Graham Parker creates his own kind of very different television on his website and new album
GRAHAM PARKER AND THE FIGGS
City Winery
155 Varick St.
Friday, April 30
212-608-0555
www.citywinery.com
www.grahamparker.net
It’s hard to believe that it’s been thirty-four years since British rocker Graham Parker first made a name for himself with the 1976 double shot of HOWLIN’ WIND and HEAT TREATMENT, two seminal albums that laid the groundwork for a complex, vaunted career that has also included such highly praised records as SQUEEZING OUT SPARKS (1979), THE MONA LISA’S SISTER (1988), and DON’T TELL COLUMBUS (2007). Over the years, Parker has written such pop gems as “Hey Lord, Don’t Ask Me Questions,” “Protection,” “Local Girls,” “Discovering Japan,” “Passion Is No Ordinary Word,” and “You Can’t Be Too Strong” as he toured the world solo as well as with a series of backup bands ranging from the legendary Rumour and the Small Clubs to the Shot and his current group, the Figgs.
Parker is out on the road these days supporting his latest release, IMAGINARY TELEVISION (Bloodshot, March 2010), a genius concept album containing eleven tunes that slide comfortably into the impressive Parker songbook, featuring inciteful and insightful, biting, ironic, and genuinely funny lyrics. Last year Parker was asked to write two theme songs on spec for a pair of television pilots; after both songs were rejected, Parker decided to create his own television network, consisting of eleven invented programs and movies for which he would write the theme songs. The result is the fabulously creative and entertaining IMAGINARY TELEVISION, which comes with a synopsis of each show instead of a lyric sheet: “Weather Report” is about an agoraphobic man obsessed with the Weather Channel, “Bring Me a Heart Again” follows the “potential cataclysmic depression” of private eye Nate Rimshot, and “Not Where You Think You Are” details the dramatic story of David “Dibby” Hrdlicka, who is participating in a government experiment testing “a substance that apparently occurs naturally inside the inner linings of lost golf balls left outside in the rough for over ten years.” The shows might sound ridiculous, but the songs are anything but, told in the classic Parker style.
Parker and the Figgs will be at City Winery on April 30; we recently caught up with him for a brief e-mail chat about his new album, his talented generation (Parker will turn sixty later this year), and life in general.
A Graham Parker show always promises a good time for all (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
twi-ny: Prior to being asked to write the two TV theme songs that eventually got rejected, what was your relationship, if any, with television? Were you a lover or a hater?
Graham Parker: I was about eleven years old when we finally got TV, just in time for THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW and 77 SUNSET STRIP and all those Westerns like GUNSMOKE. This is what we grew up with in England. They were probably the first shows I watched. TV is the greatest medium there is in my view.
twi-ny: City Winery seems to attract a certain brand of British-born wise-guy guitarist/songwriter with wry, cynical senses of humor; recent shows have featured Richard Thompson and Robyn Hitchcock, and Ian Hunter will be there shortly after you are. What keeps that generation of musicians still so vibrant, making exciting new records and playing terrific shows long after musicians half their age have petered out and faded away?
GP: It’s funny, my agent recently said to me that ’80s and ’90s acts can’t get arrested but ’70s acts are flying out the door. Hopefully, it’s the strength of the songwriting and the rich understanding of multiple musical styles. We were able to mine the ’60s musical explosion more adeptly because we were so much nearer to that period than people born in the ’70s.
twi-ny: Among the songs on the new album is “Always Greener.” A visit to your website, which includes a video of you and your son playing in the snow, makes it look like you’re pretty darn happy, not worrying about the color of anyone else’s grass. How’s life these days?
GP: I’m affected by the world around me, of course, and it brings me down like everyone else, but as I get older I find myself living in an imaginary landscape like the one you see in “Sunglass(es) The Graham Parker Show.” I think I’m losing my mind, but it’s not as bad as it’s cracked up to be.