Graham Parker ~ 2006 March 24 ~ The Turning Point, Piermont, NY
Graham Parker accompanying himself on Fender electric guitar, Gibson acoustic guitar, and harmonica
Set List (with guitars noted)
[Gibson acoustic]: Between You and Me - Heat Treatment - The Raid - You Can't Be Too Strong - [Fender electric]: Empty Lives - Temporary Beauty - Life Gets Better - [Gibson acoustic]: Lunatic Fringe - The Girl Isn't Ready - Cupid - Three Martini Lunch - Green Monkeys - [Fender electric]: And It Shook Me - Long Stemmed Rose - First Day of Spring - Obsessed with Aretha - [Gibson acoustic]: Guillotine of Guadaloupe - Blue Horizon - Crawling from the Wreckage - [Fender electric]: Did Everybody Just Get Old ... encore ... [Gibson acoustic]: Hard Side of the Rain [new song] - Local Girls
Review
At first I thought the "career retrospective" format, in which Graham plays one song from each of his albums in chronological order, was a somewhat artificial way of picking a set list. But I give GP credit for trying something different -- it keeps the solo shows fresh for him as well as the audience. I was told that GP has used this format before, so it isn't new to him (just new to me). It did enable him to pick out some great obscurities, like the absurdly humorous "Guillotines of Guadaloupe." He considered Loose Monkeys and Live Alone in America to be official albums so that one song per album would give him enough songs for a show. This format did give him a chance to make some very funny comments about his back catalogue -- for example, he said that when he recorded Human Soul he had run out of ideas so he wrote a bunch of half-songs and glued them together to make "the surreal side."
This Friday night concert took place at the Turning Point, a small nightclub on the banks of the Hudson. It's small and crowded with long tables placed perpendicular to the stage. They have a very fair method of seating customers based on order of arrival at the restaurant. The sound and lighting were good and you can actually see from just about anywhere in the venue. Geep wore a white shirt with blue vertical stripes (the photographic negative of his frequently-worn blue shirt with white stripes). The TP had an entirely different show scheduled for later in the evening, which seemed to make Geep feel rushed toward the end of his show. He only played one new song at the end, and then submitted to an audience request and finished with "Local Girls" -- I think if he hadn't been feeling rushed he might have done one or two more new songs.
I loved hearing "Life Gets Better," one of GP's best romantic songs from that extremely romantic album, The Real Macaw, GP's tribute to romantic love that's going to last. When GP sings a song like this, he always seems to remark that the song is not really him; this seems to be a running joke with the audience to try to maintain his reputation as a snarling angry punk rocker. (We know better.) Another favorite song for me was the desperately beautiful "Blue Horizon" from my favorite Graham Parker album, Deepcut to Nowhere.
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.