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In a way, the New York City subway system is kind of like Satyricon, Portland's legendary punk club. Take it from drummer David Parks, who's played both.
"There's a certain randomness about the subway that's definitely like an old-school punk-rock club," says Parks, a member of Too Many Zooz, a trio that has spent the past year drawing crowds to the subterranean labyrinth of the world's most iconic transit system. "Back in the day, there was really no control. Maybe there was one security person at the door, but never really anyone in the actual room. People break out dancing, there's overly drunk people, obnoxious people, whatever."
In 1990, Parks dropped out of cooking school in Nashville and bought a bus ticket to Portland, intent on being involved in the city's music scene. He began playing drums in Hitting Birth, the Portland art-punk act known for using shopping carts as percussion. (He also had a stint as Satyricon's janitor.) Feeling like he'd done all he could musically in Portland, Parks left for New York, eventually joining the busking drum group Drumadics, through which he met baritone sax player Leo P. After recruiting Leo's music-school acquaintance Matt Doe, they formed Too Many Zooz.
Too Many Zooz became Internet famous last year when a video of one of its subway performances made it to the front page of Reddit. Between ads for Ketel One vodka, Leo P stomps and slides across the station's tiles in bright white sneakers, while Doe, red-haired and red-faced, transforms his trumpet into a ravelike synth, and then a mariachi horn, exhorting the crowd to come closer. At the center is Parks, in a red headband, keeping time on a bass drum with blocks, bells and tambourine attached.
In the time since the video came out, Zooz has toured France, given TED Talks, put out two albums and been written up by the New York Post. But Parks is quick to point out that Reddit wasn't the band's first big exposure. "Our first push came from the thousands of New Yorkers who see us daily," he says. That's one of the major differences between playing the subway and headlining an actual stage. "In the subway, it's like having a club fill up and then empty and fill up again every 10 minutes, and the people there aren't there to hear us."
The band has adjusted its sound, Parks explains, to try and capture the attention of everyone who passes by on their daily schlep around the city. Parks describes Too Many Zooz's eclectic sound as "a walk down 116th Street in Harlem. You can walk down that street and within 10 blocks you're going to hear African [music], reggae, hip-hop, merengue—every style of music that you could possibly hear."
There's another obvious influence in Too Many Zooz's sound: dance music. The pitch of Leo P's and Doe's horns shift gradually in homage to the frantic buildups and drops of EDM, and Parks' drumming is booming enough for the biggest of the proverbial big rooms. As detached as that might seem from the Satyricon days, Parks thinks otherwise. "I'm not doing anything I haven't already done for 25 years," he says. "The only difference is location, and maybe instrumentation.â
SEE IT: Too Many Zooz plays Peter's Room at Roseland Theater, 8 NW 6th Ave., with Tope, on Saturday, Jan. 31. 8 pm. $15. All ages.
WWeek 2015
