Graham Parker and the Rumour (with Steve Goulding, second from right) have reunited after more than thirty years
GRAHAM PARKER & THE RUMOUR
Saturday, December 1, the Concert Hall at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, 2 West 64th St., $45-$75, 8:00
Sunday, December 2, the Paramount, 370 New York Ave., Huntington, $25-$49.50, 8:00
www.grahamparker.net
Since the mid-1970s, Graham Parker has been making his unique brand of pub/punk/pop music, featuring smart, incisive lyrics in all-out rockers and sweet, tender ballads. Although he has never stopped putting out outstanding albums and touring with various backing bands or playing solo, the London-born, New York-based Parker came out swinging, releasing a string of seminal records between 1976 and 1980 with the group he is most associated with, the Rumour. Consisting of Brinsley Schwarz and Martin Belmont on guitar, Andrew Bodnar on bass, Bob Andrews on keyboards, and Steve Goulding on drums, the Rumour helped define Parker’s angry-young-man sound on such classic discs as Howlin’ Wind, Heat Treatment, and Squeezing Out Sparks, ending their five-year run with 1980’s The Up Escalator (without Andrews). After thirty-one years, Parker and the Rumour have reunited for Three Chords Good, another exceptional record on which Parker examines the current state of America, taking on the conservative movement, war, and love in these critical times as only he can. (You can stream the new album here.) “I practice mass hypnosis / You’ll get sucked in by osmosis / But here comes my gnostic gnosis / (and guess what my gross is),” he sings on “Snake Oil Capital of the World,” continuing, “I’m suffering from psychosis / But I’ll give you my diagnosis / You need my medicine (in massive doses).” On the lovely “Long Emotional Ride,” Parker, who just turned sixty-two — and plays a musician named Graham Parker in the upcoming Judd Apatow film This Is 40 — acknowledges his past in a song that relates to the Rumour reunion. “I thought I was a cold, cold man / As a writer you have to be / Got to observe everything from a distance / Record it for posterity / But lately I’ve been feeling things / That I’ve never felt before / Maybe I’m just getting old or something / But something broke down my resistance / And opened the door.” Graham Parker and the Rumour will be playing the Concert Hall at the New York Society for Ethical Culture on December 1, with Parker’s previous backing band, the Figgs, opening up, followed by a highly anticipated show December 2 at the Paramount in Huntington with another British legend still making great new music, Ian Hunter & the Rant Band. As Parker and the Rumour rehearsed last week in Poughkeepsie for the tour, which began November 24 in Tarrytown, we corresponded with the irrepressible Goulding, a drummer’s drummer whose wide-ranging resume includes playing with the Mekons, the Cure, Poi Dog Pondering, Elvis Costello, Carlene Carter, Gang of Four, Nick Lowe, and many others.
Drummer Steve Goulding and the Rumour are back with Graham Parker and playing two area shows this weekend
twi-ny: How did you first find out about the reunion?
Steve Goulding: Graham asked me and Andrew Bodnar to play on his new album, so I said, “If you asked Martin and Bob and Brinsley, you’d have a band!” So he did, and much to my surprise, they all agreed, even Brinsley, who used to be hard to get on the road.
twi-ny: Is it something that you ever thought would happen?
Steve Goulding: I didn’t really think we’d get back together until I heard Brinsley had agreed to do the album.
twi-ny: Did you guys gel instantly upon getting back together, or did it take a while to find the old magic?
Steve Goulding: Yes, it was pretty instantaneous. The recording sessions were like buttah.
twi-ny: The tour is about to start. What are your expectations for the live show?
Steve Goulding: I just hope an audience turns up! The show will be more, er, mature. If we remember the beginnings and endings of the songs, and play the bits in the middle okay, I will be happy.
twi-ny: Will it be odd having one of Graham’s other backing bands, the Figgs, opening some of the shows?
Steve Goulding: I think opening the shows may be odder for the Figgs than for us, as they’ve now played with Graham about three times as long as we did. I hope they don’t feel too bad about it.
twi-ny: How is the Graham Parker of 2012 different from the GP of 1976?
Steve Goulding: Graham is probably a bit happier and has a bigger song catalog to choose from. But he’s really not much different from 1976. He still has a certain prickly energy about him.
twi-ny: What about you?
Steve Goulding: I’m much nicer than I was in 1976. And fatter.
twi-ny: Who are some of the drummers who most influenced you?
Steve Goulding: My early influences were Keith Moon, Ginger Baker, Ringo, Charlie Watts — the usual suspects. Later I got into Bernard Purdie, Max Roach, Jim Gordon, Tony Williams, Al Jackson, and a whole bunch more. Everybody I listen to influences me a little bit. It’s hard to stop things sliding into one’s subconscious.
twi-ny: You are also a member of such bands as the Mekons and the Waco Brothers, and you regularly play with such solo artists as Megan Reilly, Laura Cantrell, and Garland Jeffreys. How is your approach to playing the drums different, if at all, in so many musical genres?
Steve Goulding: I try to listen to what people around me are playing and go along with that. The artists you mention are stylistically very different but they all have similar points of reference. So it’s not that difficult to play with all of them. If Sonny Rollins and Slayer were in there, that’d be much more impressive!
“A great virtuoso madman,” “scary,” “a motherfucker,” “a lovable rogue,” “a dope addict,” “the hammer of the gods,” “a force of nature,” “horrible,” “the world’s greatest drummer” — these are just some of the terms of affection heaped on legendary drummer Ginger Baker by his friends, relatives, and musical colleagues at the beginning of Jay Bulger’s propulsive documentary, Beware of Mr. Baker. In 2009, after spending three months with Baker and his family in South Africa, Bulger published the in-depth article “The Devil and Ginger Baker” in Rolling Stone. Two years later, Bulger went back to expand the story into a feature-length film, but Baker was not about to make it easy for him, continually insulting his questions, calling him names, and even cracking him in the nose with his cane. “He influenced me as a drummer but not as a person,” Bad Company and Free drummer Simon Kirke says of Baker, an opinion shared by many in this revealing film. Baker might be crotchety, but he also opens up to Bulger, particularly in describing when, as a child during WWII, he would hear the bombings outside, sounds that would have an impact on his playing. Bulger speaks with such other percussionists as the Rolling Stones’ Charlie Watts, Rush’s Neal Peart, the Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart, Metallica’s Lars Ulrich, the Police’s Stewart Copeland, Vanilla Fudge’s Carmine Appice, and Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason, as well as such former Baker bandmates as Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Steve Winwood, who all rave about Baker’s remarkable abilities behind the kit while also delving into his self-destructive behavior, which led him through a parade of groups, home countries, and spouses. “I don’t know if it’s his ability to move on or it’s his inability to stay,” points out Baker’s third wife, Karen Loucks Rinedollar, a statement that applies to both Baker’s personal and professional lives. 
Ingmar Bergman’s Shame is a brilliant examination of the physical and psychological impact of war, as seen through the eyes of a happily married couple who innocently get caught in the middle of the brutality. Jan (Max von Sydow) and Eva Rosenberg (Liv Ullmann) have isolated themselves from society, living without a television and with a broken radio, maintaining a modest farm on a relatively desolate island a ferry ride from the mainland. As the film opens, they are shown to be a somewhat ordinary husband and wife, brushing their teeth, making coffee, and discussing having a child. But soon they are thrust into a horrific battle between two unnamed sides, fighting for reasons that are never given. As Jan and Eva struggle to survive, they are forced to make decisions that threaten to destroy everything they have built together. Shot in stark black-and-white by master cinematographer Sven Nykvist, Shame is a powerful, emotional antiwar statement that makes its point through intense visual scenes rather than narrative rhetoric. Jan and Eva huddle in corners or nearly get lost in crowds, then are seen traversing a smoky, postapocalyptic landscape riddled with dead bodies. Made during the Vietnam War, Shame is Bergman’s most violent, action-filled film; bullets can be heard over the opening credits, announcing from the very beginning that this is going to be something different from a director best known for searing personal dramas. However, at its core, Shame is just that, a gripping, intense tale of a man and a woman who try to preserve their love in impossible times. Ullmann and von Sydow both give superb, complex performances, creating believable characters who will break your heart. Shame is screening November 30 at BAM as part of the BAMcinématek series “Max von Sydow,” consisting of twenty-two wide-ranging films celebrating the outstanding career of the now-eighty-three-year-old Swedish actor; the festival continues with such other works as William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, Bille August’s Pelle the Conqueror,, Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters, John Milius’s Conan the Barbarian, and, yes, Mike Gordon’s Flash Gordon, with von Sydow playing Ming the Merciless.
It’s almost impossible to watch Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal without being aware of the meta surrounding the film, which has influenced so many other works and been paid homage to and playfully mocked. Over the years, it has gained a reputation as a deep, philosophical paean to death. However, amid all the talk about emptiness, doomsday, the Black Plague, and the devil, The Seventh Seal is a very funny movie. In fourteenth-century Sweden, knight Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) is returning home from the Crusades with his trusty squire, Jöns (Gunnar Björnstrand). Block soon meets Death (Bengt Ekerot) and, to prolong his life, challenges him to a game of chess. While the on-again, off-again battle of wits continues, Death seeks alternate victims while Block meets a young family and a small troupe of actors putting on a show. Rape, infidelity, murder, and other forms of evil rise to the surface as Block proclaims “To believe is to suffer,” questioning God and faith, and Jöns opines that “love is the blackest plague of all.” Based on Bergman’s own play inspired by a painting of Death playing chess by Albertus Pictor (played in the film by Gunnar Olsson), The Seventh Seal, winner of a Special Jury Prize at Cannes, is one of the most entertaining films ever made. (Bergman fans will get an extra treat out of the knight being offered some wild strawberries at one point.) The Seventh Seal is screening November 27 at BAM, kicking off the BAMcinématek series “Max von Sydow,” consisting of twenty-two wide-ranging films celebrating the outstanding career of the now-eighty-three-year-old Swedish actor. Von Sydow has appeared in such other serious fare as Bergman’s The Virgin Spring and Shame, such thrillers as Sydney Pollack’s Three Days of the Condor and Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, such epics as Bille August’s Pelle the Conqueror and Jan Troell’s The Emigrants, and such comedies as Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas’s Strange Brew and Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters. In addition, he’s been in two of the biggest bombs ever, Mike Gordon’s Flash Gordon (as Ming the Merciless!) and David Lynch’s Dune, was the older priest in William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, and he even played Blofeld in Irvin Kershner’s Never Say Never Again opposite Sean Connery’s James Bond. Of course, no matter what the project, Sydow brings an elegance and grace to it, lifting it up and always making it a whole lot better just for his presence.
