Search - Parasites :: Punchlines

1/6 of a great rock n' roll album

RR | Chicago | 01/29/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The Parasites are one of those strange bands that made the same song over and over again in different ways, or rather the same sound throughout, as Neil Young said to the man in the crowd who said all his songs sound the same: "It's all the same song," --; these guys put out maybe six or seven incredible "pop-punk" songs during the mid 90s, the rest of the output was unfortunately "throwaway dreck", "filler" they call it, in-between and around the golden diamonds in the proverbial "rough" going, Not that this group was ever insincere or undevoted.... One definitely got the impression throughout that they were all doing their best. This was the Parasites album that I owned back then, and the first two songs, "Crazy", and "Nothing At All" was as if you were waking up to what you were flabbergasted to recognize was the beginning of a great pop record, which it was, but without, sadly, a great, or even really very good, middle and end.... It's hard to tell from this pt. of hindsight what could have been done with this band, -- if they were now today (2003) making the same songs, but were all 17 year olds who could dance, and wore silver suits, etc. & haircuts, they would have been the Backstreet Boys, yes, in an alternate universe where the Ramones really did overturn the terrible excesses of 70s rock n roll to re-evolve toward something pure and always fresh, always rock AND roll.... But the "context" in which these guys were making their music, the audience they were playing to, small groups of bored teen youth with terrible haircuts with no appreciation for the show, standing in front of these sometimes great bands performing them sniffling and never dancing . . . O, the Parasites were humble, a mere "Ramones-ish" band, so they were called, and they were content, as well, perhaps, naive, lacking in scope of ambition (ruling the airwaves), -- who knows however despite everything but that somewhere in the universe it is the Parasites, and not all the other undeserving punk not-rocking bands that became the Greatest Rock n Roll Band In the World.... (Look at what happened to Jawbreaker.The world simply couldn't handle their taking of the mount!)"