Image courtesy Mike Juneau
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Oakland
TPC are an indie/garage/pop band from Ontario who are playing Pittsburgh tomorrow at CMU with local openers
1,2,3. These college concerts always bring in the coolest bands and should be a blast. The band's keyboardist Graham Wright was nice enough to take a few minutes to participate in this edition of
First/Last.
The first album you ever bought?
Our Lady Peace's 1997 breakthrough Clumsy. It was love at first sight after I
broke a potted plant at my Grandma's house dancing along to the video for
Automatic Flowers. OLP isn't exactly hip these days, but I still go back to
this record every once in a while and it stands up!
Your last album bought?
A collection of songs by the 16th century composer Orlando Gibbons. I heard a
beautiful instrumental arrangement of one of his more famous works, 'This Is
The Record of John', and I wanted to hear it in it's original choral glory.
I've never really listened to choral music before, and especially not in
English, so it's really interesting to hear what they're singing about! A lot
of the lyrics are about God, of course, but the last piece on the record is
called The Cries of London and it features a surprising amount of singing about
various foods. Fantastic stuff.
Favorite album of all time?
Kid A, by Radiohead. Everyone has a record that changed their life and really
changed the way they think about music, and Kid A was that for me, so it kind
of set the standard by which I judge everything else I listen to.
First concert attended?
I tell people the first show I saw was Radiohead, but it was actually the
Christian group DC Talk on a church field trip when I was 8 or 9. I was tasked
with writing a review of the show for the church newsletter, which to this day
stands as my sole contribution to the annals of rock writing.
Last concert?
The CD release show for my friends Will Currie & The Country French.
They're an amazing Toronto
band whose new album, Awake You Sleepers, is really exciting and ambitious.
It's really orchestrated, so for this show they pulled out all the stops and
had a string section and horns. It was in this beautiful old church in Toronto that doubles as a
venue and was a pretty damn good show.
Favorite concert ever?
Like my favourite album, the first proper concert I saw was Radiohead, and it
set the bar pretty unreachably high. But I recently caught Jeff Mangum, of
Neutral Milk Hotel fame, and that was one of the more intense experiences of my
life. I'm one of the people who got into NMH after they'd already stopped
making music, and so my entire fandom was spent assuming I'd missed the boat on
seeing them live. Getting to hear those songs live was pretty insane.
Least favorite concert?
Probably some random local opener who I've forgotten about, but the worst 'big'
show was probably a Broken Social Scene show in Toronto maybe 6 or 7 years ago.
I should preface this by saying that I love BSS and I've seen several shows of
theirs that were magical and fantastic, but at this particular show they
indulged all they worst tendencies. It was rambling, preachy, way too long, and
way too loud. A real bummer, since the last time I'd seen them I was blown
away. Also I think I was having a fight with my girlfriend or something, so
that probably didn't help...
Any thoughts, experiences about Pittsburgh?
I like Pittsburgh
a lot! I appreciate your devotion to hockey, your sandwiches with fries on
them, and your generally awesome audiences, just to name a few things. We found
some incredible donut place last time we were there, too, which I look forward
to patronizing.
Thanks Graham. Should be a fun time tomorrow. BTW-Pittsburgh and donuts? That's a first!
