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TWBookSpreads_book.qxd 6/20/13 9:49 PM Page 4 from a specially outfitted freighter on the fringe of international waters, often in Greenpeace- Jeffrey Morgan, 1980 Dean Motter, 1980 Memoirs Of An Air Pirate by Dean Motter like peril from HMS patrol boats and bounty hunters. Fanshawe’s radio and TV department mounted this course to explore several disci- "...a new art of design...accepts the plines, from Buckminster Fuller’s geodesics to characteristics of machine production not as McLuhan’s theories to guerrilla video to neon limitations but as means for the creation of sculpture. But what intrigued me most at the new types of rightness, and it sees the time was the EMS Putney synthesizer. This machines themselves as tools of enormously was in the pre-digital, pre-sampling days and augmented effectiveness in the humanizing of the device resembled something out of a fifties our world. Obviously in this the designer is not science fiction movie. a free agent. If he is any good at his work, he will not pluck his designs out of the air or out of Here was a class made up of audio engineers, the private storehouse of his invention. The technicians, musicians, artists and even psy- imagination which makes him competent is not chology students, with the basic tenet that we inclined to fantasy." were supposed to ‘play in each other’s sand- boxes’ as it were. We studied under the tute- --Walter Dorwin Tegue lage of Lodge, Eric (son and ghostwriter of Design This Day: The Technique of Marshall) McLuhan, sculptor Michael Hayden, Order in the New Machine Age, 1940 and Syrinx saxophonist Doug Pringle. We were an unlikely group for whom the words “tem- PART ONE: OF MACHINES pered,” “phase” and “modulation” held very dif- ferent meaningsin each of our disciplines. In For me it all began back at Fanshawe College the years that followed, the course came to in London, Ontario. It was 1974 and I was a focus on the recording industry and the more fine art and design student at the time. One of experimental, cross-disciplinarian endeavors my electives was a class called Creative went by the wayside—but not before I had Electronics. This was the brainchild of Tom become deeply involved with electronic music. Lodge, a visionary and true-life air pirate him- self. Cousin to John Lodge of the Moody Shortly after I graduated I bought a used Mini- Blues, Tom was one of the founders of Radio Moog synthesizer from a fellow alumni of the Caroline a decade earlier. This was England’s course, Michael Jackson, who was selling it off first progressive radio station which circum- so he could travel to England and study at vented the British Isles’ repressive government recording studios there such as EMI, PYE and controlled broadcasting industry by transmitting Abbey Road. 1 TWBookSpreads_book.qxd 6/20/13 9:49 PM Page 6 I’d had an affinity for electronic music since the we had to make our living by doing children’s generators—so PART TWO: early days of Pierre Kingsley and Walter books, record covers, and magazine illustra- there was an infi- Morgan at Eastern Sound. OF MEN Carlos and, later, Pink Floyd and ELP. At last I tions of all kinds. nite number of had the ability to imitate them. I noodled textures and By this time, my around with the machine in my living room in However, one of my studio mates, John sonic construc- long time friend Toronto for a time, but became bored with sim- Allison, also shared my affinity for electronic tions to look into. and colleague, ply accompanying records. That pastime music. He was the proud owner of a Sythni But original Jeffrey Morgan lacked fulfillment. The physical exhileration that 100, which was basically the Putney in a brief- melodies? That (a frequent visi- my idols like Emerson and Wakeman loved to case with a maddenly tiny touch-sensitive key- was another mat- tor to the MARS exhibit was missing. Accompanying them- board. John suggested we pool our resources ter entirely. studio on both selves on a variety of machines—some by so we hooked up our gizmos and, lo and sides of the being ambidextrous, others by automating their behold, we had an art studio up front and a It was no acci- soundproof sequencers and event generators—they stood recording studio in back. dent that by then wall) had for a brave new world where technology was my new heroes become inter- not only accessible to the artist but also able to Well, it wasn’t long before we had attracted had become de- ested in what I liberate them from the conventions of ensem- two more synthesizer owners: flutist Pierre constructivists was up to. In ble performance. There was an inherent, Ayn Ouellet, who owned a 4-track TEAC tape like Steve Reich, Philip Glass and especially addition to being the defacto Canadian Editor Rand-like heroism to the vision of an individual recorder; and Patricia Cullen with her ARP and Brian Eno. But I still wanted to produce of CREEM Magazine in America, Jeffrey was freed from the bonds of his fellows and the Oberheim. We expanded and the entire co- something that sounded at least a little bit also the editor and senior writer/columnist of shackles of a score. operative became known as MARS & CO: an conventional—if only just to prove that with Cheap Thrills, a rock ’n’ roll monthly published anagram for our last names (Motter, Allison, enough technical knowledge, imagination, by CPI, one of North America’s largest concert So I purchased a rhythm machine and a Rivoche, Steacy & Cullen, Ouellet). and recklessness one could approximate promoters. And because I also happened to be sequencer and eventually another synthesizer. musical talent. That a command of pure theo- Cheap Thrills’ art director and designer, Jeffrey I had a good assortment, if a bit Rube And now that I had everything I needed to retical ‘architecture’ would allow me consider and I used the magazine as a monthly forum Goldberg-like, but it was still that of a hobbyist. emulate my musical heroes I was missing only myself a musician. to promote the shared interests we had in the one thing: musical virtuosity. I could create more subversive musical styles of the day. Around this time I moved my graphic design Tangerine Dream-like drone pieces combining It didn’t take long to learn the folly of my and illustration gear out of my home to share a phase shifts and filter sweeps with simplistic ways. Sharing the facility with an artisan like So when Jeffrey saw the Ali Baba’s cave of Queen Street West studio (located above the chord changes bathed in a myriad of textures Pierre and a brilliant virtuoso such as Patricia, synthesizers at MARS, his eyes lit up like two original Silver Snail comic book store) with a and effects, but I had no songs! That didn’t I soon realized that any aspirations I had for LEDs. Having studied electronic music himself number of other artists including Ken Steacy stop me from investigating just what the becoming a professional performer would be at York University with James Tenney (who and Paul Rivoche. Ostensibly we were all machines were capable of, though. Every com- relegated to being an ‘interesting sideman.’ had played on Terry Riley’s seminal album, aspiring comic book illustrators but, as Toronto ponent had a variable control—whether it was And even then my other commitments would In C), Jeffrey began tinkering with the key- had only a nascent comics industry at the time, the oscillators, envelope shapers, or rhythm make it difficult for me to devote the time boards while I programmed and engineered in needed to cultivate such a narrow niche. an effort to continue my sonic explorations. 2 3 TWBookSpreads_book.qxd 6/20/13 9:49 PM Page 8 We spent countless late nights, weekends, and PART THREE: OF MUSIC Then Mark Shortly thereafter holidays practicing and recording endless vari- Domenico, a Andy Haas from ations on themes. Some we came up with on I was involved in the music business in other vocalist with Martha and the the spot; others Jeffrey had already written at ways. After a stint as art director at CBS Sefel Records, Muffins showed home on his piano. Occasionally we came to Records Canada, I had hung out my own shin- joined in. (His up to wail away aesthetic loggerheads but always managed to gle and was for a time one of the busiest children’s music on saxophone. patch things up in time for another session. album cover designers in the country. I was album But, I’m (He was a friend working for major labels and independents Just A Kid had and student at the What I discovered, or re-discovered rather, alike. One of the advantages of that line of garnered me a Ontario College was that aforesaid brave new world of the Ayn work was that I came to know many of the Juno Award of Art when I Rand-like technological musical individual. It musicians who roamed the local circuit. I often nomination for taught a Creative wasn’t so much in one’s dependence or inde- collaborated with them on artwork for their self- album cover Electronics pendence, but the simultaneous feeling of con- financed or domestically produced LPs, EPs design.) He, in course there.) trol and unexpected discovery. Each tune was and singles. In doing so I spent a lot of time turn, brought a machine in itself, and when all the parts dwelling in bohemian rehearsal spaces, along his two Even fellow worked in sequence and harmony it was as recording studios, and concert venues.

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