Oregon Music News

Were the Portland duo known as The Parasites Of The Western World to have gotten the attention they so richly deserved when they were together in the late ’70s and early ’80s, chances are they would be talked about in the same breath as Suicide, Devo and Pere Ubu as one of the essential U.S. post-punk bands. The band’s two LPs – a 1978 self-titled effort and the 1980 follow up Substrata – are cult classics that slather heaps of psych rock weirdness atop wandering space blues and discursive piano instrumentals. The principal members of the group, Patrick Burke and Terry Censky, have done what they can to keep the legacy of the group alive both in their own subsequent solo material and by making sure that CDs of the band’s albums are still available. But the group is really only known well by the serious music obsessives willing to drop hundreds of dollars on original pressings of their LPs.

The Parasites are finally getting the spotlight shone their way thanks to the efforts of De Stijl Records, the Minneapolis-based label that has reissued a number of lost classics as well as new works by similarly attuned artists. De Stijl is gearing up to reissue the first Parasites album on vinyl, a move that has many a crate digger breathing a sigh of relief. With this reissue, it seemed the perfect time to revisit the history of this amazing and original band. Patrick Burke was more than happy to do so, taking time away from his work as a photograper and musician to speak with Oregon Music News.

Tell me about your musical background – when you started playing music and what you were inspired by growing up?
I picked up a guitar at age 13 and then put it down for two years because I lost interest. At age 15, I connected with Terry Censky who said he wanted to start a band. Neither of us knew how to play anything, so in a fairly arbitrary way he decided to play bass and I decided to play guitar. It was 1970 – ‘71 and our inspirations at that time included The Beatles, Black Sabbath, CCR, Grand Funk, Pink Floyd, Faust, ELP, NEU!, and eventually Roxy Music, Eno, Bowie, Genesis, etc.

How did this project get started?
Terry and I have known each other since the first grade. We both moved away from our hometown as kids but as mentioned above reconnected as teenagers. TPOTWW began as a three-man project with us and Mark Weatherford. Mark was the guitar player in our high school band and also a freaking creative genius. The original band name was Instantaneous because we had a lot of jams on tape that we believed might make a good record and thought about using them as they were. That changed as we got deeper into the project.

The band was born in 1976 out of boredom and ambition. One bright day I had a revelation that we shouldn’t wait around for a record company to see or not see the value of what we were doing and suggested that we scrape the money together to do our own pressing: a 40-minute LP, not just a two song 45. The others were into it so the next step was getting a recording device. We ended up with a TEAC 4-track, which we proceeded to work the holy gusto out of in order to produce something we thought was reasonably good.

The album has such a distinctive and strange sound to it – did you have that in mind from the start?
Not really. We were just trying like hell to have it not suck. We used whatever was available at the time and spent a lot of time trying to get the best quality we could under the circumstances. So in that respect our somewhat mondo/deviant sound is accidental from the standpoint of sound production. However our ideas were an attempt to do something that was worth its salt artistically and quite intentional.

It sounds very inspired by groups like The Stooges and Hawkwind and Suicide – were you listening to a lot of music like that at the time?
Mark and Terry were both fans of Hawkwind and The Stooges as well as Can and early Kraftwerk. I (along with the others) had a great affection for The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. I’m not familiar with Suicide. Our influences were so varied at the time. Terry and I had been playing in cover bands doing all this music that seemingly has nothing to do with the kind of stuff we came up with for the first album. Groups like Uriah Heep (which was okay) and The Allman Brothers (ugh) among others but I don’t think we really had defined what we were at that time. More to the point, I think our inspiration was just to try to do something that was interesting, perhaps challenging to the listener, FUN and hopefully not typical of the times we were in.

Is it true that this was recorded in an apartment? If so, how did you manage to pull that off?
It was recorded in three different locations, my apartment, Terry’s cottage, and a rental house at the coast where the guitar, bass, and drum tracks for “Accessories” were created and recorded. The tapes were mixed in a studio. We used my apartment because that’s where the piano was, so volume wasn’t much of an issue for that, however we did record the blistering feedback guitar for “You Must Be Joe King” there. We blasted away for about 30 minutes hoping no one would complain. To our amazement no one did.

Was it just the three of you recording everything or did you have others helping you out?
It was the three of us up until just before the recording was finished and then Mark decided to leave the band. I can’t remember why but it was not unusual behavior for him. He probably would’ve rejoined and dropped out again if he hadn’t been killed in a car accident shortly after the album was released. That was such a painful experience for everyone who knew him. As I said he was quite intelligent and also had a magnetic personality. His contribution to the album was considerable.

What were the sessions like? Did you have a lot of material set up beforehand or did you improvise a lot in the recording process?
The sessions were exciting. We were working on something we weren’t at all sure we could pull off. We worried constantly, but were also energized by the idea of having an album out. It was unusual then for an unsigned band to have anything more than a 45 so we really felt a sense of accomplishment in what we were attempting.

Our songwriting method consisted of jamming and editing. We loved the process of improvising during the recording and sound experimentation. Mark’s guitar work was completely spontaneous, completely of the moment. That was one of the defining characteristics of his style. Terry is like that on the drums too. That being said there are a few tunes that were written by sitting down and actually thinking about it first, like “God or Just a Slow Breeze” and Terry’s “Siege of the Twilight Loon”.

You also recorded a very distinctive cover of a Beatles song – what was the inspiration behind that?
We wanted to do a Beatles’ song I think just to have a connection to that world, no matter how distant. It’s like having a small piece of concrete that was part of the Berlin Wall. Our own personalized little piece of history. So the thinking was, “Here’s a song that happens to be written by all four of them. We’ll have all of their names on our album!” What could be better? Looking back it seems entirely fitting that we would choose “Flying” because, (I’m guessing) the writing method for it was the same as ours – jam and edit. Ask McCartney.

Did you guys play a lot of shows around the time of this album? If so, what was the reaction to your sound? If not, why not?
We played a few shows. We didn’t really have a live band set up until well after the album came out, and we were somewhat at a loss for where to go to play the type of music that was on the album. There was no particular hunger in Portland for what we were doing. There were bands playing punk but that wasn’t really our thing. Too dumb. So, as I say we played a few shows, which were really fun but after awhile we moved on to different projects.

You recorded a second album together which I have not heard but have read that it is a more conventional sounding rock album? Was this purposeful – going in that direction?
Yes. It was a deliberate effort to get the attention of a monied record company so we could quit working in a factory wasting 40 hours a week of our lives doing something entirely unrelated to the thing we loved. That’s a typical scenario and it ends in several ways which we are all familiar with – success combined with artistic sellout, success without sellout or with partial sellout, or oblivion. We wound up in oblivion. Except that 30 years later there’s the Internet and this tremendous avenue of having the world connected to the keys under your fingers. But I digress…

Compared to the first album the second, Substrata was commercial, but Jesus M Ward Christ, it’s actually not. There are songs on that LP that aren’t anywhere NEAR commercial, like the title track for instance, so there’s that. I grant that there are two or three cuts that are somewhat commercial but even those songs are more original than ninety percent of the effluent that was being shot into the airwaves at the time (and now for that matter).

The audience for the first album is not the audience for the second, but to me that’s good. We didn’t exactly feel any loyalty to either because we had no connection to our audience. Most of them were overseas in Britain and France where the bulk of the records were sold (500 in Paris, 300 in London) After all, artists are supposed to do as they please, so that’s what we did. As far as Substrata is concerned I have no idea how many copies made it into the hands of listeners. We let a small record company called Matchbox handle the distribution and production and they turned out to be a fraudulent tax shelter operation, not a record company at all. See, we didn’t even need a big record company to get ripped off. We were amazingly alternative!

You recorded a solo album not long after that – was the band effectively done after the second album?
In a way, but that’s not why I did a solo album. That was for the enjoyment of working alone and because I had material that wasn’t a good fit for The Parasites. Terry and I were still working together, we just shifted gears. We developed a semi-electronic band called Infra-Red still trying to create unique music but more rock oriented. We wrote songs we could play in the clubs, which was important at the time. We wanted an audience.

Do you keep in touch with Terry?
We’ve never lost touch. Terry and I have been working off and on for a couple years on a new Parasites album. The reality of financial survival keeps us from being able to do it at anything but a snail’s pace but when it’s done it will be very good. Terry’s own solo music is incredible and a lot more in the vein of The Parasites than mine. I’ve been after him for years to publish it and am still hoping he will eventually find the time.

You have continued to record music – some that I would say is reminiscent of the work you did with Parasites and others that are more New Age-inspired. What keeps you going and inspired to keep creating music?
Nothing. Currently I am neither inspired to keep going or to create. The curious thing is that I do it regardless. I’m playing to an empty hall and yet I still keep playing. I have six CDs presently – a trilogy of what I refer to as literary (pop) rock, and a trilogy of original solo piano compositions. I have material for a lot more projects but at the moment can find no reason in God’s Hell to publish them.

Portland touts itself as a great supportive place for artists. I can only imagine how many artists must think that’s such a load of utter crap. Portland is full of club owners and media who cannot even be bothered to send a rejection e-mail, let alone actually listen and respond. Does that sound bitter? It does to me, but that’s okay. I’ll take the rap. I just don’t want to gloss over anything here. I can’t begin to tell you how demoralizing it is to work so hard and be so roundly ignored, all the while reading all the self-congradulatory slop about what a mecca Portland is for people like me. I imagine artists during the Renaissance had the same problem. Too many creatives. It’s a buyers’ market. Independent artists don’t stand a chance. Yes we’re free to create whatever we want on our own terms. We’re also free to slide into complete oblivion. Not all good art rises to the top. Vast quantities of the stuff are neglected and buried with its creator. Oh well. What else can you say? Oh well. But people should realize it. Sometimes I play coffee shops and people come there to talk, not to listen, that’s understandable. But the real clencher is when you’re playing live music and there’s a guy, or several, looking at a laptop and wearing headphones presumably listening to someone else. If you support the arts, if you enjoy a creative element in society, don’t do that. It’s unbelievably insulting. Just offering up some 21st century etiquette advice.

I’ve recently made the decision to stop spending money creating and mailing promo packs.  Listen, for the $12.00 I would spend on two promo packs (I do really good ones), I can create 50 labeled CDs and simply give them away. At least I have the satisfaction of knowing my music went to someone who may actually listen rather than ending up on a heap in some office.

What do you think of this interest in Parasites – 30 years after you worked together?
It’s an absolute gift! I told Terry in 1978 that our music would be around for a long time because we took the step of actually making an LP and people hang on to them forever (like National Geographic and Playboy) but of course I could never have envisioned the Internet. It’s a genuine boost when we sell even just one CD, and with De Stijl’s remake of the original pressing, it will be gratifying in the extreme to know more people are listening to our work, not to mention all those illegal effing downloads. You bastards!