I’m known as a writer, but writ­ing your own bio is tough..It might be the tough­est assign­ment I ever had.

But I’ve done it before. The key is to keep it brief and always ask your­self, how much does any­one need to know?

This being a web­page, I’ll expand a lit­tle but not much. A faulty mem­ory might be a bless­ing in this case.

I was born in St. Boni­face, a French-Canadian speak­ing city within Win­nipeg. I was the eldest of five kids – Betty, Bill, Gary and Don fol­low­ing me. My par­ents con­stantly were broke, which might account for my father’s many dif­fer­ent jobs and my mother buck­ing ‘50s social con­ven­tion and going to work. We knew hard­ships, then, but noth­ing disastrous.

We lived in Win­nipeg, Edmon­ton, Win­nipeg again and finally North Van­cou­ver. The idea to move to North Van­cou­ver was to start over and be near the other Har­risons, who’d moved from Win­nipeg years before.
At first we were out­casts within the large fam­ily – five uncles and an aunt — because of our poverty and my par­ents’ evi­dent lib­eral atti­tude toward bring­ing us up. Over the years, my broth­ers and sis­ter have tri­umphed in their own way.
Grad­u­ally we rebuilt and by the early ‘70s I was enthralled by music, col­lect­ing records and lis­ten­ing to the radio con­stantly. North Van­cou­ver also seemed really hip, although there was noth­ing to do.

At high school, I dis­cov­ered that I had a tal­ent for writ­ing and enjoyed it.
Later on, I became the music direc­tor at the Uni­ver­sity of British Columbia’s cam­pus radio sta­tion, which then was known as CYVR. The sta­tion was fee­ble but it put me in con­tact with record label rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Simul­ta­ne­ously, I still was con­sum­ing music vora­ciously and read­ing about it. One Toronto-based music monthly, Bee­tle, had a reviewer that aggra­vated me so much I wrote a let­ter of com­plaint. Imme­di­ately, I was remorse­ful and sent the edi­tor a few of my own reviews to show that I was pre­pared to “put up or shut up.”

He wrote back, say­ing, these are good. He wanted more and asked if I was in a posi­tion to do inter­views. As CYVR’s music direc­tor I was. I think my first pub­lished review was of a Magma album. My friends threw a party and I was called an “inter­na­tional jet-setting rock critic.”

Not quite. Bee­tle folded in 1975 and I was hired by the Geor­gia Straight to fill a hole cre­ated by Bob Geldof. In 18 months in Van­cou­ver, Geldof had increased the Strraight’s music cov­er­age sig­nif­i­cantly but he was going back to Ire­land, mut­ter­ing some­thing about form­ing a rock band, which even­tu­ally became The Boom­town Rats . In four years at the Straight, I increased the music cov­er­age even more, free­lanced on the side, and took up drums. As a novice drum­mer, I pounded for The Explo­sions, the Straight’s “house band.”

We issued a sin­gle and opened for Talk­ing Heads at the Com­modore the day Keith Moon of The Who died, Sep­tem­ber 7, 1978.

At the height of punk rock hys­te­ria in Van­cou­ver in mid-79s, I was taken on by The Province news­pa­per. My punk rock sym­pa­thies resulted in a few unpop­u­lar reviews but I’ve per­se­vered to the point where I am now an elder states­man, which I find both inevitable and ironic. I con­tin­ued to drum with a band of North Van friends, the Pota­toes, with whom I learned I could sing. I got mar­ried, to Kerry, in Lon­don, Eng­land in 1983. Kerry, who also worked at The Province, and I took a leave of absence for six months. When we got back to Van­cou­ver, I became the singer for a band called Bruno Gerussi’s Medal­lion. We signed to Warner Bros. Canada in 1989, released an album, In Search Of The Fourth Chord, toured a bit, and enjoyed a lit­tle notoriety.

Dur­ing this time, I hosted or co-hosted a cable­vi­sion TV show, Sound­proof, which played videos and fea­tured a slew of local bands.

I also helmed Demolis­ten, which for two hours each week played demo tapes and even­tu­ally Cds of local bands on CFOX. This devel­oped into the annual Seeds com­pe­ti­tion, but I was long gone.

Bruno Gerussi’s Medal­lion changed its name to Lit­tle Games and released an album, Gui­tar Dam­age. It was poorly pro­moted (by us) and didn’t sell. Too bad, it’s a good record, Later, I made a solo album, Five Guardian Gen­er­als, that is unre­leased. Too bad, it’s a good album.

Bruno Gerussi’s Medal­lion reunited for one night in Octo­ber 1998 and recorded a live album. Not many were pressed. Too bad, it’s a good album.

I had a stroke in 2000. That’s a long story in its own right.

I went back to work a year later and even­tu­ally joined another band, Lumpy. We made an album, my first of the era of down­load­ing, MySpace, CD Baby and You Tube. It’s a good album.
Any ques­tions?