Graham Parker ~ 2006 March 26 ~ Live at Drew's, Ringwood, NJ
Graham Parker accompanying himself on Fender electric guitar, Gibson acoustic guitar, harmonica, and kazoo
Set List
[Fender electric]: White Honey - Fools' Gold - Stick To Me - Passion is No Ordinary Word - Empty Lives - Temporary Beauty - [Gibson acoustic]: Life Gets Better - Lunatic Fringe - The Girl Isn't Ready - Cupid - Three Martini Lunch - Green Monkeys - And It Shook Me - [Fender electric]: Mr. Tender - First Day of Spring - Obsessed with Aretha - Guillotine of Guadaloupe - [Gibson acoustic]: Blue Horizon - Crawling from the Wreckage - [Fender electric]: Did Everybody Just Get Old ... encore ... [Gibson acoustic]: 2000 Funerals - Stick to the Plan
Review
A couple of other fans who populate the Graham Parker discussion group on Yahoo remarked that I may be the only person who has seen GP three times in a row, but really, going to the three shows wasn't any great feat, considering that the three shows were within about 50 miles of each other. If I was going to drive from Cape Cod to attend one, it simply wouldn't make any sense not to attend all three. When he's doing solo shows, GP does vary his set list considerably from night to night, so I knew I wasn't going to see the same show three times.
It turned out that the first and third of the shows -- the "career retrospective" format -- WERE largely the same, but the middle one was very different. GP did perform a few songs all three nights -- "The Girl Isn't Ready," "Obsessed with Aretha," and "And It Shook Me" for example. "The Girl Isn't Ready" was a non-reggae version. "And It Shook Me" was a lot slower than on the record. The first time I heard it I didn't really like it played this way, but by the second night I was starting to enjoy the more thoughtful, more mature feel that this style gave the song.
I attended my third GP show in three nights with my Concert Going Partner and an old college friend who now lives in the New York area. This show was a house concert in Ringwood, NJ, at the locally well-known concert series called "Live at Drew's." This is a living room, not a professional concert space. A corner of the living room served as the location for the performer, where Graham seated himself. The concert space was extremely crowded. It's great to see Graham so well-received at any venue, but there were people stuffed into the kitchen (where they couldn't possibly have been able to see GP) and onto a flight of stairs going up to a small balcony, which was probably the best place to watch from, actually. It might have been a good idea for Drew to limit ticket sales to the number of people who would realistically fit in his living room. The up-side of its being a house concert was that people brought food, and the dining before the show was truly spectacular. And in any case, any venue that repeatedly books Graham Parker, as well as a variety of other talented singer-songwriters from the New York area, is okay in my book.
The show itself used the Career Retrospective Format, in which Geep plays one song from each of his albums, and as a result had many songs in common with the show at The Turning Point the other night, but with more exceptions than you might expect. For the first four albums, he played an entirely different set of four songs. Then starting with Up Escalator he started to play the same songs as the other night. When he got to Burning Questions he was about to start "Long Stem Rose," but a woman up front called out for "Mr. Tender" instead, and called out the most plaintive "pleeeez" you'll ever hear, and who is GP to resist such a plea? Thank you to the woman who did this since I loooooove the song "Mr. Tender." (Not that I have anything against "Long Stem Rose.") He also played a different encore set of two songs from the two played the other night at the Turning Point.
While running chronologically through his catalogue, GP recited brief stories and facts about world events. This technique worked well when GP tied it in with his career in some fashion; for instance he mentioned Legionnaire's disease (from 1976) and said that while on a long tour around the world, he was sick with a bad cold and was convinced he had it.
More Chairman
Interested in my other Graham Parker reviews? Here is a page with a handy list of links to all pages on this website with Geep content.