music in the trenches

In spite of a lot of time spent digging into learning the military marches, marching militarily and machinating everything militaire, I did find some time for a bit of jazz, even Fijal Space Jazz in fact. I was invited by my superiors to form a lunch time jamm band and here we play one of my more spaced out jazz doodles called "Augmental". Videoed here are Chief Warrant Officer Don Cox on bass, Warrant Officer Floyd Hall on piano, Private Phil Lucy on alto sax, and Private me on military trumpet (with Private Jim Edwards checking out my Fijal Space Jazz chart):

CWO Cox and WO Hall invited me on one of their jazz gigs too. I'll always remember blowing some cool space jazz on "Old Man River", on a little stage in a park in nearby Alliston, Ontario on a beautiful summer evening. But I digress; although these years were somewhat lean in terms of time spent space jazzing, I did manage a little doodling for strange combinations of instruments playing my original compositions. One group consisted of a bass clarinet, flute, trumpet and two french horns complete with a jazz rhythm section (drums, bass and guitar). Here's a version I made overdubbing my trumpet and flugelhorn:


In 1992 I was posted to the PPCLI band in Calgary. As a stark contrast to the structures of musical operations in the band, I joined a local group of fearless musical explorers who called themselves the Living Hell band (Danny Graham, Lynn Hauer and Korey Krissa). It was a great release for me and an opportunity to start playing with free improvisation again. As well, I started playing with my electric guitar pedals: a chorus and a delay pedal, on my trumpet. Improvisatory space jazz in the trenches; non-stop no rules, just listening and responding; Swimming through a sea of sounds, fishing the depths for the lost chord.
After a few years of experimenting, we took a gig at the local jazz club called "Chaos Café" for a CKUA benefit. We bravely assaulted the audiences ears with our own special brand of the musical chaos theory and courageously played on in spite of varying responses on faces from horror to humour.

Continuing my play with FX pedals, I found this cool sound with a looped and echoed flutter effect on my horn. Called this one: "It Came From Outer Space".