He may be musically fearless, but Bug Incision mastermind Chris Dadge is a little camera-shy.

DETAILS

Space Face with Bug Incision
Big Secret Theatre
Friday, January 8 - Friday, January 8

More in: Rock / Pop

In keeping with the High Performance Rodeo’s ongoing appreciation of all things off-kilter, the 2010 festival is set to burst from the gates with a suitably tweaked three-night Grandstand event. This year’s theme is the reinvention of cult cinema favourites, matching Calgary musicians with visual artists for an inspired mash-up of original tunes, soundtrack cuts and freaky film clips that would make B-movie king Ed Wood proud.

“It dawned on me last year why Grandstand was such an amazing success, and I think a lot of it had to do with the audiences’ long personal history and connection to the music being performed,” organizer Kenna Burima says of the 2009 shows, which featured local bands covering songs by Weezer, The Band and Bjork. “Watching the bands and audiences have this really cool communal expression, taking them back to the first time they ever heard ‘The Sweater Song,’ made me want to re-create that experience this year.”

“Talking with fellow musicians and bandmates, I realized that most of us had very vivid memories and strong connections to films we watched as kids or teenagers,” Burima continues. “Most of them were weird or I guess what would be considered ‘cult.’ I had my wish list of musicians I wanted to be involved, we all talked about which cult film genre spoke to them the most, and then, of course, which visual artist they’d like to collaborate with. It just spiralled from there.”

On Thursday, January 7, indie-pop quartet Key to the City will team with filmmaker Ramin Eshraghi-Yazdi to reanimate the silver screen monsters that inspired the band’s 2009 album, Owls of Getchü. Saturday, January 9 finds longtime partners in crime Matt Masters and Terrance Houle revisiting their musical theatre collaboration Don Coyote with a little help from John Wayne. Nonetheless, it’s the Friday, January 8 event featuring avant-garde wunderkind Chris Dadge, friends from his Bug Incision label and local artist Joe Kelly for a “Sci-Fi Improv Freak Out” that might prove most interesting.

“The audience can look forward to seeing myself, Scott Munro, Laura Leif and Jay Crocker playing structured improvisations which will weave in and out of songs about space,” Dadge cheerfully explains. “By this I mean that there will be clear, hopefully obvious directives that inform the improvised pieces; the pieces are not ‘free-form.’ I am hoping that I can provide a scenario in which the audience will not feel totally baffled by what is going on onstage, at least not for the whole show.”

For his visual contribution to the spectacle, Kelly promises a self-described “sci-chedelic experience” that should be “very engaging if you’re in the mood.” Assigned with the strict restrictions of improvising around science fiction films from the 1970s only, he is keen to reveal the fruits of his cinematic crate-digging.

“It’s a nice way to work,” says Kelly. “Being given tight parameters can make things more interesting; resourcefulness and creativity go hand in hand. When there are less options, it can be easier to make decisions about what to do.”

“You might see some distortions on Ridley Scott’s Alien from 1979, as I have a 20-minute version on Super 8 I can work with,” he continues. “There will be a lot of prepping, but the presentation will be improvised. I will have five or six devices plugged into an analog video mixer, so I will be editing the show live. It will have a very analogue, low-res and chunky feel.”

In the end, Kelly’s enthusiasm for the project likely spawns from his identification as an unabashed fanboy — a long-running emotional connection similar to what Burima saw in audience and band members at last year’s Grandstand.

“Yes, I am a huge sci-fi freak,” he admits. “I have been all of my life. District 9 was a recent highlight for me. I will definitely go and see Avatar at the Imax. Some of my favourites in no particular order are Blade Runner, The Fifth Element, The Empire Strikes Back, Alien, Aliens, RoboCop, Predator… I could easily keep going.”