Friday, June 27, 2008- North Shore News -A21

Trio played at Trips Festival

Frompage20

hanging cage where composer
Gerry Walkediddled with a
rheostat.From the ceiling hung
a collection of mirror shards,
one of which fell one night,
narrowly missing a bystander.
The trio opened for Janis
Joplin and the Grateful Dead
at the 1966 TripsFestival in
Vancouver,and Ken Kesey and
The Merry Pranksters parked
their magical bus at Motion
Studio.
In those days,says Simpson,
"everything seemed to
intersect."
It wasn't that Neil and the
trio set out to redefine jazz
music,or to follow the New
York jazz scene of the time,
which was transfixed by free
jazz. ''We changed because it
was in the air," says Simpson.
The short-lived Motion
Studio was followed by the
four-storey Intermedia and the
WesternFront,still active today
- a lineage ofWest Coast
multimedia art that Simpson
traces back to Neil's collages of sounds and mediums in the
little Kitsilano studio.
Alongside the boundary­
pushing jazz of the trio,which
became a duo in 1968, ran the

Show,featuring Al's then-wife
ccNo composer or i1'ftprovising jazz
Marguerite as a goddess of
musician can create original music out of vegetation,and Al as "sort of
gnome," says Simpson.
his ego-memory mind. The new original thisThe
collages,innovative
impossible to categorize,
music can only be discovered in the sense and
drew crowds to venues like the
that Columbus discovered America.
Vancouver Art Gallery,as the
underground scene bubbled up
Well, America was already there.''
into the mainstream.

- Al Neil, Changes (Coach House Books)

Despite the great gap
between bebop and the
boundary-pushing music
interjecting passages from
aesthetic of collage,infiltrating
and performance art Neil
them.
the music scene and inspiring
was producing by the end
unique strains of art.
"He's got this voice,
of the 1960s,Simpson says,
Al does," says Simpson
· In 1966, Neil moved into
"Al always liked to still think
a barge on the water near
- something like a crotchety,
of it as jazz,because you're
Cates Park- Simpson recalls
ill-mannered grizzly bear.
improvising and you're into it."
struggling to get an upright
"He would just have people
In his novel,Changespiano down the hill to the
on the floor just laughing their
written from the perspective of
property- and made it collage heads off."
jazz pianist Seamus Finn,likely
In the late '60s,Neil
writ large,a workshop and
a doppelganger for Neil himself
brought the live collages to
assemblage of treasures and
- the author riffs on the limits
the public,in performances
and possibilities of jazz,in
junk.
that married storytelling with
Wrote reporter Rick
between tales of sex,drugs,
music and noise.While Neil
McGrath of the waterfront
tattoos,love and Hepatitis.
digs,"One comes close to the
wove yarns from nearby texts,
Like the rest of Neil's work,
house and one enters a strange
his writing refuses to stand still
Simpson played tapes and
world of decay,of rusted bits of records- Spike Jones,or
in one category - but these
metal, of old pieces of this,of
Mad Magazine - aiming for
meditations on jazz,both gritty
and lovely, crop up throughout;
unexpected intersections.
broken hunks of that ... "
"Sometimes the collusion of love letters and hate mail
At parties,Neil created
from an artist who took the
stuff would be amazing- you
performance collages out of
genre and wrestled it into an
get a radio recording,and then
found objects,making up a
enormous new shape.
far-fetched story,then grabbing Al would incorporate that into
"The bop syndrome made
the reading, like the story about
random books off shelves and
manifest by five guys in time.
Lulu and the Blue Eagle," says
That will do for a start," he
Simpson.
writes. "Now and tl1en a sweet
More collages followed.
hint of an unknown symbiosis.
Zen Glass featured bottles
A little better,well said.And
being broken into a bucket,
then you blow your hip licks
joined by a sound recording of
breaking glass. (Due to safety
again and so it goes.Other
concerns,notes Simpson,
bands,other burns.Magic out
the piece was short-lived.)
of a C 7th and then bullshit out
Then there was The Dome
of anF."

a

the

photo submitted

AVANT-GARDE icon Al Neil has been a major figure on
the Vancouver art scene for more than half a century.

NORTHJ·azz

SHORE

The Dixie Hummingbirds
June 28th @ 8pm
80th anniversary tour for the legendary gospel
group. Special appearance by the Sojourners.
Tickets $40/$38

USIC

behind the

ag1c

� 1928-today

Tao Ravao/
Vincent Bucher
June 29th @ 8pm
From Madagascar and France,
a fusion of African beats

est Vancouver Me

he Pine Leaf

s...thls one
as a big, big heart"

June 27@ 7:30 p
Straight from Louisiana,
Grammy nominated
Cajun/Zydeco group.

Free Concerts also at Capilano Suspension' Bridge

JAZZ HOTLINE 604-872-S200 • TICKETMASTER 604-280-4444
fOR MORE INfORMATION ,VISIT: coastaljazz.ca
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