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{Box information} Graham Parker with opening act Jeff Finlin. 10 p.m. Saturday at Exit/In, 2208 Elliston Place. $8. 321-4400. {End of box}
Like most writers, Graham Parker will admit that he sometimes worries about the day when he becomes an ``average'' writer.
``There's this conditioned idea that you're not supposed to be very good once you're over the age of 20-something,'' says the 44-year-old British rocker, ``that pop music was something that was supposed to be for young people.''
Nearly 20 years after the release of Howlin Wind, his critically acclaimed debut album, Parker has just released 12 Haunted Episodes on the independent Razor & Tie label.
``I've been fairly prolific over the years, but not too prolific,'' he explains in a phone interview from his home in the Catskill Mountains, outside Woodstock, N.Y.
``There's a preconditioned idea that one is gonna get soft and one is not going to write stuff that comes from the subconscious. When I know I'm in a stream of consciousness that is beyond normal thought, where the rhymes come out, surprising me, putting a smile on my face, then I know things are OK -- just keep doing it.''
12 Haunted Episodes suggests that Parker has found the inspirational mode again. Self-produced and recorded in Saugerties, N.Y., near his home, the songs on the new album sound far from ``haunted.''
Demons vanish?
Known for such salvos of musical Angst as Empty Lives, Break Them Down and Mercury Poisoning, Parker sounds as if he's put some distance between himself and any demons that chased him in the past.
``I lucked into this open-G tuning idea,'' he says of the writing technique he used last summer, when the songs were coming together. ``Every time I hit the guitar it suggested a certain mood.