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of those things and more: he
won our hearts. We signalled
his victory with standing
ovations; he paid us back
generously, with three encores.Everyone-star, band,
listeners-left with a glow.
Thirty years a Canadian
and neve-i:...a fan of i.eonard
Cohen's? I am one now. □

Now if only he could find a
way to put more warmth into
his playing he would fully
deserve his poll-winning
status.
The Time Flies series continues on at the Vancouver
East Cultural Centre with
p iano virtuosos Paul Plimley
1solo) andJ ean Beaudet
(with a hot quartet) on
Alex Varty
Thursday (November 3). Ex" h ·\ a-,. ~ " - I / l
f\fCv -l
~~ ~172.<l\i;:~ pressive avant-gardists Unity and the Tom Cora/Hans
Michael Brecker
Reichel duo perform Friday
(November 4), and the wonBand/Lunar
derful pianist Marilyn
Crispell closes the series.
Adventures
first alone and then with the
Review: Commodore,
17-piece New Orchestra
Workshop ensemble. on SatTuesday, November I
urday (November 5). □ Alex

Time Flies series soars
right from the start

Vancouver's Lunar Adventures and New York City.
Michael Brecker Band kicked
off the Time Flies minifestival with two very unlike
but equally fine sets of jazz,
last Tuesday night. Oddly
enough. each band chose to
open with a Celtic-influenced
original. but from the re any
similarities were outweighed
by a world of differences.
Cramped together on a
small corner of the Commodore stage. and still unaccustomed to performing for
audiences of more than a few
score, Lunar Adventures
played to each other, producing a warm and unified
sound that made up in interplay what it might have
lacked in charisma. All four
Adventurers are much concerned with texture. and the
band used small percussiondevices. unconventional instrumental techniques and
electronics to good effect,
colouring a set of strong.
vital melodies that are crying
Jut to be burnished up in the
recording studio and set
loose on the marketplace.
Brecker, of course. has
been a visible commodity for
1 couple of decades now, and
.t shows: he plays a sort of
Jebop squared, not just in
:erms of speed-though he's
'ast-but also in terms of
10w the rounded edges of the
azz Jdlom have been pared
·rom his music. leaving a
·ather hard, geometrical,
1lmost cublstically faceted
:ore. The difference between
1is sound and Lunar's tones
s that between a sparkling
liamond and a mossy en:rusted geode: some people
will love the fine-cut stone
while others will be Intrigued
by the organic exterior and
the mysterious Interior dlrnenslons of the wild rock.
It's not hard to guess
vhere my sympathies lie,
mt I was Impressed by the
.trength ofBrecker's band. A
nore muscular yet controlld set of electric jazz would
1e hard to imagine. It's clear
hat Brecker himself can do

Varty

Sonic Youth
Preview: Town Pump,
Thursday, November I 0

Feedback festival arrives,
earplugs are optional
True fans of the outer edge of
guitar sonics are in luck.
Two of the finest modern experimental groups are coming to the Town Pump:
Screaming Trees and Sonic
Youth. Both know how to
turn feedback and outrageously sustained chords into
the kind of primal music that
shoots through you and pins
you to the wall with your
head twitching in time to the
inescapable rhythm .
The Screaming Trees, a
band from Washington state,
make their local debut at this
show. Fans of the sadly
defunct Husker Du should
like the Trees, because they
have a fine sense of how to
blend noise and distortion into a focused, practically
psychedelic, beam of power.
Sonic Youth is even more
experimental, with several
different guitars. each set to
a different unusual tuning.
Despite the artiness behind
this quest for unusual variations of music, they really
rock. and lately they've
managed to construct their
Innovations Into tunes that
are somehow Identifiable as
pop music, In a way that
eludes explanation. It almost
shouldn't be possible. but
they do It very well.
Sonic Youth Is also an
engrossing live band. fascinating to watch and at times
almost poetic to hear. A brief
demonstration occurred at
the Luv-a-fair more than a
year ago, in a show that was
cut short by the early closing
hours on Sunday nights.
That won't happen this time.
There will be a full evening
of the type of music that
either sweeps one up Into
a headbanglng frenzy or
drives one away with ringing
ears. □ Dave Watson