Event Info
Art Bergman, The Courtneys
After self-imposed exile, Art Bergmann, the anti-hero-iconoclast of Canadian mus...
9:30pm
$20+
Artists
The Courtneys
from Vancouver BC
Event Description
After self-imposed exile, Art Bergmann, the anti-hero-iconoclast of Canadian music for over 40 years, comes
out of the wilderness thrusting a four song ep at the world tentatively titled SLOGANS FOR THE UNDERCLASS.
To be released this fall on the label (weewerk), the new ep was recorded this April at Arch Audio in Calgary with producer Lorrie Matheson and a crew of talented players. If you think being on a dilapidated farm on the prairies of Alberta has mellowed him, you would be wrong, SFTU shows Art at his song writing best.
His first new music since the Juno winning album, “What Fresh Hell is This”, Art is still full of vitriol and contempt
for the status quo and he cannot stay quiet any longer.
Just choose one or two well-worn clichés to describe the music. This is Bergmann’s “cri de coeur”, “j’accuse”, “I know”, “revolution, come, or die” or simply, his “final cliché”.
What Art has to say about the Songs:
“Dear Writers,
Master Leonard Cohen wisely steers clear of sloganeering at all costs. I hated to go against his sage advice, but desperate times call for desperate songs.
I just want to put a pinprick in the great facade of consumer capitalism and let the air out of it where I can. Sustainable growth, an oxymoron. The Conservative party, conserving nothing. The targets are endless, aren’t they?
Before you think this is a dreary litany of protest songs, think again. These songs are puzzles with obscure political, historical and of course, economic references.
Pick a line and use it in your daily slog.”
Song Synopses:
Company Store
The hypo critic oath. In the early version of this song, “we sold our souls to the company store”. In an updated take I inject some current events to illustrate the chorus, “we are now all whores at the company store”.
The Drones of Democracy
The making of a sleeper cell. Drones manufactured in the heart of America. How to explain the use of advanced weapons, cluster-bombs, made to shred tanks. Weapons used on innocents, man, woman, and child alike. If you think Neil Young wrote this, well yeah, I wanted my own Cortez.
Cold Appraising Eye
What can you say about people who manipulate the market to such an extreme that people end up starving as a result. That’s murder, folks.
Ballad of the Crooked Man
Ruminations on ‘what is to be done’, suggestions and advice from revolutionary stars of the past; Lenin, the Anarchists of Catalonia and Robespierre, "the incorruptible" leader of the French Revolution.
In-Person Event
Sat. September 6th 2014 + Add to Calendar
The Commodore Ballroom
