Graham Parker ~ 2006 June 24 ~ Theodores' Blues Club, Springfield, MA
Graham Parker accompanying himself on Fender electric guitar, Gibson acoustic guitar, and harmonica
Set List (with guitars noted)
[Gibson acoustic]: High Horse - Heat Treatment - Anything for a Laugh - Sugaree {Grateful Dead} - I Discovered America - Hard Side of the Rain - Pourin' It All Out - [Fender electric]: Lady Doctor - Evil - World Keep on Turning {Peter Green} - Blue Highways - Get Started. Start a Fire - You've Got To Be Kidding - [Gibson acoustic]: Three Martini Lunch - Short Memories - Hold Back the Night - [Fender electric]: Back To School Days - Soul Corruption - Don't Let It Break You Down ... encore ... [Gibson acoustic]: The Raid - [Fender electric]: Discovering Japan - Not If It Pleases Me
Review
Concert Going Partner and I arrived at Theodores' Blues Club in Springfield, Mass. around 5:00 pm, when we had been told the doors would open. It looked like a ghost town. The streets were deserted except for a few shady looking characters, and we locked the car doors. We took a seat at a front table, and sat with our backs to the stage to give GP the illusion of privacy as he ran through a brief soundcheck. After the soundcheck Graham came over to talk to us and reported that the gig had gone well in Burlington the night before, but that the crowd wasn't all he would have liked.
The food was good, and the decor interesting. The walls were covered with 4 foot x 4 foot replicas of old blues LP covers by people like Elmore James and Lightnin' Hopkins. The back of the ample stage was decorated with a series of four excellent drawings of grizzled old black bluesmen playing various instruments. Hanging from the ceiling were all kinds of junkyard collectibles, antique bicycles, old beer advertisements, all kinds of stuff. The crowd straggled in. Time passed. CGP and I wished we'd brought the travel Scrabble. We played twenty questions and a children's connect-the-dots game. About quarter to nine Sue Burkhart, the warmup singer, set up her equipment, and then she went out in the audience to talk to somebody until about 9:20 when she finally came on stage. By this time the place was filled with loudly talkative patrons (maybe 150 people). Sue played about ten songs on her lovely steel resonator guitar. She played expertly, but she wasn't miked loudly enough, and I could barely hear her singing above the roar of the crowd. Her songs seemed interesting ("Momma's Got an Ipod" stood out) but it was hard to tell. Maybe someday I'll get a chance to actually hear her perform and then I can tell whether I like her music or not.
After a mercifully short break GP came on stage carrying his acoustic Gibson and began the show. Thankfully the sound was much better than for poor Sue -- you could hear GP loud and clear, and the crowd was relatively quiet for the most part, so it looked like a lot of the folks there had actually come to hear him. GP was wearing gray trousers, his trademark black Keds, a dark green long sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up, that string tie he always wears, and his amber glasses. GP started with the song he's been opening with lately, a favorite of mine, "High Horse," that brilliantly clever condemnation of pretentiousness disguised as a kid's zoo song. In a way "High Horse" is the ultimate GP song, because his music is all about exposing phoniness, and nowhere else in his catalogue is he so direct about condemning it, but in true GP style he does it with such humor that the listener can't help smiling and tapping her foot.
Graham had a scratch on his forehead and explained that while attending his son's soccer game he had walked right into a shed used for storing the equipment (ouch!). It was hot in the club and GP was gleaming. He didn't tell quite as many stories as at some shows, but his singing and playing were top notch. He told a story about hearing the Grateful Dead for the first time back in the '70s and discovering that far from being the psychedelic, groovy band he anticipated, they were a "lame ass country band," and how this led to his eventually recording a Jerry Garcia song ("Sugaree"), which he then played. I still don't get the point of Graham recording and continuing to perform this song; I didn't like the original, and I don't like his version. There now, just in case any of you were beginning to conclude that I think Graham is god or something, that proves it isn't true! He did play another song from "Your Country," the wonderful "Anything for a Laugh," about a travelling clown.
My opinion of GP's songs often improves when I hear them live. "Lady Doctor" and "Evil" are both songs I thought were just average from the records, but GP's live performance are so good I have come to think they're great, and as for "The Raid," I never really even noticed the song, but his live performances of it are so much fun that I have come to absolutely love it. In recent gigs he's gone from calling it "the worst song on Stick To Me" to "the weakest song on Stick To Me," to just playing it without insulting it at all -- maybe he has also started to like the song more as he performs it more.
GP said that because Theodore's is really a blues club, he would play some blues, and then he imitated a bad blues singer, repeating a phrase like "I can sing this all night" several times. He played the blues-tinged "Lady Doctor," and then played a genuine blues song, "The World Keep on Turning" by Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac. It was a great song choice, although some joker in the front row (I confess, it was me) yelled for "Green Manalishi" when he said he was going to play a Peter Green song. Peter Green, that guitar genius of British blues, is known for his creative and darkly emotive guitar phrasing, and Graham did a superb job of imitating his guitar style. (Oh there I go, back to sounding like I think he's god.)
As he finished "You've Got To Be Kidding," a string broke on his Fender Telecaster. First time I've seen Graham break a string, and I've never seen any string break like this before -- it just vanished. It wasn't dangling from the guitar like a normal broken string, it just (poof!) disappeared. GP asked if there were any guitarists in the audience who would like to change the string for him, and someone bravely volunteered, but the guy couldn't figure it out, and two other people wound up coming over and helping him, which led Graham to quip about how many concert goers it took to change a guitar string .... Anyway while they were putting on the string, which they accomplished successfully, GP switched to the acoustic Gibson and played "Three Martini Lunch," and was really smooth about it, as if he wasn't at all worried about these fans fiddling with his electric guitar.
Musical highlights of the show included "Short Memories," in which Graham sang "WE have short memories" instead of "they have short memories" as on the record; "Soul Corruption" with its fabulous chords and spine-chilling high notes at the end (Graham had skipped a couple of falsetto notes on one or two other songs, but included them beautifully on this one); "The Raid," that recent favorite of mine; a very countrified version of "Not If It Pleases Me"; and of course two of the new songs, "I Discovered America" and my current favorite song in the universe, "Hard Side of the Rain." GP makes fun of himself for writing this one since he calls it a "song of hope," but it is heartbreakingly good, and besides, what other songwriter could begin a song with the phrase "twisted shards of metal silhouetted against the sky" and have it be a song of hope? I must admit I feel a little sense of ownership toward "Hard Side" since I was present at its debut, at the Towne Crier back in January. I think that at least three of GP's new songs, those two plus "Stick to the Plan," rank among the best songs GP has ever written, and I am eagerly looking forward to the new album. GP said it won't be released until early in 2007 because the record company needs time to get the payola together.
After the show Concert Going Partner and I had to leave promptly because we were driving back to Cape Cod (130 miles), so as soon as GP had come back out into the room we said good-bye to him, he thanked us for coming all that way to see him perform, we went out the door, and the deserted, scary neighborhood of 5 in the afternoon had come to life! This is apparently Springfield's club district, and every parking spot on the street was taken, the road was choked with cars looking for parking, pedestrians thronged the sidewalks, and there were lines waiting to get in at other drinking establishments up and down the street. We laughed heartily at the nervousness we had felt leaving our car in what we had thought was a deserted neighborhood.
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.