Graham Parker ~ 2009 March 27 ~ Tupelo Music Hall, Londonderry, NH
Setlist (with guitars indicated)
Review
Concert Going Partner and I arrived at the easy to find Tupelo Music Hall in late afternoon, and made ourselves comfortable on the rocking chairs the venue has kindly provided for those that like to start the line.
I've been to this venue once before and I like it quite a bit. The other time I was there they had rows of seats. This time there were seats at tables. I suspect not as many tickets were sold, thus the alternate seating arrangement. We wound up sitting at a front table with Jerry from New Hampshire (who owns a company named GP Squared -- I'm not making this up), his wife, and teenage daughter who is a huge GP fan and who was named for a song by one of those songwriters GP is often compared to. (Hi Veronica if you're reading!) The venue sells coffee and soft drinks and light food items, and you can bring in your own adult beverages.
Again, there was no opener, and again the show started just about on time, at 8:00. GP wore another one of his vaguely disco '80s shirts, this time the one with the multicolored squiggly lines and geometric patterns, reminding me of alien communication symbols. He looked extremely spiffy in both outfits. No tie, for those who care about such trivial details.
He mentioned he had done a concept show recently in which the gimmick was that he performed songs of his that had been covered by other people. "You might think" he said "that this would last about ten minutes." But thanks to Piss and Vinegar, the tribute to GP put out by a small record label in Hacketstown, New Jersey there was enough material for a full show. And it gave Geep a reason to dig "Black Lincoln Continental" out of the dustbin of forgotten songs, since it was covered by none other than Nick Lowe. He also gave a nod to Rod Stewart's cover of "Hotel Chambermaid." He complained that Rod didn't bother to learn the lyrics and sang gibberish in the "I ain't got a million dollars" section. But he did say that Rod bought him a swimming pool ... an inflatable one.
Concert Going Partner and I hadn't bought tickets yet for the Portland show the night after. It's a long way (even by our standards), and with having to return to work and do laundry and write these reviews and all the things you have to do when you get home from a rock 'n' roll road trip, it just didn't seem practical to go to the fourth night. Our official line was we were considering it, but it probably wasn't going to happen.
Up till the end of the main set, the Londonderry show was much like the other two I'd seen with a few minor variations. Geep was witty, played superbly, and his singing was great. But it was much like the other two, and I was thinking we'd skip Portland.
The main set ended with "Get Started. Start a Fire" and Graham ducked down behind his music stand. After the usual sixty seconds or so of crowd applause he "returned" for the encore, and decided he'd give some more exposure to the Carp Fishing on Valium songs.
GP explained that Brian Porker is the character who appears in every story in the book. GP got the name when he was on an airplane and an elderly American woman asked him "what do you do?" (Apparently the English don't ask this of one another and GP considers it an example of American rudeness.) He blurted out, to his instant regret, that he is a musician. The woman insisted he tell her his name. "You won't have heard of me." She insisted, so he told her, and she repeated it to her husband: "Hey Charlie, we've got Brian Porker sitting in the seat next to us."
In one of the stories Brian is a punk singer with a band called the Debillitators who do a song called "Brain Surgery." Just as he had turned into Tex Skerball to perform "Glue & Chickens" on the first night of the tour, he turned into Brian Porker to play "Brain Surgery." I sat there listening. No, wrong, I along with the rest of the audience was bopping in my seat and singing along vigorously with the part that goes "oy oy oy oy!" -- this is a song no one in the audience had ever heard and it was an instant -- I mean instant -- crowd favorite. Graham sang it with Brian Porker's cockney accent, he sneered his way through it, he struck poses and you believed he was an actual punk star and the song was absolutely fantastic!
The breathless audience was then treated to a nice cooldown in the form (ironically) of "Heat Treatment." After this Geep apologized for not playing anything from Don't Tell Columbus and played "Hard Side of the Rain," which was fabulous to hear. And then a song that was as different from "Brain Surgery" as could be ... the incomparably beautiful "Last Stop is Nowhere," from Deepcut to Nowhere and Carp Fishing on Valium: the Songs. Graham finger-picked the strings of his electric guitar while he sang -- and hummed -- this lovely statement of longing and loss. I think you could hear a pin drop in that auditorium, where ten minutes earlier the crowd was rockin'. Such is the talent of this man, to sway the reactions of a room full of people with his music, and to move effortlessly from one set of feelings to another, even to such an extreme.
Last two songs were "White Honey," in which Geep encouraged us to sing along, but that song fails as a singalong; it fails so badly as a singalong it is actually amusing; and then the final song was "Local Girls" -- which DOES work as a singalong.
As the final cheers were subsiding, Concert Going Partner and I turned to each other and said we're going to Portland. "Brain Surgery" made us do it.
More Chairman
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