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Bergen "Uncle Bergie" Moore woke up one Christmas morning to find something under the tree that would change his life: a harmonica.
Moore, then a 16-year-old Vintage High School student, took that harmonica and practiced till his face turned blue. His father's gag gift came complete with a book called "Harmonica For the Musically Hopeless."
"I didn't actually take any music classes in school," Moore said. "I wasn't getting any training."
Eventually he worked up enough gusto to start a small band called the Organic Hippos. The Hippos however only got as far as playing one show before breaking up, but that didn't break Moore's desire to play music.
With books in one hand and his trusty harmonica in the other, Moore traveled to Russia after high school to study abroad. Playing on trains and wherever else he could jam on the harsh streets of Russia, he learned how to play, he said.
Since then Moore, now 23 years old and living in San Francisco, has traded his harmonica for a bass guitar and co-founded ZONK, an ultra-hip trip-hop band that has recently won a competition to open for De La Soul, a nationally famous funk/hip-hop act.
"It was amazing," Moore said, about winning the competition.
The competition itself was sponsored by Music For America, a non-profit organization that uses music to get young people to vote in elections.
ZONK zonked out 150 or more bands by getting 1,094 downloads, beating out their main competitors, The Kieran Ridge Band.
Moore explains how they did it.
"We started to e-mail our friends and have them download our music," he said. "We had a 600-person fan list that helped (the band win)."
It hasn't always been smooth sailing for the band though. They went through numerous line-up changes before arriving to their current line up. The band first started five years ago when Moore and singer Nicole McFiendish met while working together at a Concord marketing firm.
"She mentioned she was a singer and I played harmonica," Moore said.
Together they clicked and later added Dave Levison on guitar and keyboards and Walter Boncato, from Vallejo, on the turntables.
The band draws it influences from trip-hop pioneers such as Portishead, Beck and the Sneaker Pimps. Moore's personal influences include James Brown and Portishead.
Moore said he would like to play music all across the country and get paid for it. He was born at the Queen of the Valley Hospital and is a 1993 Vintage High Graduate. Moore is also a graduate of Georgetown University in Washington D.C. and holds a BA in Russian. He currently works for a Global Exchange, a human rights organization in San Francisco.
ZONK will be traveling to The Middle East nightclub in Cambridge, Mass. to perform with De La Soul, and then off to New York City to try to get another show.
While down in Maine, he hopes De La Soul will have an impromptu-acoustic-rap-jam session with him.
"That would just be epic," Moore said.
Visit ZONK at www.ZONKaholics.com for more zonkalicious information.