Britain's Graham Parker brings basic rock back home
Close your books, it's a pop quiz. Only one question, but tricky. Multiple choice. Graham Parker's music is 1) new wave, 2) old wave, 3) no wave, 4) punk rock, 5) pub rock, 6) none of these, 7) all of these.
Having trouble? You should be. The last is probably the closest to the right answer, although none suits—a situation of which the test subject is well aware. "My image is very vague," Parker admits. "That makes it difficult for audiences to fully latch onto me and critics to know where to put me. But if you're still struggling, I've got a hook for you: call me 'atomic R & B or plutonium pop.' "
Good enough. The fast, fierce, sensual rock that Graham Parker has been setting down for the past three years is raw enough and haunted enough to make most contemporary rock pale out like an extinguished picture tube.
High-powered, always on the prowl for trouble, Parker's tunes range from the slyly salacious (Black Honey, Back Door Love) to the wittily defiant (Back to School Days) and the nakedly personal (You Can't Be Too Strong, which concerns an abortion). In all, not suitable for an easy listen or a fast dance. "I know my music makes people nervous, that it's not what the average person likes to hear," Parker muses. "It's got blues, soul, a lot of different things in it." What gives the songs much of their spirit and a good deal of their body English is frequent adrenal shocks of anger. These dosages may be taken as a tonic at regular intervals, or they may be administered locally, as when Parker took in a recent concert by Ron Wood and the New Barbarians. He went for a lark but discovered the enemy: "A lot of guys with long hair singing about floating in the sunlight and 'Hey, baby, get down.' Ridiculous. Some people may call that rock. I don't."
Parker's own hard-line commitment to rock is evident both in casual conversation ("I'm not about to give people music about rolling down the highway") and, where it properly belongs and truly flourishes, in his songs, which are like sneak attacks on his own psychic defenses. His tunes rock hard and burn bridges—and create the kind of commercial problems that have plagued Parker since his first record three years ago and seem to be easing only now.
Ever since the release of Howlin' Wind in 1976, Parker has stalked the big time, collecting delirious reviews but staying an arm's length away from the top of the charts and the kind of record sales that are commemorated with albums cast in semiprecious elements. Just last spring, with a new record company behind him, Parker released one of the year's best albums, Squeezing Out Sparks, and set out on two bruising cross-country concert tours to rally fans and baptize some new converts. His style of total-immersion rock is a salubrious shock to the central nervous system, and it is easy enough to appreciate, after one of his typically hot-wired concerts, just why he has attracted such a devout following.