Graham Parker ~ 2007 March 24 ~ Rosendale Café, Rosendale, NY
Graham Parker accompanying himself on Fender electric guitar, Gibson acoustic guitar, harmonica, and kazoo
Set List (with guitars noted)
[Fender electric]: White Honey - Fools Gold - Stick To Me - Passion is No Ordinary Word - Devil's Sidewalk - Temporary Beauty - Can't Take Love for Granite - Wake Up (Next To You) - [a capella]: Cupid - [Gibson acoustic]: Three Martini Lunch - Green Monkeys - The Sun is Gonna Shine Again - [Fender electric]: Here It Comes Again - [Gibson acoustic]: Haunted Episodes - She Never Let Me Down - If It Ever Stops Rainin' - Crawling from the Wreckage - Chloroform ... encore ... I Discovered America - Other Side of the Reservoir - Stick to the Plan
Review
It was with some hesitation that Concert Going Partner and I made the long drive from Cape Cod to the tiny burgh of Rosendale in upstate New York to attend GP's "record release event." The hesitation was based on the Rosendale Cafés website's claim that this was to be a career retrospective show. I've seen GP use that format before, and I didn't like it. A year ago when I saw him do the career retrospective format twice, the shows dragged. Instead of his usual witty between-songs banter, Graham spent a lot of minutes reciting uninteresting and unrelated historical trivia. It was almost as if GP were testing us -- "if I completely bore their socks off, will they come back?"
Well, we came back, and we got our reward. Although GP did use the career retrospective format -- to my thinking, an odd choice when one has a new record to promote -- he did it much better this time. He dropped the silly historical trivia and instead talked about his own career, commenting wittily on the mind-bogglingly huge amounts of money spent on some of the '80s albums. He told a funny story about being hired by Budweiser to sing their jingle for a TV ad, and disguising his voice so no one would know it was him. (Umm .... true story ... maybe?) Additionally, the set list was far better than the previous times I'd seen him use the career retrospective format; he added in songs that he seldom performs, including a killer version of "Wake Up (Next To You)" and a really great "The Sun is Gonna Shine Again" (a song that predicted the 'hopeful GP' many years before "Hard Side of the Rain").
The Rosendale venue remains one of the truly stellar places to see a Graham Parker gig. The vegetarian food is excellent. The art pieces on the wall, works by employees at the restaurant, were interesting and creative, the staff are helpful and accommodating (but get there early if you want to order food 'cause it gets really busy), and they obviously are politely attentive to everything that GP himself needs. Graham brought his son Jimmy and stationed him at a table next to the stage; during the show Jimmy slipped off to the dressing room and returned transformed into superhero MERCH BOY to sell the new album as well as other CDs from the Parker catalogue. (Merch Boy was the only member of the Parker family in attendance, unless you count his soccer mates, who filled a couple of tables off to the side.) Geep was dressed all in black (except for blue sneakers) and wore a string tie.
There are always lots of comments about Graham's singing -- he emoted effusively on the a capella "Cupid" (and was pleased with himself for staying on key) -- but I think he should get more attention for his guitar playing. After all, he plays almost all the guitar on the new record (Don't Tell Columbus). Even in a song that's based on the basic rock 3-chord structure, he enriches the guitar accompaniment with color notes and chord variants and does it with a smooth confidence. From the audience it looks like he has fun playing the guitar. In addition, because of the songs he chose for this show, a higher percentage of the songs were played on the Fender electric than on the Gibson acoustic, and that gives the set more of a rock (and less of a folk) feel.
The first eighteen songs consisted of exactly one song per album from Howlin' Wind through Songs of No Consequence (including Live Alone in America but skipping Loose Monkeys ). There were quite a few highlights during those eighteen songs. GP fading out "Passion is No Ordinary Word," almost whispering the last few repetitions of the phrase "that you hear at night" while the savvy audience held their breath waiting for the finish. The superb playing and singing on "Wake Up (Next To You)" with that lovely Motown riff. The unusual and excellent song choices of "The Sun Is Gonna Shine Again," "Here It Comes Again," and "She Never Let Me Down." A marvelous rendition of "If It Ever Stops Rainin'," with a thank-you to the crowd for coming out on a rainy night (the Figgs singing backup in my imagination). The only mis-step in the set list was "Crawling from the Wreckage" from Your Country, instead of "Nation of Shopkeepers," which the last time I attended a show at Rosendale was one of the highlights of the show, with its audience singalong.
For someone as literate as Graham Parker, he's also an extremely unpretentious songwriter. I don't know if it was the song selection or just something I noticed, but a lot of his songs have "ooh ooh ooh," "dip-da-dip," or other nonsense syllables for lyrics mixed in among words like "cortex" and "trajectory" and rhymes like "Columbus" with "compass" or "bought ya" with "torture." As he noted at one point in the show it isn't rocket science!
At one point -- it might have been around 12 Haunted Episodes -- GP said, "okay, we've been at this now for about 5 hours, and you're all wondering when I was going to stop making these bloody records." One more song from a few more albums, the wonderful "Chloroform" (Songs of No Consequence ), featuring another end-of-song fadeout (simulating the effect of the drug), and he said, "Finally my career was over!" But he was only kidding because the best was yet to come. There's really nowhere to go in the Rosendale Café so he stayed on stage while the audience wildly applauded, and played an encore set of three songs from the new record (not nearly enough!). The three were "I Discovered America," "Other Side of the Reservoir," and 'the kazoo song' "Stick to the Plan." He said he met a kazoo master who taught him to put rubber bands around his kazoo so that it would stay in the harmonica holder. Speaking of the harmonica, he only played it on one song all night, that being "I Discovered America."
After the show Merch Boy did a brisk business selling CDs and Graham spent a few minutes meeting and greeting the fans. He said that it was a relief to have the new record finally out and mentioned the personnel for the upcoming band shows. We can expect Mike Gent on drums, Brett Rosenberg on guitar, Ed Valauskas (who has played with Mike in his side band 'The Gentlemen') on bass, and Scott Janovitz (brother of Bill Janovitz, who opened for GP at the New Years' Eve show in Boston a couple of years ago) on keyboards. Although I regret that the band will not be the Figgs exactly, it will be interesting to see Mike Gent on drums for the whole show, and I am looking forward to a GP band with a keyboard player. The new album has a lot of keyboards and it will be good to have them in the live band. I am very much looking forward to the three Massachusetts shows and not having to travel quite as far for my Parker fix.
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