Gig 016 Graham Parker & The Rumour

Graham Parker & The Rumour
2 October 1976
Oxford Polytechnic

I went to this gig with my pal Stuart. We had both left school that summer, had jobs and enjoyed a certain amount of independence, or as much as weekly pay packet of £15-odd would afford. This gig (plus disco!) cost 60p, so with a couple of non-alcoholic drinks the whole evening might have cost £1. I think maybe I went straight from football, Oxford United’s stadium (such as it was, RIP the Manor) being near the Poly – apparently we drew 1-1 with Tranmere Rovers, I have no recollection of that. Anyway we arrived at the gig while the soundcheck was still taking place, and while we were hanging around outside the hall Graham Parker came out and asked us where he could get a drink before the bar was open, so we obligingly showed him the vending machine in an adjoining room. He was a skinny little guy, very friendly if a bit nervy, sounded a bit cockney to us. Turned out he was born in Hackney but grew up in Surrey, same difference as far as we knew.


Graham Parker & the Rumour had just released their second album Heat Treatment and enjoyed some good press without troubling the charts. I’d heard a few of their tunes and liked them, bouncy tough-sounding soulful numbers. They were influenced by Van Morrisson and The Band but I didn’t know anything about that at the time. (Unlike some of my friends I didn’t have older siblings, and my parents weren’t big music fans – they had a few records, mainly Scottish stuff, pipe bands, Andy Stewart, Jimmy Shand.) While GP had a definite charisma and punkish intensity about him, The Rumour were a fairly nondescript-looking bunch, old fellas (some of them must have been about 28!) in flares and suede, but what a great band: they had a real swing about them which sounds effortless but which rock groups generally find very hard to pull off. All those years on the London pub circuit had been worthwhile. White Honey swung like a demon, Soul Shoes had a Stones-ish drive, and on Hey Lord Don’t Ask Me Questions they even approximated a righteous amphetamine reggae groove without it being completely embarrassing. The soul-infused songs were musically fairly straightforward but had a depth, maturity and rage to them, hard to pin down but impossible to ignore. There was a restless chippiness about GP which he has in common with Paul Weller – possibly the result of growing up working-class in largely affluent, leafy Surrey.


The attached exhibit would suggest we must have hung around to get autographs, I don’t remember that at all. This was an excellent gig, and Heat Treatment is still one of my favourite albums. Still not punk though, that was just around the corner.

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