A reunion was more a test than a triumph.

Years after Bruno Gerussi’s Medal­lion changed its name to Lit­tle Games and  broke up a few fruit­less years later, we’d get unex­pected feedback.

By“we” I mean Jimmy Walker and I. Jimmy was rec­og­niz­able and I was the singer, so peo­ple put two and two together and came up Bruno when they saw us at a club. Also, peo­ple who knew I was the writer for the Province tended to know that I also was with BGM. It was appar­ent that nobody remem­bered Lit­tle Games but every­body remem­bered Bruno Gerussi’s Medallion.

They’d tell us we were their  favorite band at the Town Pump. Randy, the Town Pump’s sound man, appar­ently loved doing our sound because Jimmy was such a good gui­tar player and we were unpre­dictable. Maybe we were unpre­dictable at the Pump shows. I arranged to play there on Gerussi’s 60th birth­day, made a poster, bought a birth­day cake. Some elderly Gerussi fans showed up hop­ing to meet him. I taunted Jimmy mid-solo with a slice of cake. As he backed away, I mashed some cake into Jimmy’s face. Open­ing for Rank And File, gui­tarist Ron Scott (who pre­ceded Jimmy) threw his gui­tar over to Buck Cherry of the Mod­er­nettes, who was at the side of the stage because he knew the Kin­man broth­ers and Alexan­der Escovedo of Rank And File, all of whom were admir­ers of his song The Rebel Kind. Buck snatched the gui­tar mid-air  and played a solo. When he was done, he threw the gui­tar back to Ron, who grabbed it and played another solo. Was that unpredictable?

A band from Sakatchewan cov­ered one of our songs.

I still get emails from strangers want­ing to know what hap­pened to us and will we ever get back together.

Not long ago, I was in a North Van­cou­ver pub and lis­tened, embar­rassed, to a guy rave about BGM. Another guy, at the same pub, fig­ured — ahem — we were the best bar band ever.

A few encour­aged us to reunite.

So we did. Octo­ber 28, 1998

One of those few was Jamie Perry, aka Boce­phus King. He was in awe of Walker and wanted to see us play again. Not being fools, we agreed to open for Boce­phus King at the Van­cou­ver Press Club. That way, there’d be a full house, less pres­sure on us,  Perry would get his wish and Boce­phus King also could tape its set.

The record­ing was an after­thought, but did make sense. This was a one off occa­sion and the mea­sure of ourselves

More to the point was the ques­tion of who would be the band. The answer turned out to be obvi­ous . We went with the last incar­na­tion of  the guys who recorded In Search Of The Fourth Chord.

The record­ing set up was as sim­ple. The mix­ing con­sole came out of my base­ment. We drafted Tom Carter of Mag­i­cLab, who pulled in Craig Stauf­fer, who grabbed an arm­load of Mag­i­cLab micro­phones. The two wired  us up and we were ready to roll.

Or so we hoped.

We had two rehearsals with Jim Elliott, Bruce Faulkner, Ron Hys­lop and Jimmy Walker when Bruce had to drop out. He has a list of health prob­lems stem­ming from when he was a teenager and diag­nosed with Krohn’s dis­ease. Any one of them could hit him at any minute, which makes him unpre­dictable and why he quit BGM the first time. Our drum­mer on tour was Jack Guppy from Bar­ney Ben­tall  and The Leg­endary Hearts. He knew our songs and was avail­able, at least for a few weeks. Jack prac­ticed with us one and a half times, which was all he could spare and all the time we had. Jack did a great job.

The small Press Club was packed, mostly with Boce­phus King fans but a few BGM curi­ous. We drew our breath col­lec­tively and took to the stage. This was the first time I’d appeared with a gui­tar (my red Fender Squire) but I promised the band I’d stay out of the way. Maybe hit the one or two chords I knew.

The set went well and we were pleased with our­selves. We got a good recep­tion and every­thing seemed worth the effort. Pos­si­bly we were so focused and upbeat because we knew that this was it. Exactly what we proved we weren’t sure, but some­how felt val­i­dated. The tape record­ing might tell the story.

The tape.  It’s an accu­rate reflec­tion of the per­for­mance bar­ring a cou­ple of repairs. The first two songs were not recorded as Craig and Tom used these to get proper lev­els. The first song on the record, Fan­tasy Gar­den,  is the third song in the set. It’s the first song I ever wrote on gui­tar. Walker put it into shape. Any­how, the first two notes I sing were so off the map the Mag­i­cLab pitch cor­rec­tor didn’t know where to go. I cor­rected these. Ginger’s Alright required Elliott to retune his bass, but we went straight into the song, giv­ing Jim no time.  Walker  cor­rected that. He redid the bass part.

Dur­ing Muswell Hill Ray, a song ded­i­cated to The Kinks, there is a spon­ta­neous break as Walker takes a solo that is right out of the Jimmy Page/Led Zep­pelin book. The band comes to a full stop, he rips it up, we jump back in. I love that intuitiveness.

We close with Bruno Gerussi’s Medal­lion, a song given to us by No Fun’s David M. It’s a sim­ple, funny num­ber but we hadn’t per­formed it in years when were still together, and I stretched it out. Maybe too much. By the time it’s over, I wish the singer would shut up. The rust that had grown from not play­ing it for so long shows, but this is no big deal. It’s a one time live record­ing, right?

We called the album The Secret Return. Orig­i­nally, it was to be called The Uncalled For Return Of  Bruno Gerussi’s Medal­lion. Nobody asked us to reunite. We just did it. The Secret Return was a valid title. Not that many peo­ple knew of the gig (and prob­a­bly not that many peo­ple cared) and, in keep­ing with the low pro­file, not many records were made. The main idea was to press enough to give away at Christ­mas. It was never meant to be a com­mer­cial proposition.

In dis­cussing the cover for the LP, I envi­sioned a cow­boy on a rear­ing horse, fir­ing a pis­tol over his shoul­der at some imag­ined bad guys. I had this vague Boys Own pic­ture, steal­ing an image from the pre­teen books. Grenville New­ton, who was the orig­i­nal bassist and chris­tened us Bruno Gerussi’s Medal­lion, got excited and vol­un­teered to paint what became the art for the CD. The Newt was fond of strong images of sailors and war­ships and that’s what we got. How­ever, the tapes lan­guished for a few years until we heard that Gren had can­cer. For­tu­nately, sub­se­quent oper­a­tions were suc­cess­ful and he’s in good health, but, back around 2000, his can­cer prompted us to pack­age the album at last.

The Secret Return prob­a­bly is the truest rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the band from its first record­ing to the Lit­tle Games  phase to our some­times left field choice (and treat­ment) of cov­ers. That it came years after we broke up, says some­thing about hindsight.