Squeezing Out Sparks in 'Atomic Rock and Roll'

When Graham Parker plays the Fairfield Theatre Company on Sunday, expect him to be loud, intense, wordy, witty and generally unrestrained.

And that's just during the introductions.

This explosive singer/songwriter, undeniably one of the strands that helped to make the twisty DNA of Punk Rock, doesn't pull punches about music, the record biz, the state of things generally.

"When I first hit the scene with (his original band) The Rumour, in 1976, there was nothing like us. We'd had this period in England, where people went to see, say, Genesis, completely off their heads. They sat there quietly in the audience listening. I'd had enough of that. On our first tour, it was Atomic Rock and Roll. We went onstage and just jammed this music down peoples' throats. There was no messing about."

For those who love his fiery, literate, soul-music-on-amphetamines style, Parker needs no introduction. For everyone else, a brief history.

He appeared on the London scene, almost simultaneously with The Sex Pistols. And if Johnny Rotten could really sing and had grown up listening to Otis Redding, he might've been Graham Parker. There were two earthshaking LPs that year, "Howling Wind" and "Heat Treatment." The praise for these LPs was ecstatic, loud and long. Comparisons to The Stones, Dylan and Van Morrison were tossed out routinely.

Parker's live shows with The Rumour were like Armageddon with electric guitars. The albums sold decently, but not like they should. His fourth album, "Squeezing Out Sparks" made and still makes everyone's All-Time list. Ultimately due to record company indifference and Parker's questing spirit, the man stayed cultish and went solo. He married, moved to upstate New York, continued to make fine, biting albums. As well as write a few strong books of fiction.

"The early days were intense and mystifying," said Parker, recently. "I'd never really played any gigs before I got signed. In my 20s, after traveling Europe, I came back to England, cut my hair, got a job pumping gas and, quietly, started writing these songs. My first demo tape landed me a record deal and a back-up band. If I seemed to come out of nowhere, it's because I did."

If things seemed easy and effortless back then for the working class kid from Deep Cut, they are, certainly, a bit different now. Parker has not hid his disdain for the suits in the music business. His short tenure over the years, with various labels, resembles nothing so much as George Costanza and his countless jobs on "Seinfeld."

Then, there's this documentary they've made about him. Called "Don't Ask Me Questions" (named after a great, early Parker song), the film has been garnering praise, but hasn't yet found a distributor.

"You know we just got turned by SXSW," he fires off into the phone. "You know, they only seem to go for the films about two kinds of people, mostly. You either have to be very, very famous, or very, very weird and unknown. Unfortunately, I'm sort of in the middle."

Still, the middle is not too bad a place for Parker. For instance, since he does things in a record-by-record way, he can record what he wants. Then he finds an interested party (lately Bloodshot Records) and says, "Okay, here's the album." He has a strong, reliable audience ("I think I've played New Jersey 12 times this year, already") and he has a "huge backlog" of songs.

So what can the faithful, or the uninitiated, expect this Sunday?

"It's just going to be me, with the guitarist Mike Gent, from this band The Figgs. And I'm going to do things in a narrative, orderly way. I'm going to go through about 20 of my albums and do a song from each one. Hopefully, there'll be tunes from (the albums) 'Stick To Me' and 'Another Grey Area,' no one's ever heard before. Think of it as an historical event," Parker said, half-jokingly.

As critical as he can be of the music industry, not to mention sarcastic about his place in it, Parker still seems generally grateful that writing songs and playing them is still his 'day job' after so many years.

"Sometimes, I have to remind myself, that I'm not pumping petrol anymore. Or cleaning houses in the afternoons, which I also did, occasionally, back in those days," he said, definitely not joking. "As tough as it can be out there sometimes? This gig is actually much better."

INFO: Graham Parker will be at The Fairfield Theatre Company (Stage One), 70 Sanford St., at 7:30 p.m. Sunday. Doors open at 7. Tickets are $32, members save $10 per ticket. For information, call 203-259-1036.