RETRO: Garden Variety “Parker” live at Wetlands 1996

Posted October 14th, 2008 by eric

I recently stumbled across a mix tape I made for my wife back in 1995 that had this song on it. I’ve already watched this video about five times today. It’s off Garden Variety’s Knocking the Skill Level LP from 1994. I know I wore the grooves off this record when I was in college. Garden Variety’s cerebral, explosive rock teetered on the brink of the emotional outpouring that Jawbreaker made infinitely more famous in the early to mid-1990’s. Lead singer Anthony Roman’s strained, guttural voice croaked and cracked in all the right places and his band absolutely tore it up live. I was lucky enough to have seen them at CBGB’s at CMJ in 1995 about a year before they broke up. Roman went on to form the post-punk, dub outfit Radio 4.

Tags: video