Sons Music- Parry Gripp

 Today in #sonsmusic

Kids love novelty songs. I loved Weird Al Yankovic and bought all his albums until I was 19. Country radio played in my house and I also bought Ray Stevens albums. I also know several of my generation that grew up on Dr Demento

So I get that my kids love jokey music. Joke music, viral music, meme my. There may not be a better joke music artist than Parry Gripp. Gripp has given us classics like “Raining Tacos”, "Riding on a Llama" “Hug a Turtle” and “Baby Yoda”.

Now there’s plenty of adults who like what gets termed “nerd rock” or “geek rock” and there are massive fan bases for artists like Jonathan Coulton, Paul and Storm, MC Frontalot , and I Fight Dragons. Music is such a hard thing to box in that it’s sometimes hard to decide where the genre starts and stops. Throw anything from Nerdcore rap to video game inspired music.

Parry Gripp interestingly is his real name and he came to fame as singer for the band Nerf Herder

Now, if you are looking for a path for this genre - there’s Weird Al and They Might Be Giants, but it goes back as far as Tom Lehrer, Stan Freeberg, and Allan Sherman and lest we forget, Monty Python. Do you count Zappa and Devo and numerous New Wave and Prog bands that led to 80s bands like Ween, the Dead Milkmen and Violent Femmes. Canada had a mini boom in the late 80s that includes bands (many that became stars in the 90s in the US) like Barenaked Ladies, Moxy Fruvous and Crash Test Dummies.

I bring this up because Nerf Herder was part of what became the 90s wave that rode the Alt rock explosion- Bowling for Soup, Fountains of Wayne, Ben Folds Five, Wheatus, and probably the biggest example Weezer.

For whatever reason, Nerf Herder never quite hit that one big hit those other bands enjoyed. “Van Halen” was an alt rock hit and they got press in CMJ and Spin. Yet it’s sort of a forgotten song, while the others mentioned above had at least one evergreen single.

And Nerf Herder never really went away. They performed the theme for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and then would go a bit viral in 2016 with the autobiographical “We Opened for Weezer”.

Now, Gripp has viral hits about food, animals, and for someone who was in a band named after the Princess Leia quote "you stuck up, half-witted, scruffy looking nerf herder" from Empire Strikes Back, songs about Jawas, Admiral Ackbar and Grogu.

So maybe Parry did when the long game- millions of songs streamed and a cult audience that loves his band and him.

2013 - Parry Gripp/Oglio