Blinker the Star mastermind Jordon Zadorozny may well be the pre-millennial poster boy for indie rock. His early musical influences were, naturally, the Fab Four, Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley.| He was inspired to pick up a six-string after listening to Joan Jett's "I Love Rock 'N Roll" and the over-cooked hooks of Boston blaring from muscle cars in his hometown of Pembroke, Ontario (pop. 14,000). He gained the confidence to sing after listening to J. Mascis howl and slobber through Dinosaur Jr.'s lo-fi opus You're Living All Over Me. Then there are the more obvious ties: He spent formative band years playing in Tinker with Melissa Auf Der Maur, now of Hole, and he co-wrote a song -- "Reasons to Be Beautiful" -- with Courtney Love for Hole's last album, Celebrity Skin.

There's also the fact his band's released three albums on three labels in four years -- the sad fate of many an indie rocker during these days of label consolidation and the ascendance of just about every other genre of music. Blinker's self-titled debut came out on the A&M imprint Treat and Release in 1995; A Bourgeois Kitten, was released by A&M proper a year later; and their latest, the just-released August Everywhere, was picked up in nearly releasable form by DreamWorks after A&M folded earlier this year.

All of which begs the question: Is this twenty-six-year-old multi-instrumentalist ready to carry the torch for scrappy-smart guitar rock into 2000 and beyond?

"It was never my intention to be in that movement or anything," explains Jordon, referring to the fact that he's been lumped in with indie stalwarts like Sebadoh and Smog. To hear him tell it, his records have been shaped as much by economic limitations as by artistic considerations. "This is the record that I've always wanted to make," he says of August, without hesitation.

If so, the record Jordon's always wanted to make is a decidedly polished, thoughtfully arranged and lyrically mature affair -- one that, despite drawing from the same pool of references, is leagues apart from the Smashing Pumpkins-lite riffage of his debut or the somewhat slapdash songcraft that characterizes much of Kitten. The title track lands jabs of distortion like a prizefighter, while ambitious songs like the piano and strings-driven "Pretty Pictures" and the gut-curdling vocals of "Right Kind of Girl" show that arrangement and mood are as important to the new Blinker as unbridled fuzz was to the old.

"The blueprint in my mind -- although we never talked about this in the studio -- was to make a record as cohesive as [XTC's] Skylarking," says Jordon. "Even when I was thirteen I knew that that's what I should be hoping to do. I remember thinking, how do you do that, how do you construct music that's complex but accessible, heartfelt and that's sort of in the back of my head?"

Part of what makes that formula possible for Blinker (a power trio rounded out by bassist Pete Frolander and drummer Kellii Scott) is Jordon's impressive sonic vocabulary, which was cultivated in a musical kid's version of the candy store. Although Jordon laughs at the mention of his purportedly bohemian upbringing, truth is his family was far from Cleaver conventionality. Both his parents were professional musicians (his mother into Celtic music, his father into bluegrass) whose idea of settling down was opening a music store in the Canadian boondocks when they tired of the road.

"They weren't circus folk or anything," Jordon assures, despite admitting that as a boy he was forced to dress in turn-of-the-century garb and sing in old folks' homes with his parents playing the role of backup band. "Me and this girl Tanya toured around singing Anne Murray's 'Can I Have This Dance.' She's all frilled out and I'd have the top hat and everything. We'd sing, do a waltz, do a jig, waltz again, kiss, then sing the song and then kiss again at the end. We had this twenty-minute show that we would do. I hated that, so I had to quit that. My punishment was vocal lessons."

Vocal lessons, piano studies and his father's guitar tips all contributed to Jordon's burgeoning musical identity. By the time a college-age Jordon joined Tinker in Montreal, he was a highly proficient rocker-in-training. Tinker, meanwhile, were a local sensation fueled in no small part by Auf Der Maur.

"Melissa was beloved in Montreal," Jordon explains. "Her father was the unofficial mayor of Montreal, so she was introduced to a bigger world early on."

Soon, thanks to some diligent weekend writing sessions, he was also being introduced to a bigger world. Despite the local success of Tinker, Jordon had become the man behind Blinker, the major-label rock band. Four years later, Jordon remains a major-label talent in spite of forces conspiring against his chosen medium. At the height of his transformation he even made the most rock of rock choices: He moved to Los Angeles.

"L.A. is the best thing that ever happened to me and my music," he says now, looking back on the sessions for August. "Just running into enormously talented music people all the time. And the constant sunshine is a mood lifter."

But wait, what about Jordon the indie rocker, the humble musical spirit who grew up worshipping Husker Du through the copies of Graffiti magazine that his dad brought home for him? Has he been killed off by his celebrity doppelganger? Well, not quite.

"Los Angeles is not a place where I'd actively lead a interesting life," Jordon clarifies. "It's interesting to look at and to think about, but it's not interesting for me to really be a part of life in Los Angeles. I like Pembroke. That's where things happen for me, that's where the bulk of the things that I remember that mean something to me are from."

So when Jordon prepares his next offering -- which he's describing as "either more sweeping, heavy metal, or in a Thin Lizzy direction" - he'll likely be at home, away from the glitz and back where he always finds his inspiration. He'll probably gather up some friends and head to Fred Meigher's Bar and Tavern in Chapeau, Quebec, the very same place he whiled away long, fuzzy chunks of his youth.

"You go there in the afternoon and there's a couple old guys sitting there with Labatt's 50s talking about the old days and stuff," he says. "It's basically all the young weirdoes hanging out with the old guys. In any place where there's no policing there's this almost sort of vague code of conduct that you just sort of get used to. Really, nothing goes wrong. Someone gets beaten up once a year or something. They're generally good people. It's not really an oasis; it's more like a dirty old pond."
Sort of like indie rock in 1999, if you think about it. And thank God someone's still hanging out there.

JOE ROSENTHAL
(October 5, 1999)