Peter Bergman as part of Firesign Theater and the duo of Proctor and Bergman, two groups that throughly affected my thought and speech pattens in a way that continues to this day. His passing today reminds me of one San Francisco show he probably never forgot.
This is from his story in a 1999 "Firezine" about the duo he and Phil Proctor started during Firesign's first hiatus from perfuming and why they stopped.
FIREZINE #5: History of Proctor & Bergman on the Road
*"What stopped Proctor & Bergman was July 7th, 1977. We were performing, Proctor & Bergman, we had a new album out on Mercury called, "Give Us A Break", which was a radio album. Including the Starland Vocal Band who sang breaks like, "If the records weren't free, we'd be all news!" We had it down. Proctor and I were at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. We'd performed our show and we were doing quite well. They loved us. We weren't sure who we were or where we were going but we were moving. There was momentum. We worked hard and nobody came away ever feeling like we'd given them any less but 100%.
***We went to the Golden Dragon restaurant late that night for a snack with a friend of ours and became victims of the greatest massacre in the history of San Francisco, the Golden Dragon Massacre. A Chinese gang came in with sub-machine guns, shotguns and pistols, killed 5, wounded 12. We were in the midst of it. Someone at our table, our friend got a slug in the leg. I jumped up because I'd been in the Army, I knew the ordinance was empty. I could tell from being on a lot of Army rifle ranges, I jumped and caught a good solid 45 degree angle of the guy going out, and testified and sent him away for life. There were pools of blood, bodies. I ordered the fried prawns and we became scared prones.
***What it basically did, was it stopped us dead on the road. Even though we did perform the next day in Boulder. And no one would believe when we told them what had happened the night before."
I did the sound for Proctor and Bergman's show at the Great American Music Hall. Their original intent was to go over to the legendary Trident in Sausalito but I had to inform them that the place had closed late in 1976, They opted for Chinatown instead and wound up at the Golden Dragon. The one thing Peter Bergman has wrong in his story above is that the Golden Dragon Massacre was actually on September 7, 1977.
Don't know where he got the July 7th, 1977 date from but the initial incident that led to the Golden Dragon shootout occurred around the 4th of July in that year
The Golden Dragon Restaurant Massacre - FoundSF
This is from his story in a 1999 "Firezine" about the duo he and Phil Proctor started during Firesign's first hiatus from perfuming and why they stopped.
FIREZINE #5: History of Proctor & Bergman on the Road
*"What stopped Proctor & Bergman was July 7th, 1977. We were performing, Proctor & Bergman, we had a new album out on Mercury called, "Give Us A Break", which was a radio album. Including the Starland Vocal Band who sang breaks like, "If the records weren't free, we'd be all news!" We had it down. Proctor and I were at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. We'd performed our show and we were doing quite well. They loved us. We weren't sure who we were or where we were going but we were moving. There was momentum. We worked hard and nobody came away ever feeling like we'd given them any less but 100%.
***We went to the Golden Dragon restaurant late that night for a snack with a friend of ours and became victims of the greatest massacre in the history of San Francisco, the Golden Dragon Massacre. A Chinese gang came in with sub-machine guns, shotguns and pistols, killed 5, wounded 12. We were in the midst of it. Someone at our table, our friend got a slug in the leg. I jumped up because I'd been in the Army, I knew the ordinance was empty. I could tell from being on a lot of Army rifle ranges, I jumped and caught a good solid 45 degree angle of the guy going out, and testified and sent him away for life. There were pools of blood, bodies. I ordered the fried prawns and we became scared prones.
***What it basically did, was it stopped us dead on the road. Even though we did perform the next day in Boulder. And no one would believe when we told them what had happened the night before."
I did the sound for Proctor and Bergman's show at the Great American Music Hall. Their original intent was to go over to the legendary Trident in Sausalito but I had to inform them that the place had closed late in 1976, They opted for Chinatown instead and wound up at the Golden Dragon. The one thing Peter Bergman has wrong in his story above is that the Golden Dragon Massacre was actually on September 7, 1977.
Don't know where he got the July 7th, 1977 date from but the initial incident that led to the Golden Dragon shootout occurred around the 4th of July in that year
The Golden Dragon Restaurant Massacre - FoundSF
Last edited: