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Graham Parker Setlist
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(New for You! - W♥M brings you coverage of an event we attended back in the good old days when people could interact and breathe freely [2019], but didn’t get around to posting at the time. Enjoy it now and Stay Safe, world!)
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It was a windy but otherwise ideal weather day on the outdoor rooftop grass to lay back and gaze upward to look for cloud symbols and to open one’s ears to take in some classic music.
One of the oddest but most pleasing mid-summer Minneapolis traditions is a regular visit from legendary UK singer-songwriter Graham Parker, for a free outdoor acoustic concert.
What began as a Bastille Day-related celebration (thanks in part to a partner French restaurant formerly in the same building) Brit’s Pub in downtown Minneapolis has re-christened the annual event Fredstock, in tribute to their greeter and the face of the business, Freddie Manton, who died in March 2019 at age 90.
(The folks at Brit’s must also enjoy our previous coverage of past year’s shows, enough to crib one of our pics for their official poster too, but I digress...)
Thanks to his longtime ties with the pub’s owners, Parker dutifully takes time every mid-July, as he has for the better part of two decades, to come into town and play an informal and sometimes unpredictable (even to him) one-off acoustic show. Parker’s most recent release is his 24th studio album- 2018’s Cloud Symbols (on 100% Records) which he dipped into a few times during his ninety-minute set, as well as worked in classics from his five-decade songbook.
Parker started with a bang, launching first into 1977’s ‘New York Shuffle’ then jumped ahead three decades for 2005’s ‘Chloroform’, before playing the first two tracks from the newest record, ‘Girl in Need’ and ‘Ancient Past’, the latter complete with lyrics reflecting on his own age and mortality and musically punctuated with some playful kazoo. Impromptu picnickers grooved in place on their lawn blankets or danced over to the lawn side bar for a replacement pint.
“Good things are coming if we stick to the plan” he sang on a 2007 song (not foreseeing 2020 obviously) and Parker verbally winced that his classic album, Squeezing Out Sparks is now forty years old before going into that record’s ‘Waiting for the UFO's’.
1991’s ‘Museum Piece’ (the intro of which Parker admitted takes directly from set opener, ‘New York Shuffle’) is a relative deep cut and 1976’s ‘Fool’s Gold’ was actually part of a recent Jeopardy clue, which Parker seemed very proud to be part of (though no one on the show knew the answer).
A last-minute setlist change gave us the new ‘Is the Sun Out Anywhere’, played live only for the second time, then a guitar switch and brief audio adjustment perfected the delivery of a handful of tracks from Squeezing Out Sparks, with Parker noticing someone in the crowd sketching him as he played, remarking not to make him look too much like comedian Larry David.
The tail end of the set got a bit cut (vs the setlist notes) but the MC did tease that Parker might make a return appearance later in the evening, though the singer himself downplayed that notion.
A two-song encore of vintage Rumour tracks began all the way back with 1976’s ‘Back to Schooldays’ and ended at 1979’s ‘Protection’, with its Winston Churchill-inspired intro and succinctly point-of-fact lyric, “It ain't the knife through the heart that tears you apart, it's just the thought of someone sticking it in”.
As the current health crisis continues and entertainment options that might have previously been taken for granted, have (for the moment) disappeared, we remember the simple joys and take greater stock of some of those recent musical traditions – Graham Parker on a downtown rooftop lawn annually playing an intimate free show, is one of those simple traditions that is sorely missed.
===
It was a windy but otherwise ideal weather day on the outdoor rooftop grass to lay back and gaze upward to look for cloud symbols and to open one’s ears to take in some classic music.
One of the oddest but most pleasing mid-summer Minneapolis traditions is a regular visit from legendary UK singer-songwriter Graham Parker, for a free outdoor acoustic concert.
What began as a Bastille Day-related celebration (thanks in part to a partner French restaurant formerly in the same building) Brit’s Pub in downtown Minneapolis has re-christened the annual event Fredstock, in tribute to their greeter and the face of the business, Freddie Manton, who died in March 2019 at age 90.
(The folks at Brit’s must also enjoy our previous coverage of past year’s shows, enough to crib one of our pics for their official poster too, but I digress...)
Thanks to his longtime ties with the pub’s owners, Parker dutifully takes time every mid-July, as he has for the better part of two decades, to come into town and play an informal and sometimes unpredictable (even to him) one-off acoustic show. Parker’s most recent release is his 24th studio album- 2018’s Cloud Symbols (on 100% Records) which he dipped into a few times during his ninety-minute set, as well as worked in classics from his five-decade songbook.
Parker started with a bang, launching first into 1977’s ‘New York Shuffle’ then jumped ahead three decades for 2005’s ‘Chloroform’, before playing the first two tracks from the newest record, ‘Girl in Need’ and ‘Ancient Past’, the latter complete with lyrics reflecting on his own age and mortality and musically punctuated with some playful kazoo. Impromptu picnickers grooved in place on their lawn blankets or danced over to the lawn side bar for a replacement pint.
“Good things are coming if we stick to the plan” he sang on a 2007 song (not foreseeing 2020 obviously) and Parker verbally winced that his classic album, Squeezing Out Sparks is now forty years old before going into that record’s ‘Waiting for the UFO's’.
1991’s ‘Museum Piece’ (the intro of which Parker admitted takes directly from set opener, ‘New York Shuffle’) is a relative deep cut and 1976’s ‘Fool’s Gold’ was actually part of a recent Jeopardy clue, which Parker seemed very proud to be part of (though no one on the show knew the answer).
A last-minute setlist change gave us the new ‘Is the Sun Out Anywhere’, played live only for the second time, then a guitar switch and brief audio adjustment perfected the delivery of a handful of tracks from Squeezing Out Sparks, with Parker noticing someone in the crowd sketching him as he played, remarking not to make him look too much like comedian Larry David.
The tail end of the set got a bit cut (vs the setlist notes) but the MC did tease that Parker might make a return appearance later in the evening, though the singer himself downplayed that notion.
A two-song encore of vintage Rumour tracks began all the way back with 1976’s ‘Back to Schooldays’ and ended at 1979’s ‘Protection’, with its Winston Churchill-inspired intro and succinctly point-of-fact lyric, “It ain't the knife through the heart that tears you apart, it's just the thought of someone sticking it in”.
As the current health crisis continues and entertainment options that might have previously been taken for granted, have (for the moment) disappeared, we remember the simple joys and take greater stock of some of those recent musical traditions – Graham Parker on a downtown rooftop lawn annually playing an intimate free show, is one of those simple traditions that is sorely missed.
Graham Parker at Fredstock- Brit's Pub, Minneapolis (2019-07-21) |
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