Randy Rampage — The Gentleman Remembered
Yesterday I went to the Mountain View Cemetery (a second time, see here) for a happy memorial service for the man we called Randy Rampage who died a year before, yesterday.
According to my Chevy thermometer it was 30 degrees. Susanne Tabata and friends had an overhead tarp and served goodies and drinks.
There were a few people I had not seen for years and some I did not recognize as at one time they would have been bikers inside the dark reaches of the Drake Hotel and their Harleys would have been parked outside.
Few might know that Rampage worked as a longshoreman. Some of his dock buddies were present all nicely dressed and I was able to talk to them. Like Rampage’s rough appearance in his jackets and boots these guys were no less scary if one approached them. And approached them I did.
One of the sweetest men I ever met (a heavy metal kind of guy) Brad Kent who formed Ground Zero with Rampage is also no longer with us. But his lovely and equally sweet daughter Jade was there.
Art Bergman and wife Sherri were present as was the man with the beautiful hands, Jim Cummins.
Bergmann played one of his tunes, Entropy and modified the lyrics a bit in memory of Rampage.
When I left, I realized that when I first arrived to Vancouver in 1975 with my two daughters and Rosemary, I would have never known that someday I would feel at home among friends in a cemetery in a bright afternoon. I would have seen them all, at one time in the dark and loud confines of a rock club!
