Parry Gripp is the singer and guitarist for the “nerd rock” pop punk band Nerf Herder, whose self-titled debut album was released in 1996 and included their best-known song, “Van Halen,” which is a biting tribute to the David Lee Roth era of that band. In their first run, they also released the albums How to Meet Girls (2000) and American Cheese (2002), and recorded the theme song for the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
In a surprising second life in music, Gripp has written and posted a number of catchy/hilarious songs on YouTube, including “Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom” (31 million views), “Boogie Boogie Hedgehog” (6 million views), “Spaghetti Cat (I Weep for You)” (3 million views), “Guinea Pig Bridge” (6 million views), “Space Unicorn” (15 millions views), “Raining Tacos” (28 million views) and “Baby Monkey (Backwards on a Pig)” (27 million views). There may be some truth to the lyric from the latter song: “The world has gone insane.”
Nerf Herder will be playing an acoustic show at the Mercury Lounge in Goleta on Saturday. Click here for tickets.
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Jeff Moehlis: What’s new with Nerf Herder?
Parry Gripp: Nerf Herder has been around for a long time. We are just playing for fun — it’s kind of a hobby. But it’s nice that people come out to see us. We’re working on a new record. We came out with a new record in 2016, which seems really recent [laughs], but actually it’s a few years ago. It’s funny, for some reason we’re playing a lot of shows this year. We’re playing this acoustic show, and then we’re playing Denver in March with the Smoking Popes. Then we’re doing an East Coast tour, and we’re doing a little West Coast tour, which is more shows than we’ve played in the last 10 years, probably [laughs].
It’s fun. The guys in Nerf Herder are all really good friends, and they’re great guys, and it’s fun to play with them. I mean, if it wasn’t fun we wouldn’t be doing it, because it’s not really lucrative. But it’s fun to do.
JM: Can you tell us about the Santa Barbara music scene when Nerf Herder was first starting out?
PG: In Santa Barbara in the ’90s — and I think this was true of a lot of towns because the music movements of grunge and punk were really exciting — everyone was in a band. We were basically in a band because it was just what you did, to hang out with people in a club, and then your band would play. It seemed like every person had a band. And it was fun. There wasn’t pressure, necessarily, to be good. But people were good. You ended up having to step up a little bit because everyone was doing it. It was great. Anyone who was in Santa Barbara in the ’90s who was under 50 years old will tell you that it was awesome.
JM: My favorite Nerf Herder album is the first one. What are your reflections on that album?
PG: That album very much came out of the Santa Barbara scene. A lot of the songs are just about people we knew [laughs]. The songs were kind of written as we were playing. We started playing, and we didn’t have enough songs, so a lot of it was kind of improvised. I think you get that feeling from it, especially a song like “Nosering Girl,” that was just a one-take thing. Yeah, there was some kind of magic going on. When I listen to it, it’s like, “Oh, that’s a different person — that’s different people than me,” but it was fun. It’s all very far-fetched that we even got out of Santa Barbara, because we were just goofing around. I guess that’s probably what you hear on the record, and what people like about it.
JM: The first song on the first album is about Haley Street. What’s the craziest thing that really ever happened to you on Haley Street?
PG: Nothing, really. It’s just a notorious street. It’s way less now, but when I was a kid and when I was in high school and college, that’s where bad … Santa Barbara, of course, is a very friendly, safe town. But that was the street where you would think if someone was going to hire a prostitute, or someone was going to buy some drugs or something, they’d go to Haley Street. There was this hotel there — it may still be there — the Faulding Hotel. It was kind of like a notorious hotel. Also, when that song was written it was a two-way street. That’s how old that song is. The street has become a one-way street since it was written.
JM: So, fast-forwarding, there were a couple more Nerf Herder albums, and a bit of a break, then you started doing fake jingles and songs about hedgehogs and tacos and burritos. How did that trajectory play out?
PG: It was 2004 or something. Nerf Herder had toured, and it had become clear that it wasn’t going to be a very good job. It was going to be very grueling, because you could really only make money touring. We knew a lot of people who did this, but I think we all were like, “No, we don’t want to be riding in a van for 100 years.” So we stopped. I was just going to get rid of my equipment. I had decided that I’m done with music. My family has an orchid nursery, off of Patterson. So I was just going to work at the orchid nursery.
But somehow I was contacted by someone who was looking for a commercial jingle for waffles. So I wrote this song called “Do You Like Waffles?,” and it didn’t get used as the jingle, but it became this phenomenon on the Internet very early on, before YouTube, with a video that someone made who I didn’t know. It got millions of views, and kids all over the world knew this song. I thought, “This is kind of fun,” so I just started writing these little songs. I didn’t know what would come of it. But eventually YouTube came along, and I made some YouTube videos and those became popular, and I started getting work doing commercials and TV stuff. That just steamrolled. It never stopped, and it’s turned into my career.
JM: You used to have a video of tacos exploding, and I think the song is still on YouTube, but the video with the exploding tacos isn’t. Is there a story behind that?
PG: I wish I knew the complete story. It’s a song called “Crunchy Taco,” and I thought this would be cool. My brother-in-law had given me some firecrackers. “I know, I’ll blow up some tacos, and it’ll be cool-looking in slow motion.” What’s cooler looking than a taco exploding, like the lettuce and the cheese?
So I filmed that, and I put the video up, and pretty quickly it got dinged for being adult content or something. There were people that were like, “This is wasting food,” and comments like that. If you get attention of a group of people who are like, “That rabbit looks unhappy,” then you get a billion people commenting and complaining because they think the rabbit looks unhappy. So that song got dinged for adult content, even though it really was just taco exploding from a firecracker. Maybe that’s scary to kids, I don’t know. So I took it down. The song is still up there. I would love to know why someone complained about it. If it’s someone in Goleta, tell me why.
JM: I’m glad I caught it before it went away. But that’s cool that you shot the video.
PG: It was a rare video that I actually shot myself. What an idea! [laughs]
JM: Well, if the music thing doesn’t work out, you can become …
PG: … a special effects guy! Practical effects.
Click here for the full interview with Parry Gripp.
— Jeff Moehlis is a Noozhawk contributing writer and a professor of mechanical engineering at UC Santa Barbara. Upcoming show recommendations, advice from musicians, interviews and more are available on his website, music-illuminati.com. The opinions expressed are his own.