www.blairmojo.com
i don't really know how to account for myself... i never went to school much after about the age of 15 and started playing drums in a band called the androids when i was 18. at the age of 20 i became a rock 'n' roll singer in a short lived band, the heartbeats. when i was 21 i started my own band, the raving mojos and began writing my own songs. the raving mojos played from 1981-85 and were the 2nd best rock'n'roll band of all time, next to the MC5.
i hold the distinction of being the only ever toronto born member of teenage head . i played drums with them for about 8 months in 85/86, and was in the band when frankie originally quit, which was on the tarmac at calgary airport.
i learned to play guitar and had a thing called the blair martin group that played around town one summer. i then moved to montreal, with my girlfriend of the time, and got interested in the acoustic guitar, which i seemed to be able to play better than i did the electric. this led to my musical incarnation as a solo folksinger. around the same time i got interested in valium and heroin. the combination of drugs and new music led to a very creative songwriting period - for awhile, as well as another short-lived band the urban outriders. the next summer i honed my craft busking on queen street getting together money for heroin everyday.
i got more into dope over the next couple of years and - and that just got bad and i eventually did time (3 years) for "robbery ( x4)" and "possession for the purpose of trafficking diacetyl-morphine". while i was in prison i read a lot, and spent much time writing. the notes i wrote in prison eventually became an atrociously pretentious experimental novella, adios casablanca that i wrote during the first year on a methadone program. the work was not without merit, and produced some interesting poetry and one or two highly successful "stream of conciousness" passages, but otherwise, it reeks of immature, self-consciously derivative, experimental pretentions, and i'd be better off ripping it up and throwing it in someone else's garbage.
in 1995 - and after i thought that i was actually finished with music - i got hopelessly interested and entranced by latin dance music, and began a serious course of studying cuban percussion. this led to a 6 year career as leader of a traditional cuban music group, klave y kongo which played a regular friday gig at a popular college street bar for 6 years. i was the lead singer and bongo player, and this was the most sucessful era in regards to my musical career. this project ended very badly for me, however, when the band quit on me en masse and made sure that they kept the regular friday night gigs for themselves. the core group still maintain the gig to this very day under the name son ache .
in 2001 i discovered the internet, which had a profound effect on my life, and sparked my consuming interest in the computer and the potentials of its new enviroronments. that these environments were facilitating expression of the interior psychological experience for the average user in a way that had heretofore been exclusively accessible to the artist, being of the utmost interest to me. on the internet, people expressed things that they would never reveal or so much as hint at, in real life
i became interested in digital graphics in 2002, and started doing "photo manipulations" as a means of socializing and having a skill to offer the various communities that i was in touch with on the internet. as i became more involved and skilled within the process, i began to take what i was doing more seriously as "art" - and began to do my own photography with which to work. i always maintain an online gallery of my works, and am still able to add a few new pieces once in a while.
digital art and photo
in 2005, and sick of all the continuous and recurring problems with the microsoft windows operating systems, i took a few months and got hip to working with GNU / linux operating systems. currently i am doing all my work using the slackware linux distribution, using entirely open-source software and free software .
.my current major project of the moment, is a video documentary short about the prehistory and genesis of the original punkrock scene and its relationship to other elements in the downtown culture of 1970s toronto. i have completed the first chapter of the film and am working on resource development for the two subsequent chapters about the movements relationship to cinema, and the violence as it existed in the original toronto scene.
my short films - what i call my "object and incident" films - are really just the digital video equivalent of making collage fine art by cutting up/pasting photos and magazines. they are made completely from resources downoaded from the internet or ripped from a cd/dvd and are made in a space of 1 or 2 days. they are based on the idea that on the internet - and increasingly with all media - we are abandoning the traditional idea of "story" for a preferred focus on "object" and "incident" - and that, with the case of the medium being the message, the works might provoke some very different and varied reactions from the particular individuals who come in contact with them..
"image nation" (part 1)
documentary about the genesis of the original punk scene, and its relationship to to the downtown culture of 1970's toronto.
"lovesin"
johnnie lovesin is a true master of the rock 'n' roll guitar. he has the distinction of having been the first act in north america to open for the ramones outside of new york city, at the new yorker theatre (651 yonge street) in toronto, september of 1976. his independant single "tonight" (b/w a french language version: "ce soir"), was a rock 'n' roll, boogie woogie homage to the glories of bar-fights, and predates the recorded works of both the viletones and sex pistols.
in the late 1970s, his method of forming bands based around musical residencies in otherwise unused club spaces, not only saw him act as mentor to an up and coming generation of young players, but directly led to the establishment of several venerable toronto institutions. i doubt, for example, that there would be either a "lee's palace" or "sneaky dee's" if it had not been for johnnie lovesin's vision of the scene's "new uses for old rooms".
"when i see him face to face, i'll tell him you were ace, don't want to say i missed it - tonight!" - johnnie lovesin
"corday"
digitial video montage dealing with the character of charlotte corday as she is portayed in art. most notably, how she is used as the subject in the works of the expressionist and other 20th century period artists and writers; and her special relationship to the themes of taboo psychodrama, and psychosexual neuroses.
"guillotine"
digital video montage dealing with guillotine execution in the early part of the 20th century; most notably that of eugene weidmann in 1933. the enthusiasm of the crowd, as well as the fact that the event was filmed from an apartment window, became major factors in the french governments decision to ban public executions. as a result, the weidmann execution was the last public use of the guillotine in france before the death penalty was finally abolished in 1981.
"tumbao retro"
digital video tribute to the "son montuno" and the original innovators of the style: arsenio rodriguez, chappottin, matamoros, roberto faz etc.; as ... all » well as the drummers who pioneered the improvisational concepts of the rythym: chano pozo, mongo santamaria, patato valdez, candido camera, tata guines, jose mangual, sabu martinez, felix alfonso, papa kila suarez, yeiyito etc.
tumbadora and maracas performed by the writer, editor and director, blair richard martin... blairmojo.