It wasn’t my idea to make a solo album.

I wouldn’t have been so pre­sump­tu­ous that I could do it. I wouldn’t know where to start and I didn’t have the money. How­ever, Neil Rook and Tom Carter thought dif­fer­ently, so, blame them.

It was 1996. Much to my relief, I had dis­solved Lit­tle Games and had no plans to lead another band. I was in a cou­ple of oth­ers and, as a side­man, all I had to do was show up for the rehearsal or gig. Didn’t have to orga­nize, arrange, make deci­sions. I had cast off a mighty weight.

Besides, Lit­tle Games was falling apart; scram­bling to keep it together was adding to my stress. The few gigs we had were well-performed but the money was piti­ful. I didn’t care about the money, but it was embar­rass­ing to give work­ing musi­cians a pit­tance and I didn’t want to stand in the way of peo­ple pay­ing their rent. This caused a lot of con­flict and lead to the end of Lit­tle Games.

By this time, I was writ­ing most of our songs. I’d com­pose a sim­ple (ok, prim­i­tive) song on a gui­tar that I played very badly. I was ter­ri­ble but knew enough to slap together a few chords and apply lyrics, often writ­ten over break­fast with a hang­over. I’d put the song on my four track recorder. Add drums, bass, another gui­tar. I’d trans­fer the four tracks to a stereo cas­sette deck, which cre­ated a two chan­nel mix of the bed track. The two tracks then would be trans­ferred back to the four track, and voice and any­thing else (other per­cus­sion, BGs, gui­tar solo) would be added onto the two free tracks. Then, the final record­ing would be mixed again onto cassette.

The abid­ing rule was that I would be respon­si­ble for every note. In this way, I amassed 10 tapes that I called The Jef­frey Dah­mer Expe­ri­ence. The grisly things I would do in the name of music. At the same time, I had banded with Neil Rook, Tom Carter and Bene­dict Patrick to form a loose song­writ­ing aggre­ga­tion called Mutt. That’s a story in itself.

Carter ran a record­ing stu­dio called Magic Lab. There, dur­ing Mutt breaks, I would play a cas­sette of my lat­est atroc­ity. Rook and Carter didn’t cringe and thus became aware of my Jef­frey Dah­mer exper­i­ments. Between Neil want­ing to try record pro­duc­tion and Tom hav­ing a stu­dio, the two of them hatched the idea of pro­duc­ing a solo album with me as the soloist.

Spurring them on was a backer who had been con­vinced that I had a celebrity pro­file, could call in a few big names to appear on the record, had the songs and yak yak yak. On paper, this seemed like a good propo­si­tion, but by the time I was set to record, the backer had backed out. Maybe he knew some­thing we didn’t.

Undaunted, Neil and Tom pro­ceeded. The for­mer choos­ing the songs from my tapes and the lat­ter, a key­board player, rear­rang­ing some of them. Putting a record­ing band together was easy. For the bulk of it, I got Ra McGuire to sing BGs, Tim Hewitt on bass and Brian Smith on gui­tar. Three fifths of Trooper. I would drum. Ra and I were good friends and he had par­tic­i­pated vitally in Bruno and Lit­tle Games record­ings as either pro­ducer or adviser or as a singer. Tim sim­ply was drafted and I fig­ured Brian (Smitty) could use a change from the Trooper sound.

The first ses­sion didn’t go well. Smitty and Tim were fine. The prob­lem was with my drum­ming. Each song we’d attempt was OK on the first take but not right. When we went to a sec­ond or third I’d get more cau­tious with each pass and often lose con­fi­dence alto­gether. There was noth­ing wrong with the tracks but they lacked spark; they seemed timid. So, I fired myself. Neil and Tom got in their standby drum­mer, Phil Robert­son, who aced his parts the next day.

In the end, my drum­ming sur­vives on “Scat­ter­ing The Ashes.” Back on course, the record­ing pro­ceeded from day to day with­out inci­dent. Much to my sur­prise, every­one we asked to par­tic­i­pate did it if their sched­ule allowed. Thus, the album has appear­ances by Craig Northey and Doug Elliott of Odds (“Scat­ter­ing The Ashes,” “Lit­tle Richard Says”), Car­olyn Arends (“Strange”), David Gogo (“This Wheel,” “Guilty”), Bill Hen­der­son and Howie Vick­ers of The Col­lec­tors (“Early Morn­ing”) and Keith Scott of Bryan Adams’ band (“Five Guardian Gen­er­als”). As well as mem­bers of Trooper, are Don Har­ri­son of Sons Of Free­dom, and mem­bers of Lit­tle Games and BGM. In fact, two songs were recorded with Lit­tle Games — “Lit­tle Games” and “Strength” and one, re-recorded, dates from BGM — “Alco­hol And Tears.”

I got the feel­ing that a few musi­cians expected to be play­ing some­thing weirder or more chal­leng­ing. I am a music critic, after all, and it’s sup­posed we have more sophis­ti­cated or eso­teric tastes. That might be true in some cases, but I was an unschooled musi­cian and the songs on offer were the best I could do. I also wanted a more con­ven­tional record that wasn’t dated by trends in record­ing or arranging.

“Lit­tle Games” is one of the last record­ings by Lit­tle Games, “Scat­ter­ing The Ashes” is based on my mother telling me she sensed my Dad’s ghost near her. I’m not a great believer in such meta­physics but I liked the idea of a soul that has to wan­der until it has a rest­ing place. Craig and Doug added a lot to the song, as they did with “Lit­tle Richard Says,” which was inspired by see­ing Lit­tle Richard on a talk show in which he flow­ered over every­thing. “Strange” is straight­for­ward. “Guilty” can be inter­preted sev­eral ways, but essen­tially it’s about how we are our worst crit­ics. I can’t lis­ten to “Strength” any­more. When I wrote “Strength” I had a vague idea of what it means, but after my stroke, I knew exactly what it now means. Cuts too close to the bone.

“Work­ing Under­cover” has an unusual struc­ture but basi­cally comes from Lit­tle Games’ last drum­mer, Radar, who was thrown into con­fu­sion when his wife left him. “Alco­hol And Tears” is a the­matic vari­a­tion on “Guilty” but I really like the lyrics. “This Wheel” more or less is an attempt to write a spooky blues.

If there is one regret about the ses­sions it is that “Early Morn­ing” is the track that got away. In the back of my mind, there was a notion to include a cover of a for­got­ten song by a great Van­cou­ver group on each record I made. “My Home­town” by Seeds Of Time is on the Bruno LP, “One Ring Jane” by Mother Tucker’s Yel­low Duck on Lumpy’s.

It was while emcee­ing a Children’s Hos­pi­tal Christ­mas ben­e­fit at which a reunited Col­lec­tors appeared that I real­ized The Col­lec­tors had been a big influ­ence on me. I drunk­enly asked Hen­der­son and Vick­ers if they’d be guests on my record and they con­sented. There really wasn’t much for them to do but they were joined by McGuire on the BGs to “Sev­en­teenth Sum­mer,” another Col­lec­tors song, that was inserted to our arrange­ment of “Early Morn­ing, and Bill played some gui­tar. The Col­lec­tors’ orig­i­nal is aggres­sive and angry sound­ing. Ours is much smoother and doesn’t bris­tle nearly as much.

As well, Bill might have felt crowded. My brother, Don, plays amaz­ing lead gui­tar on one track dur­ing the gui­tar free for all at the end, Smitty occu­pies the other chan­nel and he’s amaz­ing, too. Bill squeezes in where he can in the mid­dle. How­ever, hav­ing Howie and Bill with Ra in the stu­dio together swap­ping a few tales was a highlight.

Smitty influ­enced the record just by being Smitty. The orig­i­nal idea was that my record might be an oppor­tu­nity for him to exper­i­ment or go out­side the way he usu­ally plays, but he has such a strong style that, rather than him bend­ing to us, we bent to him. This might be more appar­ent on a track that was cut from the album. Neil had an idea that we cover The Bee Gees’ “I’ve Got To Get A Mes­sage To You,” but, try as I might, I couldn’t get it. Had no feel­ing for it. Later, Smitty bol­stered the track with some very crunchy gui­tar. This reminded me of The Small Faces and, sud­denly, I knew what to do. It was too late, how­ever, as the track had been dropped.

It hasn’t been lost. My vocal was erased and Neil sang it as part of the Mutt record­ings. Again, that’s a story in itself.

The album was called Five Guardian Gen­er­als. While in Vic­to­ria (pos­si­bly while Lit­tle Games was shoot­ing the video for “To Love And Die”) I saw a dis­play of Korean and Japan­ese art at the Museum there. One of the things that caught my eye was a faded Korean tapes­try called Five Guardian Gen­er­als. It depicts offi­cers sur­round­ing their emperor/king. In truth, I can’t tell who is a gen­eral or who is the emperor/king but I was intrigued any­way. Who are these gen­er­als, when did they live, what became of them?

The tapes­try sug­gested a song, which sug­gested an album title, which log­i­cally sug­gested the album art.

The album, which sounds good cour­tesy Neil and Tom, has never been released. It was sent out to a few labels in the old fash­ioned, pre-Internet, way with the hope of one of them sign­ing us. Gen­er­ally, it was well-received albeit with back-handed com­pli­ments along the line of “bet­ter than expected.” Like, I was going to put out some­thing substandard?

There were some seri­ous attempts to cre­ate inter­est that didn’t suc­ceed and there was one small label that ini­tially agreed to release the record, but, when push came to shove, noth­ing more was heard from it. The sweep­ing changes cre­ated by the new tech­nol­ogy were to come later so these can’t be blamed.

At that time, there were arti­cles that stated records by mid­dle aged solo males weren’t sell­ing. There were a few excep­tions — Elton John being one — but every­one else was hav­ing trou­ble. As I was a mid­dle aged solo male (and, sus­pi­ciously, a music critic who already had kicks at the can with BGM and Lit­tle Games) and no Elton John, I evi­dently was a poor bet. The album was pressed in a very lim­ited quan­tity of about 35. A few still exist and there has been talk of mak­ing it avail­able via the web.