Tag Archives: Graham Parker

Sunday Video Roundup: a 9/11 special

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Today, if we choose to listen, we’ll hear a great deal about America, about the last decade, about the lessons we’ve learned. Football will be played. Flags will be waved. Tears will be shed.

And tomorrow we’ll be exactly what we were yesterday, only moreso. Maybe today is a bad time for critiques. Or maybe it’s the perfect time. Hard to say. But if you find a few minutes today and need a breather, here are some innocent distractions for you.

First, it’s true – we’re all living in Amerika.

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TunesDay: what’s in your collection?

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There are all kinds of fun arguments to be had over which band is best or whether one’s taste is critically defensible (*cough*Brian used to listen to Madonna and Gloria Estefan*cough*) and, of course, my favorite – can we separate what we like from our critical faculties (that is, is your “favorite” list different from your “best” list)?

But there’s one sure measure of what music we really care about the most, for whatever reason, and that’s how much of our money we spend on it. So today’s TunesDay question is this: what artists do you own the most music from?

Feel free to answer however makes sense, and yes, we take into account the fact that you may own everything from a band that quit too soon. I have one of those myself. Here’s my list: Read more

TunesDay: Name those bands – and the winner is….

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bandssamlovesThe results of last week’s Name Those Bands contest are in. In first place we have … a disqualification, sorta. Our friend Ubertramp logged in with an impressive 47 of 53. Seriously, that’s pretty damned good. But he has disqualified himself because I’m the one who turned him onto most of these outstanding artists and he felt like he might as well be cheating under the circumstances.

Wow – sportsmanship. What a concept.

So our next highest scorer, and the official winner, is … Read more

TuneSunday Video Roundup: The Killers and M83 live in Denver

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We went to see The Killers at DU last night. A few stray thoughts, in no particular order of importance.

1: There are air raid shelters with better acoustics than Magness Arena. I’m guessing it makes for a suitably noisy hockey barn, but let’s just say that it’s sub-optimal for a concert. Still, the crew managed to make the band sound pretty darned good, all things considered. So a tip of the hat to the sound guys.

2: M83, the opening band, is good. Really good. Read more

TunesDay: The best CDs of 2008, pt. 2 – the Platinum LPs

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Our Best CDs of 2008 continues today with a review of the super-premium Platinum Award winners for Excellence in rocking and rolling. As with last week’s Gold Awards, these are in alphabetical order. Band Web sites link to the band name, and if the CD is available via eMusic, that links to the CD title. (Mike Smith of Fiction 8, in last week’s comments, recommended that you buy from the band’s Web site or Amazon, if possible, because the artists get a better cut of the proceeds that way. Duly noted.)

Speaking of Fiction 8, let’s get this out of the way first

Fiction 8 – Project Phoenix
I have a rule – I never include in my official ratings CDs that I had something to do with, no matter how great I think they are. And since I co-wrote “Hegemony,” the track that closes this disc, that means that Fiction 8 is officially disqualified. This doesn’t mean I can’t tell you what I think I’d think about the record if I weren’t laboring with a conflict of interest, though. Read more

TunesDay: Are The Killers the greatest band in the world? We find out today…

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A lot of bands have released pretty good debut records, only to follow them up with less-than-spectacular careers. The rule used to be (before the FCC, the recording industry and the radio industry conspired to destroy all music) that you learned what you needed to know about a band with its third album. Given how things worked, you often saw a pattern that looked something like this:

  • Debut: Band (or solo artist) has been on the road for awhile, writing and building an audience and developing as a creative and performing force. Read more

TunesDay: what is, what was and what almost was – the S&R interview with Don Dixon

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I’ve been a very big Don Dixon fan since the late ’70s, so when his new CD, The Nu-Look, dropped I was bouncing around the living room like Snoopy doing a happy dance. Sadly, a lot of people don’t know Don’s music – although many know his work as the producer of Murmur and Reckoning by REM and multiple records from The Smithereens and Guadalcanal Diary (as well as stuff from Chris Stamey, Beat Rodeo, Kim Carnes, The Connells, Marshall Crenshaw, Hootie & the Blowfish, Tommy Keene, Let’s Active, James McMurtry, The Pinetops, The Reivers, Matthew Sweet and X-Teens).

The new disc marks something of a departure. Read more

The best CDs of 2007, pt. 3: CD of the Year

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In the mid-1970s Graham Parker was portrayed as a quintessentially Angry Young Man®, a pub rocker with an attitude who helped shape the British New Wave (a movement that remains perhaps the most creatively vital five years in recent rock history).

15 years later he had matured into a Responsible Adult®, with 1991’s Struck By Lightning offering us songs about marriage, domesticity, kids and dogs. As he sings in “A Brand New Book”:

I once read the story of somebody’s life
I had a few moments to spare
He was a good man who lived with his
wife with the usual kids in his hair Read more

The Best CDs of 2007

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The CD of the Year

In the mid-1970s Graham Parker was portrayed as a quintessentially Angry Young Man®, a pub rocker with an attitude who helped shape the British New Wave (a movement that remains perhaps the most creatively vital five years in recent rock history).

15 years later he had matured into a Responsible Adult®, with 1991’s Struck By Lightning offering us songs about marriage, domesticity, kids and dogs. As he sings in “A Brand New Book”:

I once read the story of somebody’s life
I had a few moments to spare
He was a good man who lived with his
wife with the usual kids in his hair Read more

Saturday Video Roundup: All the young dudes of 2007

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Last week on SVR we looked at some of 2007’s top female artists, so this week it seemed appropriate to offer props to some of the guys responsible for outstanding CDs this year. We’ll start with CD of the Year candidate The Good, the Bad & the Queen, fronted by former Blur and Gorillaz auteur Damon Albarn, who’s shaping up as one of the true geniuses of our age.


Next, another CD of the Year frontrunner. Read more

The inaugural Scholars and Rogues Interview (and our newest Scrogue): Graham Parker

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The mid-1970s were a wonderful time for music lovers. For starters, exciting and innovative new music was popping up all over the place. And when it did, it actually got played on the radio.

The UK was especially fertile ground during this period, as scores of punk and New Wave acts emerged (many from the “pub rock” scene) in the most dynamic explosion of music since the British Invasion. One of the most outstanding of these was Graham Parker, who in 1976 released not one, but two instant five-star classics – Howlin’ Wind and Heat Treatment.

While some of his contemporaries (most notably Elvis Costello) became wildly famous, arguably nobody in rock history has posted a more enduring legacy of critical success. Read more

Stick to the plan

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The stuff rolling across the transom this morning isn’t filling me with rainbows and unicorns.

The Best CDs of the 1990s

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Below is my Best CDs of the 1990s list. I never kidded myself for a second that I could produce a definitive review – if I can’t even convince myself that the list is as good as I’d like it, I can hardly fault others for disagreeing here and there, can I?

In the end I wound up deciding on a Top 25 list, and I also offered comments on 25 more honorable mentions. The whole thing, top to bottom, is something like 10 pages worth of reviewing, analysis, and self-defense. I even employed multiple methodologies. First, I tried laying it out by a “connoisseurship” model – that is, I made my own estimates based on my own sense of how things qualitatively met the criteria I established for the project. Then I played a little game where I weighted each criterion and then rated each entry mathematically, thereby generating a quantitative estimate. This had the effect of making me seriously reconsider my initial rankings (for instance, it forced me to give Pearl Jam more credit than I really wanted to – see below for more on that).

Then I sent the list to some friends whose opinions I respect and invited criticism (which I got, in spades – thanks, Greg). That forced some more noodling. Then I set about writing and justifying my picks, and that ALSO led to some revision (if I have a hard time justifying its place in the Top 25, that could mean I’m over-relying on my “like” reflex). Read more