Go Jetter in the London Free Press

It’s not every day a story from 1979 shows up in the news.

Big thanks to journalist Heather Rivers and the London Free Press for the thoughtful feature on Go Jetter — and the strange, beautiful journey that turned our London tapes into a finished album more than four decades later.

The article touches on Iggy’s legacy, our time in London, and how we used new technology to bring his performances back to life.

We’d link to the full article here, but current legislation prevents Canadian news stories from being shared on Facebook and Instagram — so we’ve shared the highlights ourselves.

If you haven’t heard it yet, the album — From the Word Go — is now live on all streaming platforms, along with the short film that tells the full story.

👉 Listen to the album and watch the documentary here

Thanks to everyone who’s reached out. It’s meant a lot.

Here’s a recap of the story:

40 years after singer's death, London band reunites – with help from AI
By Heather Rivers – The London Free Press

The year was 1979, and three musicians arrived in London with one goal: to write, produce and perform their own music.

“We wanted to go to where there was a bit of a scene,” said Chris Maxfield, one of three members of Go Jetter, an upstart band from the Niagara-area community of Chippawa. “No one knew us there, so we could put all our efforts in writing songs and recording them.”

They lived and worked out of a rundown house on William Street, surviving on “popcorn and roll-your-own cigarettes,” said bandmate Lloyd Peterson. For most of that year, the trio wrote and recorded music in London.

“It was pretty dire,” Maxfield said.

They had to keep the volume low or the neighbour would call police, he recalled from his Winnipeg home. Still, they found opportunities to perform. The band played at the Cedar Lounge, Blue Boot and The York Hotel (which later became Call the Office), and earned airplay on student radio stations.

“The London music scene was vibrant back then, and we felt lucky to be part of it,” Maxfield said. “We composed and recorded a pile of songs, chasing the kind of lightning only young musicians believe they can catch.”

Eventually, though, the music stopped. After being evicted for unpaid rent, Maxfield and Peterson moved to Toronto while frontman Iggy Morningstar headed to Ohio, where he performed in a punk band.

In the back of their minds, Maxfield and Peterson hoped one day to turn their London sessions, much of it experimental, into an album.

“There were a lot of good memories – we were in formative stages and were hopeful one day we would be able to make a record,” Peterson said. “We even came up with (the album’s title), From the Word Go, (but) we were never able to get our stuff together to make it happen.”

Tragedy struck in 1983 when Morningstar – just 25 – took his own life.

“Iggy has cast a long shadow in my memory,” Peterson said in a short documentary released Wednesday. The film accompanies an album assembled from Go Jetter’s 1979 London recordings that have been newly restored and produced with the help of artificial intelligence (AI).

“I often wonder what could have happened if we had got back together.”

Maxfield and Peterson eventually formed a new band, The Cheer, and spent much of the 1980s touring western Canada. Peterson later transitioned into recording work and came up with the idea of using AI technology to isolate Morningstar’s vocals and instrumentals.

“I had this box of tapes gathering dust,” he said.

Last year, the duo used AI to isolate Morningstar’s voice, guitar, bass and keyboard tracks and “rebuilt the songs around them,” Peterson said. While some new performances were added, they kept their late frontman “at the heart of it all,” he added.

“We didn’t want to make this modern,” Peterson said. “We wanted to use the same spirit as when we first did this and knew nothing.”

Performing with Morningstar decades after his death “opened up the world for us,” Maxfield said.

“It’s like having the band back together,” Peterson added. “I never thought I would get that feeling again – it’s kind of special.”

The bandmates call the project honouring Morningstar “a first in Canada” in terms of using AI.

“We resurrected something that was done roughly on a rudimentary . . . mixer (with) three mikes and a recorder,” Peterson said.

The album and short film is live on all major streaming platforms. Visit gojetter.ca for links to the documentary and music.