Mitch Funk, a pioneering Canadian punk-rock vocalist who fronted the Winnipeg band Character Disaster within the late Nineteen Seventies and early Nineteen Eighties, has died, his youthful brother Aaron Funk stated Wednesday.
The elder Funk died Monday evening after a prolonged wrestle with most cancers. He was 65 years outdated.
Standing six foot three, Funk was a towering determine in Winnipeg’s unbiased music scene, each actually and figuratively. Character Disaster, which recorded just one full-length album throughout its temporary existence from 1979 to 1984, was among the many first Canadian punk bands to try to determine themselves as a touring act, at a time when the style acquired no airplay and minimal mainstream consideration.
Funk wound up influencing a technology of youthful musicians, first because the chief of Character Disaster and later because the frontperson for Trustworthy John, a Winnipeg rock band that was lively within the Nineties.
“He was a legend within the Winnipeg music scene, however to me, he was my stunning brother,” Aaron Funk stated Wednesday in an interview at Public Area, a not too long ago opened Portage Avenue stay music venue.
“He was an incredible vocalist, however he was a lot greater than that. He was a lovely, variety human being.”
Aaron Funk, who information digital music underneath the identify Venetian Snares, cites his older brother as an affect. Mitch would take him to document shops as a child and purchase him no matter he needed, he stated.
Aaron Funk, who information music underneath the identify Venetian Snares, stated his brother Mitch was ‘a lovely, variety human being.’ (Trevor Brine/CBC)
In a single occasion, that meant an album by ’80s pop singer Cyndi Lauper — although Mitch additionally handed Aaron one thing by Hüsker Dü, the Minneapolis indie band well-known for its immensely loud wall of sound.
“The stuff that caught with me extra was undoubtedly the stuff he turned me on to,” stated Aaron Funk, whose personal music sits on the exhausting fringe of the digital music spectrum.
Lots of Mitch Funk’s contemporaries paid tribute to the singer this week.
“Mitch Funk was a real unique, and there is by no means been one like him or might be once more,” stated Jake Moore, who sang in the Nineteen Eighties Winnipeg punk band Ruggedy Annes.
“His look alone was one thing that may confound folks,” stated Moore, who now directs the College of Saskatchewan’s artwork galleries in Saskatoon.
Jake Moore, a Saskatoon artwork professor who sang in Winnipeg rock band Ruggedy Annes within the Nineteen Eighties, stated Funk was a singular frontperson. (Jake Moore)
“On the stage, he was nothing in need of electrical. He was a kind of performers that you simply could not not take a look at,” she stated — a “massive man” with “greater than a passing” resemblance to Frankenstein’s monster.
Moore additionally stated Funk revered ladies in a punk rock scene that was plagued with some predators, a long time earlier than the Me Too motion.
“He was somebody that I at all times felt protected with, and that is not true of another those that masqueraded as far more respectful,” Moore stated.
‘Essentially the most intense stay music I’ve ever heard’
Tributes to Funk additionally poured out this week from youthful musicians, lots of whom identified his kindness in addition to his musical legacy.
Jason Tait, a musician and producer finest often known as the drummer for defunct Winnipeg band The Weakerthans, cited Character Disaster as a major affect.
Tait stated the primary punk rock present he ever noticed was the ultimate efficiency by Character Disaster, at Pantages Playhouse in 1984.
“They only began enjoying this actually unusual instrumental music after which this actually tall, lanky man got here out on stage sporting a white woman’s robe nightgown, holding a doll, a ‘Hugo, Man of a Thousand Faces’ doll as a puppet, and he simply proceeded to play along with his doll on stage, earlier than he touched the microphone in any respect, for a couple of minute and a half,” Tait stated in an interview at his dwelling.
“Then they simply sort of went into probably the most intense stay music I’ve ever heard in my life.”
WATCH | Winnipeggers bear in mind pioneering punk Mitch Funk:
Remembering pioneering Winnipeg punk rock vocalist Mitch Funk, 65
Winnipeg’s music scene is mourning a groundbreaking vocalist from the earliest days of punk rock. Mitch Funk, finest often known as the vocalist for Character Disaster, died of most cancers earlier this week.
Tait credit Character Disaster and Vancouver’s D.O.A. for paving the best way for different Canadian unbiased bands to tour western North America, primarily by creating a community of venues and expertise consumers concerned with punk and different genres.
“D.O.A. and Character Disaster sort of carved these roots out via the connections within the early ’80s. By the point I used to be able to tour, within the late ’80s and early ’90s, that was nicely established due to the preliminary bushwhacking that they did,” Tait stated.
Together with singing in bands, Mitch Funk spent a long time working at St. Boniface Hospital, initially as an orderly and later in deliveries and in laundry providers, his brother stated.
He additionally took up portray, creating dozens of artworks throughout his ultimate decade.
Moore, the artwork professor and former vocalist, stated Mitch Funk was emblematic of a Winnipeg arts and cultural scene that has at all times had a countercultural edge. She stated his legacy is obvious, even when it might not be broadly identified.
“It takes 40 years for neighborhood data to sort of be subsumed, and we’re at precisely that marker right here. It is 40 years since PC broke up,” Moore stated.
“Do the rising musicians and radicals, as they determine themselves, even bear in mind who Character Disaster was? I am sufficiently old now that I see these tales change, the dates, the names shift, who will get introduced up. We see that sort of rewriting of the tales persistently occur.”
