On Friday, February 13, 1981 Parousia was hired to serenade the students of Orchard Park High at their Junior Class Semi-formal… BIG MISTAKE.
Wikipedia says that Orchard Park High School is a secondary school in Orchard Park, New York. The school has approximately 1725 children in grades 9-12. The students are divided among three houses with a principal for each house and a principal who oversees the entire school.
But what hey don’t tell you is that NO ONE was overseeing the rock band PAROUSIA on Friday February 13, 1981 for the VALENTINE’S DAY dance. The most important date night of the year for a hormone-engorged teenage adolescent attending Orchard Park High.
Orchard Park High-School 4040 Baker Road, Orchard Park, NY
As you know, Valentines Day is major pressure for any teen that chooses to participate in the courtship ritual. It’s an expensive and complex dance of behaviors and depending on how well you pleased your date you just might… just could… just maybe get some ‘special treats’? But do it wrong and lord help you… you could end up in cold shoulder hell for months… or worse.
And so, every bucked tooth, oily faced, acne stricken boy was hoping that us, the band PAROUSIA would charm his mate with such soothing sounds as to place her in a state of pliable malleability.
But alas, this was the rock band PAROUSIA we are talking about… Notorious for ear-splitting volume levels. We were about as soothing as a dump truck driving into a nitro glycerin plant. We knew approximately two “slow songs”. The rest of the night we were rocking out classics like, ‘Hold your Head up’ by Argent, ‘Hocus Pocus’ by Focus, ‘Pinball Wizard’ by the WHO and ‘Suffragette City’ by David Bowie.
Yeah that’s right we played Suffragette City for a bunch of impressionable high-schoolers on critical date night. ‘WHAM BAM THANK-YOU MA’AM”. Hey, I never said the band Parousia was classy. Feeling no remorse whatsoever we further destroyed any hope of a student getting laid by performing our show songs like, “Clones” and “Second Coming/ Ballad of Dwight Fry” by Alice Cooper and “Cross-eyed Mary” by Jethro Tull and ‘Perpetual Change’ by Yes and ‘Squonk’ by Genesis.
Two sets of PAROUSIA’s music were more than appropriate for an artistic event poised to raise an intellectual debate but definitely not as a background for getting busy with your date. Sorry we couldn’t be more accommodating Orchard Park students! I hope some of you did well later that night anyway.
Parousia… a great live concert style rock band but a horrible date night slow-song snuggle band
Orchard Park High School offers courses in Art, Business, Math, Science, English, Social Studies, Physical Education, Foreign Language, Technology, Career and Technological Education and Music. But they never taught a course on how to deal with the post-traumatic stress from watching a rock show by PAROUSIA. So sad, where is your tax money going anyway?
Oh that’s right… part of it went to us, because we got paid $350.00 to play this gig. Thanks citizens! I’m glad we live in a society where a rock band could get paid by the school district to freak-out of your kids. Well as least we are not as bad as the priests at Catholic School.
