Graham Parker ~ 2012 September 29 ~ Narrows Center for the Arts, Fall River, MA
Graham Parker accompanying himself with acoustic guitar, electric guitar, harmonica, and kazoo
Set List
Videos
"Old Soul"
"Back to School Days"
Review
Back for my second GP show in two nights, at the venue where I first saw Graham perform back in 2004. The Narrows is on the third floor of an old mill building in the former industrial city of Fall River, Mass. Run entirely by volunteers, the organization has seen some fund-raising success in the past few years judging from the number of improvements. These include an elevator, renovated restrooms, tables and comfortable seats replacing the old church pews, and best of all, a bigger and higher stage, allowing more room for the performers and a better view for concert goers sitting in the back. (Not me - but I do care about those people.) They also have delicious baked goods and fresh brewed coffee for sale.
GP seemed to have recovered somewhat from the sore throat and headache of the night before, and performed a 19-song set nicely balanced between new and old songs. Eight of the songs were different from the night before; Geep has never taken the easy way out and written just one set list for back-to-back shows. In fact, tonight he performed two songs that evidently he had refreshed for himself in the dressing room before the show -- "High Horse" in response to a request, and "Black Lincoln Continental" in response to his own recollection of playing it at this venue with the Figgs. He was dressed in the same natty stage clothes as the night before.
He again referred numerous times to the upcoming Rumour tour, saying he had noticed that bands re-forming seems to be popular these days. "Not Led Zeppelin!" yelled one fan. "Not the Kinks!" yelled another fan. GP conceded these fans had a point, but mentioned Pink Floyd as one band whose "re-forming" might have been not such a great idea, since David Gilmour now looks, said the svelte Geep, like a "David Gilmour balloon." He said there should be a "weight restriction" when old bands get back together. Anyway, he played just one song tonight from Three Chords Good ("Old Soul"), replacing the second TCG number with a song from his most recent album, Imaginary Television, that being the melodic and thoughtful "Always Greener."
One song played both nights was "When You Do That To Me," from Geep's 1985 release Steady Nerves. Both nights GP complained about the production on that record. He looks back with real horror at the production values of that decade. You'd play a guitar line once, and then you'd play it again, the exact same guitar line, and combine them on the record. Instead of making the sound "big" as it was supposed to do, it made it sound "small." He referred to the ultra-loud drum sounds that were used on that album as sounding like "50 gorillas falling from a skyscraper onto plate glass." After hearing this description I couldn't wait to go home and listen to Steady Nerves (I admit it's been years since that one got a spin on my turntable), and you know something, he's right! The cacophany of pointless drum sounds on that record is truly cringe-worthy.
He again performed "Stick to the Plan," the witty political satire with kazoo. At the end of the kazoo solo, he strummed a few extra bars on his guitar, catching his breath. "There's no suck to a kazoo like there is with a harmonica," he explained, "it's all blow." But later on he joked that there could possibly be an illicit use for a kazoo (it does look a bit like a pipe) and an alert audience member yelled out, "there's the suck!"
Geep said he'd finish the show with something upbeat, and ended with "Life Gets Better," from The Real Macaw, an album that, in my opinion, while it does suffer from that 1980s overproduction, is still sorely under-appreciated, even by his fans. It has some of his best romantic songs, and nobody can put together a romantic song better than this guy. Ironic, isn't it? Graham Parker, pegged as "angry" by many critics, is one of the world's best composers of love songs.
More Chairman
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