Graham Parker Releasing First Live DVD 'At the FTC' Dec. 7

British singer-songwriter (and longtime American resident) Graham Parker will release his live DVD Graham Parker & The Figgs: Live at The FTC December 7 on Primary Wave Records.
Cult faves The Figgs have long been Parkers's backup band.  The concert was recorded as  Parker celebrated his 20th album, Imaginary Television, released earlier this year on Bloodshot Records, and also dipped into his vast back catalog for numbers such as “Life Gets Better”, “Mercury Poisoning” and “My Love’s Strong”.
The performance was filmed in 5.1 on April 23, 2010 at Fairfield, Connecticut’s FTC Stageone.  The DVD also features a career-spanning interview with Parker, as well as a companion CD featuring the entire concert.
"Typically, when the film crew turns up for the one gig on the tour they are scheduled to film, something goes wrong and the band don't get a proper sound check.  The singer (me) is sick with the tour bug and has lost half his voice. A blizzard occurs and half the audience don't show.  Whatever: it's often less than ideal.  Not the case with this little, beauty, thankfully," Parker said. "The band rocked like Safari Park Chimps, the film crew were non-intrusive, I was in full, strong voice, and the weather did not conspire to keep the punters at home.  What a strange confluence of fortuitous events!   This one's a keeper."
Parker, backed by the Rumour in the mid-1970s was part of the pub-rock scene out of London, though he was often cast as "New Wave" then alongside Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson, though all three were clearly neither punk or new wave, but much more. His early classics include the albums Howlin' Wind (his debut) and Heat Treatment both in 1976 and Squeezing Out Sparks in 1979. Other career highlights include 1988's The Mona Lisa's Sister , 1991's Struck By Lightning,  Acid Bubblegum  in 1996 and 2001's Deepcut To Nowhere.  The Rhino retrospective Passion Is No Ordinary Word collects his work from the '70s through the early 90s.
Parker has been one of music's most consistent songwriters, his work encompassing areas of rock, R&B/Soul and country, too. Decades on his voice still bites when needed, yet has also taken on many other nuances, especially in the past two decades or so.
www.grahamparker.net