Good thing My Quinn, Pat Finnerty, John Parise and Brian Craig of the band Okay Paddy are in Pennsylvania, since in California an Italian police captain couldn’t even refer to himself as “Top Wop” on a custom license plate. Apparently, back East a proud Irish lad can call himself a Paddy and it’s no biggie. Cool! Unless, of course, I have the name thing all wrong.I forgot to ask.
But I did ask Quinn (and it’s Mike, actually) where home was, and he said “in Philadelphia most of the time, while the rest of the boys are in Scranton,” but added that the group “conduct[s] operations in both lovely towns.” And those operations include some pretty tricky ones, like writing the song, “Oo-Man, La-World,” with its hearty helping of Dick Dale surf guitar and jangly angular verses. Yeah, it’s been subtly updated with a side of original Third Millennium Indie Rock Fries, but that track, the second of four at Okay Paddy’s requisite MySpace page, is half concentrated pop music history and half paradoxically anachronistic contemporaneity.
I found myself hoping that these guys don’t give up, that they find their audience, that they keep on going until the wheels fall off.
The group went through a “decade’s worth of rotating lineups and self-released recordings” before releasing an EP, “Hunk,” in 2004. A full-length CD, “The Cactus Has A Point,” is supposed to be released soon. The PR-tists at their label, Prison Jazz, call it “an effervescent collection of erudite power pop.”
Quinn told me that “Pat and I make up the tunes [and] play stuff that appeals to our taste for melody, harmony and some good luck every here and again.” It’s the listener’s good luck, actually, particularly those listeners for whom the 1960s and ‘70s seem like just yesterday. They’ll seem like that and like today when you check out these tuneful treats.
These guys gig a lot — upcoming shows are listed on both their sites — and I bet they record the rhythm section live
instead of going the clinical rub-a-dubbing route in ProTools. They’re that tight, which the auto-play track #1 at MySpace, “Furrier,” proves with its confident acoustic guitar intro that stretches deep into the track before the bass and drums and crunchy attitude fall right into place like the last piece of a favorite jigsaw puzzle. Good stuff.
On hearing the catchy, clever, robo-Celtic “Fretboard,” I found myself hoping that these guys don’t give up, that they find their audience, that they keep on going until the wheels fall off. “We’ll keep going, even if the wheels are wobbling most of the way,” said Quinn. “It’s not something that I see having a beginning or an end, maybe just a series of changes.”
One upcoming change is a video for the new tune, “Fraktur,” directed by Ryan Cannava, “a name some may recognize,” Quinn surmised. “Everyone will be able to see it in some form soon. And if you accept the premise that we’re always in the process of writing/recording some new material,” he mused, “then there you have it.”
There you have it, indeed. Okay Paddy: They’re way more than okay by me.
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August 11th, 2006 at 10:32 am
Great article erik - I love furrier… that’s such an awesome track - well done