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Squeezing Out Sparks | 
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| Artist: Graham Parker & The Rumour
Label: Arista
Category: Music
List Price: $11.98
Buy New: $6.94
You Save: $5.04 (42%)
New (30) Used (18) Collectible (2) from $4.97
Rating:  44 reviews
Sales Rank: 66021
Format: Live
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 4.9 x 0.4
MPN: 18939
UPC: 078221893923
EAN: 0078221893923
ASIN: B000002VS5
Release Date: October 1, 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW, Factory Sealed items direct from the Studios. 30 Day Satisfaction Guarantee. Quick International Airmail!
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| Tracks:
| • | Discovering Japan | | • | Local Girls | | • | Nobody Hurts You | | • | You Can't Be Too Strong | | • | Passion Is No Ordinary Word | | • | Saturday Nite Is Dead | | • | Love Gets You Twisted | | • | Protection | | • | Waiting for the UFOs | | • | Don't Get Excited | | • | Discovering Japan | | • | Local Girls | | • | Nobody Hurts You | | • | You Can't Be Too Strong | | • | Passion Is No Ordinary Word | | • | Saturday Nite Is Dead | | • | Love Gets You Twisted | | • | Protection | | • | Waiting for the UFOs | | • | Don't Get Excited | | • | I Want You Back (Alive) - Graham Parker, Gordy, Berry Jr. | | • | Mercury Poisoning |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Squeezing Out Sparks was not only Parker's finest moment, but it still stands up today as one of rock's best albums. When it was first released in 1979, Arista simultaneously issued Live Sparks, a collection of live radiocasts that featured the same 10 songs in the same order plus the Jackson 5's "I Want You Back" and Parker's kiss-off to his former label, "Mercury Poisoning." The latter package was made available only to radio stations and critics, but it was a riveting live record worth all of the $40 it commanded on the collectors' market. Now Arista has reissued the 10 studio tracks and the dozen live tracks on an invaluable single CD. Included are two versions each of rock's best pro-choice abortion song ("You Can't Be Too Strong") and best Hiroshima song ("Discovering Japan"). --Geoffrey Himes
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| Customer Reviews:
 Perfect in all aspects except label support November 7, 2008
Jersey Kid (Katy, Texas, America!)
A sublime album when initially issued, it was raised to an even higher degree of perfection by the inclusion of a complete concert. By doing this, we learned that - while the original disc delivered on the promise that had been dashed by the debacle with `Stick to Me' - the performance expertise of GPR was exposed to an even wider audience. It is amazing how close the studio and live versions of these songs are to each other.
And, the song themselves are exemplary! Ranging from anti-establishment angry and alienation through wisdom derived from the knowledge that love is all that really matters to the most emotional and succinct statement against abortion, there is not a bad one included. Even the encores from the live shows pop off the disc; the Jackson Five's `I Want You Back' forces you to your feet to dance. But, `Mercury Poisoning' makes you rise in anger at the incompetence of Mercury Records, one of the least capable labels to support rock. We'll never know how much that label was responsible for the commercial failure of GPR.
But, Parker survived. Leaving Mercury and Rumour, he went on to a later - in some ways more interesting - career as a grand old man of rock.
The Keys to the Kingdom May 16, 2008
Russell D. Melling (Coatesville, Indiana)
When I first heard this album back in 1979, I was a senior in high school who knew a little about Parker and the Rumour. I was a convert right after I heard the whole album for the first time! The addition of the "Live Sparks" albums makes this one of the best collections.Well worth purchasing.
Sparks create explosions March 22, 2008
Tim Brough (Springfield, PA United States)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is both Graham Parker's best album and a high point of the late seventies. After three exceptional albums of pub-rock and northern R'n'B inflected rock that failed to detonate commercially, Parker took the Rumour and his new work to Arista Records and set out on what he knew was make or break. He'd already seen Elvis Costello make commercial inroads with some of the same concepts he'd been exploring back on Heat Treatment and Howlin' Wind, yet - according to the revealing liner notes - The Rumour was failing to catch fire on the new material until producer Jack Nitzsche told them to get serious and play the songs for what they were.
The result was an album of such brute force that Parker has yet to best it, and it became his breakthrough in the year of Armed Forces and Look Sharp!. Fed by genuine anger and the energy of the ascending New Wave, the songs on "Squeezing Out Sparks" burn everything from Hiroshima ("Discovering Japan"), the drug-infested bar scene and the wanna-be hipsters crawling through it ("Saturday Night Is Dead") to abortion in all its contradictory facets ("You Can't Be Too Strong").
Parker also courses with anger on this album. His disdain for his lack of perceived deserved success doubles as the fuel for such wounded love songs as "Passion Is No Ordinary Word" and "Nobody Hurts You." At one point, he gets so fed up that he longs for the aliens to just get him the heck offa this planet ("Waiting for The UFO's," or as Parker pronounced them "You-foes"). He and the Rumour coated all of these songs with spiky hooks and inventive playing (the twisted riffing on "Japan" in particular), making all of these songs sing-along ready. "Local Girls" even became something of a radio hit, one of the rare moments that radio embraced Parker's music.
The bonus delight comes with another of those moments. Adding the rare "Live Sparks" concert shows Parker and The Rumour on fire, barely venturing from the album arrangements. The extra two songs were live versions of his single "I Want You back/Mercury Poisoning" (which was available as a bonus 45 with the original LP). Remember about that anger? In "Mercury Poisoning," Parker takes an unsheathed shot at his former label, sneering "I've got a dinosaur for a representative; it's got a small brain and refuses to learn." It's a classic punk rock moment, on a par with the Pistol's "EMI."
Great stuff all around. While Graham Parker has made several more albums in the years following "Sparks" (recommended are The Real Macaw, Steady Nerves and the recent Don't Tell Columbus), he began to slowly mellow his music into an almost folk-rock articulacy. As a document of the kind of sea-change that occurred as the 80's kicked in, "Squeezing Out Sparks" is indispensable.
A classic May 13, 2007
J. Seiwert (Wichita, KS United States)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is an album that came close to changing my life! In 1978 I first heard this while browsing for vinyl at the local college record store. Parker and the Rumour were playing, introducing me to what we called "new wave" at the time. Trouser Press used to debate whether Elvis Costello or Graham Parker was the best band of this new era of rock and roll, giving the edge to Parker because of the back-up band! History may have chosen differently, but this is an album that can still bring a tingle to your spine! If you have not heard it, you owe it to yourself to give it a listen. If you like it, then you need to find a copy of "Live--Alone in America" to hear the most stripped down, soulful version of someone who completely "gets it" even if his talent is not singing, but interpreting.
Still sounds great January 10, 2007
Suko (Southern CA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I am very happy with this CD. It sounds as good as it did when I first heard it. I especially love to listen to the songs Protection and Local Girls (which played on my first date with my husband). This is a classic "new wave" CD.
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