Graham Parker

FIVE LOOSE SCREWS

2011-09-30T00:20:00.000-07:00

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.

“80’S REVERB RULES OK!” Graham Parker and the Fact: an odd career intermission

2011-03-01T17:59:00.000-08:00

I had signed with Atlantic Records, either in 1985, just after the “Steady Nerves” tour with Eric Clapton, or early 1986, and things weren’t going too well. My meetings with the legendary Ahmet Ertegun and his German sidekick had been underwhelming and — Ahmet being a hero of sorts — very disappointing. (They always had
a sidekick these big guns, a real Mutt and Jeff team, designed to confuse the artists with banal ideas about “rhythm sections” and the latest “hit producer,” ‘80’s record company blather trapped in layers of cliché, a million miles away from proper rock ‘n’ roll.)

In those days, artists made demos that cost tens times more than your average album does now, and record company honchos didn’t understand the sound of a guy singing over an acoustic guitar with a couple of overdubs. I should not of course have been allowing them to be privy to new songs at all. In previous years, with my first manager Dave Robinson in charge, we kept a lid on everything until the album was in the can. My second manager, however, thought it would be a spiffing idea to “get the record company involved” with the choice of material, producer, and most probably, if I hadn’t already been cultivating a shiny target on the back of my head, my haircut. (If I had one piece of advice to give to new artists who are largely self sufficient in the songwriting department, it would be to not let anyone from a record company hear a thing until you’ve got their money and made your album.)

Much of the material I’d foolishly handed over became the “Loose Monkeys” spare tracks record, released years later by Razor & Tie. This in itself should not have caused too many alarm bells to ring, but after their lackluster reaction to these admittedly scattershot songs, I got pissed and wrote more tunes, songs that would eventually become “The Mona Lisa’s Sister.” They didn’t like these any better. At this point, the alarm bells in my head became a cacophony.

All Ahmet could talk about was Whitesnake and Phil Collins, or whatever other acts Atlantic had that were currently in the charts. Yes, the ‘80’s were grim. Of course, about a year later they were all scrambling to sign acts who made records with an acoustic guitar and a few overdubs, but that’s another story.

And so I had this weird lacuna, a space to fill in whilst my manager extracted me from Atlantic and shopped around for a label that would play the game my way, which can basically be summed up as: “You give me the money, I’ll make the record I want and hand it in when it’s finished. It’ll either be good or great, depending on the breaks.”

Good old RCA went for it and “Mona Lisa’s Sister” arrived in ‘88.

Still, my confidence had been blunted by the Atlantic debacle, and in 1986 I had no idea which direction to go in, and no idea which of the songs I had been amassing to record.

Best way to deal with this, I figured, was to put a band together and play some gigs. Get out there and bash around in front of a bunch of Danes, which I did, naming the band the Fact, consisting of Brinsley, Andrew and a drummer named Jimmy Copley, a solid guy who had come my way because he’d played with Jeff Beck whom my manager had managed for years. No keyboards. I was continuing to assert my presence as a guitarist after years of merely holding one, which was always buried in the mix with GP and the Rumour.

Well, it being the ‘80’s, there’s no getting away from that wallowing swishing sound, but in its own way, it’s quite marvelous. I’m presuming that this gig was recorded professionally for radio — that’s no board tape. This thing has real fidelity and is mixed well, although the vocal is a bit low for the first few songs. At this time I was in the thrall of JC-120 Jazz Chorus amps with the chorus relentlessly on full bore (the models I had — and I’d sometimes have two onstage hooked up! — had no other level than full on). And what a chorus it is. A great swimming, washing machine effect, not far off a Leslie, which, for those who don’t know, is a wooden cabinet with a bloody great flappy thing inside that spins around and is largely used with a Hammond organ, creating that swirling effect (think “Howlin’ Wind).

And what about the songs on this set? I must have recently been immersed in a Bobby “Blue” Bland compilation and for whatever obscure reasons decided to feature two of his tunes, “I Wouldn’t Treat A Dog” and “Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City.” No idea why, but it must have seemed a good idea at the time (perhaps because the aforementioned Whitesnake also recorded the latter tune and I was sticking it to Ahmet?!), and they suit this band down to the ground. Then there’s the Knight Brothers rather awesome “Sinking Low,” a brilliant lost song I discovered in the ‘60’s on a Marble Arch compilation entitled “Blues And Soul,” (still one of my favourite albums of all time) reminiscent of Curtis Mayfield’s classic “People get Ready,” but without the religious overtones.

Check out my lead guitar work at various points in this rendition, most notably at the beginning, which is then firmly trounced — as I get back to the basic rhythm — by Brinsley’s much more eloquent riffing. Dig the rock solid bass and drums by Andrew and Jimmy, couching that arena-worthy vocal sound, swimming in a great big sucks-you-into-the-vortex compression, limiting and reverb effected hiss that helped me come up with the title for this effort.

I typically find my vocals on these live shows to be thin and flat lining, but not on this. I’m grabbing the Danish festival crowd by the testes (I think they were all males) and hanging them out to dry with this one, possibly the best delivered and recorded live vocal of my entire career up till, and possibly beyond, this point.

And it’s good to hear the only recorded band performance that I recall of the “Loose Monkeys” track “Dead To The World,” fat and greasy with the band behind it in full swing. Also from “Loose Monkeys” is a killer take of “Burnin’ On A Higher Flame,” boasting that excellent chord sequence — particularly in the solo section — that proves that I was not wasting my time spending all those hours tripping out to Hendrix records. Yes, I hummed those lead licks to Brinsley as he was learning the tune, right down to that final hammering-on at the solo’s conclusion. “Hendrix, I said, it’s a Hendrix thing.” Time well spent, no question.

(As mentioned on the awesome Spinal Tap-black cover, the beginning of this tune is unfortunately hacked up a bit, but it’s the only live version that I know of and had to go on. Our apologies, but that’s the way it came.)

It’s also nice to hear Brinsley’s backing vocals in prominence throughout; they were typically buried on GP & the Rumour shows.

Yeah, I like this record.

(Many thanks to Johannes at the “Struck By Lightning” website and our own John Howells for this one.)

SPIRITUAL, SOPHISTICATED, AND CARNAL. THREE GIGS, THREE SET LISTS.

2010-11-20T19:56:00.000-08:00

Yes, I’m biting off more than I can chew once again, playing three wildly different venues and working madly on three different set lists that will only overlap in certain places, pushing myself and a confused audience to the very limits of their patience.
The Rubin Museum on December 10th will kick off the weekend with a show that highlights the innate spirituality of certain songs, using a backdrop of Buddhist artwork and stories to illuminate our inherent material greed, the fleeting nature of human existence, and probably some uninvited acid flashbacks that may well knock me on my ass halfway through the set. The transience of our time on earth will be thrust into the eerily perfect all acoustic setting of the Rubin via such neglected gems as “The Kid With The Butterfly Net” and “Just Like Hermann Hesse,” not to mention such irreverent beasts like “Museum Of Stupidity.”

The very next day, I’ll be plying my trade at the Towne Crier in Pawling, where you may find yourself sitting in its plush and sophisticated ambiance betwixt a male model and a Quaker, eating obscure pasta dishes and drinking fine wines way into the night. I’ll need to crank up the rock element on this one, but still a few lost gems from the Rubin may come in handy for balance. Opening will be Neal Gomberg. Do not miss him!

And finally on December 12th, with the spiritual flights of gossamer and the elegant bourgeois left far behind, you can find me at the famous Jiggs’, surely the best biker bar in Butler. At least that was my assessment after a long, exhausting and wildly drunken weekend there once, trolling the pubs in the cause of science, trying to find a better one.
Here at Jiggs’ you can hang at the bar on any Sunday afternoon, chatting to some of the most brutal looking blokes you’ve ever seen, who will nonetheless wax nostalgic about their dear old grandmothers, tears forming daintily in their bloodshot eyes, pussy cats, all of them.
Expect a fiercely carnal set, heavy on the Telecaster, probably brimming with the likes of “Tornado Alley” “Lady Doctor” and “Hotel Chambermaid.” Perhaps the ultimate drinking and drugging tune, “Not If It Pleases Me,” will make an appearance.

What a challenge! I’m at work, as we speak, monkeying around with the set lists.
Go to the “Tour Page” for more details.

How many of you can make all three? Anyone who can, please let yourself be known at the CD sales area after the third show and I’ll give you a free…oh, I don’t know…“Christmas Cracker” CD? I give them away anyway. I’ll try to think of something else in the meantime…

The last shows before the holidays. See you there.

GP

"DON’T ASK ME QUESTIONS,” THE GP DOCUMENTARY. “GP AND THE FIGGS LIVE AT THE FTC.” THE “BOX OF BOOTLEGS"

2010-11-04T17:40:00.000-07:00

First off, I’d like to thank all the folks who contributed to the upcoming documentary, including the various artists who gave their time to be interviewed for it. When Michael Gramaglia informed me that they were going to use Kickstarter.com to try and raise funds to pay for the many clips etc. that have been used in the film, I had trouble getting my head around the idea that enough people would be willing to pay money to make this happen. Turns out I was very wrong. I’m moved and humbled by the incredible response. Thank you all sincerely.

Below is a rambling description of the events that led to the film and beyond.

On the 27^th of August 1997 I did a solo gig at the Long Island Brewing Company on the Jericho Turnpike on Long Island, New York (thanks Johannes at the Struck By Lightning website gig list!). The rather excellent Elliot Murphy opened. At some point after the show, a fellow named Michael Gramaglia, along with his brother John, approached me and proposed the idea of doing a documentary. He claimed to be in the midst of creating a film about the Ramones. I had no reason to doubt him, but at that point in time, I considered the idea of a documentary about me to be quite ridiculous. “No one’s gonna be interested,” I asserted forcefully. “The Ramones? Now that’s a story.”

Although my career had had some international spread, not to mention a decent amount of following around America during the ‘70’s and into the ‘80’s, the Ramones couldn’t get arrested outside of New York City and London. However, by the late ‘90’s they were slowing becoming iconic (leading to their status of household name today), and I was just out there hacking away on the circuit. Their recent lionization begged a proper recounting in film. But as far as I was concerned, a strange amnesia had set in and anything I might have helped throw into gear in 1976, a year before the punk rock/”new wave” phenomenon (basically three minute pop songs with attitude), had been almost entirely forgotten, so why would anyone be interested in a documentary about me? I was just a working musician, something I’m rather proud to be to this very day, having been at the beginning of my career more of an impressionist, a dismantler of popular forms, regurgitating them into a more modern format designed to last into the distant future, but a long way from being a musician who could actually play not only the simple acoustic strumming behind almost all my songs with a bit of fairly clever stuff in open tuning (a la “Gypsy Blood”), but also lead guitar, bass, and now with a pretty good facility at producing, albeit on my own albums. I was finally learning my trade: rather dull stuff for a documentary, I reckoned. Yes, it was all very boring.

Although I didn’t know jack about them, to be honest, the lives of the Ramones — I insisted to the Gramaglia brothers — must surely be like a Greek Tragedy, an epic opera of failure and misconception until finally, not only the critics (and musicians) but also the public (even to the extent that it became not unusual to see the average 14-year-boy wearing a Ramones T-shirt) became fully aware of their great contribution after being ignored for so long. There they were on the radio where they had never been featured much before, and popping up in adverts and other places where they were absent in their real heyday— in a word: iconic.

A film about me would be like watching paint dry, I assured these blokes. Forget it.

They seemed to not agree, to the extent that every now and again Michael would get hold of me and stick the needle in again.

I wasn’t budging, however, until the year 2000, when I reinvented myself as a short story writer and had “Carp Fishing on Valium” published by St. Martin’s Press. Then I wrote a bunch of tunes to go with the tales and did a short tour, reading from the stories and singing the songs. In a moment of delirium, I called Michael and suggested that here might be something of actual interest. Forget the down-the-rabbit-hole music career, I said, how about filming some gigs on this tour?

Now this is interesting!

And so they filmed a gig featuring me with Tom Freund on the upright bass, singing the songs and telling stories, occasionally to the exasperation of the punters who would have rather heard “White Honey” and “Hotel Chambermaid.” But the Gramaglia Bros had no intention of just making a film about my book. They had at last wheedled their wicked way in and there was no turning back. The filming would continue…for ten years! Talk about watching paint dry.

On Friday 22^nd October 2010, about 50 people, many of them heavy hitters in the donor department regarding the financing of this film, gathered together to watch a screening of “Don’t Ask Me Questions.” I don’t want to give away too much, but it seemed to go down extremely well. The film makers had managed to find a delicate balance of emotion and informati

on that struck a chord with the viewers, and after around five minutes into it I even kind of forgot that it was about me and got sucked into some larger story, a story

I didn’t even know existed that had been there all the time.

I don’t know anything about making documentaries, but like making a record, this kind of balance and entertainment surely doesn’t come off every time. Quite simply, I give a big thumbs-up to the Gramaglia Brothers.

Regarding the release of this film, the Brothers are going to target a few film festivals first, and they often want an “exclusive.” Therefore, we have to see how that plays out before a general release on DVD. So you might still have to wait a bit before it is available. The item be

low, however, is almost in your hot little hands already, or at least in time for Christmas…

…On to the next cinematic event.

As some of you know, one of the GP and the Figgs shows was filmed by a professional crew in Fairfield, CT. This film was put together by Primary Wave and Image Entertainment. The DVD is already available for pre-order on Amazon. This package also contains a bonus audio CD that includes songs that did not fit the visual format, and an interview that details an overview o

f my career. Release date is December 7^th.

To say I’m pleased with the sterling performance of the Figgs and the excellent camera and sound

quality would be an understatement. It is what it is: a rocking good show filmed and recorded by experts. Not much else to add. Don’t miss it.

Box of Bootlegs

Floating World and Evangeline has released a “Box of Bootlegs,” featuring six of our official bootleg CD’s — you guessed it — in a box. It’s a great pleasure to have our eclectic bits and pieces licensed by a European company. Looks like a tasty collectors’ item to me.

“Carp Fishing on Valium” will also see a separate European release.

Sunglass(es) - The Graham Parker Show - Episode Two

2010-11-04T17:36:00.000-07:00

“ONE STOP CLEARANCE” AKA “STICK IT TO THE MAN”

2010-07-29T13:34:00.000-07:00

Mike Gent on drums, guitar, backing vocals
GP on guitars and backing vocals
Ed Valauskas on bass
Professor “Louie” Hurwitz on keyboards and accordion

A year or so back, my publishing administrators, Primary Wave came up with the idea of re-recording some of my older material specifically to push at TV/film and other media. The reason for this is that my old record deals were "in perpetuity," which means they (mostly all owned by BMG now) own the rights forever. Seeing as I was paid large advances and tour support by the companies that have now been swallowed by BMG, every time one of my old songs makes money, I only get the publishing share because, like many artists who did not get into the multi-million record sales bracket, I owe tons of money to BMG. They get the Master Recording share. Luckily, even in those draconian deals there is a clause that lets the artist re-record the songs after five years, and so I was free to do this. So, when any of these newly minted versions gets used, both the publishing and master rights monies are going to me and Primary Wave, not some fossil record company who doesn’t give a damn and will often actually hinder the process of usage by trying to up the money on the master rights end or not bother to get back to the potential placement customer in a timely manner, which results in them giving up and going somewhere else.

Primary Wave chose some of the songs (mostly stuff from before 1980, natch, apart from, unaccountably, “She Wants So Many Things”!) and I chose a bunch of the others, mainly songs like "My Love's Strong" and "Depend On Me" which I contend are far more usable than the old stuff (I was proved right when "Depend On Me" got used on the Fox show "Fringe" and earned me a pantload).

Artistically, it was not a pleasant thought to commit to this project. I can't imagine any artist wants to go backwards and rerecord old tunes, and I'm no exception, but a chance to "stick it to the man" is always worth a go, and so I went along with the idea and tried to enjoy the process. Primary Wave want to up the value of my catalog, and the idea that such easy-going songs such as the two I've mentioned above are doomed to reach only a handful of fans is a shame, so it's nice to see them getting the chance of new life.

This recording is not in any way an artistic statement. It is what it is. I am a working musician and just trying to make a living. Very simple stuff.

Obviously, you can't improve on or match the ferocious intensity of a ‘70’s GP/Rumour performance, and so my stance was to take my live solo treatments of many of these tunes and simply add instrumentation. I did not see this as a releasable product because I consider myself a current artist and was quite sure when I recorded these songs that a new creative mode could strike at any time and I would have to follow the muse and do a new album, which I did, hence “Imaginary Television.”

At first, Primary Wave had an idea of releasing it on top quality vinyl which I would then promote by playing records stores. Right. I nixed this idea without a second thought. It has not been my experience that doing gigs gets one anywhere other than having a good time and hopefully pleasing an audience. It does not get your songs on TV shows.

That does not exclude the idea that this might not be released in the future when I feel there is a gap in the output worth filling with an odd artifact. Perhaps we’ll be forced to eventually by popular opinion!

Regarding the folks who are making money selling this: please cease and desist or I will sue your ass.

Thank you,

Paint Drying #1 - Graham Parker and the Figgs On Tour

2010-05-12T08:06:00.001-07:00

Sunglass(es) The Graham Parker Show - Episode One

2010-03-15T22:06:00.000-07:00

IMAGINARY TELEVISION

2010-02-26T10:41:00.000-08:00

Not too long ago, I was courted by Primary Wave, a publishing company that specializes in finding “placements” for their artists’ songs. They insisted that I would fit in well with their “iconic” catalog, a portfolio that includes the songs of Kurt Cobain, Hall & Oates and John Lennon, among other luminaries.
Help, I’m an icon! I thought.
There are other perhaps less flattering words that they could have used to describe me and that might well be more accurate, but hey, I’m all in favor of a world where folks with money hoist me up to impossible heights, if only to experience the dizzying thrill of dropping like a stone when it is discovered that the rest of the world does not agree with their assessments.
OK, I’ll cunningly go along with their delusions, I figured. Let them waste a few bob on me. My songs have certainly been inert for so long weeds are growing between the stanzas. At least if I knew what a stanza was, and if my songs have any of them, I’d most certainly expect to find a jungle of invasive species crowding them out and blotting out the sunlight.
But the smart folks at Primary Wave have caught on bigtime to the fact that, although CD sales for most of us are, ahem, not very good (!), songs don’t go away. If they did you wouldn’t have to hear the insufferable “Somebody’s Watching Me” on the worst of the otherwise excellent Geico ads every five minutes. Not to mention having to stomach a Journey tune on the final Soprano’s episode, which I refused to watch out of spite. (Did they all get whacked? I’ll never know.)

So anyway, early last summer I received an e-mail from a Primary Wave rep. who deals with the West Coast end of things, TV shows in particular. It was one of those missives that television music supervisors presumably throw out to all their music publishing contacts, requesting a “Main Title,” a theme tune for an upcoming show.
The rep. was unsure as to whether I’d be interested in writing something on spec, and certainly, it’s not an endeavor I’ve ever thought of attempting before, but the idea of the show in question must have got my juices flowing, for within about half an hour I had a ridiculously catchy tune that fit the bill perfectly.
I then booked time at a local studio and recorded a one-and-a half minute opus (that’s all they needed), guitars, vocals, keyboards and synth drums, and was well pleased with the effort.
Not long after submitting the track, I was told that the music supervisor on the show, although expressing high regard for my effort, had ultimately chosen something else.
Not much of a surprise, really, as my observance of TV usages has led me to the conclusion that they mostly either use trendy Indie acts right out of a Nick Harcourt playlist or, like — the Who. As always, Trend and Commerce rule, and their choice in this case was no exception, using as they did a tune by someone you’ve never heard of who nevertheless was in an “Indie” band with a very silly name.
Two weeks later, my contact sent me another request for a Main Title, and with the juices still boiling away, I wrote an even catchier piece (this time they only wanted 40 seconds) and repeated the steps listed above.
To be fair, the first show had at least picked a pretty decent piece of work, trendyness of the artist notwithstanding, but on this second show they chose the lamest instrumental imaginable, probably because they decided to go cheap and hired some hack to cobble something together instead of paying a decent chunk of change to an actual name artist.
So, two rejections, but two potential songs in the bag for me.
And here’s where it gets interesting. What if, I thought, I wrote my own treatments for TV shows — situation comedies for the most part — and then wrote the theme tunes to go with them? The only person who could reject them would be me, and that wasn’t likely to happen because they’d be so bloody good!
I plunged into the concept with some enthusiasm, knowing as I do that anything that gets me off the couch to pick up the guitar and to then return to the couch with said guitar to actually do some work instead of passing out on said couch in front of some highly dubious footwork courtesy of the Fox Soccer Channel would be a good thing.
Within a month or two I had ten songs, which included fleshed out versions of the ones that I’d worked on for the TV shows in the first place.
Then I took the skeletal treatments of the shows and tarted them up into more fully realized plots, recorded “More Questions Than Answers,” the stunning Johnny Nash tune from the early ‘70’s that I’ve had in mind to cover for about 40 years, and there it was, a new album, “Imaginary Television.”
In the booklet that accompanies the CD and Vinyl (yes, vinyl!), you’ll find TV show plots and fake press reviews instead of lyrics (Judd Apatow, call me….), so don’t cheat and ask someone to burn you a copy because by just listening to the songs you won’t have a clue as to what’s going on.
As well as some solo gigs, me and the Figgs will be doing the rounds, so please keep an eye on the Tour page.

Back in the real world, Primary Wave have already been getting results, and the best part is (when it comes to TV show usage at least) that songs are often used in the background, so no ones knows about it. (The fame I don’t need, I’ll just take the dosh, thanks)

Now, there may well be a Paleolithic among you who thinks that even wanting to have tunes placed on TV shows, in movies or in adverts, is a sell out, a morally reprehensible idea, a crass indefensibly offensive affront to the delicate sensibilities of both artiste and audience, a reproachable attack on the bedrock virtues of nonconformist ideology as espoused by 50 years of iconoclastic observance to unwritten codes of conduct evinced by a continual wellspring of rock ‘n’ roll rebellion (stop him…please…) now well established and accepted as a hierarchy implicitly sanctioned in the embedded psyche of a generation of man/child (…oh…) torchbearers still gripping unflinchingly the flame of truth-against-power, a flame (…the humanity…) held dear to countless manifestations of the unadulterated poetics of musical purity, unencumbered (no…no more I beg) by commerciality, resistant to compromise, bound implacably to the concepts of art and simultaneously immune to the vagaries of market and acceptability, popularity (…stop…) and monetary gain, resplendent and intrinsically wedded to higher aspirations of artistic insularity and the (…him…) steadfast multiplicity of complex compositional profundities deeply inherent to the form as established in long-standing antiestablishment diatribes, agitprop and anti-nabob in both structural formulation (…Can’t stand…) (…this…) and density of sonic delivery, immersed in — for want of a better word — cool.
Well, then you’d be a twit.

GP

LIVE AT NEWLANDS TAVERN

2009-05-05T22:59:00.000-07:00

And other parts of the puzzle

Standing around in a rough circle with this bunch of blokes I hardly
knew and playing my songs to them on that long late summer day,
deep into the afternoon in 1975, was a little intimidating.
The sun slashed though the blue smoke of hash joints and cigarettes;
we drank pints of bitter that the owners of Newlands Tavern, located
in Peckham in the south of London, had kindly allowed us to pull
from the taps, with no charge that I can remember paying.
Things weren't gelling on that first rehearsal, I can tell you that
much. Martin Belmont actually mentioned it to me later, apologizing
for the lackluster nature of the band's attempts to pull off my
material without anything approaching excitement. It didn't matter;
it was our first attempt and compared with any bunch of musicians
I'd done half-hearted rehearsals with before, little imagination
was needed to tell that these guys were going to be very, very good
backing me up.
We worked in a back room when the pub was closed after lunch, and
the creaking, wooden stage of that venerable London venue, just a
few feet away, started to look like something that would soon be
within my reach, an idea hard to imagine mere months before.

It all started with an ad I placed in the back pages of the Melody
Maker, one of the music rags that I devoured every week.
"Singer/songwriter needs band. Into Van Morrison, the Stones and
Dylan," it said, or something very close to that.
In no time, people were responding to the ad, calling the gas station
where I was working in Deepcut, my childhood home that I'd recently
moved back into after a few years on the Hippie trail, dossing
around in different countries with a guitar on my back, honing my
skills at a leisurely pace.
Some dick who billed himself as a bass player called, insisting we
meet at his "office," a pub a few villages away called "The Who'da
Thot It" (keep saying it, it'll come to you); I drove miles and
miles to meet a girl who could only play the licks of Paul Kossoff
(very badly, too), the late great guitarist from the band Free, who
I had seen a year or two before playing to about 30 people in the
Gin Mill Club in Godalming, Surrey, before they broke with "All
Right Now."
The trombone player whose ad seemed a permanent fixture in the
paper ("Trombone Player Needs Work") called, but my horn section
fantasieswere not in the front line of my transom yet; they would
soon emergeby the time I got to the recording studio, but first I
needed a rock 'n' roll band: drums, guitars, and keyboards.
Eventually, a guy named Noel Brown got hold of me. He lived in a
flat near Wandsworth, south London, and played great slide guitar
and dobro. At last I'd found someone who didn't have the taint of
progressive music hanging over him, a genre I'd long left behind
(well, two years ago anyway) and was determined to wipe off the
face of the earth with a whole new attitude; an attitude that at
that time seemed only to exist in my head and on records that were
made before 1970.

Noel introduced me to one Paul "Bassman" Riley, a guy I'd actually
seen on stage playing bass in an outfit called Chilli Willi and the
Red Hot Peppers who were on the "Naughty Rhythms Tour."
I'd been reading about a band called Dr. Feelgood and went to check
out this extravaganza in one of my old stomping grounds, the
Guildford Civic Hall, a few miles from my village. Chilli Willi and the
other band on the bill, the soul inflected Kokomo, were very good, but
of course the Feelgoods were incendiary, and when I saw their suits,
short hair and wickedly angry performance, I knew I was already on
the right track.
You have to realize that progressive rock still ruled, and I was
probably the only guy in the room,* apart from the band members
on stage, who had got rid of his flowing mane for a near skinhead
cut. I may have been ahead of my time for the suburbs cum country
areas, but obviously this reversal of style was already happening in
London, hence the ad in the Melody Maker. I needed other people
who also knew that ELP were a load of bollocks, and I found them.
They were not Paul and Noel, though, who did rehearse a few times
with me, along with various configurations of their musician friends,
but when Paul introduced me to Dave Robinson, things changed
rapidly. He recorded my songs in his demo studio, located in a room
in the Hope & Anchor, an Islington pub with a cellar-like venue in the
bowels of the building.
Anyone who would play for a free pint was brought in by Dave to
have a go on the demos, but he was stealthily formulating ideas
about who my eventual backing band would consist of, and before I
knew what was happening, a bunch of guys destined to become the
Rumour were rehearsing with me in the aforementioned Newlands
Tavern.
On the third day of rehearsal, Dave brought down a lanky bird-nosed
fellow named Nick Lowe, who I would learn was another victim of a
mysterious genre known as "pub rock."

(He was not the first contender for producer. Dave and I had had
lunch not long before those rehearsals with Tim Moore, an American
singer/songwriter who had recently scored a minor UK hit with a
song called "Second Avenue." Dave, in his inscrutable fashion had
apparently nixed that idea without much clarification in favour of
Lowe.)
It was here, in Newlands Tavern, that we took the democratic tack
of coming up with names for the band and then voting for the winner.
I came up with Graham Parker and the Questions, but Brinsley's The
Rumour obviously won.
The rest, as they say, is history, and if you want to read the most
definitive history of the events and situations that led to my break
into the music business, along with many others who gained from the
smarts of Dave Robinson, among others, read Will Burch's "No Sleep
Till Canvey Island: the great pub rock revolution"

It was some months into the beginning of my career when someone,
a Rumour member or Robinson himself, gave me an actual Brinsley
Schwarz album. The inappropriate term pub rock had been appearing
in articles about me, and I was further confused when I listened to
the Brinsley's album: "What the fuck has this lame country music
got to do with me?" I wondered.
Whatever, it matters not when I point out to journalists the
exasperating irrelevance of this term, which I did just 4 days ago.
It will doubtless be used in my obituary.

(*I guess I was not the only male member of the audience with short
hair at the Guildford Civic Hall that night. According to Burch's
book, a certain 17-year-old named Paul Weller was there, although,
who knows? Maybe he had hair down to his arse until after seeing
the show!

The date of this auspicious event was January 12th 1975. Before
half the year was out I'd have a manager, a crack backing band, and
a record deal. When I saw this gig I was just some bloke working
in a gas station with no future that anyone, apart from myself,
would have guessed at.)

Which brings us to this Official Bootleg, "Live At Newlands Tavern."
On the My Gig List section of Johannes Deininger's excellent "Struck
By Lightning" website, the first two gigs I did with the Rumour
appear thus:

10 or 11/75: Newlands Tavern, London, UK
75: Nag's Head, High Wycombe, UK

The time period seems accurate to me, but starting in a fairly
famous London venue runs counterintuitive to normal tactics in
exposing a new band and also does not jibe with my admittedly
dodgy memory. I'd say that we almost definitely performed in
High Wycombe first and followed up with the London show.
(I'll admit here that I could be wrong about the order!).
I can recall hanging around a soccer field or park in the afternoon
shivering in the cold drizzle, smoking a joint and riddled with
nerves about the upcoming evening. Why we were hanging around a
field I don't know, but that vague memory is in my head and we were
in High Wycombe, not London.
The audience that night was comprised mostly of pals of mine from
various villages in Surrey who would have found the proximity of
High Wycombe more appealing than a trek up to south London.

As for the show featured on this disc: who was that masked man?
Whoever held the tape recorder appears to have been hanging out
near the bar, which was located on the right as you looked at the
stage. At the risk of sounding sexist I say "man" because surely
finding a woman with a tape recorder at a gig in 1975 would be like
finding a female Captain Beefheart fan in any era.
And what are we hearing on this tape?
Martin Belmont is doing the announcing (I don't say a word). And
this may well be the complete show as far as my performance is
concerned, but I'm sure the Rumour did their own set beforehand.
I also remember something that does not appear here: Martin
introduced me thus: "And now we'd like to bring on a friend of ours.
Please welcome, Graham Parker." Yes, to blunt the shock of this
unknown character taking the stage in a well-known London venue
and completely taking over center stage, I was introduced almost as
a sideman! Talk about hedging your bets! In retrospect, this was
probably a smart move seeing as Martin was from the classic Pub
Rock band Ducks Deluxe and Bob and Brinsley were from the Brinsley
Schwarz band, in many ways considered to be the epitome of this
alleged genre. Also, the next time we played London, after our profile
had been upped considerably and articles about us had been appearing
in the music press, Dave told me that some members of my growing
audience had been at that first London gig in Newlands, and that they
had hated my guts. It wasn't that they didn't like the music, and the
applause on this recording seems quite rousing. It was the idea
of this guy they'd never heard of, appearing from nowhere, and
fronting a class A outfit consisting of London's finest as if they
were a mere backing band that pissed them off.

What strikes me most about this tape is the full-grown ferocity of
the performance. Not only do I sound as if I was already competing
with the punk bands that were not to fully emerge until over a year
later, but the Rumour sound as if they've been playing my stuff for
years, and are rocking in suitably ferocious form themselves.
After those brief rehearsals and only one gig, it amazes me just
how good we were already, and how far ahead of anything else going
on at the time (Dr. Feelgood notwithstanding).
Gone is the almost apologetic "let's just play the songs, man"
attitude of the pub rock scene that the band had come from, and my
new found angst (I was lying around watching the ceiling changing
shapes to a backdrop of "Dark Side Of The Moon" only a couple of
years earlier) seems to have been picked up by everyone and applied
with full force, making it seem as if we had planned this like a
military operation.
It's hard to imagine where I got the balls to even consider doing
"Chain Of Fools," and doing it as if I wanted to strangle the
offending member of the opposite sex that the song details.
And the arrangements of my own songs seem very close to those on
"Howlin' Wind," right down to some of Brinsley's sax lines (yes,
that's Brinsley on the sax!) that would appear on the album fleshed
out by a full horn section.
Even "Don't Ask Me Questions" has the brutal urgency of an anthem,
just as it does on the record. How did we get this act together
so quickly? Beats me.
Then there's the strange break in the show followed by a brief
appearance of the Rumour without me, doing an instrumental they had
been working on in rehearsals called "Rockin' Hawk" (don't know who
did this originally) and then I'm back on doing two more songs that
would appear on the first record and a song we probably never did
again called "Express Delivery," which appears to use drug smuggling
as a metaphor for lost love!
What also strikes me is the fantastic lead guitar work by Martin
Belmont. It is assumed that Brinsley was the real virtuoso of the
twin guitar attack and that Martin was more the rhythm player, but
most of the solos are handled by Martin, and what an underrated
lead player he is.
An interesting detail comes before "Questions," which Martin also
plays lead on. It's hard to hear what he's saying before we start
the song, but I believe Martin is commenting (and filling a rare
silent gap) on Brinsley's reggae guitar technique. Brins would
take a piece of foam and place it beneath his guitar strings near
the bridge to achieve a deadened, ring-free sound. Where he'd got
this idea from I don't know, but it was the early days of white
boys playing reggae (apart from GT Moore and the Reggae Guitars who
had made a great album in that groove that very year) and perhaps
the form was still a little mysterious.

Although the sound of this recording is obviously of very low
quality, the intensity of our act comes through nonetheless, and
the noise of the audience ("white wine, white wine..." a woman appears
to be repeating sluggishly at the bar) imbues the experience with
that full-on London pub atmosphere, bringing a bygone era back into
sharp focus.

Hey, it's gotta be worth ten bucks, that's for sure.
Available from this site and at gigs.
Enjoy.

http://grahamparker.net/newlands.php

CARP FISHING ON VALIUM: THE LINER NOTES

2009-02-09T18:24:00.000-08:00

Just before the release of "Carp Fishing On Valium," I was playing a gig in New York's Bottom Line. I mentioned my upcoming literary effort to my friend Alan Pepper, the owner of the venerable joint. "Write some songs to go with the stories and take it on the road," he suggested. I scoffed loudly at the impertinence of his idea and dismissed it out of hand, thinking that writing the book had been enough effort already and that St. Martin's Press would swing into high gear at its release and I could lay back and choke myself stupid on the copious amounts of champagne the royalties would bring in and not have to lift a finger again for a few years.

However, once I got home I dug into the task with gusto and in fairly short order had a bunch of songs going, only cheating once with the previously released "Soultime," because nothing could beat it as an accompaniment for the moddy boy opus, "Aub."

Now came the hard part. Getting the gigs would be easy enough, but getting a book publishing company to do anything other than hand me over to a clueless intern proved impossible, and so after tearing the hapless intern a new one when she informed me in an e-mail that picking up the phone and calling a few bookstores to invite them down to the venues to sell a few books was "all so complicated," I forgot about the company and just got on with it myself, treating it like any other tour where I do all the work anyway.

One thing I've learned about book publishing companies: after the product is released the phone stops ringing.

Approximately sixteen gigs were completed, starting in July 2000, many with Tom Freund as musical accompaniment, playing upright bass, guitar, and mandolin. Which brings us to this latest release in our "official bootleg" series.

Many artists dream of releasing the rawest recordings they have, and preferably before they die when someone with less sensitivity will do the job for them and release the rawest crap that they have, material that the artist would rather remain safely rotting in a dank basement.

These songs, however, fit the bill perfectly, having been recorded in the bathroom on my trusty 1980's Sony Pro Cassette recorder (with separate microphone requiring a triple A battery no less), and soon after dispatched to Tom Freund.

I'd forgotten all about this until our webmaster John Howells -- who I must have sent a copy to for his amusement -- worked the sound a bit, dumped it on a CD, and sent it off to me for my amusement.

Damn, it sounds fine!

It has all the prerequisites of the raw demo scenario with strong vocal and guitar work, plenty of open tuning, songs that sparked off entire albums like "Blue Horizon" and "Anything For A Laugh," a tune called "Hot Ringlets" which I never even sang on the tour but ripped off later for "Go Little Jimmy," and of course six tunes never heard again until now.

Please enjoy the real thing.

http://grahamparker.net/carpfishing.php

AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR PRESIDENT OBAMA

2009-02-06T23:55:00.000-08:00

Tell the Republicans to go fuck themselves. No, really. Tell-the
Republicans-to-go-fuck-themselves.

America (and the rest of the world) has suffered eight years of
these assholes — the “we create our own reality” (Rove) crowd — who
were convinced after they defiled the horror of 9/11 with a phony war
and all the torturous trinkets they draped it with that they would
ultimately prevail in their quest to maintain Republican power for
many years to come. Mr. Obama, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth
after it has kicked itself in the balls. Give it another kick, just
to make sure it isn’t getting up again any time soon.

These are the people who’s ultimate goal is to eradicate all social
programs, to privatize everything, and to keep America in the wild
west where Reagan placed it years ago with a policy of deregulation
which has finally imploded, leading to the current economic crash.

These are the people who would stand up in a debate, as the
Republican candidates did in late 2008, and when asked if they
“believed” in evolution (as if evolution is something to “believe”
in, like a deity) would most certainly keep their hands firmly to
their sides. This is the type of nutter you are dealing with here.

Conservative thinking is over. Its crushing,
one-small-portion-of-the-left-hemisphere-of-my-brain-is-all-I’m-using
approach to the complexities of this period in history are now too
flat-footed to be entertained by anyone who is using a modicum of
the other cranial areas. It might have been useful once, but it’s
not anymore.

Look, Pres., the public chose you over a man who was so obviously
suffering the beginnings of some degenerative brain disease, the
like of which strikes our aged with such unfortunate regularity.
(Well done, old chap! You beat a man with Alzheimers!) Don’t let
these “ideology above everything” folks grind you down. Please
find your Huevos Grandes, and quickly.

And so, President Obama, tell the republicans to go fuck themselves.

Thanks you for your time today, sir.

The Chairman

"THE END OF FAITH"

2007-10-17T21:02:00.000-07:00

(Available for download only, now on emusic with itunes and others soon to follow.)

At some point during the period in which I wrote the "Don't Tell Columbus" songs, I was also writing a tune called "The End Of Faith," a number born of my disdain for religion, and therefore much too literal for the more balanced, nuanced content of the forthcoming collection.
Seeing this discrepancy coming from a mile away, I ceased working on the song and left it half finished, envisioning perhaps its eventual lack of completion altogether, or, in more rash moments, writing an entire album of anti-religious tirades and using "The End Of Faith" as the cornerstone for such an endeavor.
But I find it a very hard and tiresome thought to narrow my work down to such a dogged and literal pursuit, and the thought of the difficulties involved with composing a dozen rants that bashed the heads of the faithful felt like a lead weight, and so instead, I merely finished writing this one song fairly recently, just for the heck of it.

Apart from a long held but inchoate idea (I can't bring myself to use the word "belief" and therefore use the word "idea" instead) that religion is a malignant force, and that belief and faith are the two most dangerous concepts in the world and have proven themselves to be over and over again, I have not seen anything that brings this feeling into tangible content in my entire life until recently.
Enter the three extraordinary books that give focus to the wishy washy liberalism of my highly untrained and uncoordinated mind: "The End Of Faith" by Sam Harris, "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins, and "God Is Not Great: how religion poisons everything " by Christopher Hitchens (gotta love that subtitle!).

Reading these books, especially the ones by Harris and Hitchens, is a mind expanding experience. The Hawkins book is good, but comes over as more of an appreciation of the elegance and reality of evolution and the delusionality of denying this phenomenon than the double whammy intellectual tour de force(s) of the other two.
If you have any interest in the subject, don't miss these publications. All three books were best sellers, and if you want to start somewhere, start with Harris's "The End Of Faith" itself, from whence my song title comes, which will cost you less anyway because it's out in paperback. If that book doesn't blow your mind with its clear-headed and often startling revelations (if you'll excuse the word), especially when confronting the utter lameness of the acceptance and tolerance by Liberals of other peoples' "faiths," despite the absurd and sometimes vile nature that is inherent in those "faiths," then I don't suppose the concept will interest you much anyway.

I could blabber on about my take on the subject, but due to my lack of formal education (I don't consider an English secondary modern school a formal education), my ignorance of the timeline of religion in any coherent historic sense, and my lack of the kind of elucidation brought forth by these writers, it's probably better for anyone interested to read these books for themselves.

Suffice to say, I think this is an urgent matter, and I think the sooner mankind can stamp out religion with the light of reason the better. The world and the universe will not be any less miraculous for it, more so in fact, and the misery these superstitions and "faiths" inflict in what can only be described rationally as belief in the supernatural, can be marginalized and banished to the crackpot realm where they now fully belong.

Hitchens describes in great clarity what you already know: that the whole shebang is entirely man-made, and his brilliant assessment "what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence" is the perfect antidote to the idea that openly doubting the beliefs of the faithful is off limits to people of reason.
As Hitchens also said on his often hilarious debate with Al Sharpton on a recent edition of "Hardball Plaza" with Chris Matthews, "It's time to get up off your knees. Stop groveling." Well said.

GP

PS: (Preemptive strike against the folks out there who follow the pundits.)
Yes, yes, I know: Hitchens thought that invading Iraq was a spiffing idea and still thinks so, despite the obvious catastrophe of it all. On this I disagree.)

MUSICIANS

MIKE GENT: DRUMS, BACKING VOCALS, LEAD GUITAR SOLO
ED VALAUSKAS: BASS GUITAR
SCOTT JANOVITZ: KEYBOARDS
GP: VOCALS, ACOUSTIC GUITAR, ELECTRIC GUITAR

Eva Cassidy and Amy Winehouse

2007-08-11T10:02:00.000-07:00

Forward: many thanks for the comments on the last blog. I'm not going to respond to them, because it seems to me that this blogging business can devolve into a lovefest or a bickering match instantly. So, as Steven Colbert might say, "Movin' on!"
Hence, the article below, apropos of nothing...

THE THOUGHTS OF CHAIRMAN PARKER
on the two greatest female vocalists of the last 40 years :
EVA CASSIDY AND AMY WINEHOUSE

When an English friend of mine raved about American singer Eva Cassidy sometime in the late '90's, his exhortations were intense enough to quell my usual reticence to buying albums without hearing a single performance on the radio (call me old fashioned, but that's still how I judge whether music is worth spending money on), and so I searched the racks in the local mall until I finally found a copy of her album "Songbird," buried, rather unsettlingly, in the jazz section.

I stuck the CD on as I drove away from Barnes & Nobles, and there she was on track one, playing live, with the audience applause removed, just her and an acoustic guitar with another guitarist adding a few touches, singing a version of Sting's "Fields Of Gold" with such effortless, searing conviction, such consummate technique and unselfconscious soul, that I found it difficult to concentrate of the road ahead. I choked up, felt dizzy, and put the track on again as soon as it had finished, playing it about four times until I finally moved on to the next song.
The way she feathered those notes and coaxed them into heavenly dimensions, and then suddenly switched gears to attain full-voiced awesome power was stunning, and I knew right then that my English friend had not steered me wrong.

Now, "Fields Of Gold" was already a great song and a great production by the man who wrote it, but Eva's stark version transcends the original to heights almost beyond belief, as I'm sure the songs' composer would readily agree.
As I listened to the rest of the albums' contents — not all of which I was thrilled with as far as choice of material was concerned — I found myself in the presence of an interpreter who could turn the most moribund fodder into manna, who could evince in the listener, in the space of a few notes, that rare and glistening emotional enlightenment that quite simply gives your goose bumps goose bumps (Yessss! I've always wanted to put those words into repeat mode and have them make sense!).

But what is the lineage of Cassidy's awesome prowess? Follow this: Vera Lynn, Judy Garland, Doris Day...long gap here...Sandy Denny...'nother long gap...Eva Cassidy. (Gulp. They're all white!)
OK, you might want to stick Dusty in there, too, but I think I'm concentrating on a vocal purity here, a purity that has minimal soul grittiness, but is still immensely soulful, and at the same time does not fall into the Joan Baez "I'm giving you an elocution lesson, children, so pay attention!" school of ham.

Unfortunately, the musicianship behind her, although adequate enough — seeing as her voice is what counts — sounds like it was produced by a bunch of second-string jazzers, as their weak version of "People Get Ready" will attest, ignoring as it does the tunes' obligatory funk.
And her choice of songs shows no attempt to make a cohesive album, which is admirable in a way, because apparently she had no truck with record company execs who wanted her to chose a style and stick with it, but nevertheless makes for a spotty final product.
If I'd been aware of her when she was still with us, I would have camped outside her door with a guitar singing "First Day Of Spring" until she'd be forced to cover it, just to get rid of me (and now, "All Being Well" would be my choice, the thought of which makes my knees turn to jelly).
And although normally I have no interest in producing other artists' records, I think if I'd known about her when she was alive I would have made a lot of effort to get her into the studio with a more compelling band and with a bunch of tunes that could work together to make something modern and at the same time, timeless.

She had a classic in her, in other words, but it's too late now. Eva Cassidy died of melanoma in 1996 at the age of 33.

But why am I writing about a singer who passed away 11 years ago? Because I just bought "Back To Black" by Amy Winehouse.
Eva Cassidy notwithstanding (soulful in an un-black way), I presumed that female soul vocalists had been poisoned by the Mariah Carey brand of tangled underwear melismatic histrionics, but just to show that there's always gonna be someone who comes along every now and again to break the stranglehold, Amy Winehouse arrives in the most surprising fashion, just when you've given up hope.

I've been hearing tantalizing snippets of her hit tune "Rehab" for a while now, but never the whole thing or the name of the singer. Finally, on some "alternative" radio station, sandwiched between what might have been a Rancid song and perhaps one of Creed's absurdities, I heard "Rehab" in its entirety and finally got the artists' name. Off to the mall I go again and purchase a copy.

My reaction to "Back To Black" was similar to the astonishment I felt at hearing Eva for the first time, only here we have not only a remarkable vocalist with a style very hard to pigeonhole, but a marvelous songwriter, too, one who mixes genres like an alchemist, and seemingly with little effort and zero affectation.

And this girl gets the band right. Where Cassidy's backing acts as mere wallpaper, Winehouse's rocks in the most gleefully sloppy manner, teetering between masterful and really dodgy with intriguing artfulness. Again, I'm tempted to think a bunch of jazzers are playing, but unlike Cassidy's cohorts, maybe these guys have just recently been turned on to some really early soul B-sides and had their minds blown, never to play jazz again; or maybe they actually know what they're doing and this is natural for them. I've no idea. Whatever, they do an amazing job.
And it's hard to tell whether the producers (there seem to be a couple of them doing different tracks) were having a huge guffaw at the variety of styles they pillage or whether this is the way they always make records.

"Just Friends," for instance, starts off as a slow jazz, which had me worried for a minute, seeing as I need to hear jazz like I need a hole in the head. But then, after the opening few bars, the song bursts into a faux reggae which features burping horns and a drum technique that suggests that the drummer is playing reggae for the first time, what with the extraordinarily sloppy snare cracks that threaten to make the whole thing fall on it's ass. But it doesn't! It's perfect.

"You Know I'm No Good" and "Love Is A losing Game" are too brilliant for me to even describe. This girl expresses a lot of pain, and she's damn good at mining the veins of it.
"Tears Dry On Their Own," with its Motown groove and once again, teetering- on-the-edge yet totally authentic backing, is sublime.

And what about her voice? Where is a 22 year old British Jewish girl getting this from?
Well, thankfully, unlike so many soul inspired female singers before her, it ain't the usual suspects. There's no copping from Aretha going on here.
Instead, it sounds like she heard some obscure B-side by an obscure female soul singer from the '60's, someone who made about one record then disappeared, and Amy just latched onto this rarity and it burrowed into her soul. There is a jazzy element to her style, too, but — at least on this album (and I think it's only her second?) — she reigns it in and uses it in the best possible way.

There is another comparison to make between Cassidy and Winehouse: they both have hideous album covers, which in some ways is almost endearing and makes their deep and authentic performances shine even brighter.

Letter To Nick Blakey

2007-07-10T16:08:00.000-07:00

Please read the following review of "Don't Tell Columbus":

http://www.yourfleshmag.com/artman/publish/printer_1006.shtml

Dear Mr. Blakey,

Seeing as your review was written in the form of a letter, I presume a reply would be the correct and polite response.

Let's jump right in at the shallow end, the territory your piece most frequently inhabits.

With the benefit of over 30 years of experience, I spend a great deal of thought on choosing the right people for the job.
Look at the credits on "Songs Of No Consequence." Take note of the drummer credits for "Go Little Jimmy" and "Evil." Jesse Honig, who has a great swing feel and is adept at using brushes plays on the former and Mike Gent, who can really handle a reggae number, plays on the latter. Now why would I use those guys when Pete Hayes was in the studio, playing percussion alongside them? Because they were the right people for the job.
Pete Hayes, professional that he is, understood these choices.

Which brings us to "Don't Tell Columbus."
With the exception perhaps of the more pop/rock "Total Eclipse Of The Moon" it was obvious to me (and I think to many of my rather savvy fans) that "Columbus" was not a job for Hayes, or indeed the Figgs. Listen to "Ambiguous," listen to "Stick To The Plan." These tunes swing. They require a drummer with markedly different abilities to the sterling, solid work of Pete Hayes. He is great in a different way. (In fact, he has performed "I Discovered America" with me and the Figgs twice onstage and told me that Mike plays in such a different style from his that it was a bit like learning drums again to tackle this song.)
"Why stop now?" you ask, in reference to my use of the Figgs. Who says I've stopped anything? Artists don't stop. They change the landscape to suit their work, and I will continue to do so, and if the Figgs are the right outfit for the job, I'll probably use them again.

Also, among the many inaccuracies in your piece — which I will determine to take apart as my response continues — one of which you are (faultlessly, in this case) unaware of is that Mike's first instrument was the drums, an instrument even a cursory listen to "Columbus" will tell you he has mastered with a fine degree of skill. In as much as you are oblivious to that mastery, I'm afraid, you are not faultless.

Where is Brett Rosenberg, you ask? Not a bad question, unless you have chewing gum in your ears when you listen to the nuance-perfect execution of the lead guitar parts on "The Other Side Of The Reservoir," a song you criticize and foolishly compare to the vastly different and vastly inferior "Heat In Harlem," a number that was soundly and fairly criticized back in the day for my ignorance in calling that particular area of NYC "Harlem Town." (Ugh.) Also, it is an overblown piece of tosh, quite frankly.
When it is appropriate, no one can rip from the John Platania, Peter Green — even Richard Thompson — canon the way I can. (I am not comparing my guitar playing to these people, they are far superior, but I am able to assume their soulfull delicacy better than more accomplished guitarists.)
Every riff, every ascending or descending run I perform on "Reservoir" does exactly what it should do and follows the complex emotions of the song in an intimate way that nobody else could. That is why I'm playing on it and on every other track on the album: because the exquisite and richly emotional tone of many of the songs demands the investment of the man who wrote them on what is obviously the key lead instrument on the album: the electric guitar. Simply put, I again chose the right man for the job.

"The production already makes it sound dated," you assure yourself. Yes, perhaps if your ears are still residing in the '80's when a snare drum had to sound like a ton of glass falling off the Empire State Building and all the instruments were so hyper-pumped and affected it sounded like they had been immersed in some kind of aural testosterone. "Columbus" is a paradigm of modern, natural production.

Also, the sequencing on the album was, as is typical of my sequencing, deeply considered in order to make an album, not just a bunch of disparate songs stuck together in order to grab the "impatient listener."

And in the middle of a fair critique regarding my voice resembling Dylan's these days perhaps a little more than it should, you suddenly throw in a reference to Jesse Fuller so irrelevant to the point you were attempting to make it defies reason. Like much of your work this comes off as a lame attempt to go against the grain of the resoundingly good reviews this album has garnered. Whatever, it defines lazy writing.

From this these examples, it seems clear to me that you are one of that strange, off-kilter breed one runs into now again who thinks that anything a creative artist is doing right now completely wipes out the possibility that they could and probably will return to something at least resembling what they did the year before, or years before. It's like you have a head full of soup. The essence of being a creative artist is to freshen things up a bit on a regular basis and to also return to — if the artistic muse dictates — the past. This is as clear as an unmuddied lake.

Right after your feeble dig at the kazoo (an instrument completely appropriate to the characters who inhabit the song — I'm obviously blowing a huge wet raspberry at the whole wretched lot of them), in the same paragraph, you call "Bullet Of Redemption" a "good modern protest song." You've got the good part right at any rate, but unfortunately you are not alone in hearing the word "bullet" and going off on some Iraq war fantasy protest thing. For the record, "Bullet Of Redemption" is about a teenager who committed suicide, and my wrenching vocal will tell anyone who is really listening that it is not about a case that I saw on the evening news. This is the most serious song I have recorded since "Can't be Too Strong," but because of the lackluster journalism that abounds these days, has not been recognized as such.

"Fire my press officer," you insist in the next paragraph. I can assure you that the Bloodshot staff I have dealt with on this album are as confident of its brilliance as I am. (Also, I am not in the position of being able to fire Bloodshot staff.)
There is no lack of faith involved in using the statement you mention, which I myself wrote. Their tongues, like mine, are firmly in their cheeks; they have a sense of humor! Which is something you seem completely lacking in. Of course it's a playful remark! Your earnest mention of the other artists that follows shows your total misunderstanding of the playfulness involved, and therefore, a pretty serious misunderstanding of much of my intent throughout much of my career. (Here, one can't help but quote the brilliant line spoken by the puppet Kim Jong-il in the movie "Team America: World Police": "Why is everyone so fucking stupid?")
And I just looked back at the blurb on their website and saw no mention of the "angry young man" bit, and if they have used it elsewhere, I'm confident that it would appear in quotation marks and as an obvious reference to the past.

"I know you can kick some serious ass...and have proven so" you blather on again in the next installment of inanity. Yes, I did so on the last two albums I released as you pointed out earlier and was OBVIOUSLY not trying to repeat the ass kicking on this one!!!!
(OK, there may be hope for you: you did at least realize that the "white chick singers" credit was humorous. I'll give you that much.)

God, the inaccuracies go on: "Dylan's too busy re-writing his back catalogue..." Gallons of soup are involved with this one. Dylan may well be appropriating blues archetypes and ripping a few lines from some obscure civil war poet, but there is not a single song on "Modern Times" or some of the albums before it that even remotely suggest he is doing anything of the sort.
And..."Springsteen's still trying to pass himself off as a man of the people..."?
Trust me, Bruce has no need to try to pass himself off as anything and is not doing so. Taking what I considered to be the hackneyed "Mighty Wind" folk monolithium of Pete Seeger and turning it into an electrifying and utterly credible modern album is one huge achievement.

But why are you reviewing this album, one has to repeatedly ask? It seems probable, as I mentioned earlier, that you have noticed the overwhelmingly good notices for "Columbus" and are trying to make a name for yourself by not following the trend. Unfortunately, the absurd construct of your criticism only leads you into the murky abyss of prickdom.

I trust that you will in kind publish this reply unedited and in its entirety for the entertainment of your readers.

Yours sincerely,

Graham Parker