Don't know if it was AIDS that killed him. All I know is he was playing music to the Sunday brunch crowd. Late one night he turned a bunch of my friends on to heroin, smoking it, in Albany, NY. Within a year they were all shooting up and dead, including Bert. His music may have been great, but along with that legacy is a legacy of death. When 11 people under the age of 30 die from something to which they had never been exposed before, it's tragic. I left and never looked back. Bert changed my life and I can't say for the better.