THE JAZZ TREES

"IF you don't experiment you don't evolve, and if you don't evolve you risk being eaten by sailors," Tombola observed, referring the duffest bird of all time, the Dodo. The Trees, for sure, were no Dodos and embraced every musical style - provided it was in four-four time and "didn't have too many notes". All of which makes the Jazz Trees project even more startlingly ambitious.

The idea itself was simple. The Trees - sorry, Jazz Trees - would hole up at Styx's parents' house while they were on a caravaning holiday and sneak a go of Ian Campbell's prized piano. Rat, for one, loved to sit at the piano and spill tea into it.

"It was a pretty wild weekend," Tombola recalled. "We decided to tear up the rule book and wrote one specially for the purpose. Mind you, we didn't get past No Smoking." Cigarettes, then, were constantly hanging from the mouths of the band members, though only McPherson dared light up. Predictably the guesting Al "Boring" Corrigall refused to hold one in his mouth, not because it interfered with his trumpet playing - Tombola ventured that it might improve matters - but because he was fiercely anti-drugs, as indeed all the Trees were.

Musically, the jury's still out on The Jazz Trees. At best the recording is inscrutable, what with Corrigall's discordant solo-ing and Styx's erratic shuffling. "I tried using the ride cymbal in place of the bass drum," Styx revealed, "but it kept falling over. Besides, it was a bugger to felt-pen the band's name on."

Fifteen years on, The Jazz Trees still arouses debate. In truth its full import has yet to be understood. "It's about life," McPherson told Styx's bedroom mirror at the time. "The white noise of existence, resolving itself into the briefest moments of harmony." Styx disagreed, dismissing McPherson's analysis as the ramblings of "some kind of poof".

FOOTNOTE: The Trees performed a "more accessible" version of The Jazz Trees at the Art Centre in their home city of Aberdeen. As a result, the City Council begged them to put on a massive outdoor concert in the city centre. The Trees agreed but in the event resorted to playing pop. Tombola explained: "The Jazz Trees was too challenging to unleash in an open space. It might have destroyed an innocent passer-by's critical faculties."