Something To Hold On To

Something to hold on to – The Parasites

I love that this was released on Slumberland. It’s like the pop punk world and the indie pop world coming together in a way i’ve always thought they should, and in a way that would have felt naturally done back then, when it was all one big underground without all these new markets having been created. If the decree is good guitar pop music i don’t understand why anyone would prefer either camp over the other. The Queers wrote just as great songs as did Rocketship as did Beatnik Termites as did the Aislers Set. And i love this is one of the Parasites’ more openly pop punk sounding songs, not attenuating themselves in their crossover.

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Fool For You

Fool for you – The Parasites

Pop punk bands sure do like referencing by name the convenience and fast food stores they see their crush at. It’s the chords in the middle section that make this song for me. It may be just because they’re different, reaching to a different kind of songwriting and possibility than the one pop punk would come and bulldozer over everything with. The Parasites were always smart like that.

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Good Grief

Good grief – The Parasites

Where would pop punk be without television and comic strips? Ain’t it America?..

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Hang Up

And today’s song is…
Hang up – The Parasites

This might be the best of all pop punk songs. I think i’m qualified enough to declare it so. I’ve been to the mountain and i’ve seen its peak.

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If You Knew

If you knew – Parasites

I’ll post the album version this time even though, like the Orange Juice singles, i like the 7″ version better. Again, it’s a case of a band knowing what they are doing, knowing what they want and how to get it – doing those right, templative things instead of figuring their way with their own means. But you can’t gag a good song, and this is an incredible one.

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Hang Up

Hang up – The Parasites

And here’s the Parasites late into the 90’s, when everything seemed to funnel into a very particular pattern for pop punk. The difference between yesterday’s song and this one should help demonstrate what i was trying to say. It even comes complete with a “whoa-oh,” but that “whoa-oh” is one of the most perfectly placed in the genre. This is probably my favourite Parasites song.

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If You Knew

If you knew – The Parasites

It’s surprising to find the range of sounds found under the pop punk umbrella before it all became so homogenised and Giorgini-ised – before there became a proper way of doing things. There was a 30-40 year history of achievable, imitable pop music to draw from and play band with, and some bands show such scholarliness and plain affect of that history. They had to create this music, no matter how disconnected their lives, means and ability were from the dreams parcelled out by those dream makers. Or indeed how similar.

This first fantastic, fantastic Parasites 7″, dated 1987, demonstrates this perfectly. It is the sound of a band wanting to be a band and doing so however they could. Plain and simple. Of course they would come to fit that samey pop punk mould as the 90’s rolled on (and would still write great songs all the while) but the sound of Lost In The 80’s – the bare sound of people in a room playing – just says so much to me about the nature and beauty of music and why it is done.

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