Jessica Erlendson

Funny, but Smear Campaign, a supposedly brave new piece of performance art, actually made me nostalgic.
A performance-art work, whether it makes sense to the audience or not, ought to provoke an emotional response, punch some buttons. When it doesn’t, a critic is reduced to playing “spot the influence.” This one catapulted me right back into the era of Andy Warhol, acid and waif-ish folk singers.
Smear Campaign, concocted by local artists Michael Milo and Mathew (DMZ) Di Castri, consists of a juxtaposition of video collages, live songs and some rudimentary theatrics. According to a press release, it purports to be about “the manipulation of information in a media-saturated society.” Could be – I don’t know.
Despite some gestures at fantastical horror and bludgeoning satire, it doesn’t excite, or move, or do much of anything. In fact, it doesn’t even bore you. And that’s thanks to one long, hypnotic video segment – an almost subliminally-edited montage of random film and TV footage, which Milo and DiCastri have toyed with like kids twiddling the tuning knob on a radio.
What Smear Campaign does do, is remind you of where you’ve seen all this before. The use of video as psychedelic wallpaper, the hyperactive editing, etc., made me think of the druggy underground films of the 60’s and the work of people like Kenneth Anger. When a pretty, long-haired chanteuse (Jessica Erlendson) came out to croon a soft song alongside the projected visuals, I recalled Warhol, unreeling his movies overtop a performance by the Velvet Underground and Nico.
And when fragments of a talking head appeared on several TV monitors, slowly reciting a strange, gory fable, there’s a sense this could be pretty cool if you were watching it under the influence of some illegal, mind altering substance.
Aside from Erlendson’s singing, the live element consists mostly of silent movement by four performers go up as half naked savages with primitive masks. DiCastri turns up briefly as a ranting bishop in John Lennon specs, while Jeff Norgren, as a Dr. Strangelove-style loony-tune general, delivers a crazed speech about President Bush’s “new world order” in the show’s one bit of overt satire.
This coupled with the numbing video barrage, including clips of a lip-smacking “Stormin’ Norman” and burning oil rigs in Kuwait, may all add up to attempted commentary on the Gulf War and its blanket TV coverage, but it doesn’t really say anything.
- The Calgary Herald 1991

Attitude is all in how you perceive it. Let’s say, for example, you think human beings exist only for your amusement. Now, some people might argue that you’re a misanthropic prick who needs a good beating and hours of religious indoctrination to cure that. On the other hand, there are those who might feel you show a great deal of tolerance in being humored by the masses and not wanting to watch them all bubble and shriek as they’re burnt alive in a huge lake of fire.
So ya see, who’s to say what’s a good or bad attitude?
Admittedly, for the past decade local singer/songwriter Jessica Babe (Erlendson) has been fighting the perception that she could use a bit of an adjustment in the attitude department. Maybe wanting to dispel the image or possibly wanting to sort it out in her own head, Jessica is quick to bring it up in conversation.
“I very often hear about how I have a bad attitude,” she says with a look on her face that’s a great mix of bewilderment, defiance and admittance. “So I was thinking, ‘Do I have a bad attitude?’ And I started calling it my jaded sense of purpose.
“I’ve been going through this whole thing in Calgary playing live music. And I’ve done everything from leading vocal ensembles to playing in jazz bands to studio work with various people on various instruments and busking on Electric Avenue…and it’s been really hard. I find that when you’re on the bottom there’s a lot of people coming in and telling you how to do it differently.”
Jessica definitely doesn’t need any urging to do things differently, as her songs can attest. Her new independently released six-song CD called The Bedroom Project, is an odd little personally driven excursion into multi-faceted pop music. Sometimes structured like Mummer-era XTC with keen jazz sensibilities, a fondness for quirky melodies, folk leanings and Sundays-like vocals, the demanding tracks engage as often as they frustrate you into abandoning them.
The daughter of well-known Canadian pianist Bob Erlendson, she comes by her influences naturally. And judging by how long it took him to succeed – he only recently been acknowledged as one of the nations best – the fondness for jazz stylings isn’t the only thing she inherited from her dad. His gumption (not to mention his bankrolling of the Bedroom Project as well as an appearance on one track) coupled with the gentle nudging of her bassist, Martyn van Remmen, a growing fan base that can relate to her songs of gender-based boudoir musings and now, especially, the gradual acceptance by her peers in the local scene have caused her to preserver lo these 10 years.
“There’s been a big change since I first started; there wasn’t a lot of support. The other musicians, they didn’t really like what I was doing and they thought I was a spoiled brat because my dad’s a big jazz musician.
“But now that it’s been 10 years and I haven’t keeled over or just given up, they actually are happy to see me when I com to a jam.” she says.
“It’s really nice for be because finally I feel like I’m not really in the club, but at least I have the feeling that most of the people aren’t saying that I suck anymore –‘She’s got a bad attitude and she sucks’ They’re saying, ‘She’s got a bad attitude, abut she’s alright. At least she’s not a quitter anyway.”
Jessica laughs briefly and then gets that look on her face again.
“I don’t think my attitude’s that bad.”
- FFWD magazine 1998