Buffalo Live! Music Podcast

Gorillapunch is a cool name for a band. You won’t find it in the dictionary, yet it’s sort of self explanatory and spell-able. The band is pretty cool too. You can imagine a gorilla’s punch being pretty formidable. This band plays hard-hitting rock that you will know when you hear it, just like you know it when a gorilla punches you. You can’t ignore it. This is not background music!

I met them at an event called Xtreme Model Search 2007 in Niagara Falls NY. It was held at a conference hall called Niagara Falls Conference Center, not to be confused with the Niagara Falls Convention Center, which is a block away and now known as the Seneca Niagara Casino. It’s a prime location in a section of downtown NF thats slowly being revitalized. Whether you like the casino or not, you’ve got to be glad to see new life in this area of town.

The model search, a come-and-see-if-you-have-what-it-takes-to-be-a-model expo, was new to me, but they called me and offered to have me come in and record the bands they were having play for the show.

I got to the event and found a huge convention hall with a double stage set up with full sound and light systems. They had hired a company out of Syracuse to do the sound and lights. I talked to the sound man and he was happy to give me a line out of the board. He actually gave me four and set each one up however I liked. I ended up with a channel for drums, bass, guitars, and vocals. I had a ball mixing the sound afterwards. (Also wasted a lot of time playing around!)

But back to Gorillapunch…

Gorillapunch is a five-piece band. Jeremy Kirkpatrick and Jim Nickles play guitar; Kevin Peace is on bass; Mike Valenti plays the drums and Dennis Farley is lead singer. We’ve met Dennis earlier on this podcast when we covered his other venture, Magictonez, at the ALLWNYRADIO.COM House Parties. He and Andy Herman play a duo act with a sort of folk sound.

Gorillapunch plays pretty regularly around WNY, but doesn’t have a CD out yet. I have an early, hand produced, EP by them and they have an EP in production to come out soon. But they play all original music and keep coming out with more.

For more info and upcoming show dates, visit Gorillapunch‘s website: www.myspace.com/gorillapunch

Set list:

Somethng New (from the EP)
Tear Yourself Apart
Ten
Hope
Head Hold On
Drifter
Picture Frame (from the EP)
Before You Fell
Plot Thickens
Aftermath
Like I Had A Chance
Evil bastard (from the EP)

If I get any titles wrong, I apologize. They were announced during the show, but I couldn’t always make sense out of them.

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[Audio podcast file has been moved to Archive.org]