twi-ny recommended events

TWI-NY TALK: GRAHAM PARKER

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.

MSG/RADIO CITY TOURS

Fans get a unique view inside the World’s Most Famous Arena during All Access Tour (photo courtesy MSG Entertainment)

MADISON SQUARE GARDEN ALL ACCESS TOUR
RADIO CITY STAGE DOOR TOUR
Madison Square Garden: 31st to 33rd St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Radio City Music Hall: 1260 Sixth Ave. at 51st St.
Daily 11:00 am – 3:00 pm, $10-$18.50 each
www.thegarden.com
www.radiocity.com

Madison Square Garden. Radio City Music Hall. The very names of these institutions are iconic. In a country where the premier entertainment venues in most cities seem to be named after banks, telecom companies, and fast-food chains, these two unique historic attractions seem to embody the very spirit and character of New York. While visitors and natives alike enjoy any number of events at these landmarks, a wonderful way to get a deeper taste and understanding of the goings-on backstage is to take the official tour. Both Radio City and the Garden offer interesting and informative guided visits where guests can learn about the buildings’ histories and mysteries. The MSG tour takes guests all over the main drags and back roads of the World’s Most Famous Arena, beginning with a short film on the history of the Garden (or actually all four Madison Square Gardens, the first of which opened in 1879) and featuring a collection of Garden-related ephemera as the guide leads visitors from the arena floor up to the sky-box level and down to the home locker rooms of the Knicks and the Rangers. (During basketball season, guests just might get to meet a Knicks City Dancer as well.) The guides, able to answer any question imaginable, kept up a happy patter that seemed informal enough to avoid sounding like propaganda, considering the number of queries that dealt with the sorry state of the two local sports franchises who call the Garden home. Even with both clubs missing the postseason yet again, the Garden is never dark for long, as there are plenty of boxing matches and concerts scheduled, and the Liberty start up next month. Happily, the tours continue all summer long.

Tour takes visitors all around historic landmark (photo courtesy MSG Entertainment)

The Radio City Music Hall grand tour is another great way to spend an afternoon. The landmarked building, which was slated for demolition back in the ’70s until a last-minute injunction saved the day, is truly one of the architectural gems of New York. From the Hall’s gilded, soaring interiors to its acoustically perfect upper reaches, exploring the place was both enjoyable and fascinating. The guides, even more outgoing than the Garden’s demure damage-control specialists, again take visitors on a behind, and under, the stage journey, explaining the machinations of one of the more technically advanced yet vintage hydromechanical set-ups in the world. Some of the Radio City tours even allow guests to get up on the legendary stage itself. The tour, lasting about an hour, concludes with the group getting to meet an actual Rockette, the true stars synonymous with this breathtaking Art Deco treasure of a building.

SHOTGUN LOVER

Nashville foursome will shoot it out on Ludlow St. on April 25

Piano’s
158 Ludlow St. at Stanton St.
Sunday, April 25, $8, 9:00
212-505-3733
www.myspace.com/shotgunlovermusic
www.pianosnyc.com

Barely together for a year, Nashville’s Shotgun Lover is introducing themselves via their hot five-track EP, AU REVOIR (which is currently streaming for free here). The debut disc, which comes out April 27, features killer guitar riffs, and we mean that literally; the guitars feel like they are about to cut right through your heart and soul. “I got a woman / She ain’t no good for me / She loves to watch me fall / She hates to watch me bleed,” they sing on the album opener, “Oh No, Yeah, Yeah,” which instantly announces that they are the real deal, playing loud, no-holds-barred southern rock with big choruses. The band borrows liberally from the Red Hot Chili Peppers on “Try and Try” before exploding with “Dying Man Blues” and then incorporating techno-indie sounds on “I’ll Be Around,” which we hope is true, and not just for this one gig at Piano’s on April 25. Singer-guitarist Andrew Nelson, background vocalist and guitarist Blount Floyd, bass player Nathan Roland, and drummer Chris Johnston are scheduled to go on at 9:00, followed by Forest Fires at 10:00 and Organs at 11:00. Get ready for some serious guitar-slinging.

bobrauschenbergamerica

bobrauschenbergamerica returns to New York City for an extended run at DTW (photo by Richard Termine)

Dance Theater Workshop
219 West 19th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
April 23 – May 16, $25
212-924-0077
www.dtw.org
www.siti.org

In October 2003, New York City-based SITI Company presented bobrauschenbergamerica at BAM’s Harvey Theater. The production is now back for an extended run at Dance Theater Workshop as part of the Guest Artist Series, with cast and crew Talk Backs following the April 27, May 4, and May 11 performances. Here’s our original review; please note that we have not seen the current show, so some aspects, of course, might have changed: Playwright Charles L. Mee and director Anne Bogart’s Americana romp is set on a perpendicular American flag with openings a la LAUGH-IN, wherein characters will suddenly appear, sometimes in the midst of showering. The multitalented cast features a biker, a homeless man, a bikini babe, a prom queen, a roller-skating cheerleader, a gay man, a white professional man, a black man in love, and artist Bob Rauschenberg’s mother. Making art out of everyday objects, the show is an avant-garde collage of American apple pie, featuring such songs as “Love Will Keep Us Together,” a picnic with fried chicken, a human martini, Ping-Pong balls, a swinging tire, and text from Rauschenberg, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Walt Whitman and Merce Cunningham. “Art was not a part of our lives,” Bob’s mother says to the audience several times. But it is surely a part of her son’s vision of America, making for a wacky, wild, and fun night.

TASTE OF THE JETS

The Jets will be hosting a benefit evening for gourmands at Cipriani

TASTE OF THE NFL
Cipriani Wall St.
55 Wall St. between William & Hanover Sts.
Wednesday, April 28
VIP admission: $400, 6:00
General admission: $250, 7:00
973-549-4654
www.newyorkjets.com
www.cipriani.com

The Jets have added quite a bit of spice to the team that made it to the AFC Championship Game this past season, with Santonio Holmes, Ladainian Tomlinson, Jason Taylor, and now first-round draft pick Kyle Wilson joining Rex Ryan’s successful reinvention of Gang Green. Fans will get to savor some of that flavor at the eighth annual New York Jets Taste of the NFL benefit, being held at Cipriani Wall St. on April 28. The event, which features food and drink from dozens of New York and New Jersey restaurants and live and silent auctions to raise money for local hunger-relief organizations, will be hosted by Pro Bowlers Nick Mangold, Darrelle Revis, and Leon Washington (well, now that Washington has been traded, that might change), with appearances by numerous former and current Jets players and staff as well as members of the Flight Crew cheerleading squad.

BEHIND THE BURLY Q

BEHIND THE BURLY Q (Leslie Zemeckis, 2010)
Opens Friday, April 16
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St.
212-255-8800
www.behindtheburlyq.com
www.quadcinema.com

Actress Leslie Zemeckis delves into the fascinating history of American burlesque in the playfully dirty little documentary BEHIND THE BURLY Q. Zemeckis, the wife of Oscar-winning filmmaker Robert Zemeckis (who served as an executive producer on the project), wrote, directed, and edited this oral and visual history of the burlesque movement, speaking with many of its stars and uncovering wonderful old photographs and film clips. She speaks with such burlesque beauties as Joan Arline, Lorraine Lee, Taffy O’Neill, Sunny Dare, White Fury, Dixie Evans, Tempest Starr, Kitty West, and Blaze Starr, cutting between them today and archival footage of them in their prime, taking it almost all off. Zemeckis also speaks with journalists, musicians, comedians, and relatives of deceased legends (Sally Rand, Lily St, Cyr, Lou Costello), including Alan Alda, who talks extensively about being raised on the burlesque circuit since his father, actor Robert Alda, was a popular straight man. The dancers discuss run-ins with the law, battles with local government, famous fans (Pretty Boy Floyd, Bonnie & Clyde, Elvis Presley, JFK, Walt Disney), drug and alcohol problems, and fighting and jealousy among some of their own, including stories both very funny and rather tragic. Zemeckis keeps it all proceeding smoothly as she documents a generation that is quickly disappearing, as evidenced by the long list of burlesque performers who have since passed away after being interviewed for the film. Zemeckis will be at the Quad to participate in Q&As following the 7:05 screenings on Friday and Saturday night.