@SteveFff and @strummer101 - if a brief sidebar is ok, what are your shortlists for essential Mekons recordings?
Original Japan for US Arista and WG Vertigo cds sound pretty good. Certainly much better than either remaster. But I have not compared them to the lp. EAC says they are different masterings, but if there are any significant sonic differences they've never jumped out at me during casual listening.
Well, Since they're one of my favorite bands, they're nearly all essential! But for someone who wants to get into them, IMO you can't go wrong with these: (* = my short shortlist, as short as I can get. But it hurts. Actual physical pain.) *Fear and Whiskey (1985) ...New York (1987) An ode to life on the road complete with live music, bits of conversation, and snoring. Maybe not for everyone. *Mekons Rock and Roll (1989) *Curse of the Mekons (1991) Can be found on CD with the EP F.U.N. '90 added to it. That's the one to get. I Love Mekons (1993) *Journey to the End of the Night (2000) OOH! Out of our Heads (2002) Ancient and Modern (2011) And then there's the compilations of rare stuff, both released in 1999: *I Have Been to Heaven and Back: Hen's Teeth and Other Lost Fragments of Popular Culture Vol 1 *Where Were You?: Hen's Teeth and Other Lost Fragments of Popular Culture Vol 2
Brief sidebar: (connection, Steve Goulding on most if not all) Excellent question. But a shortlist is not easy, as there has been such a significant discography of excellence and variety over their lengthy career. I'd start with The Mekons Rock'n'Roll, which is in my top ten albums of all time. Curse of the Mekons is in a similar vein and came on the heels of Rock'n'Roll. Fear and Whiskey and Edge of the World are from their Sin Label (out of Chicago) years that reformed and reenergized them in the mid-eighties. And are rightfully critical faves. So Good It Hurts from the end of that era has some of their best and most beloved songs. Punk Rock, which has the current Mekons revisiting their formative punk years and Out of our Heads (OOOH!) came out around the same time to celebrate around their 25th anniversary and quite wonderful in really different ways (OOOH with perhaps more folk strains, and also superb songwriting). Their fairly recent album Ancient and Modern 1911-2011 is my favorite album of the 2010s and is great mix of styles and tremendous playing and writing, with remarkable thematic depth and range. Journey to the Edge of Night is quieter late night album with rich writing and a city-scape atmospheres. And of course their early punk singles are genre defining. (And I'm feeling guilty for leaving out I (Heart) Mekons and Mekons Honky Tonkin'! which are great and very different listens--Honky Tonkin' as the title suggests and I (Heart) Mekons with a harder punkier and rockin' edge). Hope this is small help. Feel free to contact me for me details. As you maybe can tell, I'm a little evangelical when it comes to the Mekes.
I believe the one with only the 2 bonus tracks was a slightly later UK edition, from 2001. My 1996 has all of Live Sparks added. It predates the loudness wars and sounds pretty good to me.
The Mekons are one of my fave bands ever as well. My list would go... ...everything from "Fear & Whiskey" up through "Retreat From Memphis" and then I'd also toss in what I think is their last great album, "Journey To The End Of The Night", as well. Their run from '85 to '94 is one of the greatest ever!! So I'd add... "The Edge Of The World", "Honky Tonkin'", "So Good It Hurts" & "Retreat From Memphis" & leave out "OOH Out Of Our Heads" & "Ancient & Modern" (very good albums, but not top shelf for me personally).... I don't think the later albums are bad, by any means, & they often have some great songs on them... and the earlier material (pre-'85/pre-"fear & Whiskey") has some great songs, but is just of lesser interest to me...
Well, I would have told him to get them all, but the guy wanted a short list. 2016's release, Existentialism, is pretty darn good too.
The original arista and the WG vertigo both sounded similar.....okay not great. And neither of them compared to the original UK Vinyl.
I think it sounded terrible....compressed. The 2001 with the 2 bonus tracks sounded better than that 1996 with Live Sparks added but both are worse than the original Arista and WG Vertigo which are okay
I've been viewing this thread for a while, but had not yet posted in it. Here's the deal - I have every Parker album up to, perhaps, 2005 or so. I'd say that makes me a pretty committed fan. I have several of the titles more than once. My problem is, I prefer solo Graham (if you can call him that), over his work with the Rumour. The early albums, Heat Treatment and Howlin Wind - which I acknowledge many consider classics - just do nothing for me. Stick to Me? No thanks. Squeezing Out Sparks is another highly rated album, but I find it maddeningly uneven. I love Nobody Hurts You, You Can't Be Too Strong, Passion is No Ordinary Word, Love Gets You Twisted, Protection, and Don't Get Excited. But Discovering Japan, Waiting for the UFO's, Local Girls, and Saturday Night is Dead aren't near the quality (imo). The Up Escalator has never sounded good, it's a thin recording in all formats. I like No Holding Back, Devil's Sidewalk (the best track), Beating of Another Heart, amd Jolie Jolie. The rest is poor. Parker went on a 9 album winning streak after that - with the one exception probably being The Real Macaw, which is patchy. Struck by Lightning is fantastic, and my favorite Parker album is Mona Lisa's Sister. I bought the more recent albums with the Rumour, but they don't feel essential. Just my take.
You're a pretty committed fan but you don't actually like the first 6 or so albums & you stopped buying his releases 12 years ago. mmm. I do agree The Real Macaw isn't a great album & Struck by Lightning is a great album. IMO Mona Lisa's Sister was a brilliant return to form after 3 poor albums where it appeared he was chasing the American dream & sound.
Would you settle for WAS a committed fan? I just find that personally he was better once he'd grown up a bit, and was finding more of a personal voice. The early material doesn't sound especially noteworthy. I stopped buying his music because I was into Jazz heavily for a long time. As I said, I bought the two more recent albums with The Rumour, but nothing about them leads me to believe we have missed out on anything over the years.......
Huge fan--of GP and the Rumour and just GP. Have everything from Heat Treatment to Deep Cut To Nowhere. My intro was Squeezing out Sparks in 1979. My older brother brought it home, and I absorbed whatever turned up in his room. I remember listening to that and Got No Breeding by Jules and the Polar Bears pretty obsessively. GP turned me on to Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson. After that I bought each new GP album as it came out, starting with The Up Escalator. After college graduation in 1988, when I spent a decade living alone and working on my Ph.D., I went through a second very big GP phase, launched by the excellent The Mona Lisa's Sister. The run of RCA albums that followed that one, most of which were acoustic based, revealed the strength of the songs. Alone in my various apartments, with my cat Veronica, I'd spend my nights working out the tunes on my acoustic guitar and they were always concise, sturdy, smart, and fun to sing and play. Can still play those songs to this day--"Don't Let It Break You Down," "Back in Time," "Get Started," "Big Man on Paper," "She Wants So Many Things," "And It Shook Me," "Children and Dogs," "Too Many Knots to Untangle," "Platinum Blonde," "Love is a Burning Question." The list goes on.
Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson are often lumped in with GP. Apart from Costello's 1st album (recorded with a different band than later albums) I find them of little interest & fail to see any comparison to GP.
This thread has made me bust out my Graham Parker and the Rumour: Live at Rockpalast DVD. How great is Brinsley Schwarz?! I'm finding myself singing along with his guitar riffs at least as much as the lead vocals.
I met him once at a Mekons show (the band is typically very happy to hang out with fans before their shows), and he was incredibly nice and humble. It's a great band, they record and tour steadily without letting it dominate their lives, they all like to hang out with each other...it's not hard to see why he stays with them. Fear and Whiskey is my favorite, though Rock & Roll is very close behind - they've made plenty of other great albums but those two are the mightiest peaks of their career. Fear and Whiskey is best heard on the Original Sin CD because it's got the full dynamic range without the brick wall compression of the later masterings. It also has some choice bonus material. Re: GP & the Rumour, I'm sorry I missed my chance to see them - hope they change their minds about doing more shows but I doubt it.
Not to flog the dead horse here, but I happened to be re-watching the Mekons documentary Revenge of the Mekons, and Steve Goulding in one interview addresses this very point of why he started playing with The Mekons. This was during the period of the early 80s when the Mekons had gotten to playing again in support of the miners strikes. Goulding says that reason why he started playing with them was because he felt like he really wanted to do something for the miners. He recognized that The Mekons couldn't play very well at this point (to be generous), but because Lu Edmunds, who as we know can really play, and Susie Honeyman, who can play, all joined at this time, and that really made the choice even easier for him. And this is the point when The Mekons begin to really have people who are much stronger musicians, like those mentioned above, and including Dick Taylor of Pretty Things and Rolling Stones fame, join them and revolutionize their sound. As Goulding says in the interview, they could just roar at this point (in a positive way).
Look what's popped up on The Cerebral Jukebox™ this early AM: "Soul Shoes" - Graham Parker & The Rumour.
What better way to stick it to your employer than in song... a great song, by the way: "Mercury Poisoning" - Graham Parker & The Rumour, 1979.
Well then... "Local Girls" - Graham Parker & The Rumour, 1979. ♬ So isolated that she thinks that the army is the place where a man oughta be-yee.... ♬
i have quite a few of his albums and enjoy all the ones i have. hey Lord, protection, howlin wind, under the mask, temporary beauty, stupefacation ... so many great songs ... hard to pick a favourite album, maybe stick to me
