Nomo’s Elliott Bergman
More Gotta Start Somewhere
No matter how successful entertainers become, they’ll inevitably always remember the first gig—whether it was disastrous, wonderful, or absurdly strange. Gotta Start Somewhere embraces these nostalgic moments by asking established entertainers to retell the story of the first time they ever graced a stage. In this edition, The A.V. Club caught up with Nomo’s Elliot Bergman, one of the band’s eight multi-instrumentalists. The free-jazzy Ann Arbor electro-funk crew will be lending Thanksgiving weekend some much-needed groove with a show Friday, Nov. 25 at Schubas.
The A.V. Club: When was the first time you performed in front of an audience?
Elliot Bergman: Well, I performed in church as a kid. But now I’m thinking of all these other [shows] in high school. My mom let me take the day off to go play this sort of African market in downtown Chicago. I traded this lady who makes these cool African hats. I got a hat.
AVC: What kind of hat?
EB: It was a really fancy African hat. [Laughs.] I was pretty psyched about it. It was made of kente cloth, and it looked like something that the guy from Jamiroquai might wear. [Laughs.] It was pretty appealing to my sophomore self. I think I actually wore it a couple times before I realized I should stop. Well, I met this woman, and she sold hats at jazz festivals. I remember meeting her, and I was like, “Oh man, these are great hats, how much are they?” And they were like $300, so I was like, “Oh man, okay, well I can’t afford one.” And she was like, “Well what do you do? Are you a musician?” And I was like, “Yeah,” and she was like, “Well, why don’t you come and play at my festival? It’s a benefit for children with AIDS in Africa.” I said, “Okay, that sounds great.” So she said, “Well you can have this hat, but then you have to come play the festival.”
It turned out the festival was at noon on a Tuesday on a school week, and I was 14 or 15 years old. This was before cell phones or anything, and this lady was calling my house and leaving messages to my mom. And my mom was like, “This lady keeps calling the house. She thinks you’re not going to show up for the festival.” And I said, “Well I have school that day—I can’t do that.” And she said, “Well you’re going to have to.” My mom made me. She said, “Well you told her you were going to play the festival, so you’d better go.”
So I went down—there were all different vendors and dancing and stuff. I wore my new hat, and there were these African drummers, and I sort of played the saxophone along with them for hours and hours. I seriously was hurting myself. I went up to her and said, “Hey, I’m getting kind of tired,” and she was like, “The festival’s still going; you’d better keep playing.” [Laughs.] So, it was one of my formative musical experiences.
AVC: Okay, so you were wearing a Jamiroquai hat and playing the saxophone for hours. Do you think you were visibly tired?
EB: Yeah, I could barely make a sound on the saxophone. But it was people milling around—it wasn’t a dedicated sit-down audience, or anything like that. I have no idea what they were thinking about this 14-year-old saxophone player in a Jamiroquai hat. [Laughs.]
AVC: And the hat was your only payment?
EB: Yeah, that was my only payment. I thought she was going to ask for the hat back at the end of the day because I didn’t do a good enough job, but I got to keep it. I still have it actually. My family tried to sell it in a yard sale last summer, and I saved it. I said, “Oh no, this is not going in the yard sale.”
AVC: “I worked too hard for that hat.”
EB: “I played the saxophone for seven hours for that hat!”
