'Twist' by Adele Bertei
Cleveland’s industrial gothic vibe provided a good home for artists, in the shadows, during the ‘70s. One of them, Adele Bertei, got involved in alternative music before the term was coined, working with Peter Laughner, an early member of Pere Ubu, before moving to New York and joining with an expat Milwaukeean, James Chance, in The Contortions.
Bertei’s memoir doesn’t take the story that far. Twist covers her childhood and teenage years through 1973, when her only musical experience was singing songs from Cabaret in a Cleveland gay bar. She was subjected to the dark side of the old blue-collar America. Her violent dad was also a virulent racist and life with mom was hand-to-mouth if he refused to pay alimony on time. Bertei’s first exposure to the music industry was through her family’s secondary ties to the Mob-run jukebox trade. But music came into her life on a more positive note with the British Invasion, “the blue sound of Gerry and the Pacemakers’ ‘Ferry Cross the Mersey’ … And the Kinks’ ‘All Day and All of the Night.’”
Bob Dylan appealed to her for the poetry of his lyrics. She walked to grade school holding a book of Shelley “like a shield against the nitwits.” In ‘60s blue collar America, if you were curious and questioning, friends were hard to find. Bertei survived foster homes and reformatories on her way to becoming a musician. Volume 2 should be interesting.
