Requiem For SoundProof Magazine

You'll have to excuse us if we're a bit glum these days. Our very favourite music magazine in the history of everything ever — SoundProof — recently announced that they're calling it quits after five awesome years. Most of us Little Red Umbrella folk got our start writing or shooting photos or editing for them. SoundProof is, if you will, the big blue womb from which our little red umbrella emerged. (Note: ewww.) Some of us were there right from the magazine's earliest days. The first issue was a little black and white print thing that you could pick up for free in bars around downtown Toronto. (We can still remember the way our heart skipped a beat when we first saw it: our magazine quietly sitting there on the bar at the Horseshoe Tavern, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.) From there, we saw it grow into an online magazine with writers and photographers and editors all over the world, from Vancouver to Auckland to Glasgow to Dubai. 

As you can imagine, SoundProof means a LOT to us. We learned a just-plain-stupid amount of stuff while we were there. We met more amazing people than we could possibly ever mention; amazingly talented people, too: they've gone on to do work for Pitchfork, Spin, VICE, NOW, Toronto Life, the CBC, the Globe & Mail, 24 Hours, PopMatters, Crawdaddy!, Spinner and a million other places. 

Maybe most importantly, we saw what you can accomplish when you just go ahead and do something without stopping to worry about whether or not you actually have any clue what you're doing. SoundProof's owners (a couple of rapidly aging punk rockers: Chris Stevenson and Scott Mckean), love to tell a story about how the magazine started with nothing more than access to a photocopier and a food court to meet in. It's inspiring shit, that shit.

We could go on and on and on, getting ever more teary-eyed about this whole thing, but we'll save that for tomorrow night, when we're getting drunk off our asses with all our old SoundProof peeps at the mag's goodbye party. A much better way, we think, to remember our very favourite music magazine in the history of everything ever is to share it with you. We've spent the last few days combing through the site's archives to find some of stories we think back on most fondly. We've posted them below. (And lord knows we've missed a few, so if you've got any you'd like to add, please do: you can link to them in the comments.)

So. Deep breath. Here it goes. A requiem for SoundProof Magazine. By SoundProof Magazine. (Click on the photos to read them.)

YOU SHOULD ALREADY OWN: BLUE BY JONI MITCHELL by Karolina Rous
One of our very favourite SoundProof features was "You Should Already Own": essays about super awesome kickass great albums. In this one, Karolina Rous took a look at the story behind one of the most super awesome kickass greatingest albums of them all.

OBAMA AND THE INDIE KIDS by Adam Bunch
In the lead-up to the 2008 presidential election, SoundProof took a look at all the indie bands lining up to support Barak Obama. And whether they'd still be glad they did after he won.

THIS WEEK IN HISTORY: WOODSTOCK by David Ball
Every week we'd look forward to Dave Ball's take on the history of music. His articles were bitter and sarcastic and hilarious and downright informative. This was one of his best: a look back at Woodstock that takes the legendary festival down a peg or two.

 LIVE: CONNAN MOCKASIN IN AUCKLAND by Sophie Grace and Alexander Gandar
One of the things we like to think we learned at SoundProof was that music is waaaay more about personal subjective experience than some sort of objective critical standard. We learned that from reviews like this drunken one from New Zealand.

 

TORONTO VIRGIN FESTIVAL 2008 by James Sandham
Speaking of subjectivity: the 2008 edition of V-Fest is remembered by most as the festival that saw Noel Gallagher attacked on stage by some crazy dude, but for us it will always be about James Sandham wandering around a field with his friends.

TEN SONGS THAT CODY HATES by Cody McGraw
Before our Managing Editor vented his rage at the world over here, he vented his rage at the world for SoundProof. Here's the time he tore apart ten songs no should ever play ever again.

CAN A PUNK LEARN TO LOVE PINK FLOYD? by Alan McGee
SoundProof was lucky enough to have some pretty freaking awesome guest columnists over the years, including Oasis discoverer and all-around giant of the British music scene, Alan McGee.

DESERT ISLAND POEM: A TOWN CALLED MALICE BY THE JAM by Dave Bidini
While we're talking about guest columnists, here's another: former Rheostatics frontman Dave Bidini. His very first column for the magazine was our favourite, a meditation on pot, pills and punk rock.

SUBGENRE OF THE MONTH: BOOTYHOUSE by Laurie McGregor
Another of our fondest SP memories came from putting together "Sex Week", seven days spent posting nothing but stories about music and sex. Laurie McGregor tackled Bootyhouse, a genre that blatantly raps about sex in all its stripped down, naked glory.

MUSIC & SEX by Adam Bunch
Meanwhile, Adam Bunch delved into the relationship between music and sex in a sprawling five-part series, including interviews with super-groupie Pamela des Barres, Har Mar Superstar, Kids On TV, and a musicological neuroscientist.

BEATLES WEEK
Sex Week wasn't the only seven-day-long single-minded content orgy that SoundProof put on. We also dedicated a week to the greatest band of all-time, with essays and rants and reviews of the Fab Four's discography.

FRIENDS IN BELLWOODS  II: THE SOUND OF SUCCESS by Richard Trapunski
We've always been fascinated by the way artists and musicians come together to form creative communities. And so we were always fond of this piece, in which Richard Trapunski takes a look at the role Ohbijou have played in the Toronto scene.

BRIAN BORCHERDT GETS NAKED by Alison Lang

Most of us know him best as the young guy pounding the shit out of synths and drum machines in the infectious and inventive electronic music group Holy Fuck. But his fourth solo record was album of songs stripped to the marrow. Alison Lang talked to him about it.

YOU SHOULD ALREADY OWN: CHEAP THRILLS BY BIG BROTHER AND THE HOLDING COMPANY by Stephanie Cloutier
Another one of our favourite You Should Already Owns was by one of The Little Red Umbrella's Contributing Editors. If you think Big Brother and the Holding Company were nothing more than Janis Joplin's backing band, you're missing out.

THE TOP 20 TORONTO ALBUMS EVER!
One of the first big features SoundProof ever tackled combined our own picks with a panel of folks from Torontoist along with the Russian Futurists, Carl Wilson and a couple of our favourite local bloggers. Turns out when you ask a bunch of young indie music fans what their favourite albums are, you end up with a bunch of young indie albums.

THE TOP 20 MANCHESTER ALBUMS OF ALL-TIME
A few years later, after SoundProof had spread across the globe, we tried it again with Manchester. This time we called on Alan McGee, Liam Frost, one of the members of the Mock Turtles and a bunch of Mancunian journalists and bloggers and venue owners.

LIZ POWELL TALKS LAND OF TALK by Marsha Casselman
We're kind of in love with Liz Powell, frontwoman for Land of Talk. And so weve always kind of loved this feature Marsha Casselman wrote about her back in the days before she was a giant, massive, Polaris-longlisted superstar person.



ONE LUCKY SON OF A MARSUPIAL by Bill Alexander
Speaking of giant massive superstar people, Bill Alexander interviewed Kid Koala in the wake of his collaborative project, The Slew, which saw him working with Dynomite D and Wolfmother. The lucky fuck.

 SUBGENRE OF THE MONTH: FREAK FOLK by V. Rachel Weldon
As we write this, V. Rachel Weldon is out on the West Coast, touring with Doom Squad, hanging out in rainforests, heading to Burning Man and covering it all for us. But her writing about hippieness goes back at least as far as this old SoundProof piece.

SUBGENRE OF THE MONTH: NERDCORE by Andrea Grassi
Another of our favourite subgenres: nerdcore. It's all about nerdy people rapping about video games, sci-fi characters and software devices

MAKING A SCENE: CALGARY by James Callsen
One of our favorite DEKs ever: "Fuck y'all. I'm from Calgary." When SP first spread across the country, we were lucky enough to have James "Newsboy" Callsen, one of the most tireless supporters of the Calgary scene, there to cover it for us.

THE RETURN OF BY DIVINE RIGHT by Orlando da Silva
Orlando da Silva, Editor-in-Chief of SoundProof, is one crazy-big By Divine Right fan. So it was pretty awesome when he got to talk to the band's mastermind, Jose Miguel Contreras, about the group's return after a five-year break between albums.

QUICK & DIRTY: THE MILES by Andrea Grassi
SoundProof had a lot of fun putting together showcases for festivals like NXNE, CMW and Pop Montreal. We had one of the bands we booked, The Miles, do a special photoshoot with our Photo Editor, Carmen Cheung, and a bunch of free clothes from Ben Sherman.

INDIE IN ANTARCTICA by Adam Bunch
One of the craziest, most exciting things that ever happened: SoundProof got to do a phoner with a guy in Antarctica. We talked to a member of Nuntak, a band of scientists who were about to play the Live Earth show. Totally. Freaking. Amazing.