Tag: Squeezing Out Sparks

Graham Parker – Discovering Japan

The first Graham Parker album I listened to was his debut, Howlin’ Wind. I went in order, and this one was his fourth studio album, and I have enjoyed his albums. I still need to listen to his 90s output. This is one of my favorite albums by him, no doubt. It’s full of great songs like Local Girls, Saturday Nite is Dead, and Protection is just a few of them.

This song was one of the many standout tracks from Squeezing Out Sparks, released in 1979 by Graham Parker and The Rumour. By that point, Parker had already built a reputation as one of the stronger British songwriters to come out of the pub rock era. The song was reportedly inspired by Parker’s fascination with Japanese women and culture during a period when Japan was becoming more visible. Parker later admitted the title and lyrics were partly tongue-in-cheek.

The Rumour was the perfect band for Parker’s vocal style. Guitarist Brinsley Schwarz helped drive the track with sharp rhythm. The producer Jack Nitzsche gave the album an edgy sound that kept the focus on the band. The sessions for Squeezing Out Sparks took place at a time when Parker was frustrated with the music business. He kept getting overlooked commercially compared to some of his contemporaries.

Over the years, this song became one of the songs most associated with Graham Parker. It was never a major hit single, but it became an FM radio favorite and a live staple. Many fans and critics still point to Squeezing Out Sparks as Parker’s strongest album. The album did well as it peaked at #40 on the Billboard Album Charts, #79 in Canada, and #18 in the UK. The album was helped out by the single Local Girls that got a lot of play on MTV but failed to chart.

This video is an entire concert, but I pasted it with Discovering Japan on the time stamp. It’s worth watching the entire concert, but when you click play, you will hear this song.

Discovering Japan

Her heart is nearly breaking
The earth is nearly quaking
The Tokyo taxi’s braking
It’s screaming to a halt
There’s nothing to hold on to
When gravity betrays you
And every kiss enslaves you
She knows how hard a heart grows
Under nuclear shadows

She can’t escape the feeling
Repeating in her head
When after all the urges
Some kind of truth emerges
He felt the deadly surges

Discovering Japan
Discovering Japan

The G.I.’s only used her
They always ran right through her
Giving an Eastern promise
That they could never keep
Seeing a million miles
Between their jokes and smiles
She heard their heart denials

As the tears run sideways down her face, face
Ah, with the time in the tune of a different race, race

And as the flight touches down
My watch says eight oh two
That’s midnight to you
Midnight to you
Midnight to you

I dreamed of long collisions
In Cadillac Panavisions
I shouted sayonara
It didn’t mean goodbye
But lovers turn to posers
Show up in film exposures
Just like in travel brochures

Discovering Japan
Discovering Japan
Discovering Japan
Discovering Japan
Discovering Japan
Discovering Japan

Graham Parker – Saturday Nite Is Dead

I’ve been listening to this era a lot recently and you will see something about it in a couple of weeks. This album was made by Graham Parker & The Rumour. His first album Howling Wind remains my favorite so far but this one (Squeezing Out Sparks) is catching up…the more I hear it the more I like it. 

When he met the manager of Brinsley Schwarz. With ex-members of Brinsley Schwarz and ex-member Nick Lowe producing them…they made his debut album Howlin’ Wind in 1976. His band had a name at this point…The Rumour. The Rumour would be Graham’s backing band for years. They also recorded their own albums separately and did three in all. They broke up in 1980 and then reformed and started to back Parker up again in 2011 and remain his backup band to this day.

When I hear Parker, I can hear some Springsteen, Van Morrison, and Elvis Costello in his music. This song is straightforward, no-frills, traditional rock ‘n’ roll delivered at full steam ahead. You have The Rumour pumping this music out while Graham spits out the lyrics. 

The song is on his fourth album Squeezing Out Sparks which was released in 1979. The album did well as it peaked at #40 on the Billboard Album Charts, #79 in Canada, and #18 in the UK. The album was helped out by the single Local Girls that got a lot of play on MTV but failed to chart. 

Graham Parker: “In Squeezing Out Sparks I was kind of attempting a concept album about the suburbs of England, or at least trying to capture a vague approximation of suburban life. This idea succeeds in “Saturday Nite Is Dead” and “Local Girls” particularly well. I guess I drifted off the mark there for the rest of the record because the concept turned out to be a little confining for a whole album. I’m too restless to stick with such a narrow program”

Saturday Nite Is Dead

Everybody just looks ugly now information don’t compute
I draw a blank every time I think
The football crowd is going to give me a boot

And Saturday night is dead Saturday night is dead
It don’t matter what they say
You’ve got to use your own head some day
Saturday night is dead Saturday night is dead
Yeah it’s dead

The ultraviolet light hurts me so
It used to be my friend
I used to know a good place to go
But now it’s nothing like it was then

And Saturday night is dead
Saturday night is dead
It don’t matter what they say
I’m going to the funeral Sunday
Saturday night is dead
Saturday night is dead
Yeah it’s dead

It must have been murder it ain’t no accident
Oh no it means nothing to me
The clock goes tick tick tick in my head
Saturday is dead
Saturday is dead
See upcoming rock shows
Get tickets for your favorite artists

I look inside to find a place to hide
But there ain’t no place I know
It’s just as well that I’m stupefied
It makes it easy
It makes it easy to deliver the fatal blow

Deliver deliver deliver

CHORUS (FIRST VERSION)

Saturday night is dead REPEAT AND END

…

Graham Parker – Local Girls

I posted a Graham Parker album (Howlin’ Wind) a while back and it was the first time I’d heard it. This song…as soon as I heard it I remembered it. I remember MTV and Fridays playing this video in the 1980s.

Graham Parker - Squeezing Out Sparks

This was on the album Squeezing Out Sparks released in 1979. The album peaked at #18 in the UK, #79 in Canada, and #40 on the Billboard 100. Parker had just left Mercury Records and this was his debut on Arista Records.

I’ve listened to Squeezing Out Sparks and there is not a weak song on the album. Parker had felt like Rumour had overplayed on his albums to this point. He told them they need to play like they were in a studio and not live. After that… once they were clicking, it only took 11 days to complete the album.

This album didn’t include horns that were on his albums up to this point. It was a no-frills approach that made it arguably his finest album. This song has everything you want. Smart writing, catchy hook, and Parker’s voice is on point.

Normally, Parker named his albums after song titles, although this time he toyed with calling it “The Basingstoke Canal” after a waterway connecting to the Thames River, about 30 miles from where he was born in the London area of Hackney…but he woke up one morning with a song on the album called You Can’t Be Too Strong going through his head with the lyric “I know it gets dark down by Luna Park/But everybody else is squeezing out a spark/That happened in the heat, somewhere in the dark.”

Graham Parker: “‘Local Girls,’ of course, refers to the girls in my/your hometown, not the girls in someone else’s town. … The idea for ‘Local’ is from remembering what it was like to be a boy at home, looking out the window, seeing a rather toothsome piece stroll by, nose in the air perhaps, down the quiet semi-detached suburban street, and knowing that she probably already (at 13/14 years of age) fancies herself as an army wife (I grew up next door to an army camp and the squaddies were always stealing the girlfolk) and is going to look upon your feeble advances with some disdain. It’s a fairly typical the-object-of-ones-desire-is-always-out-of-reach-type song, just about 30 times better and more pregnant with meaning/detail than pretty much anyone else on the planet could even begin to aspire to, is all”

Graham Parker:  “It wasn’t until I’d done all my Hippie traveling and being a freak and all that, and got back and lived with my parents and started to absorb all influence of my earlier years. I just pushed myself out in the world, got to London and met the right people, including Dave Robinson, who became my manager. He put the band the Rumour around me. So that was basically the beginnings of my career. I was just basically what I consider to be a successful singer/songwriter/musician by the time I came to write Squeezing Out Sparks. It was very inspired times for me, and that’s what resulted in that album.”

Local Girls

Sit by my window and look outside, wonder why the sun don’t shine on me
What’s wrong with you, you stupid child, don’t you think that I’m the one
You’re waiting to see?
Don’t talk too much ’cause she falls for the suckers, makes her feel
Everything is secure
Don’t ever leave a footprint on the floor

Don’t bother with the local girls, don’t bother with the local girls
They don’t bother me

She’s probably half-wit, she must be straight,
Or bound to have a mother who knows nothing but hate
Don’t want to love her, I’d rather knock her down
Standing at the bus stop where she waits each morning
So isolated that she thinks that the army is the place where a man ought to be
Don’t bother with them, they don’t bother me

Don’t bother with the local girls, don’t bother with the local girls
They don’t bother me

They got the walk, they got the talk, right down without a flaw
At 6:00 I got to stop my dreaming at the counter of the store

Don’t bother with the local girls, don’t bother with the local girls
They don’t bother me

Without a doubt I got to intercept, must be time someone ran and shouted in
Their head
You look all right in the cheap print dress,
But every time you swish it ’round you make me disappear
I’m aware of exactly what I’m doing, making everything a mystery
Don’t bother with it, it don’t bother me