Canada's Iggy Pop

Hey all thought I'd post some MP3's of Art Bergmann. Art was a Vancouver legend who never quite broke out of Canada. He was signed to MCA, Polygram, and finally Sony. All Canadian deals.

When he was on, his live shows were awesome. If you're a fan of Iggy, Dead Boys, Replacements you may like this.

I'm posting three songs:

Bound For Vegas is from "Sexual Roulette" an awesome CD that came out in 1990. Voted in Chart magazine as one of the top 100 Canadian albums of all time.

Bound For Vegas MP3

Song two is from the self titled Polygram release from 1991. The song is called "Ruin My Life" The whole CD is killer

Ruin My Life MP3

Song 3 is "Crackin'Up from the same CD
Crackin' Up MP3

Let me know what ya'll think.
Here's a bit more about Art Bergmann

A pioneer of Vancouver's punk scene, songwriter/guitarist Bergmann has always walked on the edge and a volatile personality and drug addiction has kept him from reaping the benefits of his on-again off-again solo career.

Growing up in Surrey, Bergmann, son of Mennenite parents, would sing along to Beatles songs with a broomstick for a guitar. He joined his first band, The Schmorgs, in 1977 and with a crudely made debut LP Bergmann and others led the Vancouver punk scene into a revolution that Bergmann would soon sign-post with a number of other legendary acts.

In 1978 he joined the K-Tels who would release two EPs - 'Hawaii' (1979) and 'This Is Your Life' (1980) before a well known record label threatened copyright infringement action against them and so they became the X-Tels and finally The Young Canadians.

In 1981 he joined Los Popularos where a drug addict with some extra cash invested $10,000 in the band's recording efforts in an attempt to launder the money. When the band wasn't able to repay the man immediately he grew impatient and threatened the members with a gun. The situation rectified itself when the investor went to jail for first degree murder. However, the record was finished - a four song EP called 'Born Free'.

In 1984 came Poisoned, whose material was produced by future stars Paul Hyde & Bob Rock, and the resulting two demo tapes and a full 6 song EP 'Poisoned' brought the band to the attention of Canada. But with the rising popularity of LA hairband Poison, they dropped the name and put Bergmann in the spotlight as frontman.

At the very moment that Duke Street's Adrian Heaps was holding a pen and record contract, the band was getting ejected from Toronto's Rivoli club for being drunk and disorderly. His debut solo album on Duke Street, 'Crawl With Me', was produced by Velvet Underground legend John Cale and would go gold (50,000) without advantage of much airplay.

Bergmann received a 1989 Juno Award nomination for Most Promising Male Vocalist based on his 'Sexual Roulette' album and hit single "Faithlessly Yours". His touring band, The Showdogs, featured Poisoned's Taylor Nelson Little (drums), Ray Fulber (bass), Susann Richter (keyboards) and Mick Joy (guitar).

In 1990, he made a small appearance in director Bruce McDonald's 'Highway 61'.

Despite critical acclaim and significant airplay, 'Art Bergmann' (produced by Chris Wardman) only managed to sell 7,500 albums and Bergmann was ditched by his label Polygram in May 1992. At issue was lack of funding to launch a national tour which Bergmann ended up not being able to do because the label offered him half of an estimated tour budget. Many trial shows cost Bergmann money out of pocket, but nevertheless, he was out pounding away, sans band, on the Lollapahoser Tour with the likes of Bootsauce, Pure and Sons Of Freedom.

In 1993 he decided to finally kick his heroin addiction and that experience translated into his last album 'What Fresh Hell Is This?. He has since maintained a live presence with a newer backing band featuring members of Stigmata and Dead Surf Kiss.

Bergmann is married to Sherri Decembrini and has a daughter, Naomi.

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[ October 01, 2004 04:56 AM: Message edited by: Sandy Hazard ]

[ October 01, 2004 05:18 AM: Message edited by: Sandy Hazard ]

That's fucked up Sandy. Last night I was finally getting REALLY frustrated with not being able to find any of his stuff, since you told me about him quite sometime ago, and your avatar is a constant reminder. I have searched all of the "stores" I used to "shop" at online, and nobody ever has his stuff. I was finally going to ask you for the best place to get it.

Art and Tommy Rivers are the two biggest pains in the ass to get stuff by!!!

Fuck man, you can also say fans of mid-period Replacements! This guy is GREAT!!! O.K., I am on a mission.

Carl, I had a feeling you'd like this. Speaking of Replacements, he has a song called Message from Paul, that is about Westerberg. I have all his studio albums. There are 6 in total.

There is also a retrospective of his punk band "The Young Canadians" that Zulu Records put out. I still have to get that.

Crawl with me - Duke Street/MCA
Sexual Roulette - Duke Street/MCA
Art Bergmann - Polygram
What Fresh Hell This is - Sony
Ventura Freeway - Audio Monster.com
Design Flaw - Other Peoples Music

He was supposed to re-release Crawl with me. The original recording was done by Bob Rock and was way more guitar heavy. That still hasn't surfaced.

Your right about finding his CD's. It's pretty hard as they're all out of print. Even Gemm has very little which is the best resource I've found to find rare items.

http://www.gemm.com/c/search.pl?curr...d=art+bergmann

I'll tell ya what, I'm lacking in my Dogs collection, Email me and we'll do a trade or something.