Biography for Jacques A Blackstone,composer of the Banff Film Festival theme

My Personal Biography

I was born in France in 1966. Soon thereafter, the family immigrated to Canada . Due to the family’s work (thanks dad), we moved all over North America from Montreal to Los Angeles , finally making Vancouver our home.

My musical training started at the early age of 4 with piano lessons from my sister. At age 6, private classical guitar lessons overtook my musical training. Continuing to play both instruments, I attended North Texas State University (now known as the University of North Texas ) as a major in music composition with a minor in classical guitar performance. I was the only student in the history of the University who was enrolled in classical guitar master classes but was not a classical guitar major. Needless to say, this did not sit well with my professor. He made me attend the master class, pay for the tuition, made sure my piece was practiced up and ready, but never allowed me to play; Even though I could blow the pants off from some of the other guitarists.

As a composition major I was told to write atonal music. If you’ve ever heard atonal music then you understand. If you’re a fan of atonal music, hey, more power to you! If you don’t know what atonal music is, do some on-line searching. For a quick in-home demo: grab a hammer, randomly hit artifacts and walls or anything you wish to destroy in your home, and now figure out some way of writing this down in an inventive time-chart format and presto, your now a composer ready for a Ph.D. in music. Anyway...

Personally, music for me requires a sense of tonality. So when my teachers wanted to flunk me because I wrote a 16 page full orchestral piece and not some cryptic time-chart made out of random notes and tones, I decided to leave the world of ‘educated’ musicians and write some music that the world could enjoy.

So I formed the band: The Knarly Thrashers. You guessed it, hardcore punk at its best. Green Day eat your heart out. A drummer with safety pins through his cheeks (Mike Malinin now of the Goo Goo Dolls), a bassist who did not know which planet he was on, a singer with one (1) glass eye (which he would occasionally take out and throw at audience members) and me, loud, proud, and with a Mohawk on my head. I made my mom so proud of me!!!

Soon thereafter I moved to Vancouver to earn some money after this expensive escapade in higher education. I started the band Ivan Purple . This band started as a foursome and quickly became a trio (where are you Charles and what are you today?). We were:

	Jacques: Guitar, bass, vocals, drums & keys
	Nela H: Keys
	Ron Clempson: Guitar & vocals
	Charles: Bass

We played around Vancouver for a few years as a really different act. No drummer, just a drum machine (avant-guard for 1987). We were a cross between punk, classical, and techno (which had not yet existed). We once got a review and labeled as an: Ethno-Gothic Techno Pop sound. We liked it! We managed to play every dive in town and we were happy.

This went on for a few years and we got a mild success. A few videos on Much Music, VH1, MTV, and other video stations. But the best was when we went #1 on the charts in Poland . We had a lot of interests in touring but no financial resources or backers. No record label was interested and why should they be, they were all headed into grunge (which turned into hip-hop). Let’s not let the record label execs listen to atonal music and promote it into some kind of fashion!

After Ivan Purple ran its course and Nela H went on to other endeavors of life (a mommy and operate an amazing dance school), Black Stone was created. A new album was cut (Insomnia) and titled accordingly. I was working in a recording studio then and was averaging 2 hours of sleep a night recording my own stuff at home for 6 months (hence the title). Ron came in for some cameo appearances on certain tracks and so did Nela H. Predominately; this was a solo album by me. Yet again, a couple of videos were spawned, some album sales, but now TV & feature films started showing interest. My music had now been used as source music on these programs. Hmm, my university teachers did mention that my music sounded like movie music.

Forever loving the feeling of performing live, I decided to create a live band that no one had seen before. 2 stand-up drummers, guitars, bass, and keyboards, all driven by a computer system. All I can say is WOW! This was truly an amazing ensemble of some very talented and prolific musicians. Every live show we played got a minimum of 3 encores. After our first gig, the director of a feature film happened to be there and wanted a song of ours in his film. 5 days later we were being shot into the film with 2 songs.

Labels started getting interested, managers were seriously looking at us, and everything was headed in the right direction. But unfortunately, get 5 talented people in one room and what do you get? Disaster! I won't get into it but some of the demands were ridiculous! All I can say is that any negotiation with a label proved futile at that point. The 5-piece disbanded, a new version attempted with a new member, D24 was formed, but alas the dream and moral had already been shattered.

I’ve since cut my long hair off (which is in a bag for future scalp repairs) and been working in the film industry and thriving at my work. I love what I do but the passion of music has never left my soul. All of the recorded works from over the years are on here (with more to come). I hope you enjoy my music and I thank you for listening. Let me know your thoughts via e-mail, I’d love to hear from you.