Industrial Jazz Factory
I used to live in
a warehouse in Montreal
It was a monstrous
old brownstone ex-textile mill
on a run down dead end in St. Henri
in the industrial
zone down by the Lachine Canal
I was sharing a
three thousand square foot studio space
with a renegade gang of musicians and artists
We had divided the
space up with warped two by four studs
to which we'd stapled
crude walls of crushed cardboard boxes
Strewn about the
rooms were odd pieces of furniture
threadbare red velour
chairs and old
formica tables
with futons concealed in rough makeshift lofts
and
we had a strange assortment of ornaments
There were scrap
sculptures and bone mobiles
dangling from the beams
An old couch was nailed upside down to the ceiling
and with an inverted T.V. hung up wired to the rafters
the whole scene had a really surreal feeling
On three sides of
the studio there were huge mullioned windows
with a vast view of the tin rooftop tenement slums
We could see the
green copper domes of a dozen old churches
and looming high over it all
the affluent Chateaux of Westmount
each block up the mountain more heavily fortified
with tall walls of cut stone and iron bar gates
with large mansions at the top like feudal castles
lording over rich Mount Royal real estate
I can't forget waking
up to the clang of the loading dock forklifts
and garbage trucks banging out dumpsters in the yard
with a smoggy red
sun smearing dawn through the windows
and I'd be inevitably
groggy from the previous evening's beer
bleary eyed dragging my ass out of bed
and then staggering off to work in the wire grill factory
with the roar of machinery hammering in my head
brutal hangover
aggravated by the vile smell of the smokestacks
I remember stumbling
home an eternity later
dragged out dead
beat from exhaustion and boredom
sticky with sweat in the humid heat
every muscle in my body aching sore
coughing shop floor dust and rush hour smog
as I clomped heavy boots up four flights of stairs
down the hall to
the studio where my room mates were already
flopped out exhausted on all the couches and chairs
And yet somehow
we'd still find the second wind energy
fueled by numerous quarts of home brew
to blow off the stress of our working stiff angst
jamming mutant industrial jazz punk
blues
With anguished animal
howls cranked through the amplifiers
echoing
through the urban decay
we'd rave into the mikes off the tops of our heads
desperate
to express our pent up rage
ranting angry young maniac lyrics
spewing out spit and sweat and beer
banging on cast iron sculptures for percussion
as Johnny Chaos tortured a screaming guitar
and while Don blasted
riffs on a primitive
saxophone type instrument
made
from an old metal chair leg with a tea kettle bell
Bill blew a crude blarinet of carved wood
and I hammered zither
strings drilled into the hip bone of a cow
It was as if a collective
creative instinct compelled us
to break the robotic
rhythms of the wage slave routine
to shake off eight
hours of assembly line consciousness
and drown out the monotonous roar of the machines
I'll never forget
that apocalyptic scene
The lurid sun setting
behind the imperial mountain
like a sulfurous ball of flame
going down in a toxic haze
Semi-truck traffic
flashing long shadows through the studio
from the elevated Ville Marie Expressway in the sky
and as twilight grew darker...the hypnotic strobe
of the neon Molson Canadian sign
and the screaming
saw blades of the sheet metal factory below us
cutting through our chaotic jazz
feedback shrieking like gremlins trapped in the machinery
like the hallucinations when you're going mad
I still can't explain
what we were trying to achieve
in those crazy, spontaneous expressions of rage
banging on the iron bar wall of percussion
like we were banging on the bars of a cage
but when I listen
to the few remaining tapes from those days
behind
the heavily dissonant wall of noise
I can hear in the rudimentary music
the breakdown of the industrial age
© 2007 Gary Lee