Graham Parker — Get Started. Start a Fire

JUL 01 1988 · 12:00

Graham Parker — Get Started. Start a Fire (1988) Era: Late MTV Classic Rock Era (1988) - Peak of RCA-era Graham Parker; post-pub-rock singer-songwriter comeback cycle aligned with college rock and MTV's 'postmodern' programming block This video is a rare surviving promotional artifact from Graham Parker's 1988 commercial and critical resurgence — a pivotal moment in the late-1980s back-to-basics movement that Rolling Stone recognised in real time. Its MTV 'postmodern' slot placement, stripped production values, and literary lyrical content make it a textbook case for studying the transitional aesthetic and cultural space between pub rock legacy and the imminent 1990s alternative rock era. The absence of credited directorial or production data increases its archival fragility and curatorial significance. Context: Released in spring 1988, 'Get Started. Start a Fire' arrived as the lead single from Graham Parker's critically lauded comeback album 'The Mona Lisa's Sister' — his first for RCA after an acrimonious split with Atlantic Records and the first album he self-produced (with Brinsley Schwarz). The album's stripped-down, back-to-basics sound was seen as a deliberate rejection of the over-produced 1980s mainstream rock aesthetic, and Rolling Stone subsequently ranked it among the top 100 albums of the decade. The video received MTV rotation during the channel's dedicated 'postmodern' programming block, connecting Parker's working-class British pub rock roots to the emerging U.S. college rock and alternative adult radio audience of the late 1980s. Director notes: The video is confirmed as a 1988 U.S. release on IMDb (tt27579473) with a runtime of approximately 5 minutes, consistent with the provided duration of 242.68 seconds. It served as the promotional clip for the lead single from Graham Parker's RCA debut album 'The Mona Lisa's Sister' (April 1988). The single received strong airplay on rock radio and on MTV during the channel's 'postmodern' programming slot. No production company, commissioner, or crew details have been located in publicly indexed sources.