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The Parka Kings' "Wherestheafterparty Live" By Mr Phelps. 10/14/99

There is a real irony at work when you notice the easiest stories to begin are the ones you already know the ending to. For me, I find it easy to begin with the recollection of showing up late for a ska show at the Michigan Fairgrounds in 1993. In time to see The Exceptions, Gangster Fun and the national headliners Bim Skala Bim, I remember a crowd that wore plaid and optimism as if the two didn't clash. The ska scene in Michigan in 1993 knew the lyrics to ?'t Know How to Party' and shopped at Beat Hotel, the small, virtually ska-only record store in a north suburb of Detroit. I remember it being the time I was putting together my first ska band. Packed in a car of future band-mates, I arrived with an agenda: a couple more horn players and a drummer were needed. Talent was not a prerequisite. Neither was any working knowledge of what the music was or what it meant. Certainly we had no idea. In retrospect, however, the energy and excitement was unlike anything I'd felt in a music before. I feel no guilt for wanting to be a part of it so badly. The attraction is undeniable. Fresh from one performance of The Exceptions just a couple of weeks before, I was inspired and taken.

I had missed The Parka Kings, probably by minutes. I recall friends of friends speaking of them as if they were peerless only for what they were going to be rather than what they were. It wouldn't be long until I'd witnessed The Parka Kings perform more times than any band but my own and I would be agreeing with those friends of friends, and more.

Jump Up! has released a limited edition live recording of The Parka Kings. In fact, the recording is of their last show ever. As the result of a conflicting gig schedule I am sad to report that I was not present. This live recording, however, will sufficiently bandage me, but not a part of Michigan that is no longer there. It is unnecessary to review this CD. I can't hear these songs and not think of the pilgrimages to gigs or, what seemed at the time, the strangeness of the gig accommodations. The PK's played anywhere, anytime. I can't hear these songs and comment on missed phrases, missed arrangement opportunities, or production failures, whether they exist or not. I can, however, tell you of a band that existed out of view for the rest of the world, but were the focus of one small city in the Midwest.

In short, The Parka Kings' "Wherestheafterparty Live" is a retrospective of a 6-year career that made a huge difference to those of us fortunate enough to call Michigan home during that time. For those initiated, the CD is all a live recording from the PK's promised to be with the unexpected addition of nostalgia, for the PK's were never supposed to go away. For those uninitiated, those who believed the critics who unfairly panned the PK's as Morrisey-done-ska or not trad enough or not punk enough, those who never had the chance to witness Brett's low-strung guitar gypped by long, skinny arms drenched in sweat, Doug's quick roll-of-the-eyes when something inevitably flatter than expected escaped his trumpet, let me take this opportunity to warn you: You're never going to get it.

This CD has every bad note, every mumbled lyric, every cautious key-change, every slip that the Michigan ska scene could recognize and sing-along to just as easily as the catchy choruses that held it all together. The guitar was always out of tune at some point during every song in every PK performance and I believe the horns were so banged up and dated that their ability to be tuned was abandoned sometime in 1994. There was nothing covered up by producer Steve Presti in post-production, thankfully. Consider this CD an honest retrospective (except for the fact that all of the Reuben Sandwich Horns showed up for the gig) and the album the PK's should've put out all along.

Months after missing the Parka Kings at the State Fairgrounds by minutes, my own band was playing a New Year's Eve party opening for the PK's. I remember going into the basement to witness the entire ceiling rising and falling to the crowd above. Dust was spitting from between fragile beams and the bass was reverberating off of the accordion-like poles. The Parka Kings covering ?Better Blues' was the last song I heard that year.

They were one of those bands that could be playing down the street on Saturday but you'd still drive across the state to see them on Friday. In the early days, the PK's would never turn down a gig. A 2 hour drive to Lansing would find them deep in the basement between the sweating water heater and a duct-taped coat-rack acting as a microphone stand. Another mic would be suspended from a beam in front of the horns, doing little more than feeding back and echoing the cracks and bumps of horns banging into it during ? Ska' or ?h or Die'. A 40 minute drive to that hole on Willis in the Cass Corridor would find them firing Descendants covers and ?a Bella' at a crowd that couldn't tell the difference between Milo and Coxsone Dodd. I know I certainly couldn't. I remember thinking ?a Bella' was one of the coolest songs Brett had written.

It was on a pilgrimage to see The Parka Kings in Chicago that I found that song on a CD in one of Chuck Wren's merchandise bins. And that, ladies and gentleman, is how history is made and lives are changed.

We all have soft spots in our hard hearts for those bands that make a difference in our life, from whatever genre they may come. The Exceptions were my introduction to ska and the PK's version of ?a Bella' was my introduction to the ska.

We all found our reasons for loving the PK's.

For myself and thousands of others in the Chicago and Detroit ska communities, it was the kind of small explosion the PK's provided in song after song that excited us. I remember a dozen different crowds in a dozen different venues reacting the same way to ?ked' and ?fidential.' The PK's were as at home with The Descendents as they were with The Maytals. Sometimes they managed to bring the two disparate musics easily together but more often they just did their own thing, perhaps single-handedly keeping Detroit's ska scene from being a real scene. What would have been a ska scene in any other town, in Detroit, was the Parka King's scene, and their scene only.

No touring band, no up-and-coming band, and certainly no band that had chops to play circles around them could have any impact on the PK crowd. It didn't matter. Touring bands eventually began to skip Detroit on their tours because unless the PK's were sharing your stage you could not expect to draw. This is to the PK's credit. They accomplished in Detroit's scene what may not have been done in any other across the United States during the third wave, they were the kings they purported to be. They didn't need a ska scene to survive, but we sure did need the Parka Kings.

I suppose every town has its' own third wave hero. Every town probably has that band that won't show up in the history books of the next wave but had made more impact upon its thousand or two than those bands that will be written about because of their selling to thousands and thousands more. I venture to believe, however, that none of the others transcended their genre like the Parka Kings did. None of them ruled with heart and hooks alone. The Parka Kings did.

The Parka Kings deserved more than large audiences and adulation. They got it. Detroit's loyalty is unmatched. No one went to only one show, every one knew every lyric, and every one of us will own this CD.

Since this is a limited edition CD I beg those of you who never knew the PK's to just stay away. We wouldn't want one of us who did sweat through their sets night after night to be left without a copy of this album. "If you didn't leave sweating, you were never there to begin with." We were hoping we wouldn't ever have to leave.

1. No lyric sheet. That's ok, you can understand almost everything Brett sings.

2. Production couldn't be different.

3. This CD will be a gem in my collection whether I listen to it or not.

4. Jump Up! is a major label for putting this CD out.

5. The packaging could never appropriately display the music found inside.

6. Style? See above review.

7. The CD is nearly 70 minutes long but it packs in 6 years of music.

Total equals as much as is available.

- Mr. Phelps