I remember that none of us were very good at our instruments, but we thought we were way better than everyone else. We were jazz-fusion snobs, in the early 90s world of guns n roses and skid row that surrounded us. Our major rival was another band of high school kids, led by a kid named Victor Ortega, and also featured Ian Zazueta. They did GnR and Extreme [sic?] covers, as I recall They were our rival becuase they were the only other band we knew. We were all to young to go out to clubs, and way too sheltered and scared to sneak out. So we played a few parties that our friends held. We were generally ignored, or screamed at to shut up. I remember Koven and I went outside with out horns (he was playing trombone), and just started improvising off each other. Some "friends" watched for a while, and then said something they though was clever, but wasn't. Koven got real upset and stormed off. No one appreciates ART!
Keep in mind, though, that we probably really did suck.
I think this was the same party were we met Anthony Dupree . At the time, we hated him for played covers on acoustic guitar and wowing the ladies. That's not ART! Later he would join me and Koven Smith and Jon Austin in forming Minton's Playhouse.
I think that night culminated in what we thought would be an allstar jam of us two bands; Victor's and Montag. It was as awful as you can imagine. The metal guys were playing power chords as fast as they could, and tapping, and we "artists" were weedling and soloing as high and loud and fast as we could.
It's that with the exception of Trevor Griffin, everyone who was in that band is still rocking. Koven's in Indiana, and his Big Band opened for Fugazi. I keep threatening Jon and Jim that I'll mp3-ify some of those old recordings (we recorded EVERYTHING back then) and put them up here.