Паркети

… After all the story of Parketi began more then a decade after the first wave of Punk Rock, everything was seen and heard, we had the Sex Pistols, Sid Vicious, the Ramones and Joey Ramone and in former Yugoslavia there were punk rock bands already from the beginning, bands like Pekinska Patka, Sarlo Acrobata, Azra and many others were making their marks in the minds of young people in the turbulent time when the country and it’s system were falling down. Nevertheless no one really penetrated this massive barrier that the controlled media and state owned record labels had made against this strange thing called Punk Rock, or if you like, against, Rock and Roll. There was very little that slipped through all of that. In Bitola (a city of 100 000 people) at the end of the 80..s, there were only a few active underground (in the wide sense Rock and Roll) bands that were making their own music, and there was only one place in the whole city where something other then domestic folk music could be heard, and that was some kind of Disco Basement called Orfej (Orpheus). It was a disastrous situation. In other places in Yugoslavia there was a more vibrant music scene, like in the bigger cities of Belgrade, Sarajevo, Zagreb, Novi Sad and Skopje, but still the really good stuff never left the basements and garages of these cities. For Bitola the biggest events in those years were the concerts of some mediocre domestic folk musicians, the really big ones never came there. At the same time, three completely lost guys came somehow over a cassette by the Ramones, and that fact changed Macedonian music history for all times. The times were changing, private night clubs, pubs, cafeterias were beginning to open in the end of the 80..s. Among the new gathering points that rose at that time was a place called "kaj Pajncata" (Pajncas place), after the nickname of the owner, a certain hippie/rocker type of guy, today he is well over 50. I was too young at that time and never really caught the hype around that place, but as I understood it afterwards, that was the place that got the things in motion. One other big thing that was decisive for the existence of Parketi were the new TV and radio stations that were rising up at the same time. There was no more state control of the media and suddenly there was place for everything and everyone. The local public service radio station "Radio Bitola" and some local TV stations began making charts of Demo Bands, unsigned bands from Bitola could send their masterpieces and the listeners and viewers could then vote for their favourites. That was how I heard for the first time about Parketi and I immediately liked it. The adults around me, people on TV and on the radio, were completely disgusted by Parketi, they warned parents for letting their children to listen to Parketi..s complete nonsense lyrics or letting their kids to Parketi gigs, where there was everything from chainsaws, nudity to very brutal mosh pits where people were stomping on each others heads. It seems unreal to believe that in the 90..s something like that could happen, but it happened to Parketi, just like to Sex Pistols, one of their gigs (near the city library in Bitola) was stopped by the men in blue due to usage of obscene language. To think about that today makes you realize how pathetic some people and structures were during that period. One should never get too carried away and begin to analyze the meaning of Parketi lyrics, their only goal was to confront the norms. There are almost always rhymes in their verses but, at least in the early days, between totally unconnected things and words, for example the song Supermen: "nesto leta crveno e, ne e fen ne e fen, toa e Supermen" In English this would be: "Something red flies, it not a hairdryer No, it’s not a hairdryer, its Supermen". And then you have the totally obscene and morbid songs "I’ll fuck your grandmother while flying", "Mama, buy me a gun" and a couple of others – these are the songs that disgusted the parents and adults in general. You also have the completely meaningless songs like "Oranges", "Wasp", "Fly", "One pack of Milk and Coffee" and others. Among all of the things that Parketi have done, there has always been one central thing that they have been completely honest about and that’s LOVE. They may have these obscene songs and those completely meaningless ones but the love songs have always been sincere, songs like "Ball", "Mislam" (eng: I think), "The most in the whole world" and the more recent ones "Little spring", "Barbara", "A song with the most beautiful notes", "I forgot you on the moon" and so forth, are both by and about Parketi and it’s members. Occasionally there have also been songs that touch some social themes and topics that are important to Parketi in this category you have the songs "Brown Midgets", "Lieben Wir", "Clara smokes weed", "Sweet vegetarian" and others. Through all of their songs there is always (as a parallel story) the story about the Rock..n..roll lifestyle. This story about the dreams of rock..n..roll can be perceived in the songs "I’m Part of New York City" and "My whole life". They also do adaptations of world music songs like the "La Cucaracha", "Mama yo Quero", the "CanCan" and some old Macedonian songs like "Sekerna" and "Aco Kabadaja" and several other songs. I can firmly state that the music of Parketi is at best when performed live by Parketi, the crappy home studios where the songs have been recorded do not give enough life to their tunes, both these recordings here on myspace and the others are to be considered as decent Demo recordings at best, but then again, this is kind of punk rock we are talking about so the "sound" does not really matters at all. Parketi live is something else! In the beginning no one in the band could play or sing good, they jumped around, their guitars were getting disconnected due to the jumping, they never knew the lyrics to their songs and were singing different all the time, they could not tune their instruments and were getting off the stage in the middle of the songs because of disagreements between each other. But people were calling them again and again in spite of the mess they made, there was something about them and people seemed to like them. Writer: Ranko Parket