Graham Parker with Mike Gent ~ 2008 September 11 ~ Johnny D's Uptown, Somerville, MA
Graham Parker (lead vocals, Gibson acoustic guitar, Fender electric guitar, harmonica); Mike Gent (backing vocals, guitar, and opening set)
Setlist
Mike Gent
False Alarms (unreleased Mike Gent) - Chin to Ear (unreleased Mike Gent) - Alice the Goon - Million Dollar Bash (Dylan) -
Girl of My Dreams (Bram Tschaikovsky) - Jupiter Row (new Figgs song) - Bungalow Bill (Beatles, obviously) - Mr. Rose (unrecorded Mike Gent) - Look At Her She's Walking Away (Figgs)
Graham Parker (with guitars he played noted)
[Gibson acoustic]: Fools' Gold - Back Door Love - Hard Side of the Rain - Guillotines of Guadaloupe - Carp Fishing on Valium - Next Phase - Pollinate - That's What They All Say - [Fender electric]: You've Got To Be Kidding - Howlin' Wind - Release Me - Signed Sealed Delivered - Passion Is No Ordinary Word - Get Started. Start a Fire - Don't Ask Me Questions - [Gibson acoustic]: Three Martini Lunch - Nation of Shopkeepers ... encore .. (with Mike) High Horse - Something You're Going Through - Local Girls - [Fender electric]: White Honey - Back to School Days
Review
Graham Parker and Mike Gent played Johnny D's in Somerville on Thursday night. Johnny D's is a restaurant-bar/nightclub with the emphasis on restaurant-bar. Where my party was sitting, toward the side front of the stage, the door to the kitchen swung open and closed all night, making for some noisy clattering that was very distracting during quieter songs. Toward the back, the patrons were standing close to the very noisy bar. Oh well, if we want quiet, we'll go to a folk concert next time.
The establishment is located in Davis Square, Somerville, an area that seems to have escaped some of the horrifying gentrification of neighboring Porter and Harvard Squares, but it still isn't what it was a couple of decades ago when this was my home town. I understand the used record store where I used to shop (I undoubtedly bought Parker records there, back in the day) has closed, but at least the classy Somerville Theater is still in business and booking topnotch acts.
Concert Going Partner and I arrived at 6:45 and met my friend Jill, who is a Kinks fan. Talking with her I had this weird sense of the clash of my musical universes ... someone from my Kinks universe was sitting there in my Geep universe. For a second there I had the weird illusion that I was at a Dave Davies koncert (....sigh).
We all had scrumptuous dinners (one of us had mussels and the other two had tasty and well-prepared chicken dishes), and my buddy Jamie ("Midnight To You" from the GrahamParker.net message board) joined us. Promptly at 9:00 Mike Gent came on stage to perform a superb 9-song set. His songs included at least two numbers from the forthcoming Mike Gent solo record and a song from an upcoming Figgs record which is currently in production and will probably be released early in 2009. For one song he picked up a huge book called Bob Dylan Lyrics and offered to pick a song at random and play it, even if he had never played it before. He flipped the book open to "Million Dollar Bash" which he then played just as if had rehearsed it. (Ahem.) He played "Bungalow Bill," a crowd-pleasing singalong, complete with whistling. Another highlight was "Mr. Rose," in which Mike gently criticizes (ahem) Axl Rose for taking 20 years making an album. His final number was that Figgsnut from their superb LP Palais, the song called "Look At Her She's Walking Away," in which MG instructed the audience to sing along. The guys sing "look at her she's walking away" while the girls sing the lovely high-pitched descant "she's walking away." As one of the girls, I think we need more female voices for that one to work really well, but in any case it was a perfect song by which to leave the stage.
After a short break Graham came on stage, wearing appropriately awful cheap 1983-vintage plastic sunglasses, and otherwise dressed all in dark gray. He started with two Heat Treatment numbers including "Back Door Love" which I'd never heard live before. Next was "Hard Side of the Rain," after which GP bragged that this song, from his most recent album, was just as good as the first two, from his second album ("better," some joker up front opined). He then entertained the crowd with some fractured French history, about Cardinal Richelieu playing tennis in his long robes and other legends of the Bastille Day story, none of which had anything to do with the next song "Guillotines of Guadaloupe," during which he played a snippet from "Sugar Sugar" (yes, THAT "Sugar Sugar") to indicate that's where he had stolen the riff. (Graham has recently been in a phase of claiming that he stole everything he ever wrote from something else.)
The next song was a Real Treat! Geep said the last time he'd played Johnny D's was in 2000 when he was touring to promote his book of short stories, Carp Fishing on Valium, and he had written some songs to accompany the stories. He said that in many venues this reading/singing format was met with hostility from the crowd, but not in the Boston area, where "you are all so smart." (He did complain about the near impossibility of finding your way around on the Boston area's creatively laid out and unmarked highways and roads, to laughter from the identifying crowd.) So, to commemorate that other gig at Johnny D's, GP pulled the song itself -- "Carp Fishing on Valium" -- out of the dusty back of the closet and performed it. What a wonderful song! It had a very pretty chorus and I am hoping confidently that I get to hear it again soon.
Introducing "Pollinate," Graham said the song sometimes inspires the audience to pair off and start making whoopie immediately (nobody did, good thing). It's a song that's both sexy and innocent, and contained some very lovely guitar playing on GP's acoustic guitar. Another highlight was "Three Martini Lunch," a song that in my opinion is very unusual in GP's catalog. It's really a character study, something that GP doesn't write very often. GP closed the main set with "Nation of Shopkeepers," a song he likes playing, since he has the audience sing the "doo-doo-doo-doo doo" part while he "scats" like a jazz singer on top.
GP didn't leave the stage, but he did hide behind his music stand. I think he thinks the charade of leaving the stage before an encore is unnecessary. MG returned to the stage for a 5-song encore, beginning with the fun "High Horse" (during which song Mike played the familiar riff from "Windy" -- okay, Mike, whatever you say) and ending with the equally fab "Back to School Days."
Mike was taking a one-day break from touring in Juliana Hatfield's band and despite lack of rehearsal time he and GP were great together ... as always. Geep himself seemed in good humour and played and sang beautifully.
Also spotted in the building were John Powhida (from groovy Boston band the Rudds) and Scott Janovitz (who played keyboards in Graham's touring band the Latest Clowns and is now a member of the Figgs), ably substituting for Merch Boy selling CDs.
My Kinks fan friend was duly impressed, and wished she'd brought her vintage copy of "Mercury Poisoning" for GP to sign. Next time, Jill.
More Chairman
Here is a page with a handy list of links to all pages on this website with content relating to Graham Parker.
and
More Mike
Here is a page with a handy list of links to all pages on this website with content relating to Mike Gent and The Figgs.