His Brilliant career

>> Gary Jansz is back with the country-rock Quinine and a new record distributor called Brilliant

by CHRIS YURKIW

"I was one of the first people out when the new regime came in."

That's Gary Jansz, talking about his last days as a buyer for Cargo, the late, largest distributor of independent recordings in Canada. And if Jansz was one of the first to leave when he smelled trouble, maybe that's because he was also one of the first onboard to help found Cargo back in the late '80s. His instincts proved right: Cargo tanked and closed its doors two years after Jansz had left in late 1995.

"Cargo was just a monster that was out of control," says Jansz, "way too many staff, way too much product, way too big." Today, Gary co-runs a much leaner label and distribution company called Brilliant, one of several similar Montreal companies which are largely run by former Cargo employees, including F.A.B., Nice and Ozone.

"All of us have learned from the mistakes that Cargo made," says Jansz. "Everyone's kind of mapped out their own niche and they're doing it really really well."

Nonetheless, the basic philosophy of Cargo remains with Jansz and Brilliant: the company subsidizes its Canadian representation of preferred British and German labels ("post-rock, space rock, drone rock") with the distribution of more mass-appeal imports, such as Radiohead albums released only in Japan. In early '99, Brilliant's first big project will be a series of four Spacemen 3 reissues, beginning with a new double-CD version of Playing With Fire.

Brilliant has been happening since early 1997, which is also when Jansz went public with the new band he leads, Quinine, who fit nicely in the local scene between similarly slow-and-low neo-country bands like Sackville and Molasses. Jansz had been previously known as the drummer for the demised Goldfish, a Brit-influenced indie-rock outfit. But with Quinine, who will release an EP in early '99, he moves to acoustic guitar and leaves violin, upright bass and drums to back him.

"It was always the running joke in Goldfish that I was the closet Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris, Johnny Cash fan," says Jansz. "A lot of people who got their start in punk rock, like myself, get burnt out on indie rock as they get older. And you start looking back into the history of music."