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GRAEME KIRKLAND

Intro? ... What's black and blue and read about all over? Answer ... The third and latest release from T.O's boy punk of the black tie set , Graeme Kirkland's Compositional Collage. Thanx to the growing trend of political puritainism and cultural consignment that insider debates such as 'Music Industry in a changing world 90' (the insider debate just mentioned was held in 1990 and sought to give the Canadian music industry a new direction. A panel of a dozen or so people, Much Music's Laurie Brown being one, sat around a conference table and decided that the popular music of Canada should be country music.

This decision was almost instantly reinforced by the addition of three country music television stations to Toronto's cable line up and the arrival of CISS FM. ed.) are suggesting and enforcing, more people will read about this disc in the media than will ever hear it en mass. The CBC, who have historically welcomed Kirklands science of jazz, have labeled this effort "extreme" and "dangerous" and have declined to play it or distribute it to the rest of their shows across Canada. This itself is nothing new, one only has to ask "when's the last time I heard 'The Four Horsemen' or 'John Oswald' on adult Canadian radio?" to enter into the void that composes Can-Am culture. But this time it's different.

This time the product 'boycott' has nothing to do with it's intrinsic commercial value or any controversy surrounding the musicians culled for this outing. The scandal comes from CUSS cartoonist ( back in 93, when this review was written, the magazine presently known as Exclaim had no name, only #@*!. For this reason it was known by many names, mostly rude, one of them being CUSS ed.) Geoff Marshall's punkie cover art. Under Mr. Kirklands careful art direction Geoff fashioned the characters that were to become the cover.

Jesus Christ, two lovers, a Jew being shot by a Nazi amidst happy blond children, Graeme's X-girlfriend, a leather clad dom. being buggered by a wolf, Graeme playing drums and a loner walking down the street. All of these images are very topical, yet collaged together and serving as a cover for a disc containing the sort of white room jazz high culture has traditionally called it's own proved to be to much for the Canadian media. This isn't to say that the Comp. Swings and swoons along like a stardust piano lounge from beginning to end.

At it's most extreme the musicians play with distempered Swiss precision along with chainsaws, phone sex workers and the voice of God as G.K. beats the crap, papple and snot outta his Bam-Bam street kit like a young monkey on good speed. The music is constantly varied, switching styles as easily as someone new to the Queen St. shmooz but always containing ripped-up/ripped-off elements of collage. Packaged like a Crass album the musical cut-up reaches new heights through a contextual counterstrike that blows the milk and cookies out of limp jazz classicism like a rape whistle in an elevator. But even with such leaps and bounds and public displays minority decision has given Graeme a "handle with care" boxtop and assured that his music will be shoved into some 3AM timeslot safe from the working class populace.

If the corporate cows, and all who follow their leadership, feel that the Canadian populace are too platinum, gold and silver spoon fed to deal with humorous inconsistency then I'm sure that acoustic CISS-off country pudge will remain the opiate of our mass until we're all bored to death. I guess all I'm trying to say is that I'm a city kid and Graeme Kirkland is my kind of country.

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