bev. davies' photostream  

Bloodied but Unbowed traces Vancouver's punk history
By Mike Usinger



photo bev davies June 9, 1979
Vancouver punk pioneers, including D.O.A.’s Randy Rampage (left) and Joe Keithley, are featured in Susanne Tabata’s long-overdue documentary film Bloodied but Unbowed.
www.straight.com/article-321070/vancouver/bloodied-unbowe...

Entirely appropriately, if you think about it, more than one pioneer responded in a way that was totally punk rock when asked to be a part of the documentary Bloodied but Unbowed.

“I got told to fuck off a lot,” director Susanne Tabata says bluntly, interviewed at the Georgia Straight offices. “But I expected that—I really did. In other words, it was like, ‘I’m not interested.’ People have moved on with their lives, and to ask them to recapture, relive, rethink moments of their youth can be an emotional experience. And it was an emotional experience for people.”

The “it” that the independent filmmaker is referring to is the late-’70s birth of the Vancouver punk-rock scene. At a time when the world was fixated on feathered hair, flared jeans, and coke-dusted discotheques, the West Coast spawned a musical movement every bit as important as high-profile ones in Los Angeles, New York City, and, arguably, London, England. Vancouver bands like D.O.A., Pointed Sticks, Young Canadians, Modernettes, Braineaters, Dishrags, and Subhumans seemingly exploded out of nowhere, overnight. And, just as quickly, an alienated generation embraced them.

Bloodied but Unbowed takes a loving—and long overdue—look at one of the most fertile scenes in North American music history, with Tabata mixing rare archival footage with modern-day interviews with those who were on the frontlines. Among the many things the director gets right is making it clear that Vancouver punk was about more than just D.O.A.; lesser-known acts like Rabid, U-J3RK5, and Active Dog also get their due. As stylistically varied as those bands were, Tabata says, they had one thing in common: back when they were planting their flags at ground zero, they had no idea what they were creating.

Trailer

Watch the trailer for Bloodied by Unbowed

“From my point of view, when this musical thing was happening, I don’t think anyone, for a second, stopped to consider what it was,” she says. “I don’t think there was a sense of ‘This is important. It’s going down and happening right now.’ It was something that was very transitory. But as time goes by, you can look back at that era in Vancouver, and it becomes more and more mythical.”

And with good reason. As much as the likes of D.O.A., Subhumans, and Pointed Sticks seemed to gig every other weekend at the long-defunct Smilin’ Buddha, punk was actually underground in a way that’s almost unfathomable to the Internet generation. You didn’t discover bands on MySpace, Facebook, or Pitchfork, mostly because computers were something you only saw in science-fiction films. And you sure as hell didn’t hear classics like Pointed Sticks’ “Out of Luck” or the Modernettes’ “Barbra” on commercial radio, which completely ignored every important local record released during Vancouver punk’s golden era.

Tabata knows all this because she was there as a player. Her résumé includes, but is hardly limited to, the skateboarding documentary SkateGirl and a producer’s credit on the Jason Priestley–directed Barenaked Ladies doc Barenaked in America. But long before moving into film, she was a teenage correspondent on Nite Dreems, a pre–MTV, DIY Vancouver cable show that spotlighted local music. Involved at the time with UBC’s CiTR, she also recalls making the rounds at commercial radio, only to find that its power brokers had no interest in underground music.

In some ways, Tabata wonders how much the mainstream media’s interest in vintage punk has changed since those times, noting that she’s worked for three-and-a-half years on Bloodied but Unbowed.

“The funding came together and fell apart three times,” she says. “There have been some really lean times and some trying times in trying to put this together. What I found quite surprising was that, even though I had solid production experience and good credentials, the powers that be—the people that control the purse strings at major networks—didn’t think that this was a story worth covering.”

Bloodied but Unbowed proves them wrong. Making it clear that Vancouver punk was a big deal for more than those who lived here, luminaries such as Henry Rollins and Guns N’ Roses’ Duff McKagan pop up to pay tribute to our city. Tabata—who credits B.C. public broadcaster Knowledge (formerly Knowledge Network) with helping get Bloodied but Unbowed made—may have been told to fuck off more times than she can remember, but she also managed to secure interviews with many of the scene’s key players. What she excels at in the movie is getting great stories, whether it’s members of D.O.A. and the Subhumans recounting how they met in grade school, or Paul Hyde of the Payolas remembering how he learned that you don’t show up to a punk house party in a cab.

Ultimately—and fittingly—it’s the characters who made Vancouver’s original punk scene so vibrant who make Bloodied but Unbowed so watchable. There are moments of total surreality (ex-Modernette Mary Jo Kopechne’s postmusic existence in rural Alberta), moments of serious reflection (Subhuman Gerry Hannah ruminating on Direct Action), and moments of painful poignancy (ex–Young Canadian Art Bergmann trying to make sense of where it all went wrong).

What makes Bloodied but Unbowed more than ancient history is the legacy that Vancouver’s first-wave punks left on these shores. They laid the foundation for a Vancouver music scene that has since given the world the likes of the New Pornographers, Black Mountain, and Japandroids. Quite rightly, Tabata thinks it was important to make her documentary for another reason.

“In defence of doing this now, and not later, well, people aren’t going to be around for much longer,” the director says. Pausing, she adds with a laugh: “Right now, there are still people who are able to recount, with clarity—and some with no clarity—this period in history.”

Susanne Tabata will attend the world premiere of Bloodied but Unbowed at a DOXA festival special presentation at the Granville 7 Cinemas next Thursday (May 13) at 8 p.m.


my photo of Randy Rampage on a skateboard
skullskates.com/catalog/product_info.php/products_id/806


July 24 to aug 31 2009
Bev Davies: Play It Loud
A retrospective of the legendary Vancouver Photographer
by Gerald Deo
Bev Davies displays a consistent and practiced eye at capturing the performer freed of the self-awareness that often plagues formal or posed photos. Her retrospective show Play It Loud, which ran at Chapel Arts in July and August, is a selection of concert photos from the last 30 years and is a fascinating slice of local live music history in addition to a collection of stunning photography. The show features a selection of black-and-white photos shot on film in the late ‘70s to mid ‘80s and colour prints of digital photographs that date from 2007.
The unexpected surprise of the show, though, is undoubtedly Davies herself. Her presence placed the photos in a context of both local history and personal art by reversing the distillation of a concert from the sensory entanglement of sound, motion and presence into the visual stimulus taken from a minuscule fraction of these. Davies didn’t skimp on providing technical details and freely discussed the rigours of shooting concerts on film as a photographer for the Georgia Straight in the 1980s. It was with her guidance that I saw an otherwise unremarkable pair of shots, looking markedly unlike her other works. The photos taken at Maple Leaf Gardens in April 1965, are in colour, in that oddly saturated way that only old film stocks seem to get right. These two shots, taken from the Rolling Stones performances, were Davies’ gateway into concert photography, and though they lack the verve or polish of her future work, her talent is already apparent.
The works from the first half of Davies’ career float away from the wall, pairing the impact of monochrome imagery with a unique mount evoking the d.i.y. ethos of the ‘80s punk scene. Each photo was scanned from the negative and printed on plastic and mounted on adapted metal shelving. The shelves have their sides covered in collages created from reproductions of punk show posters dating from the same era as the photos, and the whole construction is attached to the walls by three-inch bolts that terminate with wingnuts, regular nuts or metal anchors. The complex mount doesn’t distract from the photos themselves, and the posters around the sides provide a subtle reminder of the era of the photos.
The second half of the retrospective begins with 2007. After leaving the Georgia Straight in the mid ‘80s, Davies’ output waned significantly and the lack of feedback from processing constant shoots led her to stop shooting. The purchase of a digital camera and its instant feedback reignited her interest, and a meeting with Anton Newcombe (The Brian Jonestown Massacre) rekindled her old affair with concert photography. Behind glass and bordered by wood, her new works are printed in colour and framed more conventionally but are no less impactful. Ranging from Jan. 2007, right up to Arrested Development at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival in July 2009, her shots in colour are saturated and while they lack the historical authenticity of her earlier work, her keen eye for expression remains in effect.
Play It Loud is an impressive distillation of a historically fascinating and visually potent body of work, and with a narrator as exciting as the work, it is an unforgettable art show.
More of Bev Davies’ work can be found at www.bevdavies.com or at www.flickr.com/photos/bevdavies/.

It's Feb 14, 2008 and here is the link to a new interview
alienatedinvancouver.blogspot.com/2008/02/bev-davies-neve...
It's Feb 22, 2009
www.bevdavies.com
I am trying a bit of blogging there also.

John Mackie, Vancouver Sun
Published: Tuesday, August 22, 2006

People will put out calendars of most anything: dogs, cats, old cars.

Bev Davies has come up with one of the most unusual concepts: a calendar of vintage photos of punk rockers.

Today Davies is a welfare worker with the provincial government. But back in the heyday of Vancouver punk in the late 1970s and early '80s, she was one of a handful of photographers who documented the thriving local scene.

Many of her photos appeared in the Georgia Straight, others became album covers. With some financial help from her parents, she even put out two punk rock calendars of local bands in 1980 and 1981.

Those calendars are now as rare as vintage copies of the old punk magazine Snotrag. TV and radio personality Nardwuar the Human Serviette somehow tracked them down, and now, a quarter of a century later, he's convinced Davies to issue an all-new punk rock calendar.

It's called Nardwuar the Human Serviette vs. Bev Davies, A 2007 Punk Rock Calendar! Local legends such as DOA, the Subhumans and the Pointed Sticks are featured alongside shots of international acts such as the Clash, the Gang of Four and the Ramones.

There is an amazing shot of the Go-Go's back in their early, early punk phase where singer Belinda Carlisle looks about 12 years old. The Motorhead shot from 1981 is a classic, featuring a typical heavy metal rude gesture.

Davies was a wee bit older than most punk rockers -- she hung out with Neil Young in Toronto in the '60s, and was a last-minute dropout from Young's famous trip from Toronto to L.A. in a hearse that ended with him meeting Stephen Stills and forming Buffalo Springfield.

She discovered punk after coming across a DOA poster. She had just taken a photography course and was looking for inspiration, and found it, in spades.

"They put out this poster that said, 'We were banned in Vancouver, and you thought you got rid of us!' So, they played about two blocks inside Burnaby at some hall," she laughs.

"I went to that but I didn't take a camera. I thought, 'Hot damn!' And I went back to the next show that was happening and took a camera with me."

She is currently scanning her thousands of negatives with the goal of putting out a book.

Mint Records is sending the calendar around North America as a promotional item, but it will be for sale in September, after a release party Sept. 9 at 1 p.m. at the downtown library featuring Nardwuar's band The Evaporators.