Some assembly required

>> Eddy Cola pieces together his Fisher Pryce Leggo Band

by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Whenever friends of mine decide to carry the mommy-and-daddy-dance through to its logical conclusion, the first thing I tell 'em is, go get the lil' brat some Lego. Those funky little chunks of plastic, in the hands of a fertile imagination, rapidly become tank-o-copters, astro-tractors and radar-packin' octo-cycles. The long-term results of Lego exposure, though, are the real payoff. Today's sour-faced rugrats become tomorrow's industrial engineers, aerospace designers and, as in the case of Jazz Pharmacy's Eddy Cola, hypercreative musicians.

In a tip of the hat, Cola's named his current side-project the Fisher Pryce Leggo Band (spelling note: Cola's not sure the toymakers' lawyers would buy the "tribute" angle). "It's something that (former Jazz Pharmacy bassist) Fraser Nash and I started a little while ago," says Cola, "a little project thing. We're both playing drums, so it's a rhythm thing, for sessioning, but ultimately, getting people to dance is the idea. We're two drummers, but we're using other things, too--MS10 synth bass, sequencing and samplers. There's also a collective on top of that, the core of which is Tommy Babin on bass and Dave Bennett on guitars and other instruments of destruction.

"We're doing an initial run of five or six dates at Swimming, just to see if we can get it going. The idea is, there's not that much of musicians in different Montreal bands playing together. We'll have different guests every week, so it's kinda like a jam, but not really. It'll be people we know, from the inside." Included on that list is DJ Maues, who'll be working the turntables of the inaugural soirée. Week two (May 31) is guest overload: Interchill's Gordon Field and the zesty Brass Knuckles Crew DJing, downtown folk from Gordon Hashimoto and electro-oddness from Freeworm, the scratch video of Covert Ops and the hip hop-infused artwork of Urban Expressions and Heavyweight.

The 31st is in fact a benefit, raising dough for a Russian kid named Anton Yakovlev who's Montreal-bound for treatment of his cerebral palsy. A sobering purpose, and a noble one, but that's no reason not to get down and silly that night. "It's childlike, what we're doing," continues Cola, "purely for fun, purely for music. There's no preconceived anything, no real image yet. It's like Lego blocks. We start with rhythmic ideas and break them up into pieces. Fraser will play half and I'll play half, and together it's a whole piece. Same idea with the other members--everybody's bringing building blocks to the group, eventually creating a sort of collage, but definitely a unit."

The visual arts aspect of the benefit night suggests some interesting possibilities, ideas that haven't really been explored at Swimming yet. Cola says that while the FPLB's intentions are humble for now they, like Lego itself, leave ample room for future add-ons and expansions. "Right now it's very small, like a scene. If it does blossom, then it'll be everything, because we have enough people around us doing animation, video, film and so on that it'll all converge into one thing eventually." :

Swimming every Wednesday starting May 24, 10pm, $5. The Friends of Anton benefit (May 31) is at 8pm, $8