MORE DOSH FOR NATALIE

In 1984 a party was held in the the Natural History Museum in New York City to celebrate the record breaking sales of Michael Jackson's new album "Thriller."
The invitation granted to a select group of people was a white cotton glove, bearing the words:
"Walter Yetnikoff, Don Dempsey, Allen Davis invite you to a MICHAEL JACKSON THRILLER PARTY.  2/7/84 9PM.  AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, CPW at 79th ST.  BLACK TIE.  RSVP Susan Blond

I got this glove from someone who was attending the party.  He was a staff member of CBS Records who was close to Michael at the time and accompanied the artist to the event.
It is in good condition, a little faded from time but the invitational words are still clearly visible.  It has a very small tear on the the index finger, probably because I wore it to the event!

Now I've given it to my daughter Natalie to sell - more dosh for her trip to the land of sari's and sandals.  Rickshaw rides aplenty I shouldn't wonder.  I hope she brings me back a T-shirt that says: "My daughter went to India funded by my valuable collectables and all I got was this crap T-shirt."

Here's the link:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=261191049290

BUY MY WALKMAN PRO CASSETTE RECORDER!

My daughter Natalie, world traveler that she is, is about to embark on a visit to India and other rather dodgy areas in the East, for what reason, no one really knows.  She'll be traveling with her boyfriend - which affords a modicum of assurance - but he doesn't know what they're doing either.  I'd feel safer if she had some financial cushion in order to buy her way out of jail, hostage situations, and other everyday trials of the mystic lands.  Not that I had any safety net when I was legging it around Europe and Morocco etc., but times were different then.  Knowing that she won't have to beg for food, however, is at least something that might provide me and her mother at least a modicum of comfort.  Therefor, I've been giving her things to sell (hey kid, earn it!).   One of them is my marvelous old Sony Walkman Pro Cassette Recorder WM-D6C.  It's hard to let this awesome piece of hardware go, but now that I have a teensy MP3 recorder to do my rough demos on, a much easier device seeing as you can email the results to your band rather than snail mail them cassettes, which might baffle modern day band members anyway, it will just sit in a box doing nothing. 

  I listened to a Sam Cooke cassette of greatest hits on it the other day through headphones and very nearly reneged on the offer.  The sound was amazing.  Bright, clear high-end, rich middle ground and deep bass greeted my ears, making digital MP3 recordings sound like the thin excuse for fidelity that they are.
  What am I thinking? I found myself thinking.  Sell this, so that my daughter can get wasted on primo Indian black in some crap hole hotel in Calcutta?
  Whatever, it's too late to stop now.
  This is the very machine that I recorded the "Carp Fishing On Valium" tunes on, which eventually were turned into a CD sold on this very website.  This is the machine that I recorded the demos for "12 Haunted Episodes" on, which I listened to over and over again on high volume in headphones and decided right there and then (after a few buckets of Bad Chardonnay) that I should record the album solo (albeit in a proper recording studio), then add the musicians later, an idea that would horrify my engineer when I insisted that this was the way this album was going down.
  This is the machine that I have recorded the rough demos for many albums over the years: "The Mona Lisa's Sister,"  "Struck By Lightning," "Human Soul,"...the list goes on.
  Well, here it is, a piece of GP history, sold off for a passel of stomach churning curries, served up by Hindus with their thin penance-earning arms held in the air and the ability to turn their bodies into pretzels at the drop of a rupee. 

  One of these fine gadgets just went for almost $500 on eBay and they often go for something in that area, but no one on eBay has to my knowledge mentioned that I (or any other reasonably well-known rocker) has recorded tons of tunes on one, including an album made available commercially.

  This item will come with a signed copy of the CD, "Carp Fishing On Valium-the songs," recorded on this very machine.

Here's the link:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sony-Walkman-Professional-WM-D6C-previously-owned-by-Graham-Parker-/261187046124?pt=Vintage_Electronics_R2&hash=item3ccff60aec

  Put it in the hands of a GP fan (then I can borrow it and record a rendition of "Happy Birthday" on it, personally, for you) and my daughter can continue to spend much of her life in complete aimlessness, but at least she'll have a few bucks for a curry in her pocket.

GP

CARP FISHING ON VALIUM, reissued, with three more stories added

After getting the rights back to "Carp Fishing On Valium" from ST. Martin's Press a year or so ago, I sat on it for awhile, rather distracted as I was by a few other things involving an old band of mine and a Hollywood movie.
  But with a bit of work behind it, it's out again, in both paperback, thanks to our own John Howells' Tangible Press, and also on Kindle and other E-reader formats, that marvelous new expression of light (in terms of weight) entertainment for travelers and people with weak arms. 
  One thing I knew I had to do was punch it up a bit, give it a bit more heft in the form of more stories, something to induce the gullible to buy it twice (!), basically. And so I plugged the old computer in.  You know the one: it's the size of the QE2, runs at sloth speed, looks like an old wooden TV set minus the rabbit ears and hums like a bee sting on a gout infected foot.  Hauling that old thing out of the attic and out of its box is still compromising the couch-bent spine that resides in my back and the pain killers are to this day in constant use (not really), but it was worth it.  Buried in the mounds of moulding bit-rot in the ancient Apple's innards were three unpublished stories in various states of (de)composition.
  It transpires that after the editing and re-writes of the ten stories that made it into the original Carp Fishing collection, I still had three other potential stories left over, one of which my editor, Tim Farrington had had a go at but bailed out when he found himself disgusted with the premise of what he called "the whole fucking Peter Pan crap" that the story was deeply invested in.  Yes, Tim - who had called me "The Mark Twain of Surrey" - was not at all keen on the bent of this particular story and thought the sudden emergence of the 13-year-old Porker's magic powers was a travesty of the highest order.  Well, this sowed the seeds of doubt in me as to the stories' veracity even though as Tim then said: "Paradoxically, this is some of the best writing you've done."
  That second assessment I agreed with ( who wouldn't?) but it turned out that my feeling anyway was that the ten stories we had both accepted were actually a fairly well-rounded collective in their own right and did not need any further additions, so I stuck with those and called it a book.
  But still I continued composing tales, in thrall of the idea that I was now in fact a "writer" and not just a song writer.  Being a writer, I decided, was a man's job, and being a song writer was a boy's job, because it was so much harder to write stories, apart from the fact that you didn't have to use rhyme, something I conveniently overlooked at the time and which of course makes song writing pretty damn manly and tricky in its own right.

  The three tales that missed the original boat are presented in the new format(s) as a trilogy entitled "KERNLEY DAYS," Kernley being the fictional village that Porker grows up in, which is touched upon in some of the previously published stories.  One of the "new" stories is nice, one of them is naughty, and the other one is naughty, too.  In fact the third one is actually filthy.  Disgusting, really.  Gross, perhaps.  It's so hyper-sexual it should be banned.  I think when I wrote it I had the mercenary idea that the book needed to be sexed up a bit, so I forced the issue and stepped into the abyss.  That's supposed to sell, right?  Of course, it wouldn't have worked for me anyway and the book would not have sold any more even if this particular piece had been at the level of Sade or Welsh.  As it happens, the book sold over the amount of the advance anyway or it wouldn't have made a second edition in paperback, so it's worked out fine that "A Dearth Of Women," the grossly explicit story in question, has been hiding in that almost pre-Internet computer for all this time since about 1999 at least. 
  The first story of the trilogy, "The Flat of My Hand," - the one that upset my editor so much - involves the acquisition of supernatural powers that the narrator wields to solve a womans' heinous violation by a Scottish Sergeant Major, with much abuse of the power along the way.  Young Brian Porker can't resist a good old trouncing foray, most of it directed at a certain Mrs. Hooght, the mother of one of Porker's pals who our (anti) hero has recently left stuck up a tree which the poor fellow consequently falls from and breaks an arm (Hooght The Younger's older brother turns up in tale number two of the trilogy), an injury which the fishwife Mrs. Hooght squarely - and quite rightly! - blames Brian, ringleader and troublemaker that he is.
  The second story, "Did Otis Play The Big C," is the one of which I'm perhaps the most proud.  Porker is now 17 and is clubbing it up in the "desolate southern suburbs" where he hears a rumor (sic) that Otis Redding played in a tiny club called "The Big C," a fairly new establishment he frequents quite regularly to dance to soul, Motown and ska and occasionally try his hand at picking up birds.  A ham-fisted sexual encounter occurs in this story, too, but thankfully nowhere near as graphic as the examples in "Dearth."  How could he have missed Otis, playing in the dank and minute quarters of a night club a mere ten minute bus ride from his home?  Blue, blue, midnight blue are the colors (sic) he sees (like the background color of the "Otis Blue" album cover) on tattered shreds of posters - along with letters that echo the title of the parenthetical Otis volume - below newly ripped bills adorning the telephone poles on the way to the club as he goes to see the (to him) awful pop/psychedelic band Tomorrow and to meet the green-eyed blonde girl who will later help him with a surfeit of virginal spermatozoa.  Oh, what fun I had writing this one!  Fiction is fiction, which means that like song writing, it takes a grain of reality and blows it up out of all proportion, and somewhere nagging at my memory for years has been this idea that I did indeed (in real life) hear somewhere, from someone - back in those days when word of mouth was often all you had to go on to find out who was playing where - that Otis had in fact played the Big C!  I'll never know (I've looked it up but can't find any evidence) but imagine if, somewhere around 1966/67, this had actually happened, that my (and Porker's) idol had graced the stage of a joint that held maybe a hundred people in a town called Farnworth (in reality Farnborough), a short bus ride from Porker's (my) youthful abode.  And poor Brian (who?) missed it!  After all, I (Brian Porker) did actually (really!) stand in line at this very club to see Martha and the Vandellas there in this approximate time period only to hear - as me and some mates stood in line - the announcement of one of the clubs' hirelings who had reluctantly, risking life and limb, appeared at the head of the line to shout: "Sorry, but Martha and the Vandellas can't make it tonight!" before ducking back down the venue's stairs leaving a lot of grumbling moddie boys considering charging down after him for a good old fashioned bout of severe agro (only halfheartedly it turned out: we simply went home).  
  Now if Martha and the Vandellas were at least scheduled to play there - and they had had a much bigger hit than Otis ever had - why not The Man himself?
  This terrible memory haunts me to this day.  What do you do with trauma like that?  You write about it, that's what.  And you turn it into fiction, because nothing else captures it so well.

Enjoy.

GP

 Buy from Amazon.com

PS: 

  Well what do you know?  Someone has unearthed the info I dreaded:  Otis really did play the Big C.  My meager and as always impatient research got me as far as the 1967 Stax tour of Europe featuring Sam and Dave, Eddie Floyd and Otis Redding, among others.  My thinking was that in the unlikely event that Otis did indeed play the Big C (aka the Carousel) club in the humble town of Farnborough, a very short bus ride from where I grew up, it may have been a stray gig he did tacked on to the beginning or end of that tour.  But it appears that he played there in September 1966, a couple of months before my 16th birthday.
  I don't know exactly when I started going to the soul clubs in the south of England but it most probably wasn't until '67 that it became something of a regular event, when I got a Lambretta and some of my older friends had graduated to cars.  And so, even though I was immersed in Otis's music by then it would have been easy to have been totally unaware that my idol was doing a show right under my nose.
  You may be able to tell from the main body of this essay (see above) that if I did ever did find out that he played a gnats' whisker away from me, I would be, if not devastated, at least a tad bummed out.  Very simply put: I am.  Somewhere between devastated and bummed out, that is.
Yes, I'm bum-tated.  Deva-bummed.  Very fucking pissed off, describes it just as well.

  Hey, but the story would not have existed if I'd known for sure about the Otis gig in a club the size of a shoe box and gotten to that show, which must surely have been mind blowing, like having Otis play your living room.

Here's the proof:

http://www.historicfarnborough.co.uk/gallockermemories.html

CHAIRMAN PARKER ON THE GP/R 2012 WINTER TOUR/MOVIE RELEASE

The creaking knee joints and tweaky lower backs, the minor arsenal of rattling bottled medications, the cries of "Oh gawd, my bloody lumbago!", the fevered panic attacks that percolated through the ranks in seismic waves threatening to evince mass hysteria, as if we were about to face armed combat in enemy territory, the detached retinas wobbling like drunken black ants in jelly jiggled loose by the massive boinging of cavernous halls, aircraft hangers still unpeopled at soundcheck but hopefully (please, hopefully!) packed by showtime, the airplane-induced ear pressure failing to pop until deep into purpling night hours waking the near dead with a jolt like shotgun retort that kills all further sleep utterly, bringing abject exhaustion once again from sticky hotel breakfast time onwards through the long, dank misery of travel day...and did I mention knee joints?
OK, there might be some exaggeration involved in the above sentence, but seeing as my memory isn't what it used to be, how would I know?
It could be startlingly accurate.  But not one of these largely imaginary complaints could have stopped me and the Rumour from giving it all and laying it all down every night of the tour, and in turn getting it all back from the most marvelous audiences we could possibly hope for.
It is true, however, that a frisson of nerves could be felt before we took the stage on our first gig in Tarrytown, but - for me at any rate - that all disappeared from the moment I walked on stage and heard that welcoming roar and the first chord struck of "Fool's Gold," which sat there fat as a hog without a hint of nervous speedy up, steady and nailed to the ground like a rock.  I felt utterly confident of the band behind me, the strength of the set list, and sure-footed enough to strut around that old wooden stage like a monkey in heat the moment I reached the first song without a guitar strapped around my shoulders.  No problem - this was gonna be a blast.
And so it continued to be from beginning to end (true, the turn-out in Poughkeepsie was as disappointing as I expected, but it didn't lower our intensity one iota), from the east coast to the incredible experience of the "This Is 40" Premiere and the jam-packed Roxy gig in LA, to the home away from home Park West venue in Chicago and the classic high-end concert hall airiness of St. Paul's Fitzgerald Theater.
It was all good.

We are all grateful for the support we've had, both in the area of record reviews for "Three Chords Good," very few of which have been silly (meaning no one has foolishly called it a classic and no one has foolishly called it rubbish either), and for the reviews of the live performances (meaning all have been positive and some have rightly called them classic).  A gratifying result for all of us. 

This has not been about touring for touring's sake, or about making money (a six piece band with three crew members...staying in hotels? This costs money!), but we felt we had to get out there for a short while at least and be a part of the "This Is 40" entourage (I did a few panels with various cast members both before and during the tour, and then there was the Premiere...) and bash some instruments around for the heck of it.

Talking of the Premiere, what a night it was on December 12th at Grauman's Chinese Theater in LA where all except for me (as I'd seen a screening in August) saw the movie for the first time with a capacity crowd and joined everybody there marveling at the quality of Judd's and all the casts' work on a screen so big, you had to keep moving your head from left to right in order to keep up with the fantastic camera work and editing.  It really made you wish every cinema had a proper sized screen instead of these postage stamps in the cineplexes.  Whatever size the screen, don't miss this movie.  I think it's Judd Apatow's finest work, not to mention the incredible double bill of Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd.  They are just excellent in this film as are so many performances, too many to mention.

Also got to give a big thanks to Conan O'Brien for having us on the show.  My publicists were working hard on all the late night shows but only the Conan folks had the good taste (!) to go for it.
We also did some radio appearances on our "days off" and if they have not all been aired yet, keep an eye out for them.

Thanks to Primary Wave, thanks to Shorefire.  Thanks to everyone.

GP

THREE CHORDS GOOD/THIS IS 40 TOUR

It’s safe to say that the lads and I are excited about having a bash onstage again.  I wonder if we hold the record for time off?  Certainly, every band and his brother seems to have reformed; it's like a contagious disease all of a sudden, but with over 30 years since the Squeezing Out Sparks tour, officially our last, this reunion surprised me as much as it probably surprised everyone else.
Just for the record, I had no intention of doing any of this.  I did however have an idea that doing an album as a three-piece with Steve and Andrew might be a good idea musically, after doing a few too many in a row with me playing all the guitars and recording the basic tracks with just a drummer behind me.  I e-mailed the rhythm section with this in mind and both guys were up for it.  Then Steve made a little joke about how it would be good to get Martin, Bob and Brinsley, "...that'd be a proper band," he suggested, then said something like: "Kidding!"  Well, maybe he was and maybe he wasn't, but without thinking (you can't think in these situations) I went to the e-mail machine and posed the idea to those three.  Perhaps I did it in a fit of pique, a sort of "I'll show that Goulding!" idea.  Something weird overcame me anyway, and judging by the swift "Hell yes!" replies of the band members they didn't think it through any more than I did.  Damned if I wasn't stuck with it.
Well, I had enough songs written, although I couldn’t see what any of them had to do with a Rumour reunion, but there again, as someone pointed out to me recently, I didn’t write “Howlin’ Wind” for the Rumour, either.  They didn’t exist then.

It couldn't have been more than two weeks after this (April or May 2011) in which time I'd managed to fix a date for recording and get the engineer/co-producer and studio all lined up, that Judd Apatow got hold of me and we set up a meeting.  As he gave me a rough outline of the script he was working on and my possible involvement in what became "This Is 40," I of course sprung it on him that me and the Rumour would be doing a new album in a few months time.  How fortuitous, right?  A week later Judd is telling me he wants me in his movie, playing myself, and that he wants me and the band in Los Angeles sometime in August/September for a two-day shoot.  This does not happen to me.  What happens to me is that I make albums, three blokes in duffel coats with nasal infections become strangely excited, and everyone else goes home for tea and crumpets.   Well, might as well come back with a bang for once, right? 
In Los Angeles, a marvelous time was had by all, and playing onstage with the lads again (in a beautiful old theater called the Belasco in downtown LA) was something I'll never forget, especially having to sing numbers like "Protection" over and over again at 9 in the morning.  (And on my other visits there for my alleged “acting” parts, finding myself in make-up with Albert Brooks on one side of me and John Lithgow on the other — to name-drop just two of the fine talents on display in the movie — was quite interesting, too.)
So, a few gigs are in order.  The Birchmere and the Ramshead are almost sold out and I'm hearing that ticket sales are off to a decent start in some locales (there again, I hear a lot of things), so get a jump on it.  I have no idea if this will ever happen again. 

Also, I might add that although hardcore fans are used to me appearing at the CD table for signings and generally having a good yak after the show, this won't be happening on a tour of venues that are considerably larger than my usual hangs.  So please, vinyl monkeys, leave the collection at home.  This will be tiring enough for this old bugger and I will most probably be vanishing from the premises as soon as show time is done, possibly wearing a cape and a ski mask.  You can always catch up with me when I’m back in the venues that have the words “Café” or “Coffee Shop” in their title, which I undoubtedly will be, because water always finds its own level.
Talking of merch, you may be interested to know that for the first time ever, there will be GP/Rumour T-shirts on sale, plus key rings, and of course “Three Chords Good” in both CD and vinyl formats
On another note, the GP documentary, which, by the nature of this new beast had to have some stuff added to it, including me and the Rumour filmed for the very first time working in the studio and in LA at the shoot (the entire “Three Chords Good” recording sessions were filmed by the Gramaglia Bothers at Mr. Apatow’s prompting), has had its release date delayed yet again.  I’m sorry this thing has taken so long after so many chipped in to the Kickstarter fund so long ago, but it should be worth it in the end.  It will come out, and with all this other stuff going on, 2013 seems more suitable a release period now.

Then there’s “This Is 40.”  I’ve been to a screening.  It’s excellent, really exceptional I thought (here I could blather on about Judd Apatow and Jonathan Karp, the music supervisor for the film, and all the people I had the great privilege of being in the same space and time with on so many occasions, but maybe that’s for later down the line).  The movie opens in cinemas December 21st.  I’d advise getting to the matinee performance because apparently the world is coming to an end on that day.

“THREE CHORDS GOOD” release date 11/19/12

All the best,

GP

¡LIVE ALONE AT THE FREIGHT & SALVAGE!

The first time I played the Freight & Salvage in Berkeley, CA in 2009, I was very pleased to find a full house awaiting me.  Since then, the venue has moved to a bigger room holding more people, and although I played this much larger space just recently, in November 2011 on a Sunday night, it was still pretty packed, and with a very enthusiastic crowd at that.  I'd just done three shows in two nights, always a worry where the human vocal chords are concerned (when the voice winds down after an hour and a half show then is forced to crank up again for another show of the same length, it is like putting the vocal chords through a meat grinder), but my voice had hung together and maybe even gained more fluidity and nuance over the course of this long weekender, a good thing indeed when you know that the venue is recording the show.
As soon as I heard the results, and that the folks at the Freight were gracious enough to let me release the recording, I knew a live "official bootleg" was in the works, hence "¡Live At The Freight & Salvage!" only available at the site and at gigs.

This alone may be of some interest to followers of the string of these grahamparker.net releases, but something else also of interest, and perhaps with a touch of serendipity attached, came along with the package.

When I released "Burning Questions" in 1992 I was - it is no secret - quite the fan of the ground breaking cartoon Ren and Stimpy.  I won't go into a description of this fine work here, but suffice to say it was not something the kids should be watching, although of course they did, often due to the fact that their parents wanted to share this devilish piece of irreverence and subversion with them, despite their tender years, in order to encourage future comedic perversity and hopefully avoid breeding children hobbled by prudishness and the church-lady humor of boiled eggs.  Yes, many a child’s future in the domain of goodness and light was thwarted by that rude and controversial episode "Stimpy's First Fart" (the original title) in which our poor perennially put-upon Stimpy spends an entire show searching the world for a lost fart which he believes is his child (that’s right, when children know that cats can fart too the world becomes an infinitely more humorous place).
I credited Ren and Stimpy with percussion (actually performed by me) on "Burning Questions" and somehow the show’s creator, John Kricfalusi got wind (no pun intended) of this and graciously sent me a cell from the famous "Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy" episode which I still have, proudly displayed in a plain wooden frame.

Not long after receiving this fabulous gift, I was playing the Troubadour in Hollywood and was approached by a fellow named Steve Loter who handed me a black and white drawing he'd done of Ren and Stimpy which depicted Ren wearing some suspiciously GP-like sunglasses and pointing his finger angrily at Stimpy in a very "Don't Ask Me Questions" pose.  Steve told me that he was an illustrator for the show and judging by the accuracy of his work, there was obviously no doubt about it.
I believe that this show took place on 10/22/93 because I checked the indispensable "My Gig List" section on Johannes Dieninger’s "Struck By Lightning" website.
What the website does not note is that a young up-and-comer named Jewel was opening for me that night, solo.  I recall that there was a major label bidding war going on for this girl, led by Atlantic, a label I had been on briefly in 1987 but was dropped from before I even made a record for them.  The reason I was dropped was because I continued to insist to the label’s boss, a certain legendary figure named Ahmet Ertegun, that the age of bombast in the form of '80's production values whereby the sound of the snare drum, massive, glassy and out front, was about to end and that I should make a record that focused on the singer, the acoustic guitar, and the voice (albeit with a crackin' band behind it).  Ahmet and his absurd German sidekick found this concept utterly unfathomable.  But here they were about 6 years later in a lemming-like search for singer/songwriters wielding acoustic guitars and making simple, very non-80's sounding records.
Jewel it seemed was a perfect candidate: she did indeed wield an acoustic guitar, did a bit of yodeling as a gimmicky bonus, and was undoubtedly a mammal.

(I looked her up on the internets for this piece and, despite the fact that she has apparently sold 27 million records, found myself on various jewelry sites perusing some alarmingly outlandish handiwork that only an Italian lady from Long Island would dare grace upon her slender age-spotted wrist.  Eventually I found the artiste herself and was astonished by her record sales, thinking, not for the first time, of the accuracy of my song title, "They Got It Wrong (As Usual)."

The point of my rambling is that Steve Loter, who handed me that cartoon on that night, has been in touch with me and John Howells of late and kindly offered his services as an illustrator (he now works in a Disney studio) and so when the opportunity arose, as it did with this album, we took him up on it.  And what a fine piece of work it is, with no less than four panels of lovely stuff from this talented fellow.  I laughed like a drain when I saw the work, each piece exquisite and unique and full of the required humor it takes to get anywhere near a GP album cover, at least ones which involve cartoon-like illustrations.

As for the songs, there’s a few on here that have only recently been added to my live solo canon, most notably “Endless Night,” “Dark Side Of The Bright Lights,” “Problem Child,” and a cover of Captain Beefheart’s “Too Much Time.”  I listened to a lot of Beefheart in the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s and “Clear Spot” was a real favourite, so about a year ago, feeling it was time to re-acquaint myself with some of his work, I bought a nifty two album compilation containing both “Clear Spot” and “Spotlight Kid.”  I’ve often fumbled around with “Too Much Time” over the years with a view to cover it, but only recently did I find the groove and the key that worked.  Here it is, portrayed on the trusty Telecaster at the Freight for your enjoyment.  Like many of these covers I turn up with from time to time, this one will no doubt slip away from me and never be performed again.  Glad I got it on record.

Enjoy,

GP

FIVE LOOSE SCREWS

Many artists are daft enough to prefer the off-kilter, weird tracks that they used to use as B-sides of singles, and now release more often as Internet-only tracks, over their actual best work, and I'm no exception. Well, not strictly true, but it sounds like a good story.

Perhaps more accurate is the fact that it's more fun to put out oddities than it is to release the Tablets That Just Came Down From The Mountain, with all the pressures involved with that undertaking.

Who cares if they're crap? Certainly not me!

(note: “Harridan Of Yore” appeared on the Bloodshot compilation “For A Decade Of Sin.”)

Seeing as my premier recording endeavor is a state secret at the moment and will not be unveiled for quite some time (sorry about that, but the reason for the wait is a good one) (Um...whoops. You can see I began writing this piece before the cat popped out of the bag!), I found myself harkening back to an idea I've had brewing for some while: to take all the spare tracks from recent Bloodshot Records history and put 'em on a disc.

Our own John Howells had the sterling idea of coupling this with my Youtube output.

So, you get the complete Tex Skerball, a combined edition of "Paint Drying," and both episodes of "Sunglass(es) The Graham Parker Show," all on one disc. I didn't even know you could combine these two elements together so easily, but John assured me it wasn't rocket science.

The dates of the musical recording section are most probably recorded on an old computer the size of a military cargo plane that sits in an attic than they are in my memory, so I'm not going to go into too much detail here, but here's a few clues.

"Area 51 (in your heart)" was undoubtedly recorded with the "Your Country" sessions, and that's where anyone interested should look for the credits. This was my first record for Bloodshot, and I was having trouble sequencing the tune, but had the problem solved for me by the big guns at the label who thought it was thoroughly out of place on the record, which I, breaking character, agreed to, and so it was cruelly thrown into release via the Gulag of modern recording, the Internet.

"2000 Funerals" was of course written in response to the depressing news that that number of US military personnel had perished in Iraq, with much more to come. The tune was recorded in a stand alone session, and I played all the instruments.

Way before this, in what was for many of us the early days of the Internet, just before even my son’s hermit crab had its own Facebook page, I wrote the strange and disturbing "Search Engine," which seems to be about some kind of Internet perv, trolling the chat rooms and whathaveyou for a bit of cyber stalking.

According to Mike Gent, "Harridan Of Yore" was from the SONC sessions with the Figgs, and "The End Of Faith" recorded with Latest Clowns members in Boston's Q Division studios, minus Brett Rosenberg.

I recall writing "Harridan" after hearing Al Franken, back in the days when he was on Air America, telling the story of how he met Barbara Bush on an airplane and found himself unable to stop from doing a quick impression of her son for her. As Al told it, she soon signaled the end of their little chat with a curt "We're through!" Later, when asking a friend or colleague who had knowledge of that fine lady's personality, the friend told Al that, yes, she was indeed a harridan. What a fine word, I thought! I simply must use it immediately. I played the tune for the first time live at the Turning Point club and a couple right in the front, who had seemed quite happy before, began to assume very soured expressions, and the female of the couple turned down her mouth and moved her head from side to side at me in obvious disapproval. After the show, I spoke to them at the bar and they admitted that they were in fact "conservatives." They were fans of my work they insisted, but thought that "Harridan Of Yore" was "the worst song you've ever written."

I smiled happily and continued to study these exotic creatures with an eagle eye, hoping to glean further inspiration in order to write more of the same at future dates. And I do hope those folks got to read my blurb for "The End Of Faith." That would probably have had them apoplectic!

(A record producer/musician friend of mine who used to be in a band with Franken sent "Harridan Of Yore" to him, but neither he nor I got a response from the now senator. Probably if he knows anything about me, it is that I make something called "pub rock" music so he never bothered to listen to it, because like Janeane Garofalo and those other radio liberals, he thinks that it was the Jam who made the real cutting edge stuff in the '70's!)

So, there you have it. Please enjoy "FIVE LOOSE SCREWS." What? The Rumour? The Movie? Is that what you're asking me? None of that sees the light of day till late 2012, so, even though I was ahem, "on set" the other day, doing interviews along with the other, ahem, "actors," with the likes of Time Magazine and Entertainment Tonight (because the nice people working on the movie asked me nicely to), I feel it’s a bit too early to be blathering too much about it, although some publications (like those above that would not normally touch me with a barge pole) seem to be quite interested all of a sudden, so a few nuggets of information may soon be floating around. It's an excruciating wait till the end of 2012, but that’s when the movie release is scheduled, so I’m holding the album, too. No brainer.

In the meantime, please enjoy “FIVE LOOSE SCREWS.” It’s damnably quirky.

GP