1000 Songs: Richard Trapunski

1000 Songs: Richard Trapunski

I have now posted one thousand songs from my live recordings to this blog. My introductory thoughts on that landmark can be found here, but long story short: I asked some folks to pick some of their favourites to help me celebrate.

Today's list comes from local music scribe Rich Trapunski, who manages to get a lot of cool bands some exposure in NOW magazine, but can also investigate a trend when the situation calls for it. He's making a valiant effort to add a layer of scuzz and confusion to CMW in helping put together this Resonancity showcase, co-presented with Dan Burke.

---

Congrats on the milestone, Joe!

Constantines - Dirty Business

This is from the Constantines’ secret show at the Garrison in 2009 as part of their 10^th anniversary celebrations (otherwise centred entirely at Lee's Palace). It was cool to see the now-defunct IndieCanRock institution in such a small room – likely the first, last and only time I’ll ever see them – but this was back when the Garrison was the loudest venue in the city, so it's nice to hear a recorded version that won’t give me tinnitus.

I wrote a review of the show for my blog, Resonancity (in my pre-NOW days) and posted it on Stillepost, where the one of the late forum’s lovable curmudgeons predicted something along the lines of this: "the writer seems destined to churn out infotainment pieces for Eye Weekly." Close, but no cigar.

Broken Social Scene - Sweetest Kill

This was the "legendary" free Broken Social Scene gig at the Harbourfront Centre, a makeup gig for their cancelled Olympic Island Gig in 2009 (depending on who you asked, it was either due to the garbage strike, noise from the Molson Indy or low ticket sales). Having failed to get there before the masses, I ended up stuck behind a couple of older patrons who spent the entire concert standing on their seats. Despite my seething annoyance, I was still seduced by the love-in vibe at this two and a half hour marathon, complete with all the "special guests" that now garner their own marquees (i.e. Feist, Metric, etc), but the only way that I’d ever be able to actually see the gig would be to rent Bruce MacDonald's This Movie Is Broken.

Fucked Up - Year of the Ox

Fucked Up's epic "Year Of..." songs rarely get played live, so I’m lucky to have witnessed "Year of the Ox" twice. Having caught the band's soundcheck earlier in the evening (I interviewed Ben Cook about one of his many other bands, the Bitters, before the show), I knew we'd be in for the whole strings/guest female vocalist treatment, but it sounded even more incongruous in front of a wild – but strangely civilized – all ages crowd... at the Toronto Reference Library, of all places.

Four Corners II - Losing Touch With My Mind

If you haven't been to a Four Corners show at the United Steelworkers Hall, here’s the concept in a nutshell: four bands each set up in a corner of the room and alternate playing songs, while the crowd stands in the centre of the action. The song captured here is all four bands – Rituals, Sun Ra Ra Ra, Quest For Fire and Lullabye Arkestra – all playing together on a chaotic, Zaireeka-style cover of Spaceman 3's "Losing Touch With My Mind". It's a "chaosbomb", to quote Joe himself, but this recording is an apt reconstruction of the maelstrom of barely coherent noise that was the grand finale. Bonus: I’m pretty sure that’s my voice asking "do you know what song this is?" at the 2:48 mark.

Ty Segall - Standing at the Station + Girlfriend

Ty Segall's Toronto shows tend to be louder, sweatier, more bruise-inducing shows than his melodic garage-pop nuggets would have you believe, and this CMW performance at Wrongbar was certainly no exception. After being knocked around and distracted by the energetic, beer-swilling crowd, Joe's recording is a helpful reminder that there were actual songs under the madness... and damn good ones, too.

---

You can always click on the tags below to read more about the shows these songs came from. Have there been four or five songs posted here that made an impact on you? If you'd like to get in on the action and make a list, feel free to send me an email: mechanicalforestsound@gmail.com.