Parker on the up . . .
IN A SHOW of courageous self-respect, Graham Parker has quietly stood back from his most successful album to date, "The Up Escalator", and stubbornly refused to promote it live.
After four solid years of road work with nothing but a wasted brain and the sound of genuine applause ringing in his ears to show from it, the message from the Parker camp seemed to be one of "I've shouted for you long enough. Now it's your turn."
Sunday night, GP and the Rumour took to an English stage for the first time in a year, and opened quietly and efficiently with "Stupefaction."
Two more songs, "Jolie, Jolie" and "No Holding Back" were quickly aired and though the songs bristled with typical Parker intent and purpose, there was a nervousness in the air, a kind of muted holding back, as audience and band tested each other out.
Parker whipped off his guitar, led the group into "Love Without Greed," and he began to grab the audience in earnest.
His stage movements were quick and dramatic, impatient as ever as the song rose to its climax and then coasted on a peak of hard guitars and Nicky Hopkins' urgent piano.
Better was to come.
Still only a quarter into the set, the band hit the riff to "Passion Is No Ordinary Word," and suddenly Parker was in the sole spotlight, spitting out each concise line in a mixture of disgust and hurt. Moments like that hit you with the truth that Graham Parker was probably born to sing songs like these. His vocals and timing, the emotive inflections he can hit in just one lyric, say more in a second of your time than most performers can muster in a career.
He's a true soul singer and he began ramming that fact home in true GP style. The temperature was pushed along on an unstoppable up, helped along by an intuitive, dynamic Rumour, especially Steve Goulding's precise, crisp drumming. We got a stunningly dramatic "Discovering Japan", a skanking "Howling Wind", and the rough and tumble of "Don't Get Excited".
A wickedly delightful "Manouevres" followed, "for all those about to sign a contract", and then a stunning "Empty Lives" that dehumanised savagely the rock star role, over a stringent, relentless riff, with Parker's wild movements, capturing the song's spirit with angry intensity.
By now the audience had been drawn totally into Parker's world. The set slowed for an emotional, "Beating Of Another Heart" that kept the tension bubbling underneath, and then there was a piece of magic. The whole band gloriously flew into "Endless Nights", locking into a groove that just sped faster and faster 'till it seemed it could go no further. It took your breath away and you were completely enveloped in it as Parker and the Rumour, not once losing control, took it to its shattering climax.
We caught our breath, and "Protection" and "Nobody Hurts You", with its stinging guitar line and rousing chorus, saw us safely home.
Encores were demanded and Little Feat's "Tripe Face Boogie" was dynamically executed, before Parker finally left us with the double killer of "Hey Lord" and a nostalgic romp through "Soul Shoes".
In less than two hours, we had been offered some of the best that rock music can ever offer us, and what's more it had come to us honestly, straight from a passion that lies recognisably in the essence of all great rock music.
Parker and the Rumour were true heroes; breathtaking in their expertise and feeling, vindicating fully one of Parker's most eloquent statements, that you can't stop the beating of another heart, and what's more, when it's as big and as human as Graham Parker's, you shouldn't even attempt to.
- PAULO HEWITT
Pic: TOM SHEEHAN
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