The Parkdale Hookers

The Parkdale Hookers are a trio of punk moonlighters from the environs of Bay Street They're making their music to a different, Internet-based business drum, Bill Taylor explains

BILL TAYLOR
FEATURE WRITER

It hardly seems proper to breeze into the Hilton Toronto hotel coffee shop and demand to know where the Parkdale Hookers are. Better to look around quietly for a trio of well-dressed, buttoned-down guys in earnest conversation over breakfast.
And there they are, their sensibly shod feet on corporate terra firma, heads in a high-decibel cloud of "good old-fashioned, three-chord, punky power pop" and hands on PalmPilots, trying to schedule a rehearsal around demands of the business world.

"So far, that looks pretty open to me ... Yeah, I'm good for that ... It's gotta be before 2 o'clock, but I'll block it in ..."

Bass-player noise leans back: "They don't have a breakfast martini here, do they?"
"Only if you get a room," says guitarist Mark Jeftovic. "We were on TV one time, and noise thought he'd have stage fright, so he showed up with a Thermos of pre-mixed martinis."
"Well, I'd never been on TV before," says noise. "And I didn't actually have any."
"That's why we're a Web band," says drummer Mark Collins. "God forbid we play in front of people."
"Fifty per cent a Web-based band, anyway," says noise.

The band can usually be found on the Internet at http://www.park dalehookers.ca. But the Parkdale Hookers were live and kicking recently at the Bovine Sex Club on Queen St. W. for the launch of their first CD, polyester fire starter. The Hookers may be the only band that's ever gone on stage at the Bovine in suits and ties.

Jeftovic, 37, runs an Internet-startup company with 15 full-time employees and, he says, "29,000 customers worldwide. We started in 1998 and have been profitable since 1999, one of the few to come through the tech wreck in better shape."
Collins, 36, is an account manager at "a big, publicly traded high-tech company."
noise, 40, runs a graphic-design company, "small but I employ freelances."

He and Jeftovic met when they had offices in the same building. Collins and Jeftovic knew each other as kids and Collins refound him through classmates.com on the Internet.
"We examined our resource base and thought we had something going for us," says noise.
Collins grins. "When I auditioned, they went through my stock portfolio."

"Bands can be toxic environments," says noise. "They stick together when they really should break up. This is the first non-ego-based band I've ever been in. We're trying to take this as far as we can without quitting our day jobs. But we couldn't do it without the Internet."
"The Web can make going on the road obsolete," says Collins.
"Technology has made it all accessible," noise continues. "Before, you needed huge, expensive equipment to record. Now, anyone with a PC and some creativity has a shot."
"It's a low barrier to entry," says Jeftovic. "We did our CD for less than $5,000. It brings democracy to music distribution. Before, it was about being a kid and kissing the velvet glove to get somewhere. Now, you do it, you put it out there and, if it's good product, it'll get listened to, and if it's bad product, it won't. You're going to get a musician middle-class, which has never existed until now. It was either musicians busing tables and playing at night or, the other end of the spectrum, being chauffeured around."
The key, he says, is "podcasting, the new phenomenon. It's like Internet radio. We jumped in there like a dirty shirt. I'm noticing our downloads are up."

Podcasting involves publishing music files on a website, generally a pay site with subscribers.
"Our whole concept is: The website is the project," says Emery. "And if we can monetize the website, we can turn the traffic into ... chicks and cars!"

"The original name of the band was Content Provider," says Collins, deadpan, and it's hard to tell if he's joking. "But that was kind of dry."
noise says that, every time he hears of a major record company launching a lawsuit against MP3 pirates, "I want to tell them to give it up; that world's gone. You release a song, someone burns a copy, they're blogging it, they're trading it with their friends, they're talking about it. Suddenly, there are 5 million copies out there, or however many. Tell me that's a bad thing for the band. We're finding different revenue streams, a different structure."
"You forgot to preface that with, `It's about the music, man!'" says Jeftovic, laughing.

"The band is an outlet for people who live in a mahogany world all day," says Collins, "a place to go to keep the other side of your brain running. But we do almost run it like a company."
When this interview was being set up with noise, he kept referring back to "the steering committee": the whole trio.
"noise sends out minutes at the end of each practice that have to be reviewed," says Collins. "The efficiency of the band is phenomenal. Rehearsals are run like a meeting. When we're through the material, we go home. It's not like we have to finish the bottle of Jack Daniels.
"Samples of what we're going through are emailed to me so I know what's expected. We almost never start learning something live together. noise wrote a song and emailed it to me and Mark. He outsourced the lyrics to me. I wrote them."
"We don't write songs about boy-meets-girl," says Jeftovic. "They're about being cut off on the Gardiner by guys in Beamers on cellphones."
And the band's name? Jeftovic recalls listening with a friend to the New York Dolls, "years ago, and it hit me that Parkdale Hookers would be a great name for Toronto's belated answer to the Dolls. We laughed. But it stayed with me ..."
- The Toronto Star

Toronto, ON. (December 4, 2006) Parkdale Hookers International today announced their entry into the novelty song/seasonal song market segment with the release of "Have a Parkdale Hookers Christmas" by its flagship act, The Parkdale Hookers (http://parkdalehookers.ca)

The track will be distributed exclusively via The Parkdale Hookers Web site, http://parkdalehookers.ca/ There’s no cost for the download.

Best described as an anti-glam band, the three business-suit clad rockers liken themselves to “a trio of accountants who figured out a way to make Marshall stacks tax deductible and went with it”. All three are high tech industry entrepreneurs who use their varied collective talents to bypass usual music industry channels.

“New technology and new business models are coming together to create opportunities for musicians who want to reach out to their fans in an impromptu way, without having to cut a CD or involve a distributor,” according to PHI spokesperson, Mark J.

“Two weeks ago, during rehearsal, we started fooling around with a new Christmas tune. Last week, we decided to record it and went into the studio. This week it’s available world-wide.”

The Parkdale Hookers debut CD, Polyester Fire Starter, was released in 2005. The six tunes that comprise the CD are also available from the web site as free MP3 downloads.

--30 –

For more information contact: Mark J, 416 822-6013
markjr@parkdalehookers.ca
- Canadian News Wire

Posted by Lana Gay on Dec 20, 2007 | 1 comment | » Post a Comment

I don't know about you, but I never get home for the holidays. Instead I have a misfit Christmas party that usually involves a lot of cookies and Crantinis. As the group grows closer to getting type two diabetes, we trade cheesy gifts and sometimes have impromptu dance parties. Its fun.

But there's one issue every year, half of the misfits enjoy classic holiday music, while the other half have their hate on for good ol' Bing (you know who you are, Mel). This always leaves me on the hunt for the perfect non holiday, holiday set list. This year, among my collection is this gem. To please the horror fans, it has an Exorcist worthy intro, there's a rocking beat to dance to, and enough Christmas mentions to make everyone happy! And the band name will be a good ice breaker - The Parkdale Hookers.
- CBC Radio 3

Friday, December 8, 2006

This time of year, some folk are humming “Der Bingle’s White Christmas when they’re in the shower, others belt out the words to Jingle Bell Rock.

But in Toronto the innovative, groups such as Parkdale Hookers International, come up with novelty songs. The release of “Have a Parkdale Hookers Christmas� by its flagship act, the Parkdale Hookers is available to spice up your annual Christmas carol collection. - www.torontofreepress.com

By: Jason Evangelho (IR)
Submitted: 12/14/2006

Around here, we dig xmas tunes IF they don't sound all...you know... christmas-y! (Trust me, it'll be a word eventually - just like "Truthiness")

So, have a dose of Motorhead meets Bing Crosby from Toronto's anti-glam rockers, the Parkdale Hookers.

For more info on the 'Hookers, visit parkdalehookers.ca and check out their debut 6 cut EP.
- Insomina Radio.com