When Graham Parker sits down to play Wednesday night at Five Points South Music Hall, he's going to feel tense and anxious. Scared, even.

What: "Tellin' Stories: An Evening of Acoustic Music," with Graham Parker, Radney Foster and Jeff Black. When: Wednesday, 8 p.m. Where: Five Points South Music Hall, 1016 20th St. South, Birmingham. Admission: Free. Tickets available at Magic Platter, 106 Centre at Riverchase, Birmingham; call 823-0040.

Never mind that Parker, 47, has been performing his intense rock songs for audiences for 22 years. Or that he's reputed to have a prickly personality, a cynical attitude and a quick boiling point.

Pouring it all out for listeners in a nightclub is a risky business, even for the man who helped to define abrasive New Wave music in the late 1970s and early '80s.

"It's like that dream where you're naked running down the street and everyone's staring at you," Parker says during a telephone interview from his home in upstate New York. "Or that one where you go on stage and don't know what you're doing.

"Usually, after three numbers it's all right and everything comes together. But the stage is an alien dimension. You walk on and there's these weird colored lights on you. For me, it's a very hair-raising experience. But I need that for stimulation."

The British singer/songwriter has been stimulating fans since his first album, Howlin' Wind, a sharp-tongued effort that wowed critics on both sides of the Atlantic in 1976. He followed it with the equally incendiary Heat Treatment, which ignited favorable comparisons to another angry young composer, Elvis Costello.

Backed by a band called The Rumour, Parker received raves for his "big, brash barracuda of a voice" (Tom Lanham, CD Re­view), his soulful yet snarling lyrics and melodies that drew from R&B, reggae, blues and rockabilly. Other emotion-packed recordings followed, including Squeezing Out Sparks, The Up Escalator, Another Grey Area, The Mona Lisa's Sister and Struck By Lightning.

Although his "Local Girls," "Wake Up (Next to You)" and "Get Started (Start a Fire)" charted on mainstream and college radio stations, Parker also received acclaim for lesser known tunes such as "Don't Ask Me Questions," "Hotel Chambermaid," "Watch the Moon Come Down," "Stupefaction," "Fool's Gold" and "Thunder and Rain."

Parker's fame has waxed and waned over the past two decades, and he never really matched the heights of Costello's stardom. But a committed core of listeners has followed his distinctive work no matter where it leads, from the cocky brashness of "Back Door Love" to the loving maturity of "The Kid With the Butterfly Net."

"When I first heard Howlin' Wind and Heat Treatment in 1976, I was knocked out," says Michael Kates, an admirer who corresponded with Parker via an Internet site called Squeezing Out Sparks (www.punkhart.com/gparker).

"Since then (Parker has) been one of my favorite songwriters," Kates continues. "That's pretty cool, I think - 22 years of digging an artist without once having to say, 'He used to be good back when ...'"

Similar sentiments will likely be expressed at Parker's appearance here, a solo acoustic show ("just me and a guitar," he says) with opening sets in the same mode by Arista Austin labelmates Radney Foster and Jeff Black. The free concert, titled "Tellin' Stories," is sponsored by the Coalition of Independent Music Stores, an organization headed by Don VanCleave, who owns Magic Platter in Hoover.

Parker plans to try out a few new numbers at Five Points, do selections from a 1995 recording called 12 Haunted Episodes (the CD he's most proud of) and run through a few of his signature tunes if time allows.

"We cannot possibly be doing more than six or seven songs each," he says. "If you do more than two hours, everyone starts yawning."

An acerbic sense of humor peppers the musician's comments, but Parker's phone manner belies the usual perception that he's an angry rabble-rouser with more talent than social skill. Over the course of an hourlong conversation, he's polite, jovial and accommodating - frank but not blunt, self-deprecating and slow to take offense.

He delights in responding to fans' inquiries on the Internet, for example, even when they repeatedly beg for a reunion with The Rumour (Parker and the group split in 1980-81) or ask why he's never been a consistent Top 10 hitmaker.

"A lot of people don't really understand how the pop machinery works," says Parker, who's philosophical about his career's ups and downs. "It's fun to stick a great splice in their illusions."

His own illusions disintegrated a long time ago, he says; dealing with more than a half-dozen record companies and their executives will do that to you.

Parker started out on the Mercury label with Howlin' Wind, then hopped to Arista, Elektra, Atlantic, RCA and Capitol. He now records on Razor & Tie, a small independent in New York City, and has even contemplated marketing and selling his discs directly on the World Wide Web.

"I'm lazy," he admits, when asked if that enterprise seems likely. "I think I could sit around and let Rod Stewart do the work for me." (Stewart did a cover of Parker's "Hotel Chambermaid," and Parker often jokes about the ease and profitability of collecting royalty checks.)

Actually, Parker is quite prolific in both the musical and literary veins. While he's not constantly publishing tunes, composing them is a continual internal process.

"I spend a lot of time away from the guitar," Parker explains. "I feel it's better to let it build up like a pressure cooker, then let it rip. I do some demos and some overdubs, look at them and see if I've got an album there. ...

It's so easy to be average, and the older you get, it's harder because you have a craft. You can knock something together. But I write some songs five times and still have to jettison them at the end."

He's also been polishing an "absurdist" short story collection that, despite an enthusiastic literary agent, has elicited a preliminary round of rejections in '98.

"It's awful to have someone say, 'What an original voice, but we don't have a market for it,'" Parker says. "It's the same with music. I've made huge amounts of money from record companies, and at every one, I've done what I wanted to do. But to take an artist who's going against the trend and make him massively successful is difficult these days. We're in a very conservative era."

Here's a Graham Parker discography:

Howlin' Wind, 1976

Live At Marble Arch, 1976 (promotional record)

Heat Treatment, 1976

Pink Parker, 1977 (EP on pink vinyl)

Stick to Me, 1977

The Parkerilla/Live, 1978

Mercury Poisoning, 1979 (promotional 45)

Squeezing Out Sparks, 1979

The Up Escalator, 1980

The Best of Graham Parker, 1980

High Times, 1980 (British import compilation)

Another Grey Area, 1982

Look Back in Anger: Classic Performances by Graham Parker, 1982

The Real Macaw, 1983

It Don't Mean a Thing if it Ain't Got That Swing, 1984 (British import of early album tracks and singles)

Steady Nerves, 1985

Pourin' It All Out: Mercury Years, 1986

The Mona Lisa's Sister, 1988

Live! Alone in America, 1989

Human Soul, 1990

Struck By Lightning, 1991

Burning Questions, 1992

The Best of Graham Parker 1988-1991, 1992

Live Alone! Discovering Japan, 1993 (solo acoustic)

Passion is No Ordinary Word: The Graham Parker Anthology 1976-1991 (2 CDs)

Christmas Cracker, 1994 (EP)

12 Haunted Episodes, 1995

Live on the Test, 1995

Old Grey Whistle Test Series, 1995 (live)

BBC Live in Concert, 1996

Live From New York, NY, 1996

No Holding Back, 1996 (3-CD box set)

Acid Bubblegum, 1996

Squeezing out Sparks/Live Sparks, 1996

The Last Rock 'N' Roll Tour, 1997 (live with The Figgs during Acid Bubblegum tour)

Temporary Beauty, 1997 (compilation)

Not if it Pleases Me: BBC Live 76-77,1998

Piss & Vinegar: Songs of Graham Parker, 1998

Hold Back the Night, 1998

Vertigo (Best of), 1998 (2 CD German import, contains Live at the Marble Arch)

Sources: The Ultimate Band List, All-Music Guide, Music Boulevard, CD Now, Trouser Press and Squeezing Out Sparks sites on the World Wide Web