The black-and-white world of photographer Bev Davies

Joan Jett sneers while in performance at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver in 1981. All photographs copyright by Bev Davies.

By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
March 7, 2012

For decades, you’ve been able to find Bev Davies squeezed against the stage of even the most raucous concerts.

Dressed in dark clothes, armed with a trusty Canon, she is still and contemplative even while all around her is frenzy.

She has photographed the famous (Bono, James Brown), the infamous (Iggy Pop, John Lydon) and the obscure, capturing in an instant a revelatory image from even the most familiar figures.

She’s been doing it for so long that young concertgoers now approach to ask if she has a son in the band.

“They’ve been kind enough not to ask if my grandson is in the band,” she said.

Her black-and-white photographs have graced posters, album covers, and the slapdash pages of fanzines. They have been in the pages of the Georgia Straight and on the walls of art galleries. Her image of the high-flying, scissor-legged bassist Randy Rampage of D.O.A. has even been imprinted on a limited-edition skateboard.

James Brown

Some of her work is ephemeral, some of it timeless, and some of it only lasts as long as there are days in a month.

Ms. Davies has produced her sixth calendar of rock photographs, this one distributed free with each copy of the Busy Doing Nothing! compilation album put together by the Vancouver deejay Nardwuar the Human Serviette.

The photographer’s legion of fans prefer to think of her latest calendar coming with a free vinyl LP.

The calendar runs from May, 2012, until December, 2014, merrily ignoring the pending Mayan apocalypse.

It includes 17 photographs, including a striking cover shot of a teenager doing a jackknife dive off the stage into a crowd at a 1981 punk show in Pasadena, Calif.

Other notable images include a fully-clothed Iggy Pop casting a mesmerizing stare; Viv Albertine of the Slits in a babydoll dress a full decade before Courtney Love ever hit the stage; a sweaty and straining James Brown (“a bit too much girdle,” notes the photographer); an exhausted and shirtless Lux Interior of the Cramps on a leopard-patterned couch backstage at the Commodore Ballroom; and, Bono being grabbed by stagehands before tipping into the crowd at an outdoor festival in California.

One of her favorite images depicts John Lydon of Public Image Ltd. wearing a pajama-style shirt on stage at War Memorial Gymnasium in Vancouver.

“I like the shape of it,” Ms. Davies said. “So many of the shots are close-ups of people singing and playing guitar. He’s listening to the audience. He’s got his hand cupped to his ear.”

She began photographing the nascent local punk-rock scene in the late 1970s, suffering a black eye on her first shoot when she brought her camera to her eye while in the midst of the mosh pit. She quickly learned to keep elbows high while staking a spot stage left or right.

It was an exciting time when unknown do-it-yourself musicians filled out nightly lineups in dingy halls and decaying clubs. Ms. Davies offered a calm presence in a turbulent time. Her images were warmly received by the bands.

They were unknowns, but she thought they’d someday be famous.

She had seen it happen before.

Ms. Davies, the daughter of a auto mechanic and a potter from Belleville, Ont., left home to study art in Toronto. The Yorkville folk scene was “breaking out," she said, "and turning on and and tuning in and dropping out.” For a time, she helped operate the Cellar Club, a jazz and chess venue at 169 Avenue Rd., where musicians would drop by to jam and hang out after playing gigs. Among them was Neil Young, whom she befriended. He announced one day that he was leaving for California in a ’53 Pontiac hearse. Bev was invited to join him, though he wanted her to chip in for the cost of gas to the coast. She was penniless.

“The invite was pulled away,” she said. “Neil said I couldn’t go because I didn’t have any money.” Her reaction? “At that time, Neil didn’t handle women crying very well.”

Two of her roommates joined him on the transcontinental trek. Soon after arriving in Los Angeles, Mr. Young formed a group called Buffalo Springfield and within days opened for the Byrds. It happened for him just that quickly.

(A later meeting between the photographer and the rocker, with Nardwuar in tow, is told in hilarious detail by the Vancouver novelist Kevin Chong in his nonfiction work, Neil Young Nation.)

Later, after she settled in Vancouver, Ms. Davies befriended the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. They first talked when she called an open-line radio show on which he was appearing. Intrigued, he later asked the host for her contact information. They went for dinner — an odd experience for Ms. Davies, still broke, who associated such extravagance with visits by her parents — and established a platonic friendship.

He later wrote her a warm letter in which he described his latest relationship woes — he would be married five times before his death in 1982 — with candour.

“Bev, you were nicer to me than anyone else I met in Canada, and I’ll always remember that,” he wrote. “You made me feel like a person.”

In recent years, acolytes and those studying Mr. Dick have approached the photographer for her insights on the writer.

“He was nice,” she said. “He wasn’t crazy. I know crazy.”

She continues to attend shows, her dedication creating an important documentation of the music scene in Vancouver over the decades. Incredibly, her work has yet to be gathered in a book. Publishers, start your bidding.

Stagehands grab Bono as he teeters toward the crowd at the US Festival in San Bernardino, Calif., in 1983. Photograph ©Bev Davies.

Return of the Subhumans: 'More bombastic' than ever

Subhumans front man Brian (Wimpy) Goble finds a lifetime performing at punk gigs good training for a job as a mental-health worker. Simon Hayter photograph for The Globe and Mail.

By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
September 1, 2010

VICTORIA

You start a band in Vancouver back in the day.

You debut in front of an anti-Canada Day concert organized by anarchists.

The punk thing is so new that some in the audience still wear flared jeans and are as hirsute as a ZZ Top tribute band. Not you though. You wear torn clothes and a buzz cut.

You give yourselves noms de punk — Wimpy and Dimwit and Useless.

You find yourself pogoing shirtless before maelstroms of sweaty kids.

You hunch and lurch about stage, a howling front man whose lyrics are most easily discernible when the chorus includes the shouting of a common expletive.

You release records whose staccato rhythms mimic a firing squad of AK47s, your buzz-bomb sound best captured by a skid-row graffito reading, “Apocalypso Now!”

Of course it all comes to a screeching halt and the Subhumans split up.

The drummer dies.

The bassist gets caught up in a series of acts of sabotage, each more violent than the last. He gets sentenced to 10 years in jail, gets out in five.

A British anarcho-punk band settles on the same killer band name.

Some others claim to own your recordings, so that somehow you no longer have the rights to your original album, which has long been heralded as a classic of the genre. A court battle looms.

So, what do you do?

“Cheaper to go back into the studio,” said Brian Goble (aka Wimpy, Sunny Boy Roy). “Re-record everything again. Get it right. For me it was a blessing in disguise because I was now able to get these songs out now without musical parts that make me wince.”

The band reformed — Mike (Normal) Graham on guitar, Gerry (Useless) Hannah on bass, Jon Card replacing the late, lamented Ken (Dimwit) Montgomery on drums. They gathered at Hive Studios in Vancouver and, 30 years after making the original recordings, redid such catchy ditties as “Death to the Sickoids,” “Slave to My Dick,” and “Let’s Go Down to Hollywood (and Shoot People).”

Since the original album, released on an independent Vancouver label in 1980, was titled, “Incorrect Thoughts,” this one is called “Same Thoughts, Different Day.”

Punks getting together in middle age to recreate the sounds of their youth has the potential for farce. Happily, the release on San Francisco label Alternative Tentacles is getting favourable reviews. It is “an anthemic, provocative and inspiring update,” according to CHARTattack, the online music magazine.

“Bigger. More bombastic. More powerful. To me it sounds like we wanted it to sound. It really shreds,” Mr. Goble said.

Now, the Subhumans are heading to Ontario and Quebec later this month for a series of club shows. Three years ago, the band drove across this vast land in a van with a U-Haul trailer, spending much of the time nursing a viral ailment. “Just about killed us,” Mr. Goble said. This time, they’re flying, though the punk do-it-yourself ethic still involves coach surfing on dates when a motel is unavailable.

While the Subhumans institute a scorched-earth policy in Eastern Canada, fellow punk peers D.O.A. will be laying waste to vast swaths of Alberta. (Such is the DNA of the West Coast contemporaries that Messrs. Card and Goble both spent time in D.O.A.) The tours follow the well-received release of “Bloodied but Unbowed,” Susanne Tabata’s feature-length documentary on the Vancouver punk and new wave scene.

“I can feel my age for sure,” said the 53-year-old frontman. “But I can still put out a fair amount of energy” on stage.

When not making music, he can be found working as a building manager and mental-health worker at the Roosevelt Hotel in the downtown eastside.

“Keep the place from erupting into anarchy and chaos, y’know,” he said.

“I think touring on a shoestring budget in that kind of environment has given me experience in dealing with crisis situations. With D.O.A., we were the band and we were the bouncers at a lot of our shows. I’ve dealt with a lot of craziness, so it doesn’t surprise me when more craziness rears its ugly head. I have a good idea how to deal with that stuff.”

The class clown in the band is Mr. Hannah, who, after the Subhumans originally broke up, became involved with a group of left-wing activists who adopted an urban guerrilla philosophy. They called themselves Direct Action, though, after a dramatic arrest on a highway north of Vancouver, the media dubbed them the Squamish Five. Mr. Hannah was convicted of conspiring to rob an armoured car. He spent many years after his release working as a snowplow operator. He still writes memorable songs.

“He’s doing what we’re all doing — working hard, paying off the mortgage, planning for retirement, I guess,” Mr. Goble said.

He’s looking forward to hitting the road again at a time in his life when he plays for fun, not fortune.

“We’re not trying to become the next Justin Bieber anymore. There’s no pressure.

“You never know, maybe someday Justin Bieber will cover a Subhumans song.”

Call us weirdos, call us crazies, but it might be more entertaining to have the Subhumans perform one of his hits.

Lock up your beer fridge, here come the Subhumans: (from left) Jon Card, Mike Graham, Gerry Hannah and Brian Goble.

The day the hardcore punk music (almost) died

Chuck Biscuits beating the skins for the Circle Jerks.

By Tom Hawthorn
Special to The Globe and Mail
November 4, 2009

VICTORIA

Joe Keithley, who operates a small record label, opened his email one day recently to find a flood of condolence notes.

Sad news. Sorry for your loss.

Mr. Keithley had no idea who had died. The notes offered no clue.

He is not unaccustomed to grief. He has lost friends to drugs and to disease, the excesses of the music scene not conducive to a healthy life.

As a young man, he formed a punk band and launched a label to release a record no one else would. D.O.A. and Sudden Death Records carry in their names a young person’s carefree mocking of mortality.

It did not take long on the computer to learn the terrible news.

Chuck Biscuits was dead.

Throat cancer had claimed him at age 44.

Mr. Keithley had known him since the boy was in elementary school in Burnaby, the younger brother of a neighbourhood friend. At age 15, Chuck Biscuits became D.O.A.’s original drummer. He left after three years, playing for such bands as Black Flag, Circle Jerks and Danzig, gaining a cult reputation for his frantic drumming. He played with a wild abandon reminiscent of the Muppets’ Animal thrashing the kit for Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.

Chuck Biscuits’ reputation was such that his name appeared on Top 10 lists of all-time punk and hardcore drummers. When not included, the comment section would invariably include a posting along the lines of: “How can your list have any credibility without the legendary Chuck Biscuits ...?”

A decade ago, he quit the music scene, becoming a semi-recluse.

Mr. Keithley found it hard to believe he had not earlier heard of Chuck’s illness, let along his death.

Yet, the news was being reported on music websites and by such news outlets as the CBC, the Boston Herald, the London (Ont.) Free Press, the New Musical Express, National Public Radio, and by Entertainment Weekly.

Wikipedia, the collaborative online encyclopedia written by all-comers, noted the death.

Mr. Keithley knew he had to call Chuck’s brother, Bob Montgomery.

“Bob was all cheery,” he recalled later. His own stomach sank. Bob hadn’t heard.

“Uh, what’s happening with your brother?” Mr. Keithley asked.

Mr. Montgomery was on the job as a Vancouver bus driver. He had not heard the news. He wasn’t sure it was true, though he had not spoken with Chuck in some time. He promised to find out what had happened to his younger brother.

Bob Montgomery was the middle born of three brothers and the only one not to become a drummer. His older brother, Ken, was a high school classmate of Mr. Keithley’s in Burnaby. The two met when Joe headbutted Ken during a touch football game. They became fast friends.

Ken lived in his parent’s garage, which he outfitted with his drum kit. The boys jammed in there, a little brother sometimes sitting on the upper mattress of a bunk bed, keeping time on bongos.

In time, all would take punk names. Ken became Dimwit. His younger brother, Charles, also known as Chuck, which sounded like upchuck, became Chuck Biscuits. Joe took a common, scatalogically-inclined slang that was a vulgar synonym for bonehead. He answers to it to this day.

In 1994, Dimwit died of an accidental overdose, an occasional heroin user succumbing to the purity of a shipment of China White. His family was not alone in their grief, as dozens of heroin users were dying in Vancouver in those days. Bob discovered his body. Ken was 36.

On Friday, it again fell to Bob to find determine a brother’s fate.

“Poor Bob,” Mr. Keithley remembers thinking. “This is rotten. One brother gone already.”

Meanwhile, graphic artist Scott Beadle, who as a boy had published his own punk fanzine, titled Skitzoid, began posting details about Chuck Biscuits on his Facebook page. In short order, he posted a warning.

The only source of the report of the death was a blog entry by James Greene, Jr., a New York freelance writer and contributor to Crawdaddy!, the online music magazine.

He said after several months of online correspondence with Mr. Biscuits and his wife that he had received an email on Friday morning reading, “Chuck did not survive his battle with throat cancer. He passed away surrounded by his family on 10/24/09.”

Within hours, the report went viral.

An early debunking note was posted by the artist Bad Otis Link, who wrote on his Facebook page: “Chuck sent me an email last night at 11:55. DEAD MEN DON’T EMAIL!”

In short order, Bob Montgomery reported back. He had good news. His brother was alive and well. He did not have cancer.

The New York blogger posted a report from the family stating, “Chuck is alive.”

He alleged to have been the victim of an elaborate hoax.

“All I can tell you is I’ve been communicating with two people since May and I was always 99.999% sure were THE Chuck Biscuits and his wife from e-mail addresses bearing their names,” Mr. Greene wrote. “They never asked me to wire money to a Nigerian prince or adopt their child, so I took it all at face value.”

Four hours and 49 minutes after reporting the death, a Wikipedia contributor performed a digital resurrection.

Michael Marotta, author of the Boston Herald blog item, retracted the fake report by audaciously stating, “Is Chuck Biscuits really hoax-worthy?”

Carrie Brownstein, who writes the Monitor Mix blog for National Public Radio, reported the death, later wrote an apology including this egregious statement: “As for me, until Chuck Biscuits is sitting next to me as I type this, I still won’t know for sure.”

She’s happy to report a death with no evidence, but demands overwhelming proof of continued existence. Let not the facts stand in the way of a good story, a mantra for this age of insta-gossip.

“It’s great that he’s alive,” Mr. Keithley said. “But from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. he was dead and that was tough.

“It’s unbelievable a lie can spread so fast.”

No cancer. No death. Just a lot of egg on the face of a blogger and those who rush to publish without confirming facts.