The Real Story...

Colin Davison (aka Jude) contacted me after catching a 3Poets show at the Glacier Café in Nelson (since closed). I remember that it was snowing. I think it was just before Christmas & I had an end of the world theme so it must have been 1999. Anyway, Colin had written a CD of songs sung by a fictional punk band name of Fetish. He’d just come back from LA where he was trying to flog some songs and was looking for somebody to work on a screenplay with him. I do believe it was Thomas Cournoyer said I might be interested. I had been working the year previous with Thomas on the Mind Field’s tapes. Anyway, at first Colin wondered if I would be interested in doing some kind of poetry thing for the screenplay but then he wondered whether we should just do the screenplay ourselves. I had never done anything like that & neither had he but Colin was like: it’s only an hour or so long – how hard can it be? After a little hesitation, like a fool, I said, sure why not.

So, the upshot was that Colin & I met at my house or his house once a week (maybe more) & worked up various scenes & drank wine. That was probably one of the best winters I ever had. The wine was cheap & the laughs were really great.

We went on to do some shows at local joints – me reading & extemporizing over Colin’s guitar & beat box & Colin singing some of the songs etc. It was our idea of advance publicity for the movie coming soon to local theatres. So while we were waiting for Hollywood to get its act together & make the damn movie, we went on to put up a website, do a photo shoot of the band and so forth. Our idea was to get people involved all over the net. Different people from around the globe would take on the personas of the different band members & other personnel & the site would evolve. The fictional band manager was writing a novel about the fictional band that would also include a book of poetry by the fictional lead singer of the band and so forth.

We also included a couple of bus boys (Colin & myself) who would be in the movie & the book as fictional characters who had overheard the various stories from the Fetish band because the diner where they worked was the diner where the band hung out. So, naturally there was a little conflict between the bus boys & the band manager who was also writing a script and of course the later novel which told about the making of the movie and then of course there was the dispute over the death of the lead singer or…