Graham Parker was a big fan of the Sex Pistols and the punk movement that emerged in England
at the same time he did, and he and his fellow pub-rocker Elvis Costello were
often lumped in with them. Parker didn't mind -- "I'd rather be lumped in with the new than the old," he said.
But Parker knew even then that he and Costello were never really part of the punk gestalt
that brazenly rejected the past. They embraced the past even as they extended
its traditions into new territory, and as a result their early records endure.
In fact, the new Parker and Costello box sets provide a much more satisfying
account of the late-'70s revolution in rock-and-roll than Rhino's recent nine-volume
"D.I.Y." punk compilation.
Graham Parker
Parker is touring behind "Passion Is No Ordinary Word: The Graham Parker Anthology, 1976-1991" (Rhino/RCA) as if it were a new album (he comes to the Bayou Saturday). When
he sang one of his rare love songs in Chicago earlier this month he told the
crowd, "This is a more pleasant number, which proves there is a gentle, caring guy inside this
Ren & Stimpy T-shirt." For most of his career, Parker has more closely resembled Ren, the
adrenaline-crazed cartoon Chihuahua. Indeed, his apparently inexhaustible
outrage at the world has given his work an unflagging vitality across 18
years of shifting fortunes and five different record companies.
Parker's reputation rests largely on his three best albums. The 1976
double-shot of "Howlin' Wind" and "Heat Treatment" anticipated
Costello and the Clash by a year, with American soul and Jamaican ska
transformed by fast and furious British working-class anger. Even those two
triumphs, though, were trumped by 1979's "Squeezing Out Sparks," a
near-perfect example of how rock-and-roll can dissolve the boundaries
between the personal and the public. Every album Parker has released has had its
fair share of brilliant songs, however, and the 39 tracks on the two CDs of
"Passion Is No Ordinary Word" are an attempt to reveal the broader scope of his career.
Some of the choices made by compilers Gary Stewart and Cliff Chenfeld are
dubious, especially in the later years. Omitted are
some of Parker's best Motown-inspired love songs ("I'm Just a Man" and
"Wrapping Paper") and some of his most propulsive Stones-inspired rockers ("Fear Not,"
"Endless Night," "Success" and "A Brand New Book").
Still, "Passion Is No Ordinary Word" is a useful
introduction to one of the few enduring talents of the late-'70s upheaval in
British rock. The set comes with a 50-page booklet that includes detailed
credits, a Jimmy Guterman essay and, best of all, self-deprecating, sarcastic
comments by Parker himself: "This is supposed to be a 'best-of'? Oh, I see -- they're calling it an 'anthology.' Smart move, Rhino!" (To hear a free Sound Bite from this album, call 202-334-9000 and press 8161.)
Elvis Costello
The most impressive thing about the new four-CD Elvis Costello box set,
"2 1/2 Years" (Rykodisc), is its title. That's how long it took the second Elvis to release
three of the best albums of the '70s plus enough non-album singles, outtakes
and live recordings to fill up the 75 tracks in this set. The songs were coming
so quickly and brilliantly to the former computer technician Declan McManus
that they were scattered over different U.K. and U.S. versions of the albums,
EPs and singles and assorted bootlegs, making it very hard for the average fan
to track them all down.
Rykodisc has solved this problem by creating "universal" editions of the
first three albums: '77's "My Aim Is True," '78's "This Year's Model" and '79's
"Armed Forces." That means every song that was on either the U.K. or U.S. version plus any
extra recordings from the same year are now included. So, for example,
"Armed Forces" includes the 12 songs from the British release plus
"(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding," which replaced
"Sunday's Best" on the U.S. version, plus three non-album B-sides from '79 singles, plus both
sides of the free single that came with the first
U.K. pressing, plus the three live songs that came as a bonus EP with the first
U.S. pressing. That's 21 songs in all, one of the most dazzling one-year
outbursts in rock history.
The fourth CD marks the first official U.S. release of
"Live at
El Macambo," the March 6, 1978, show at the Toronto nightclub that was issued as a
promo-only album in Canada and was much bootlegged. It captures the barely
contained fury of Costello and the Attractions onstage in those early days --
all bleating organ, slashing guitar and snarling
vocals. While the other three albums are also being sold separately,
"Live at El Macambo" and the 24-page, LP-sized photo album are available only in the box set.
Except for Costello's own witty, short remarks in the individual CD booklets,
the set comes without any commentary. Nonetheless, these 75 songs stand up 14 years
later as some of the fiercest rock-and-roll ever made, the equal in their own
way to the box sets of the first Elvis. (To hear a free Sound Bite from this
album, call 202-334-9000 and press 8162.)
- Geoffrey Himes
Reproduced with kind permission from Geoffrey Himes.
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