A singer-songwriter with 7 lives
by Melora B. North (Provincetown Banner 3/27/08)

Take the name Rick Berlin. Sounds pretty ordinary, doesn't it? Makes you think of some average guy, maybe an accountant, who wears jeans and a casual sweatshirt on weekends while raking leaves or reading the morning paper over orange juice and cereal. Well, rethink those assumptions. This guy is anything but ordinary. In fact, his name isn't even Rick Berlin. He's an imposter, a fake ordinary guy who's anything but your regular Joe.
"I was born Richard Gustave Kinscherf III," says singer-songwriter Berlin, who will be performing in the guest spot at the Coffeehouse at the Mews at 8 p.m. Monday in Provincetown. "The name was too psychedelic. No one could pronounce it. The name Berlin telescoped off the page when I was reading Christopher Isherwood's 'Berlin Stories'. People call me Berlin now. I waited to change my name until my father and grandfather had died. Irving Berlin was a fake name too, you know," he says, laughing, which he does a lot, particularly at himself. And why not? He's had a life that requires either a heady smile or a bucket full of tears depending on your viewpoint.
A waiter now for 19 years at the Jamaica Plain watering hole, Doyles - an Irish bar and institution for over 100 years where certainly everyone knows Berlin's name - he claims he is very happy with the direction his life has taken after all the bumps that have now settled to dust.
"All kinds of people come in, everyone is welcome," says Berlin. "A long time ago the owner decided that racism and homophobia would not be allowed. If you were, you got banned for life. It's sort of a haven. I look forward to work, but I don't take it home with me." Which gives him a clear head so he can write his songs and concentrate on his music, which came to him later in life, thought he did study piano when he was 10 but dropped that after four months because he says he "hated it". Odd, since that is now his instrument of choice.
Brought up in a family that was often relocated, they finally landed in Pennsylvania where he graduated from a private boy's school in Philadelphia with 49 other students.
"All the guys went to Vietnam," he says. "They all came home too. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to shoot or be shot at." So when it was time for Berlin to join he says he dropped acid before the physical exam and got rejected, 4F.
After graduation Berlin went to Yale where he earned a degree in pre-architecture "by the skin of my teeth," he says. Then, for some reason he can't understand, he was offered a full scholarship for grad school, but he turned it down. "It was too monastic," he says. So he took a job designing toilets for Vincent Kling & Associates.
Itchy to try something else, Berlin decided to join the Peace Corps. All was going along swimmingly at the sessions in the Poconos where he was training for Korea until the government psychiatrist deemed Berlin "not suitable". Another strike against him, but he didn't despair; he decided to take a post in Moosup, Conn., teaching special needs students in the public school system. For personal reasons, he quit. Berlin then went on to teach English and photography at the Whitman School in Steamboat Springs, Colo., where he got fired.
Oddly, Yale came into the picture once again when they offered him yet another full scholarship, this time in drama. He accepted but quickly dropped out. By this time acting was in his blood, so when an opportunity to do a movie in Grenada came up he jumped on board.
"A guy from Amherst who was a drug dealer wrote a film about the end of the world. It takes place on a ship. There are pirates left over from World War III," explains Berlin. "I had to climb up the mast naked with a spy glass. The one-boat army came along and arrested us." All 35 members of the cast and crew were jailed for nudity. Let the good times roll.
As the film fizzled out the filmmaker decided some of his followers should start up a band. Berlin joined the fray. They all moved to a house near Amherst. It turned out to be temporary housing because the house burned down. "The karma with this guy was scary," says Berlin. "I moved to New Haven to a multi-cultural house and worked in a porno bookstore." It was at this time that the musician card was drawn with a firm hand.
"Everyone in the house was so creative, they were all artistic," says Berlin. "I got a piano from a church and started to write songs. I found my way." However, the musician never got a handle on the piano, and admits today that he doesn't know notes or chords.
"I'm proud of the little parts I write, they're very simple but they serve my songs," says Berlin, who accompanies himself on piano with limited but adaquate chords when he performs.
For the upcoming spotlight, Berlin plans on playing an original song or two from his most recent CD, "Me and Van Gogh," as well as the CD he has coming out in September, "Old Stag." Plainspoken little vignettes of the frailties of mankind and dramatic slices of life on the table, Berlin's cabaret style of song and storytelling is sure to provide some laughs and a moment or two of deep thought on weighty matters.