Bruno, Elio (Mind Gallery) (July 2002)

Entering The Gallery Of His Mind - A Conversation With Elio Bruno

Mind Gallery is just one of those names that is perfect for a progressive rock band. It sounds intelligent, memorable, and respectable. These qualities, however, pale in comparison to the fact that the moniker represents the members of this Canadian act just as well, and in every sense of the word. Mind Gallery is a band whose's interests transcend those of music only, with its members' activities extending into areas as diverse as programming, political activism, scientific theories, design of new devices and systems, alternative healing options, and Lord knows what else. A veritable collection of diverse thoughts and activities, as well as an act with a guitarist influenced by punk (and not at all by progressive rock), Mind Gallery is a band that just had to be interviewed. And thanks to both Mind Gallery sound engineer Anita Langley and keyboardist Elio Bruno, yours truly able to do just that!

Marcelo Silveyra: Back when the Mind Gallery lineup lacked a guitar player, you enlisted Gary Bourgeois, who had previously been in a couple of punk rock bands. Why ask a punk rocker to join when Tracy Gloeckner (drummer), Mike Anderton (bass), and you were making progressive music? Looking at the band's music now, how do you feel Bourgeois' punk experience has benefited Mind Gallery and its sound?

Elio Bruno: Since 1979, Tracy, Mike, and I were involved together in various bands. Our first dedicated prog band was One-Eyed King, which formed in 1985 with Mike on guitar, Dennis Vasile on bass, Tracy, and myself. We played prog cover tunes from bands like King Crimson and Genesis and actually played a few gigs. We began writing original tunes from old riffs Tracy and I had developed between '79 and '83. The rocky relationship over the years between Tracy and Mike, coupled with the fact that both of them didn't get along with Dennis, led to the breakup of this band. In 1989, Tracy and I put ads in the local paper and hooked up with John Larson on bass and Gord Campbell on guitar. We began putting together several songs that eventually showed up on The Lemmings Were Pushed, but frictions began over band vision and personalities and in 1990 it fell apart. Mike rejoined the band, but insisted on playing bass.

We wrote the rest of the songs on Lemmings while we auditioned guitarists. We auditioned thirteen guitarists, some of them incredible musicians in their respective styles, but not one of them could play odd time. I'd known Gary for five or six years as the salesman at the local music store who sold me my keyboards and I happened to tell him about our problem finding a guitarist who could play in odd time. He said he was a punk guitarist and really didn't like prog rock, but could play in odd time and was willing to give it a try. Where Gord had been a very smooth guitarist like Steve Hackett, Gary had an edgy heavy metal sound and Mind Gallery came alive with a real energy that had been missing. He enjoyed playing with us and liked our casual attitude toward music. Gary has a weird approach to guitar playing, he loves to go into these spastic wanks, a sort of trance state where anything goes and leads us to places we normally wouldn't go. It's rather amazing, considering he's not a true prog rocker, but he can sure wail in odd time.

MS: The band seems to have been playing away from the public long before your debut album, The Lemmings Were Pushed , was released. It somehow seems that when it comes to progressive rock, bands don't actually care that much about playing in a basement for quite a while before presenting themselves to the public, while in other rock fields there is more of a sense of urgency. Was there some urgent eagerness to record and play live by the time your debut was released? Actually, considering the fact that after ten years you only have three albums, do the members of Mind Gallery ever feel a sense of urgency in making music?

EB: The reason we only have three albums out is that we all have regular 9 to 5 jobs in order to pay our bills, the band is a hobby that we hope may become more. We get together once or twice a week for about three hours; so to have four albums written in eleven years is not so bad. We just finished writing our fourth CD Better Dead Than Led and are currently recording the bed tracks; it should be out next year sometime. As for live gigs, we only get to play about one a year as there are few places we can play in town and we definitely don't have the money to tour. I pay all the expenses for Mind Gallery on a mailman's wage, putting out CDs sucks a lot of money when you're living from paycheck to paycheck.

MS: From a personal point of view, The Lemmings Were Pushed was an album in which your own sound hadn't quite kicked in yet, and I found a considerable number of King Crimson references in the music. With Guilty Until Proven Rich, however, this all changed and your sound expanded into all sorts of territory: epic, dark, heavy, etc., with Mind Gallery truly acquiring an identity of its own. Did this have anything to do with the fact that you had your own recording facilities for your second album? Are those differences noticeable as your record new material, or is it something one realizes only until much later?

EB: Gary had very little input on Lemmings, most of the guitar parts had already been written. Only his solos and parts on the songs that were written after Gord left were new. Guilty was written by Mind Gallery jamming together and linking riffs created this way. Having our own studio in the basement gives us the ability to record our jams and experiment. Having my wife Anita as the sound engineer gives us many advantages and savings of expenses. As for our sound, Mind Gallery is an odd time template that we apply to various styles of music such as flamenco, heavy metal, classical, etc. We intend to go further in this direction, incorporating various ethnic instruments and styles such as flutes, tabla, and other percussion instruments.

MS: If there has been a band that some people have mentioned when it comes to describing Mind Gallery's sound, it is Djam Karet. How do you feel in regard to this comparison, or better put, reference point? Have you ever been in touch with the members of Djam Karet and if so, have you ever thought of working together at some point in the future?

EB: It's difficult for us to get our hands on new prog band's CDs, so we've only heard one song by Djam Karet on a compilation CD. We were very surprised that we are compared to this band; I always thought we sound like King Crimson [in the] '74 era with an ethnic edge. The new prog bands I like that I've heard are Mastermind, Happy Family and Thinking Plague.

MS: Something that came across to me as particularly nice concerning Mind Gallery is that it seems as if though a lot of the bickering that goes on between some progressive rock bands is practically nonexistent here. While checking out your website, I noticed a link to ConXious (previously Mindgallery) talking about how that band had changed names to avoid confusion and urging visitors to check them out. I guess a united front is better than being divided and conquered?

EB: We've had occasional contact with Bill Berends of Mastermind, but other than Bill, we don't hear much from other prog bands, though we'd like to. I think we should all work together to keep this style alive, I've never seen a style of music so vilified and discriminated against as prog rock. I go see Black Sabbath and they take new heavy metal bands on tour with them, yet bands like King Crimson or Yes NEVER take new prog bands on tour with them. You'd think that they would want to keep the style they started alive, instead, from what I gather from interviews, they couldn't give a rat's ass. We, the new prog bands, are the only ones keeping this style alive; other than King Crimson, the rest of the original prog bands have all abandoned it. We stay true fans to them, but they don't even know or care that we exist; they just like our money to keep them warm.

MS: Three Meals From Revolution could perhaps be seen as a more accessible effort than Guilty Until Proven Rich, as it retains some of the stark sampling and heavy influences but also comes across as a lot more melodious (and perhaps better produced as well). Is there a state of mission every time that Mind Gallery is about to enter the studio? How has your fan base reacted to the changes that have transpired in the band's sound?

EB: As we progress, we are getting more comfortable with each other and the style of Mind Gallery. We view Mind Gallery as a product and consistency is part of a successful product. If someone bought Genesis' Invisible Touch and then bought Foxtrot, they wouldn't believe it was the same band. We don't intend to make that same mistake; our fans can rest assured that Mind Gallery will always sound like Mind Gallery. As for a mission, we intend to make heavy instrumental odd time music with a psychedelic, ethnic edge.

MS: When writing music for a Mind Gallery album, where does the inspiration come from? Are musical pieces created with an intent purpose in mind, or do they evolve in their own way as they're coming out?

EB: Most of our music just comes out spontaneously during jams; in fact our next album will sport two straight jams. Our friends, who listen to our practices, get to hear some amazing jams that just come out of nowhere and are lost if the recorder isn't on. One of these jams, "Peeking In The Dark," is on our 10th Anniversary CD and will appear on our fourth CD along with a jam called "The New Bourgeoisie." Some songs are planned in order to express a mood we are playing with, or a particular idea.

MS: Three Meals from Revolution is a title that sounds more than a bit socialist. With Mind Gallery being a band that is quite active in spheres (gravitics, politics, conspiracies, programming, etc.) outside the musical one, how can you express those interests or get them to be known via your music?

EB: I don't think we're socialist, we're actually realists. We worship the truth, no matter how ugly it seems to the observer. Being an instrumental band forces us to use the titles of our albums and songs to get whatever messages we want out. We believe that we make our own reality and that you should be careful that you don't let others program reality for you. The 20th Century was the century of "The Big Lie" and what made it worse was that the people knew better. I'm not ashamed of Earth's past because it was fueled by superstition and ignorance, but in the last century the corruption and murder was done with full knowledge that it was wrong. Enslaving all the people on Earth was done with full knowledge and planning on a grand scale.

MS: A thing that makes Mind Gallery albums immediately recognizable is the cover art for all of them, which is rather simplistic but also to the point. Looking at all three albums, the black person silhouette with a red armband is always conspicuously present. What is the significance of this silhouette?

EB: The black figure represents authority impacting on people's lives. On Lemmings, he leads the world to a green plateau of promise, only to push them over the precipice, each of the five races in turn, with the white race last, but not least. On Guilty, our hero is forced to walk the plank of life and pay for his freedom lest he be fed to the sharks. Notice the shark is as black as the authority figure; this is because they're in it together. On Three Meals, he is in a prison (country) attached to a factory (work), forced to work for less and less wages (food), until he finally revolts. On our next album, we find our hero surrounded by several authority figures vying for his vote, with him holding a gun to his own head while trying to refuse them, Better Dead than Led.

MS: You've previously stated that the decline of progressive rock in the late seventies was not really due to punk itself, but to a conspiracy against progressive rock that both record labels and the media suddenly supported and which eliminated the genre from public eye. The question is, wasn't this conspiracy sort of asked for by the progressive rock scene itself? Didn't it just get too overblown to be able to exist any longer?

EB: No, I think what happened to prog rock is what happened to everything else in society; the right wing yuppie maggots took over with their "bottom-line is everything" attitude. Now they're giving themselves twenty and thirty percent raises on their $100K+ incomes, while they lay off regular workers or hold back their wages, blaming it on recessions created by them. I don't see anyone telling country music or jazz to give it up because it's not the fifties anymore or stop playing classical, it's three hundred years old for Christ's sake! For some reason, prog rock was supposed to die at the end of the seventies and never be heard from again. When I go buy a Miles Davis CD, I don't say I shouldn't listen to this, it's from the sixties, I just listen to it for what it is.

MS: One of your "famous" phrases is "The only good government is a dead government." Why this animosity against regimes? Is it completely impossible to ever have a decent government that looks out after the best collective interests? And if so, what would be the alternative?

EB: I've hated authority since as long as I can remember. I grew up in the days when every adult you came near would beat the shit out of you with any object they had at hand. This included parents, teachers, cops or any other authority figures that could get their hands on you. Explain to me why the generation gap between my generation and my parents' generation is as wide as the Grand Canyon, yet the gap between us and our kids' generation is practically negligible. My first axiom is "Everyone in the world is absolutely right, just ask them," that's why I don't want to govern you and I'll be damned if I let you govern me. I believe that you should have a vote on every law that governs you and if you break those laws you should be judged by your peers. My peer is not some seventy-year-old judge behind a bench or a twenty-year-old conservative. I live in a country where I pay the Piper, but they call the tune. That's why we refer to it as "The Fourth Reich."

MS: When reading about your political viewpoints, suggestions, and comments, one notices that there are a lot of conspiracies going on behind the public eye and that Mind Gallery is trying to do something about. Now, how hard is it to actually be able to do something about these conspiracies? How hard is it to stand tall and face the injustice when there are people who are dear at stake?

EB: I believe in turning on the light of truth and watching the roaches scurry for the dark corners. It's not really conspiracies that are taking place, rather mass corruption as these scumbags feed on each other and the rest of us. I'm a believer in "the hundredth monkey theory" and when enough people know the truth, change will take place in spite of the obstacles. As Kahlil Gibran said, "every dragon gives birth to a St. George who slays it."

MS: Alright, let's finish this by letting you express your thoughts on the following phrase: "free and democratic world."

EB: One of the things that few people recognize about Mind Gallery is that we are actually spiritual anarchists. God created the Earth and all the people on it and gave them free will; men created government and took that free will away for safe keeping in the reality imposed on you by "the authority of the week." The people who created democracy had the idea that every man should have a vote on the laws that govern them. It was impossible to get every individual vote to a central point, so a system of representatives was set up to bring the votes of a group of people to a central point. This was the spirit of real democracy, yet today with all our electronic abilities to get our individual votes to a central point, every excuse is made to avoid letting our individual votes count. Politicians verbally masturbate about freedom and democracy, but they have nothing but contempt for true freedom and democracy. It's very easy to bribe or threaten one man who represents a million people, it's a lot harder to bribe and threaten a million people. "Leaders" call this a free and tolerant society yet, when my generation chose to create their own culture, they began referring to us as a "sub-culture" and began to zero-tolerate us. They launched a "War On Drugs," but really it was a war on us. They began to "Cannabisnacht" our homes and take away children if found in the same house as a pot plant. Next they'll demand that we wear a green marijuana leaf sown on our coats, but they're not Nazis. If you recall the old Nazi phrase, "work will make you free," the new Nazi motto is "For free we'll make you work". Free has become the dirtiest four-letter word that starts with "f" in the English language. I pray that one day we'll be free, but until then, it's another day of stealing back my freedom from those who gave themselves authority over us.

Discography:
The Lemmings Were Pushed (1991/1999)
Guilty Until Proven Rich (1995)
Three Meals From Revolution (2000)
10th Anniversary (2001)