Graham Parker ~ 2006 December 3 ~ R.H. Tug's, Staten Island, NY
Graham Parker accompanying himself on Fender electric guitar, Gibson acoustic guitar, harmonica, and kazoo
Set List (with guitars noted)
[Gibson acoustic]: Watch the Moon Come Down - Socks 'n' Sandals - Dark Days - Haunted Episodes - Stick To the Plan - Hard Side of the Rain - Christmas is For Mugs - Misstra Know-It-All {Stevie Wonder} - [Fender electric]: Howling Wind - Can't Take Love for Granted - Discovering Japan - [Gibson acoustic]: Local Girls - [Fender electric]: Nobody Hurts You - You Can't Be Too Strong - Passion is No Ordinary Word - [Gibson acoustic]: Saturday Night Is Dead - [Fender electric]: Love Gets You Twisted - [Gibson acoustic]: Waiting for the UFOs - [with recording of GP with The Figgs] Don't Get Excited ... encore ... [Fender electric]: White Honey - Get Started, Start a Fire
Review
GP performed a similar show as the previous night at the Turning Point. Tonight's venue is a place on the north shore of Staten Island called R.H. Tugs, across from the industrial zone of Bayonne, NJ -- ugly looking during the day, but once dark had fallen the twinkling lights were pretty in the distance. Graham joked that a tidal wave would come along and swamp the folks sitting by the window.
R.H. Tugs is a restaurant with occasional live music. It doesn't have the best sight lines; there is a railing around the outside of the stage that blocked some of the view from some places in the audience, but it was decorated with Christmas wreaths and looked very festive. Someone at the club is very creative; scattered around the walls were apparent Christmas packages with bows, but looking closer they were the shape of framed pictures, so it looks like what they did was take the decorations that are there anyway and turned them into Christmas decor. The specials menu was entirely in honor of Graham: it had menu items like "Mona Lisa's Sister Meatloaf." A very nice touch, showing that someone at the club really knows their Parker.
Graham changed the set list a little from the night before, replacing the two new songs from Saturday's show with the crazy current-events kazoo sing-along "Stick to the Plan," and the incredibly good "Hard Side of the Rain" (by request). GP added a second song from Deepcut to Nowhere (always a good choice), "Dark Days." He again played "Christmas is For Mugs" and gave away a copy of Christmas Cracker, although he had to try a couple of times to find someone who didn't already have it. The blonde woman to whom he offered it first already had it; later on in the show she yelled out "I love you, Graham," which caused a momentary flicker of something across his face (was that: "yes I own them, I own every woman here" or was it "she's had a few too many glasses of bad Chardonnay"?). Graham did seem grateful to the large and enthusiastic audience, saying he had been a little concerned about whether anyone would show up on Staten Island on a Sunday night, but the crowd proved him wrong.
As he did last night at The Turning Point, Graham again played Squeezing Out Sparks in its entirety, which he called his "stunt du jour." As he explained last night at The Turning Point, he feels it is impossible to play "Don't Get Excited" solo, so he had the soundman pipe in the recording of that song as done by GP and The Figgs. This Rock-Star singalong with GP and the Figgs was embellished with even more Rock Star moves than the night before, and this time during the instrumental break he stood off to the side of the stage, just as if the real Figgs were on stage with him and he was giving them their moment in the spotlight. It was very, very funny.
This time the brief encore set consisted of two songs on the electric, "White Honey" and "Get Started, Start a Fire."
I suspect Graham won't do this "stunt du jour" again; he got it together for the house concert in November and then decided to use it again a few times, and it worked surprisingly well, but I suspect he'll lose interest in it by the time he hits the Greenwich Public Library in January and the Towne Crier in February. Ed. Note: Scroll a few shows into the future to see if I was right.
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