Places To Park
Better Sights Were Set (2002)
Scott Heisel
Places To Park is like that local band in everyone's scene. You all know who I'm talking about - that group of 4 guys, all with varying degrees of patchy facial hair, one has a pseudo beer gut at the age of 18. They all have assorted Hot Water Music and Small Brown Bike patches and stickers on their clothing/amps/guitar cases. The drummer's license plate is probably "AVAIL 7" or something.
The band's friends come to all their shows and learn the gang vocals parts in their songs, but really only sing along because they know the guys on stage - the music isn't too moving, but at least they're trying, right? Might as well humor them.
This band is the only local band who really seems to try at being an actual band, so they usually get the nod from the local promoter to open for whatever semi-big group is coming through town. They shared the bill with Thursday [before they blew up, of course] last summer, and still tell their friends to this day how "fucking awesome" the show was and how "totally rad" the guys in Thursday were, and how they're positive they remember them and will bring them along for their big MTV2 tour.
We all have a band like this in our scene. We all know that these bands won't ever get signed. Hell, usually the bands themselves know they won't make it big and will end up just giving away the 300 extra demos they had made, "just in case," after their impending breakup [usually because someone goes off to college].
Places to Park is this band, but apparently someone forgot to tell them they're not supposed to make it this far. They got signed to Volcom [who seems to have pockets as deep as Drive-Thru nowadays] and were thrown on the entire length of this year's Warped Tour, winning the hearts of girls who mistakenly thought they were at the main stage and guys who mistakenly thought Hot Water Music was starting early. They really don't offer anything special or new to music now, nor will they probably ever. This is just fine as background music, and that is all it ever will be for me.