Terminal City Redux

Zulu Records CD Retrospectives Reveal “Real” Vancouver

Most often people are marked by their roots. The same is true of cities. One of the most irksome facts of living in a city bursting with newcomers is that few know from whence Vancouver came.

The Newfoundlander’s pride of their home turf is famous. But when I spoke to a chap from St. John’s recently about BCer’s fending for a little of their past and their distinctiveness, he replied without blinking, “I don’t know why you’d bother if so few of you’s are actually from here.” Kind of killed the conversation for me.

I thought I was the only one who’d sat through easterner’s endless summing up of Vancouver’s shortcomings until I read “The Trouble With Torontonians,” recently published in the Toronto Globe & Mail Writer Michael Comrie cites some former Hogtowner’s nasty habit of putting the terminal city in its place. “Is it not enough to be the largest, richest, most powerful city in Canada?” he asks. “I fear the mythical ‘search for Canadian identity’ is really the search for Toronto’s identity – extrapolated nation-wide by a too centralized media.”

Modernettes

It’s not just the flacks in Upper Canada that perpetuate the mythical search. Have you seen and heard what passes for content on local TV and radio stations? A few yucks about the weather, the Canucks and Surrey is what your average Vancouver diskjockey is qualified to talk about. CFMI’s Winnipeg morning team Tom & Jerry were run out of town mere months after transplanting here.

The local dailies follow the pattern. They have a terrible track record when it comes to local content. Staff reporters have confided to me their frustration in dealing with editors who do not know the city, nor care about it.

For years it’s been the unfortunate condition of this city that if you want to know anything about it, you avoid the mainstream media because, well, they suck.

“A friend of mine once said that no one can create a scene, but that you can only contribute your part to it,” says Grant McDonagh. “I guess that’s what I’m doing here.” I drew the Zulu Records bossman away from a Saturday shift to talk to him about his label’s release of 3 CD retrospectives of Vancouver punk rock. They are collections of the Modernettes, Young Canadians, and Pointed Sticks.

Pointed Sticks

Respecting the other great independent record shops here, Zulu is probably the most well known in Vancouver. For 17 years an independent and alternative record dealer has existed at the site on 4th and Burrard, the last 14 it has been Zulu Records. Previously the store was known as Quintessence Records, and like Zulu today it was also an indie record label. Quintessence was no screaming success as a business, but it did get a lot of great acts back then put to vinyl.

Zulu Records (the indie label) sports acts such as Knock-Down Ginger and the great Daytona among others. Zulu also is managing some of the legacy of Vancouver’s late 70’s, early 80’s music. Their Last Call compilation is the definitive collection of that period. It was decided three bands on that CD merited disks of their own.

Aided by Zulu staffer Gord Badanic, Grant has spent lots of (costly) studio time since last winter cooking up the disks. Admittedly, in some cases the source tape wasn’t the best quality, but the performance so strong it couldn’t be left off the disk. In the case of some Modernettes’ recordings, a remix was in order. Anyone who owned the View From the Bottom EP will be impressed by how good songs like “Rebel Kind” and “Red Nails” sound on the disk. With the Pointed Sticks disk, fans will be elated to find great tracks from the ill-fated Stiff Records recordings.

The liner notes of each CD are excellent. Those who’ve never heard of one of Vancouver’s best writers Les Wiseman, will enjoy his reflections on the Modernettes. (Personally, I’d enjoy a whole book by Wiseman on the subject of Vancouver music and politics. He’s likely one of the edgiest scribes this city has produced. He recently resettled in Powell River.) Former enfant terrible in his own right, Phil Smith (now working with the famous photographer Jeff Wall), supplies the words for the Pointed Sticks disk. And of course Buck Cherry himself, Modernettes frontman, tells the story of life with Art Bergmann and Young Canadians.

No Escape, Young Canadians’ disk, reminds me in parts of some coveted bootlegs I keep in a tapecase. Not that the recordings are all that rough, but the intensity is like that of a raw, unproduced performance. Young Canadians (aka K-Tels) weren’t known for their polish, so it suits their sound. Especially funny is a live recording where Gord Nichol (a former Pointed Stick at the show) shrieks to the crowd not to throw beer bottles at the band. Wish I was there.

Only Art Bergmann could explain why he has never played his famous “Hawaii” song since those days. Knowing Art, he probably detested its popularity with frat boys and fresh-faced school kids. Young Canadians played one of their last gigs late in 1980 in my high school cafeteria. They did not look like they were having a good time. They did not play “Hawaii” although everyone was chanting for it all night. Good for them.

Young Canadians

On Part of the Noise, Pointed Sticks live up to their somewhat legendary status. The saga of Pointed Sticks surrounds the fact they were signed by Stiff Records in England (Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Ian Drury). Yet not long after, they were dropped and the record was never released. The Sticks tried to be brave about the setback, but they gave it up not long after returning home. The Zulu disk has many songs from the Stiff recording sessions, and tragically, they’re some of the band’s best.

Modernettes’ disk, Get It Straight, is my early favourite. The songs are bitterly funny, in many cases they are pop classics. “Barbra,” “Teen City,” “Rebel Kind” and others are in league with some of the best music of their day. Buck Cherry was kind of a west coast Frank Black, a great songwriter.

Grant McDonagh doesn’t want to be perceived as someone dwelling on the past. “We had some great times back then, but this is now…” He started working at Quintessence Records when he was 17. He’s been the proprietor of Zulu Records since 1981. I asked him if he was like Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life, beholden by duty to his business while part of him wants to leave it all behind, see the world. He thinks about it. “Well, I suppose it would be nice to go to Africa for 6 months or something, and I guess I could because I’m the boss. But the answer is ‘no’. I enjoy what I’m doing here.” He fumbles for a bad baseball metaphor, but I take his point. In a city where so many seem to overlook the uniqueness of where they live, guys like Grant still give a shit.

Art Bergmann photo by Diyah Pera, from "Euphony"

Typically, retrospective CD’s aren’t big money-earners for the label, many times they barely earn back their costs. These 3 collections of Vancouver punk and pop are products of Zulu Records’ passion for local music. To my mind the disks have another purpose. They’re passports to Vancouver’s past, to some of what has made living here worthwhile.

God knows, you have to ask yourself sometimes what there is to this city besides a mild climate, a few good restaurants and Stanley Park. If you depended on the media to reveal the life, the originality, the rage, and the ideas of Vancouver’s citizens, you’d be left wanting.

Listen to these CD’s, and hear some of the real thing.

*Art Bergmann photo by Diyah Pera from “Euphony”