When we played with Parisman at the Rose & Crown in Golcar in November 1999 they were good. When I saw them at the Leeds Festival the following summer as winners of the Futuresound competition they were even better. After their show at the Well in February 2001, they became one of my favourite bands.
First up were Great North Patrol, one of those Northern groups who dress in parkas are vaugely laddy, vaguely mod and sound vaugely like The Faces/The Jam/The Oasis. They were vaugely decent.
Parisman went on around 10pm and showcased tracks from their newly released E.P., 'Responsible For Everything'. They'd recently added Hoochy, a guitarist/keyboard player to their line-up, and moved away from their earlier Hammond inflected, Charlatans-esque incarnation towards a more interesting and individual sound, with vintage synths and quirky arrangements. Around the same time, their bass player, Shaun, had started to share lead vocals with rhythm guitarist Mike, which further added to their development.
The band's new tracks were fantastic. With bass, drums, guitar, backing vocals, synths and a keyboard, there was a lot going on musically, but each individual part had its place, and the songs never sounded busy or over-egged. Highlights for me were "The Plasticine Boy" and "Song In D Minor", two tunes that set the tone for the music that Parisman would write over the next five or six years, and "Women's Magazine", which was a piano driven, slightly rocky number with some stunning lead guitar parts.
Parisman's only weak spot was their lyrics, which were sometimes dodgy enough to scupper otherwise great tracks. They also had a habit of repeating the same line over and over again. The two more dance orientated new songs, "Murder In A Colisium" (sic) and "We Are Alone", suffered particularly badly, with the former featuring the dreadful line "Man with a gun, can you see him?, can you see him?, murder in a colosseum, colosseum" ad nauseum and the latter pretty much consisting of the revelatory lyric "we are together, we are alone" for its entire duration. Hmm....
I bought a copy of the E.P. afterwards and jealously listened to it on repeat for the next few months, wishing my own band could be half as good.
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