Ever since Bachelor said that Jonathan Richman performed Kars4Kids, I’ve been listening to him and the Modern Lovers nonstop. My knowledge is not exhaustive, but I think I’ve heard enough where I can stitch together 20 great songs.
I think his most recent albums is one of his best. Jerry Harrison collaborated with him on it. He played on the original Modern Lovers album, back when they were a Velvet Underground fan band. Later, he would join the Talking Heads. A reunion like this is so powerful.
I could say so much about how I feel about this music, but I don’t know if I can type it right now! I love the vulnerability in the early album. He’s kind of mean on it, but a lot of teenagers/young adults are like that. I love how that bitterness transformed into an assured and optimistic worldview as he got older. I love how he sings songs in other languages just because he likes them.
Buh-bye, I gotta find a cookbook for California health food.
I think 20 is actually kind of a challenge, it’s more than an album usually is and it’s a time commitment to listen to. 20 big ones are only for the bold
The CD compilation of the first Modern Lovers album was something I got introduced to my senior year of high school. My English elective was on “The Hero’s Journey” which yeah, meant we talked about Joseph Campbell’s schitck, but then we read a bunch of not heroic stuff and tried to think about it in that context. This was the class I read All the Pretty Horses and On the Road for, and it was pretty good. On Fridays, we would do creative writing-ish stuff in class, and the teacher would bring in music to play, usually a mix CD he burned, IIRC. On one of these, just out of nowhere, was “I’m Straight”, a song that cracked me up. I was pretty straight (edge) myself at the time (Jesuit high school, and also I was a dork), but even I laughed a lot at how silly this dude sounded whining about Hippie Johnny, even as he maybe almost had a point a little. And then was “Pablo Picasso” as well, which yeah, that song is great too.
So yeah, as one did back in the 90s before broadband, I just went to a record store and bought that CD for like 10 bucks and it lived in my Discman for a good long while. I think I might still have it in a binder somewhere. Just a great album to be a shitty bored dork in high school to. That sounds a little like a diss, but I actually mean it a lot, and it almost works like Catcher in the Rye for me in that, when younger, I maybe identified a bit too much with parts of it that now, as a middle aged dork, I laugh at and say “man, what a prick I could be”.
Similar thing is happening in “She Cracked.” Really fascinating to hear someone at this specific step of developing emotional awareness. The way he shouts “I stay alone and eat health food at home,” shouldn’t feel cathartic at all but it kind of does? That song rips for being recorded in 1971.
for many years I would have said that That Summer Feeling is my favorite song in the world. I think that’s still probably true.
there are also several Jonathan Richman songs that I strongly associate w people I dated in the past, and they’ll usually make me cry! here are two:
I also think this performance is absolutely essential, he really has an incredible talent for working an audience. I watched it on repeat during a tough period in grad school.
in Elvis Costello’s book there’s an aside about how hearing Roadrunner changed his writing and inspired him to start taking music more seriously - he figured that if you could sing about the stop & shop, you could sing about any of the mundane stuff he was experiencing. so, a bit of a mixed bag there.
okay those are my Jonathan Richman thoughts! I’m glad this thread is here.
Thank you for sharing this. I didn’t know about his whole idea about electric shows being connected to fossil fuels and hearing loss. I mean, he has those lines in Parties in the USA, but wow he really believes it. The amount of principles this guy lives by are innumerable.
