Graham Parker with Mike Gent ~ 2012 September 28 ~ Club Passim, Cambridge, MA
Graham Parker accompanying himself with acoustic guitar, electric guitar, harmonica, and kazoo; Mike Gent opening and accompanying GP on two songs
Set List
Set List:
Mike Gent opening set:
Dorado - No Time is the Wrong Time to Groove - Do Me Like You Said You Would - One Good Night {The Rumour} - This Copy's Mine - Victoria {The Kinks} - False Alarms - Stuck on Leather Seats - Shouldn't Have Ever Looked Back [new solo Mike Gent]
Scroll down past the videos for review; photo gallery is to the right.
Videos
"Stuck On Leather Seats": (Mike Gent)
"Carp Fishing on Valium":
"White Honey" - Graham Parker with Mike Gent
Review
This is hard to believe, but I hadn't seen Graham Parker do a full-length solo show since October 2, 2009. Every GP show I've been to since then has been a band show (with the Figgs), with the exception of the brief 11-song solo set I saw him do in March opening for Garland Jeffreys.
So, for me it was a treat to be able to catch GP twice in one weekend, and in my own backyard (relatively speaking). Tonight's show was at Club Passim in Harvard Square, where GP had never played before. He seemed very impressed by the place's history, referring to Joan Baez and other musicians who have played there ("Dylan? Has Dylan played here?") and said he felt hesitant to play his electric guitar in such a folk music shrine. (He didn't let that stop him.) He played 20 songs from all phases of his career, but with an emphasis on early material. With the Rumour tour coming up, he's clearly getting into Rumour-warm-up mode. He referred to getting back together to record with the Rumour after a 31-year hiatus, and mentioned the upcoming tour with that band, to enthusiastic cheers from the crowd. Although I personally like to hear the later material, I recognize that most fans are pleased as punch when he picks from the first four albums. In fact, there was a woman sitting to my left who sang along so vigorously to the Squeezing Out Sparks songs that I was quite grateful that she didn't know any of his recent songs.
Every time I see Graham he seems to be on a rampage against something or other. This time it was hiking. He said that someone invited him to go hiking, to discover it was just walking. Trees, and more trees, he said. Although this wasn't as funny as many other rants I've heard from him over the years, later in the show Geep looked out the window and commented on people going by the windows (Passim is at basement level, and passersby can look down into the venue from the street); and a clever audience member called out, "they're hiking."
After several mentions of the new album, recorded last year with the Rumour and due for release in November, Graham started to think Three Chords Good sounded weird, and started calling it Three Schwartz Good instead. This brought a laugh every time from the sold-out and very enthusiastic crowd. GP played two songs from the new record, "Old Soul" and "Snake Oil Capital of the World." He wore a long-sleeved shirt with a swirling chambered nautilus pattern in a dark brown and a pair of dark glasses with silver rims.
For this election year, Graham has revived the song on which he first used a kazoo. It's "Stick to the Plan," of course, still an honest crowd-pleaser and easy sing-along. Although many of the lyrics are no longer relevant, since they refer back to the previous president and previous campaigns, it is still an enjoyable satire of this nation's wild and woolly political process.
Mike Gent opened the show with an entertaining nine-song set. He started with three songs off the latest Figgs record, The Day Gravity Stopped. He included, to my surprise, the soulful "Do Me Like You Said You Would." It surprised me that he performed this solo since it's a real duet vocal between him and Pete Donnelly when the Figgs perform it; but he tossed in, under his breath, "Pete sings ... " before the line "I need your love, need your love." Then he asked for requests and someone suggested "something from Banda Macho," so Mike started in on "This Copy's Mine," but his amp started to buzz and make horrible noises, and Mike started to change the lyrics to suggest that instead of looking for his lost record album, that someone should take the amp away and dispose of it properly. Mike recovered nicely with an always crowd-pleasing singalong of the Kinks' "Victoria." Mike said that the Figgs will be opening for some of the Graham Parker and the Rumour shows, and that the Figgs have learned some Rumour songs (not GP and the Rumour songs -- the Figgs already know those) but songs recorded by The Rumour on the three albums they recorded under their name without Graham. He played one of those Rumour songs, "One Good Night." He ended with a new song, "Shouldn't Have Ever Looked Back" that I think will be on a solo Mike Gent album soon.
Since Mike was scheduled to play another gig later that night with his band the Gentlemen, GP had him come up on stage and play two songs in the middle of his set, rather than during the encore. The two songs were "White Honey" and "Local Girls." In my many Graham Parker shows I have noticed that he seldom plays his three radio hits in one show, but tonight he played all three. I'm referring to "Local Girls," "Discovering Japan," and "Get Started. Start a Fire," which was the last encore. He also responded to someone in the audience shouting "Feelings" at the beginning of the encore set by attempting a few bars of that schlock hit. I'm wondering if "Feelings" is the new "Free Bird" -- the completely inappropriate song that gets randomly requested at concerts?
GP's book of short stories, Carp Fishing on Valium, is being re-issued, both in print and as an e-book. Hopefully this exciting fact won't be overshadowed by the general kerfuffle over the Rumour reunion and the Hollywood movie, This is 40, in which GP and the Rumour will make an appearance. To promote the book, Graham performed a very nice version of the song "Carp Fishing on Valium." He also told the story of the tour he did when the book was originally published, in which he would read 10 minutes from the book followed by a 3-minute song. (He wrote songs to accompany the stories.) He said that this format did not go over well; in fact he called it "excruciating" and did an imitation of an audience member pleading with him to play some songs. He also said that this particular crowd might have enjoyed that format, since we are from the Boston/Cambridge area and therefore are more cerebral than some of his other audiences. (He singled out his New Jersey audiences, but then decided that since the show was being broadcast live on concertwindow.com, and he sells better in New Jersey than anywhere else, he really shouldn't say that.)
Geep said he was suffering from an upper respiratory infection, but other than cutting the after-show meet-and-greet a little short, you wouldn't have known.
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.
More Mike
Here is a page with a handy list of links to all pages on this website with content about Mike Gent and his band The Figgs.
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