by Vish Khanna
In a way, the band TUNS reflects almost all of my musical interests from the most formative years of my life as a cultural consumer and processor.
On November 5 at the Ebar (41 Quebec St.), they play Guelph for the second time after an Island Stage set at this past summer’s Hillside Festival, which was fun, spirited, scrappy, and as enjoyable as I’d hoped it’d be. The band consists of Chris Murphy of Sloan, Matt Murphy of the Super Friendz, and Mike O’Neill from the Inbreds. That’s their musical pedigree any way. They do other things too.
But those bands they were or are in (Sloan remains a going concern; the other two outfits come and go when the mood strikes) meant everything to me as a teenager. I grew up listening to the radio and watching MuchMusic a lot. If I had surrogate parents, they were electronic boxes that revealed hidden cultures of music, comedy, and storytelling of every sort.
My gateway into this world was my cousin Anand. He had a bunch of tapes and eventually CDs and, when we’d visit his and my other cousins in Scarborough, we always stayed late or spend the night, which meant I’d get to watch Saturday Night Live or Late Night with David Letterman. Anand first played me some best-of Beatles tape and I was immediately hooked on the band and music generally. Including one of his other favourites: U2.
For some discerning music fans, U2 are now a guilty pleasure or a band to be outright derided for their preening, rock star posturing, and performative emotional manipulation. But for a kid like me, growing up in the 1980s, their blend of outspoken political songs, catchy melodies, and vaguely post-punk style seemed super cool to me and I was all in. I got every record, every single, every magazine, every book, every video, every film. Obsessed is what I was.
Chris Murphy and Mike O’Neil were too. While their work in their respective bands and even now in TUNS tends to draw comparisons to great pop artists and harmony singers in the Beatles, Everly Brothers, Kinks or the Stones, they came of age when U2 were among the most interesting rock bands going.
I interviewed TUNS recently and asked them about U2 because I’d kind of heard through the grapevine that, while they’ve probably a little over a decade on me, the band also meant a lot to them when they were younger. It turns out that U2 almost made its way into the sound of TUNS.
O’Neill told me that, when they first convened, Chris would play drum parts from actual songs he liked, in their entirety. He’d just, part for part, play a song by Led Zeppelin or the Cure and Matt and Mike would come up with fresh guitar and bass lines over top. The formula worked so well, TUNS released a whole self-titled album’s worth of original songs in August, and the source inspiration for Chris was buried.
A notable failure in these experiments was an attempt to write a new song via U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and its iconic beat by Larry Mullen Jr. Apparently it was super amusing.
When I graduated to other bands after U2, they included Sloan and their own label murderecords’ roster, which included the Super Friendz and later the Inbreds. I first saw Sloan at Peter Clark Hall in Guelph in 1994. The Super Friendz opened the show and I was 16 years old. The independent, Canadian culture that these guys opened me up to, that particular night alone, permanently altered my aesthetic and led me to dig deeper for underground art that, say Rolling Stone, wasn’t covering because they mostly just covered U2.
So, while TUNS finds a group of friends coming together as a tremendous musical unit after decades of friendship and shared experiences, it’s also a sound that brings me full circle in a way I never imagined. Good or bad, we share bands together and may not even know that we’re doing it. Sometimes you just gotta ask.
--taken from: Guelph Mercury Tribune (listen to the podcast here)
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