Graham Parker was born November 18, 1950. Happy #52! Most commonly he has been grouped as one of three classic original new wave "angry young men" along with Joe Jackson and Elvis Costello. On the one hand, that's damned fine company. On the other hand, it hardly does any of them justice musically, and a lot of the comparison is simply that they are all English and came out within a couple of years of one another.
Stylistically, you would probably do better musically to describe Graham Parker as a pissed off Bruce Springsteen. He writes more directly than most of the new wave crowd. He didn't nearly so much construct a personnae as Joe Jackson or Elvis Costello [as his animated self says on the Simpsons after his ugly glasses get knocked off "Oh, my image!"]. Actually, Graham Parker is in a sense more Springsteen than Springsteen. That is, he comes on more direct in what he does, with less image manipulation or self-mythologizing. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Parker, however, comes across with a very pleasing lack of affectation.
He came with the most straightforward rock attack as he understood things at the time of his first album in 1976. This does not mean that he was any kind of generic, or lacking personality. It's just that he was, per his classic song title, "pourin' it all out."
His most popular and perhaps best album was the 1979 classic Squeezing Out Sparks. His one proper American Top 40 single was the outstanding tough guy love ballad "Wake Up." Really though, his first four studio albums are indispensable:
Howlin' Wind
Heat Treatment
Stick to Me (highly underrated)
Squeezin' Out Sparks
Also, he made a one-man-and-acoustic-guitar album Live Alone in America that may be the best one such album I've heard. The two CD Rhino anthology Passion Is No Ordinary Word would be an outstanding starter record.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Parker is grossly underrrated, Costello overrated, and Jackson seen for what he is: smoking start, not much since.
Besides the surface similarities you mentioned, these three have very similar voices and at the beginning anyway, singing styles.
Don't forget: the Rumour was a terrific band - saw them several times in smallish venues and they rocked and rolled. Brinsley Schwartz (sp?)has always been underrated.
2 - Bill Sherman
I'm a major Parker fan, too: did a tribute page to the man a while back. I remember when Elvis Costello came on the scene; for a time there was a rumor going 'round that EC was a new persona for Graham, using a new i.d. to crack the charts. The sounds were undeniably similar, but Elvis wouldn't reach Graham's level of soulful tribute and arranging for several elpees.
Agree that the first four albums are indispensible, but the later 'uns have plenty of great curmudgeonly moments, too.
3 - Anne
I agree that Parker is a highly underrated artist. "The Mona Lisa's Sister" from 1988 is also worth checking out.
James Lileks once wrote that he thought critics liked Elvis Costello because he looked like them. I still enjoy Costello's work, but Parker's always been more daring.