Graham Parker's Solo Act

The Angry Rocker, Tackling 'Musical Fascism'

Graham Parker is so fed up with the music biz at this point that he's doing everything himself. Not only did the British rocker write and produce his 14th album, "Burning Questions," but he also directed the first video and conducted both sides of the only interview he was going to give this year.

In the interview, the imaginary "Jay Weinerbaum" of "Campers Monthly" asks about Parker's longtime guitarist Brinsley Schwarz, "Where is good old Brimsley these days?" Parker answers, "ZZZZZZ. Look, this is the third time I've been asked this today. You must have a file that says, 'Graham Parker: Ask about pub-rock, Brimsley Shortz, poor commercial success, record label problems (mention 'Mercury Poisoning' at least three times in piece), comparisons to Eris Comparo, what is 'Can't Be Too Strong' really about... etc., etc.' Am I right or what?"

So when Capitol Records announced that Parker would be giving a few interviews after all in conjunction with his fall tour (he plays the 9:30 club Thursday and Friday with Lucinda Williams), this writer was understandably nervous about what to ask. But when Parker answered the phone in Upstate New York, where he now lives, the writer figured what the hell, and asked, "So what is old Brimsley doing these days?"

Parker laughed. For all his carefully nurtured reputation as rock-and-roll's last angry man, he is a surprisingly affable man offstage. He typically fills his conversations with polemical tirades, and then ends up chuckling at his own excess.

"I said I wasn't going to do any interviews this year," he explained, "because I find it very depressing to read them and even more depressing to do them. Besides, for Capitol to be lulled into thinking that everything's okay because I'm getting good press would be a mistake. We have to face reality ... I don't sell records. Good press hasn't solved that problem in the past, and it won't now.

"The real problem is we're suffering from musical fascism. My label took my first single, 'Release Me,' to MTV and said, 'Would you play a video of this song if we made one?' And they said, 'No way would we play anything by Graham Parker. He doesn't fit our demographics.' ... The next thing you know, MTV will be listening to demo tapes and deciding whether people get deals or not."

So Parker bought a Sony Hi-8 camcorder, gave his wife, Jolie, about 30 seconds to glance through the manual, and then shot his own video für "Release Me." The diminutive guitarist is seen chained inside a chicken-wire cage, dancing with frogs, banging on cattle skulls and "releasing" wild birds and snakes. While it has low-budget touches, a little editing would make it perfectly presentable for MTV - which denies blacklisting Parker.

"At home," Parker said, "I play a game and say, 'I'm going to turn on MTV and there will be a long-haired idiot playing a simplistic guitar riff with sexist imagery in the background.' I'm always right. By making, a video for under $4,000, I proved you don't have to be a rocket scientist to be a video director."

"Burning Questions" is Parker's best album since 1988's "Mona Lisa's Sister." Whether he's excoriating the public's "Short Memories" about past wars as if he were Bob Dylan or crooning like Smokey Robinson to the. woman who's his "Oasis," Parker is writing and singing with more skill and just as much passion as he did in his early London days.

It isn't his only new release, though. Razor & Tie Records has reissued "The Up Escalator," "Another Grey Area" and "The Real Macaw" on CD. Typical of the new liner notes Parker wrote is this comment about "Another Grey Area": "This record was made in true mid-'70s style - it went over budget by two hundred thousand bucks. That the producer turned up two days late didn't help, especially with double-scale musicians waiting around the lobby of New York's most expensive studios nursing their nose-candy hangovers." Meanwhile, RCA Records has released "The Best of Graham Parker, 1988-1991."

"I don't believe quality is subjective," Parker asserted. "l really believe that the songs I write are better than 90 percent of the stuff you find on the pop charts. My new song, 'Here It Comes Again,' is far more rebellious than anything Guns N'Roses has ever written. They're just a packaged cartoon version of assimilated rebellion. Anyone can get drunk and act like an ass, but not everyone can write a real song. Most people, though, aren't developed enough to recognize quality. They're led to concerts like sheep, they're led to record stores like sheep and they're led to war like sheep."

He stopped his tirade for a moment and laughed. "This is Graham Parker's paranoid theory of the universe."

Reproduced with kind permission from Geoffrey Himes.

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