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I’ve always been irked by the fact that I don’t get more demo cassettes and CDRs as promos for DFB; I don’t know if it’s that people see labels like Fat Wreck Chords on the site and think that I don’t care about any band that doesn’t sell at least 5,000 copies per release, but that’s simply not the case. I spend virtually all of my spare cash on obscure vinyl and I review a lot of it on the site, pushing more established bands off the review schedule to help get the word out about the music I love.

However, there’s something about hearing a band whose existence you had absolutely no clue of and being totally blown away. Such is the case with Moron Parade; don’t let the fact that this is just a CDR with an insert made on a shitty desktop printer fool you, this is easily one of the best indie rock bands I’ve heard in ages. In fact, after listening to all twenty-one (!!!) tracks on Heat Slap I’m convinced that Moron Parade must be stealing their songs from someone; how else could a totally unsigned band have this many totally unique and classic songs?

Since I don’t know where Moron Parade are getting these beautiful slices of indie rock from I’ll just assume that they’re all theirs and tell you about them. “One Note” opens the CD and despite the fact that it’s the simplest and most straightforward track here it’s probably the band’s best. The chorus, “It would be so easy if every song we had only had one note” is a total misnomer; the song’s chorus reminds me of Pete Shelley’s classic Buzzcocks tunes in the way that the melody seems to keep going and going, stretching out and pushing itself further and further until the singer is totally breathless. “Mints!” is totally different; while it still has a delicate melody the fuzzed-out guitar and cocky vocals give it a bit of a rock flavor, and though Moron Parade’s energy level spikes on this song it all gets re-diffused in the song’s mantra-like outro.

So you want more? Moron Parade have it for you with the droning, Flaming Lips-esque “Ants,” “2x Twice,” which sounds like it was yanked straight off of Daydream Nation and one of my personal favorites, “Permanente,” an odd track that combines the funky melodic bass lines of the Minutemen with the loose, jammy feel of the Meat Puppets (actually, I think that this is the sound the Minutemen were going for on their last album but never achieved).

I could go on, but with twenty one tracks of stunning quality this review could easily be thirty pages long, so I’ll close this sucka out by saying that if you’re looking for value for your indie rock dollar track these Portland indie kids down and give this CDR a spin or ninety. If all demos were this good there’s no way that record labels would exist.

Added: March 25th 2003
Reviewer: Daniel
www.deepfrybonanza.com