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.