I Heard A Rumour...

Mostly, when I post about music, I try to keep to things fresh. Even if the links I bring aren't new, at least they're new to me. 

Music isn't milk, though, no matter what Capt. Beefheart told you. It doesn't come with a Use By date and it doesn't go off. Let me caveat: most of it doesn't go off. An unswerving focus on the present can leave you just as blinkered as an obsession with the past.

Pitchfork, as I believe I may have mentioned before, runs a top-class feature every Sunday, in which one of the staff writers "takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible." Unsurprisingly, they only pick albums they think are worth retro-reviewing, which means all the reviews are positive but also that they're all worth reading, even if the artist or genre in question isn't one you're particularly into. You'll learn a lot.

Today they dragged out a forty-three year old album I've never heard by an artist I'd almost forgotten: Squeezing Out Sparks by Graham Parker and the Rumour. 

I'm not going to give chapter and verse on Parker. Everything you need to know is more than adequately covered in the review itself and Wikipedia has you covered if you want to go deeper. All I'm going to add is a little bit of personal history, then I'm going to play some of his tunes. Like this:

That's Heat Treatment. I remember that one. And so I should.

I saw Graham Parker and the Rumour play live twice, or maybe it was three times, in the mid-seventies. I was in my teens, still at school, and I went to a lot of gigs, mostly with my pals Chris and Paul, neither of whom I've seen since the early '80s.

We were very early adopters when it came to fast, loud, raucous rock and roll, especially the pre-punk kind we called "fast R&B". A lot of the bands playing that stuff morphed into punk or new wave acts  but we'd seen them when they still had wide lapels and flares, so we weren't fooled.

Hey Lord, Don't Ask Me Questions there, from 1976. I remember that one, too. I was going to say I'd have to remember it because I don't own any records by Graham Parker but actually I think I might have his first album somewhere. I'm not sure. No, on reflection I think it was Chris who owned it and I just heard him play it a few times.

Back in those days I drew a very clear line between bands who were good live and bands who were good on record. Not many crossed it. I saw plenty of bands who were stunning live but just sounded dead on vinyl, including

• Dr. Feelgood (Saw them live three times.)
  
• Thin Lizzy  (Saw them live twice.)
• The Downliners Sect (Saw them live twice.)

Graham Parker and the Rumour were one of the few fast R&B acts who could do it live and on record but even then it's not really the kind of music you sit down and listen to, which is a shame. As the Pitchfork piece makes plain, Parker had the same kind of wit and wordplay that made people pay attention to what Elvis Costello was saying, only set to the kind of backing tracks that made you think of dive bars, beer and sweat. Same problem Springsteen had, I guess.

New York Shuffle - Like that one, for instance. It hardly invites rigorous intellectual analysis, more like physical exhaustion and unexplained bruising.

By the time the album Pitchfork just reviewed came out, Parker had had a few hits and was on the cusp of major success. Good luck to him. I'd moved on. I never heard Squeezing Out Sparks nor saw him tour it. I guess that was my loss but I can't say it's worried me until now.

Nobody Hurts You from the US tour behind the album. Listening to that, I'm not sure I'd have been convinced. He really has the full new wave sound down, doesn't he? Could be Joe Jackson, which would be a funhouse mirror alright. Sounds a bit too brittle, perhaps?

The album didn't tank but it didn't set any sales records either. Parker's career stalled and never got going again. The Pitchfork review (I should credit the writer - it's Elizabeth Nelson.) gives several solid reasons why Graham Parker never became an enduring presence the way Elvis Costello did but in my opinion it misses out one salient point: the guy's really short.

Protection, also from that tour. You can see how short he is in that clip. I know it shouldn't matter but if you're going to be frontman for a dangerous-sounding, kick-ass rock and roll band it kinda does. And don't talk to me about Bono. U2 are none of those things. 

Reasonable or not, his height, or lack of it, was always an issue. It got mentioned by the press a lot and I remember my friends and I talking about it after we'd been to see him. Didn't stop us going to see him again but it did affect how we placed him in our teenage pantheon. Shame, but teenage boys can be shallow. If he'd been eight inches taller, who knows where he'd be now?

Probably not playing The Turning Point in Piermont ("The place can't hold more than 60 people" - TripAdvisor.) that's for sure. Still, it beats pumping gas in Deepcut!

Also, on that evidence, he's still got it. I'd go see him. Again.