued by Supreme Echo. I don't know PAZ, one of his other projects, at all, and I've never seen the
Warsaw flexi apparently put out on Friends Records, who put out early DOA and Subhumans material, but they're both musically interesting -- with Warsaw especially appearing to exist somewhere between New Wave and No Wave, artful punk-adjacent stuff that seems to prefigure happenings on the MoDaMu scene and bands like Red Herring. Essential to the story is the fact that, one the day of the episode, Clay had his two young boys with him, aged about 4 and 7, young enough that he felt the need to be protective of them, especially in that neighbourhood.
Jaime Clay at the Windmill, 1978
That day, video camera in hand, when he spied Imogen, thought, "Okay, this will make an interesting video." (The footage is now lost, or possibly taped over, it would transpire). Clay explained:
I started enough of a distance away that I wouldn’t be intrusive, but people were passing in front of the camera, and I had to keep an eye on my boys, because even back then it was getting pretty unsavoury down there. So I got up close – not in her face – but close enough to get her, and I think she had a stool or a bucket, and she had a box with all her papers in it, with a rock holding down those papers so they wouldn’t blow away. As soon as she saw me filming, she directed all attention to me, and without any care for the boys, let go a whole litany of all kinds of abusive stuff. I can’t remember exactly what she was saying, but I was trying to keep the camera rolling, and trying to juggle this and the kids... A bit of a crowd was gathering.
Clay was tempted to just put down the camera and leave. Initially, as described in the piece, her invective was predictably Biblical, but then:
As I was filming, I think she pointed at the camera, and then the cuss words began to spill out of her mouth – ‘fuck this, you’re shit,’ and at that point, she took the rock from her pamphlets and threatened me with it. And I knew she was going to throw that rock, and she was going to throw that as hard as she could. I thought, ‘I don’t want my life ending here with my boys,’ and I just turned and started to walk away, as normal as I could. And she was away from her corner, still with that rock, still cursing… I hightailed it out of there.
This speaks to the surreptitious recordings made by Efrim Menuck and David Bryant of Godspeed You! Black Emperor. They also did not ask permission, either before or after recording her, which someone might criticize them for. But if they had actually approached her, she may well have unleashed her temper on them, as well, and her surviving presence now -- so well captured on "
East Hastings" and preserved -- would have been lessened considerably; I think I say in the article that without GY!BE, none of this would be being written.
Amusingly, I mis-remembered what Jaime had told me about the rock -- we hadn't actually spoken at that point, only swapped a few messages -- and told Efrim when we spoke that Clay told me she'd actually thrown a brick at him. Efrim chuckled at that and said, "Fair enough!"
I rather love that he was able to identify with Imogen getting violent over being recorded... while himself being someone who had recorded her!
4. Keith Parry, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and "East Hastings"
Keith Parry at Scratch Records' first location
As I tell in the Montecristo piece, Imogen was directly responsible for my buying the first Godspeed You! Black Emperor record, thanks to man-of-taste Keith Parry, proprietor of Scratch Records. I don't remember him saying a thing about the music being interesting -- which it is; I've become a fan, and will be going to see them at the Vogue this weekend. But it was because of her that he recommended the record and because of her that I bought it. Imogen came first, had primacy: she never made me repent, sinner that I am, but she got me into Godspeed.
Parry doesn't really remember that conversation in the shop -- or her! Writing now, he says,
The funny thing is I remember said preacher, but not vividly...I have so many vivid memories of the first Scratch, living behind the store in that crazy hovel with a cave as the bed... and living in the neighborhood, going to all of the Hastings bars and restaurants that all had their own element of downer glory and chaos...and of course walking to Army and Navy store after welfare day meant seeing people quite possibly no longer alive... and so many crazy memories of that era... but yet I have only the haziest recollection of the GY!BE preacher...
Which is fair enough -- this was 30 years ago, and if reports online are correct, Imogen has been gone for 20 of those years. Efrim also didn't know much about her -- they never spoke, and there's no indication she ever heard "East Hastings," though I would love it if she had. The following are outtakes from our conversation, mostly focused on the album in question,
F# A# ∞, and starting not with "East Hastings," but with "
The Dead Flag Blues."
2025 INTERVIEW WITH EFRIM MENUCK
Conducted over Zoom, April 11, 2025
Allan: So the focus of this will be mostly on the "East Hastings" street preacher, but I hope we can come to this a bit indirectly. I want to ask you about "Dead Flag Blues" and the sample from your film.
Efrim: Yeah!
Allan: In the sample, after the line, "the car's on fire," a dog barks in the background. And I remember when
I interviewed you about
Horses in the Sky, we talked about your dog, who had just died [
note: I see now that it's mysteriously not in the published interview, but it came up somewhere!], who gets mentioned in "
God Bless Our Dead Marines." So -- it's a silly thing, but is that your dog who barks?
Efrim: No, it's not the same dog. I went to the house of the guy who read the monologue, and he had a tiny dog that was in the other room, and that was his dog.
Allan: Ah, okay. I kind of had hoped that it was the same dog [
I will later explain that this had something to do with James Farwell and his dog, Milo, who inspired Bison's song "An Old Friend" and who figures in the cover art for Lovelessness
-- which has an insert with Milo's image and a cover based on a photograph of the cancer that killed him; but there was more to it than that, also connecting with James being involved in the Montecristo article. But I can't really do it justice].
Efrim: No, no no no. Wanda had a louder bark.
Allan: Ah, okay. Too bad. I don't know that I will use that now -- sorry Wanda. But the film has never been released, right? What was it called?
Efrim: It was called Incomplete Movie About Jail, and it was kind of a diary film. My idea at the time was that I would keep working on it and adding onto it forever, that it would never have an ending, until I ended.
Allan: But that didn't continue?
Efrim: No, no, no. It stopped once the band became a thing.
Allan: And who is doing the reading? He has a remarkable voice; is he First Nations?
Efrim: No, it's an old professor of mine, who just had a great voice, so I asked him to read it.
Allan: Okay, thanks. Another thing -- I've never trusted a transcription from that, I've seen one line written out as "we're on so many drugs," but I could also hear it as, "we're all so many drunks."
Efrim: Yeah, it's "we're on so many drugs."
Allan: Okay. There's also another sample elsewhere on the album that I haven't researched, about a "large barge" with a radio tower on it. What's that from?
Efrim: That was from shortwave radio, and it was some paranoid conspiracy theorist being interviewed. It might have been from the
Art Bell show? ...which eventually we were able to pick him up on FM radio in Montreal, but at that time, he wasn't syndicated up here, so you could only catch him on shortwave radio, y'know?
Allan: Okay, and the large barge was some sort of pirate radio...?
Efrim: To be honest, I don't remember what the context was, but it would have been some secret military weapon or something.
Allan: Thanks, okay. So tell me about the street preacher on "East Hastings." How did that recording come to you?
Efrim: I went on a roadtrip with Dave, one of the other guitar players in the band. We got a drive-away, y'know, like where you transport a car for someone, and we drove across the country, and we spent a few days in Vancouver.
Allan: What was it like at that time? It’s become very bleak.
Efrim: It was bleak then, too, the only difference was that there weren’t all these Hong-Kong style condominium high-rises. But it was dark. It was East Hastings. It’s difficult to process, y’know? Yeah.
Allan: It’s become quite a bit worse since the fentanyl crisis.
Efrim: Yeah, yeah, that’s evident.
[
The next ten minutes of the interview are almost all included in the Montecristo article].
Allan: Is the bagpipe that's in there also a sample, or was that something you did in the studio?
Efrim: No, that was a guy we knew -- we used to play shows at a collectively-run space that no longer exists, in Toronto, a space called Symptom Hall, which was a special place. And there was a guy who was part of that crew who played bagpipes. So we got him to play the melody of the song on the bagpipes.
Allan: That makes sense.
Allan: So there are three variants to the cover of F# A# ∞. Can you tell me about the images -- I assume I've got them all?
Efrim: Yeah yeah, those are the three.
Allan: What are these?
Efrim: That's the wheels of the parked train behind the loft where we recorded the record. [The other is] a water tower down the street from where we recorded the record.
Allan: And this? [I hold up the street sign variant].
Efrim: Dave took that photo on the way to the airport in New Orleans, coming back to Montreal. He'd been living in New Orleans for awhile, and he just stuck the camera out the window and snapped some photos, because he was at the end of the roll. And then he got that one.
Allan: Is there any narrative, any sort of reason why you've chosen these three images? Why three variants?
Efrim: I don't know, because we could? It was very small-run and hand-assembled, the first pressing. So, like, we developed the photos ourselves with the help of a friend who had a darkroom, and we were gluing the records ourselves and putting the things inside, flattening the pennies ourselves. It was because a small run and we could, y'know? Yeah. That's all.
Allan: There were flattened pennies inside the original pressing?
Efrim: There still are. The record label still has to go out there and flatten pennies! Like, flattened by trains, y'know?
[Note: I had forgotten the penny in my original copy, only remembering it after our conversation. I sold my first pressing long ago. I have since bought all three variants but did not explore the inserts at length, only looking inside after this conversation. I am stunned to discover that all three -- one earlier pressing, in the top right, and two later, still have flattened pennies included. It may be significant to note that the one in the top left, presumably hand-assembled by the band, has the best flattened penny of the three, and also has what appears to be a gig poster not included in the other pressings].
Efrim, continuing: A lot of it was trying to represent a sense of place, which was our neighbourhood at the time, which is no longer our neighbourhood and which is not a neighbourhood I ever spend any time in now. But the neighbourhood at the time had some magic in it, y'know, especially around the train tracks and the abandoned industrial land that used to be there, that's now turned into Home Depot and condominiums and stuff. I don't know -- it was a sense of place.
Allan: I assume that some of the film that you project and I think you sometimes burn in concert is from that time and place?
Efrim: I don't think there's anything left from around there. Uh, there's maybe one thing that's left. But it's all fallen apart since then... Again, that was a long fuckin' time ago.
Allan: Okay, so... I suspect you won't much want to talk about this, but what about 28 Days Later? I've always been curious about how you ended up on the soundtrack to the film, but aren't on the album, and how the rest of the official score sounds very suspiciously similar to "East Hastings." John Murphy seems to be basically ripping off Godspeed.
Efrim: Yeah.
Allan: So what happened there?
Efrim: The director approached us. We were playing in London. He had been emailing us about this and we kept saying no, and he said, "Look, can we just go have a beer and we can talk about this?" And at the time he said that -- and I'm sure it was true at the time -- it was independently financed and produced. And y'know, we all loved old zombie films, so the idea that it was independently produced... we thought it was going to go nowhere, y'know? And then we liked the idea of some kid 30 years later renting the videotape at a Blockbuster and being curious about who the band was. And so we said yes, and then -- let me think; he sent us a DVD before it came out, and that's the only time I've seen that movie. And we said no to being on the soundtrack because it just didn't interest us, and it was also a kind of exploitative deal, it seemed like. So we just said no, which is why we're not on the soundtrack.
Allan: Exploitative how?
Efrim: We weren't being remunerated fairly. Not that everything's about money, but when you're dealing with like, 20th Century Fox or whatever, it felt like they were taking advantage of us, so we just said no. There was no reason for us to be part of it. And I dunno... we've said no to so many song licensing things, and almost every time, if I end up seeing the movie, then, they get someone to do some soundalike thing, instead of us. So we're sort of used to that.
Allan: The score feels very much like, "do something like 'East Hastings,' but not quite." It feels that way.
Efrim: Yeah, I mean, I guess it served the film... again, I only saw it the one time, way back when. But it served the film. I don't begrudge anyone that.
Allan: Okay, fair enough. I have one more thing I want to ask about, which seems to be another street preacher on "
Static." I mean, maybe there are others in your catalogue, but I'm curious about the attraction to street preachers, and who that was...?
Efrim: Which street preacher on "Static"?
Allan: There's a sample on "Static." I'm not sure it is a street preacher?
Efrim: Like, the lady who is talking about hell and serpentines of the highest order?
Allan: Yeah, with her voice kind of slowed down.
Efrim: Yeah yeah, Okay. "Chart #3." That was also from shortwave radio. I don't know anything about who she is or was! [
Note: apparently digging around on the internet, there are answers to my questions here, which presumably Efrim himself may not have seen: hear an approximation of the original here, and see here and here for more explanation. According to sources on that last link, the speaker is apparently
"Helene 'Spring' DeBoe, an independent Pentecostal preacher based out of Long Beach, California"]. At the time I was recording shortwave radio all the time. I had a shitty little boombox with a shortwave radio built into it and I was endlessly spending hours just slowly turning the dial. It had a built-in cassette recorder, and I was recording things when they were interesting. And I don't know the context, I don't know anything, but what she says in that monologue is very fuckin' beautiful, and applies to things that don't have anything to do with Christ, or... I dunno; it's a beautiful sermon.
Allan: I don't remember it word for word but it seemed to touch on authentic experience and being awakened.
Efrim: And also, like, mental illness, and having to pass through anxiety and fear to reach a pure state. It resonated for me at least.
Allan: Actually, I have a transcription of some of what Imogen says in the other piece, which is also quite powerful: "And God help our souls, no matter what we have, no matter the money, no matter the riches of the world, it cannot buy what we need, and what we need is the love of Jesus Christ." That's a beautiful sentiment.
Efrim: Yeah. And she also says "nothing's all right in our lives," which is also a very heavy thing, y'know?
There are still tickets available to the May 11th show at the Vogue. See here. Live review of May 10 here.
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