The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #143769   Message #3320984
Posted By: pdq
10-Mar-12 - 01:28 PM
Thread Name: Obit: Peter Bergman (Firesign Theater) 1939-2012
Subject: RE: Obit: Peter Bergman of Firesign Theater RIP
...for those who remember the Golden Dragon Massacre:

"...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."