Graham Parker
on Acid Bubblegum

Huge debts will be run up all around the world; record buyers will be re-mortgaging their homes in order to afford this plethora of Parker; prosthetic limbs will be hocked to foot the bill; glass eyeballs will be plucked from sockets by their owners and slammed down on the counters of pawn shops from Kerry to Katmandu in order to pay for each and every CD; marriages will crumble from the strain and drug addicts will go cold turkey to scrape their pennies together, eschewing their precious fix for the chance to own all seven of these important works; the national debt will triple due to reasons not yet calculable; England will become a sub-district of Morocco in a last ditch effort to save the pound by coalescing it with the now-strong dirham; Dow Jones will be 'Parker Jones,' because that's what everyone will have; the state of Virginia will declare war with Long Beach, New Jersey in a fit of pique; the World Bank will become a disco for people with one leg, one eyeball, and huge amounts of Parker product; and finally- for reasons entirely calculable- I will become the extremely fat, wealthy and altogether slovenly dictator of the British Virgin Islands, Trinidad and Tobago and the entire archipelago below the Marquesa Islands (15 degrees south of the equator) and will never make a record again.

An idyllic scenario for me perhaps, but I don't fancy your chances much, gentle record collector.

OK, if you can stretch it, buy the tribute album as well- it may cheer you up (the tracks I've heard certainly made me guffaw). But please, ignore the rest. What is the point of the Demon set? Alright, it's three CDs for the price of two but we're talking 1988 to 1991 here; a 'best of' a couple or years ago (secretly, I believe) and it's just the same old junk, really. GP and the Episodes Live? If you were one of ten people who caught the show I don't think you'd bother to pull your wallet out for this- please, don't believe the hype, it's sort of....OK, is all. Squeezing Out Sparks/Live Sparks you may indeed be tempted to hazard your hard-earned cash for, but consider this: on my last royalty statement from Arista, I owed them eight hundred thousand dollars- so you won't even be doing me a favor!

No, better to move into the future than retread the same tired old ground. Acid Bubblegum has all the typical Parker elements you would expect anyway: extreme hostility ("Turn It Into Hate"), gardening tips ("Sharpening Axes"), flippancy disguised as extreme hostility ("Bubblegum Cancer"), completely impenetrable lyrics ("Impenetrable"), really twisted psycho-sexual situations ("She Never Let Me Down"), extreme hostility leveled at iconic soul singers ("Obsessed with Aretha"), accountancy ("Beancounter"), monkeys getting it by the first bridge ("Girl at the End of the Pier"), extreme hostility towards most of the musicians I've worked with ("Baggage"), breast feeding made angry ("Milk Train"), exceptionally twisted psycho-sexual situations ("Character Assassination"), and finally, extreme hostility towards everyone ("They Got it Wrong(as Usual)").