About These So-Called
“Persians”
Like many other bands,
Starkville, MS-based The Persians play music, and not just any type of music,
but rock music, which means the guitar and bass are usually
electrified, the drums are often pounding and frenetic, and the singing, though
effective, is not operatic. Not on purpose, anyway.
The two original
Persians, John Brocato
(guitar, vocals) and Todd Hunt (drums, backing vocals) knew each other
for years while playing music in the local area before deciding in 2001 that
they really ought to play together and just stop with all this “rival bands”
business. So that’s what they did, and before long they were playing energetic,
moderately loud live shows at places like Rick’s Café and the Darkhorse Tavern (Starkville), Memphis Jam (at Mud Island
in…um…Memphis), Hal and Mal’s (Jackson, MS), Grand
Central (Mobile, AL), and the colossal outdoor festival Big Spring Jam
(Huntsville, AL).
Playing live,
however, can be somewhat unproductive if bands don’t have something for
potential fans to remember them by (business-savvy people refer to this
something as “product”; modern musicians refer to it as “a CD”). After two
years of working up nearly 30 original songs and several obscure covers, they
released their debut album, A Thing Like Any Other, in September 2003. The album’s songs, it should be noted,
have distinct beginnings, middles, and endings; none of them simply fade in or
fade out, because that’s silly and careless. Some of the songs last longer than
others, but the average for all 11 tracks is 3 minutes 27 seconds, which is
nice and reasonable. As for the style of the songs, they owe a debt to a bunch
of big names, like Led Zeppelin and Elvis Costello and Nirvana, as well as
several smaller names, like Billy Bragg, Pavement, and Guided by Voices. Some
of the songs are very hard-rocking (“Swimming Herward,”
the opener), others are mildly hard-rocking (“Daguerreotype,” which is hard to
spell), others are mildly hard-rocking and melodic (“Accidental
Physics”), and still others are not at all hard-rocking but are nonetheless
extremely melodic, perhaps because they’re not so hard-rocking (the well-known
“U.V.A.,” the evocatively titled “Mashed-Potato Sky”). All in all, it’s a good
debut album if the band does say so itself. Thankfully, other people feel this
way too, including CD Baby (where the band sells its album) and the 30
music-download sites on the Internet (such as iTunes,
Napster, and Tower Records Online) where A Thing Like
Any Other is available.
Once cutie pies
and musical geniuses Lee Graham and Steve Chrestman decided the Persians were worth their
time, the band started looking forward to releasing its sophomore album, which,
contrary to previous claims here, may or may not be titled Allergic to
Juggling, since the band has now written a bunch of new songs and stumbled
upon the bumper-sticker-cum-album-title Get
In, Sit Down, Shut Up, Hold On. Regardless, the alleged new album will have
no fewer than 14 songs, all of them bad to their marrowy bones.
As for the band name, John found it in 1993 right after he broke up with
Skeleton Crew. While contemplating some name other than the obvious for his
solo days, he saw “The Persians” on a banner advertising a history lecture at
the California Institute of Technology (where he worked at the time) and
thought it was perfect.
The band's use of “The Persians” carries no political, social, or cultural
significance. They chose this name simply because it’s a beautiful-sounding
word. It may as well evoke a herd of cats or a fleet of flying carpets instead
of Zoroastrianism or a large gulf surrounded by contentious Middle Eastern countries.