2003-01-17

Back in the day, I was in a band. No really, I was. At first glance, this statement would seem to assume some level of musical proficiency on my part. However, my complete lack of any such proficiency (outside of a short childhood stint of piano lessons and a regrettable passing acquaintance with the clarinet) was precisely the point of this �band�. None of us could play a damn thing, except for our guitarist (and the brains of the operation, in the style of a hand-wringing evil genius in a B film), who was entirely self-taught and, at that point, not quite ready to pinch-strum for the Mothers of Invention if you catch my drift, although he�s come a long way since then.

We wanted to summon fame whole cloth from nothing using only the mechanics of hype, minus the pedestrian encumbrances of practice, songwriting, or anything resembling talent. We wanted to become a postmodernist comment on the manufacture of celebrity, a dissection of the interaction between media and public perception. We wanted to be the Marchel Duchamps of garage rock, turning the urinal of the music industry on its proverbial ear.

In other words, we wanted to sit around and get fucked up and talk about what kind of bullshit we�d pull if we were famous. We also wanted an excuse to act like dicks. And lo: Gojiro was born.

Although any actual product issued by Gojiro was more along the lines of performance art than rock and roll, we did start out with a fairly traditional set of instruments, mostly because we had them lying around: I supplied an electric guitar and amp (and an almost-working knowledge of about ten chords), Evil Genius supplied a decrepit keyboard, an acoustic guitar and a microphone, and someone else came up with a bass guitar. We rented a drum kit for a couple of months, and when the Drum Fund was exhausted (I think we drank it), we bashed the shit out of a set of rubber containers instead. Fuck you, Stomp. At various times, I provided shitty guitar, shitty bass, shitty keyboards, shitty vocals and shitty drums. We were less interested in churning out anything listenable than we were in the stage antics that would accompany our aural bilge: an early �jam session� involved us videotaping ourselves playing (read: making a hideous lot of noise) while our bassist writhed around on the floor, enveloped in a flour sack up to his chest and wearing an SS helmet, as the rest of us took turns whacking him with the drumsticks. Not surprisingly, it also involved a lot of beer.

We spent most of our time plotting ways to get famous without doing any work. We planned to create gig posters for an imaginary show, plaster them up everywhere, spread the word about this amazing band (as I recall, we were going to claim that Gojiro was from the States somewhere), and then show up at the designated time and place to see what kind of crowd we�d generated, whom we�d then rouse into a frenzy by complaining loudly about the asshole rock stars who�d cancelled the show. Events on that scale never did transpire while I was with the band, although the four of us did manage to get people to refer to us as a �band�, and that was something of an accomplishment. Evil Genius even had groupies, and he�d do impromptu performances of our hit song �What�s Jute?� in the hallways at school: mostly that entailed bashing at the strings of a violently out-of-tune guitar, rocking back and forth like an autistic wino, and screeching �WHAT�S JUTE?� at the top of his lungs. Good times, good times.

Despite the inevitable falling-out of the original lineup, Gojiro continued to exist in sundry disconcerting guises, some of them even involving music. I have of late come back in contact with Evil Genius, and he summed up the lurid arc of the band�s career in a recent e-mail:

�As for the music getting more sophisticated, well�no, I'd say it's grown more facile if anything. Our first gig consisted of me and A drinking Scourgeuse* on stage and daring anyone in the audience to get up and remove us. We didn't actually have instruments, although I think S might have been playing a keyboard in the background. We then invited the audience to play a drinking game with us. Some guy with a trumpet got up and started playing it (the trumpet, not the drinking game). At some point I ran around blowing on one of those elk call things you can buy at sporting goods stores. The second (and final) gig was at a seafood restaurant. I taped a microphone to an �Electronic Battleship� game in honour of the venue. Then the soundboard broke, and it was over. One time we had a �Gojiro Parade� down 17th Avenue, and stopped for an impromptu free jazz session in a laundromat. I'd describe our new sound as �Creature Dub.��

Despite its failure to be embraced by Calgary�s music scene as the Dadaist emblem of the postmodern zeitgeist, Gojiro has even gone so far as to produce recordings, one of which will apparently be sent to me in short order by Evil Genius. To say I�m curious to hear it is an understatement.

In later years, I was in a second fake band called �Transfucklesbo�, but that�s a story for another day.

* �Scourgeuse�, proper name �Scourgeuse McNaster�, is the invention of Evil Genius: the patented drink to separate once and for all the men from the mere hominids, and the first three layers of skin from the tongue. It consists of equal parts Jack Daniels and Buckley�s Cough Mixture (the latter mostly for sheer nastiness of taste, although it has the added effect of curdling in the whiskey, creating an unspeakably horrifying chunky texture). It tastes�well, pretty much as you�d expect. Evil Genius forced the band to do shots of Scourgeuse one night as some kind of initiation while we were all stoned on acid. I don�t think I�ve fully recovered yet, and I�m not sure into what I was initiated.