Post a controversial music opinion

Josh – did you stay at home and eat health food alone?

All criticisms of Jonathan Richman need to be deferred due to the fact that he used the lyrics "I still love my parents // and I still love the old world" as a straight faced couplet in a rock song. One of the funniest thing anyone has ever done with rock music tbh

Richman is a litmus test of whether rockists have a sense of humour (no offense haters)

there is a guy who used to sell art in harvard square in the 60s/70s who walks by my store 50 times a day and looks at the record covers every time he goes by. he looks like homeless gandalf. or my brother. one or the other.

self-pitying, conservative straight white male, whining about how women like bad boys instead of him and wishing he lived in the 50s. the "friendly" face deflatormouse talks about is the thinnest of veneers. the reason it works as a rock album is because underneath the dorky all american boy surface the record is seething with anger. reactionary anger.

― treeship.

i mean if that's your reading of it i guess that's your reading. all i can say is that i don't get that out of the modern lovers record (basically the only richman i've heard). he's friendly _and_ he's angry, he has strong emotions. a song like "i'm straight", that's something i can relate to. i've seen so many people get fucked up by self-medicating. i'm not any better for not doing drugs. i have my own unhealthy coping habits. i fuck myself up in other ways. i'm... glad that i don't have to deal with the shit people who use drugs as coping mechanisms do. i don't _blame_ my girlfriend for using her street chemistry skills to process her prescription ADHD meds into something she could shoot up. sometimes i can't stand what she does. sometimes i can't stand her. i thought about that song a lot the last time she was in the hospital. yeah, that's anger. i was angry. i did want her back in my life, i still do want her back in my life. i don't think of that as "conservative". a lot of the stuff he says resonates with me. his anger is genuine. so is his compassion. he doesn't put on this "everything's ok" front. fucked up shit happens. even when you're a "straight white male". because patriarchy hurts everyone. it doesn't hurt him _most_, but he has to live in this fucked up world with all this fucked up shit going on. he's not exempt. he's not immune. is he writing from a psychological hellhole? i don't think so. i think he takes this fucked up place and finds joy, finds things to celebrate in it, despite the pain. driving past the stop 'n shop. is it meaningless? sure. does it feel _good_? goddamn right.

idk. that's just what i read into it. i love jonathan richman. and i still love my parents. just because my parents abused me doesn't mean i don't love them. and i still love the old world. it's just time for it to go. burn out, fade away, i don't fucking care which. it just needs to malcolm k. mooney its ass out of here.

basically if straight white men acted more like jonathan richman and less like. i don't know. who's that motherfucker who plays "star lord" in the comic book movies. less like him. the world would be a lot better place. i think.

Great posts Kate

I didn't really get the modern lovers/richman till I heard "a plea for tenderness". I think that song shoes the heart of jonathan and the band for better or worse. It's an absolute cracker, would recommend all haters to indulge if you haven't already

"That summer feeling" also essential. Jonathan at his best when he's wistful and funny, not just funny

*shows, not shoes lol

he's friendly _and_ he's angry, he has strong emotions.

^^^this

i love how that van gogh song says it-
like, you think he's such a tragic figure? look at all he was able to feel

“That Summer Feeling” is the lead track on Jonathan Sings!, the solo album that I really like.

Great posts Kate

+1

For some reason, I've left this sitting on my desktop for two or three years: Jonathan Richman's graph of pop music in the late '60s (done for some Boston publication at the time--the Boston Phoenix?).

https://i.postimg.cc/rF3YPzXH/richman.jpg

Did people read the 33 1/3 book about "Roadrunner"? Which basically said it was an update of "Maybellene," iirc

I think that was the publication of the guy who ran the cult the girl in Zabriskie Point was in.

Whis is discussed in the the book Astral Weeks.

Mel Lyman

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Apparently Joe Harvard, who wrote the early 33 1/3 book (the 11th) about VU and Nico, originally set out to write one about the S/T Modern Lovers, but I guess his editor/publisher thought maybe it was a little too esoteric so soon in the series. Obviously they're a lot less normcore these days.

No, sorry, another zine called Vibrations, apparently.

Jonathan Richman's graph of pop music in the late '60s

Volunteers came out in November ‘69, so I’m not sure why the “Airplane” line is crashing quite as precipitously as it does…

That's where I found out about it, the Astral Weeks book--then found it online.

Josh Clover's "Roadrunner" book is a different series.

(Why does the “Who” line split up and the strands diverge like that; was the idea that the guys were all gonna do solo albums, KISS style?)

I have to agree that VU got closest to God at the end of 1970.

Yeah, sorry, the Singles series.

Have there only been three of those so far?

Do you recommend the "Roadrunner" book?

yes indeed.

Seem to recall there was a rave review from Xgau.

https://robertchristgau.substack.com/p/faster-miles-an-hour-who-knows-where

Also just read Rockin' Robin Beth' Wikipedia page. Pretty interesting career.

The graph is from 1968.

I said hello to the graph from 1968.

Yeah, sorry, the Singles series.
― The Ginger Bakersfield Sound (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, February 25, 2024 10:03 PM (forty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Have there only been three of those so far?
― The Ginger Bakersfield Sound (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, February 25, 2024 10:05 PM (thirty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Do you recommend the "Roadrunner" book?
― Lily Dale, Sunday, February 25, 2024

Yes, yes, and yes. And--I don't do this often, but I have to here--there was supposed to be a fourth, my own "American Pie" book, but (for reasons explained in the book--it was amicable) I ended up self-publishing.

Thanks for the link. “Recently the Velvets have become even more basic.”

its nice that he saw god in VU. a lot of people probably saw death. i wonder how he felt about ccr the west coast death choogle band. the yin to the yang. or maybe they were the yang to VU's yin. i forget.

I saw Richman in a club once, but I can't remember where or when--mid-'80s, probably, around the time of the solo album that got an A from Christgau.

I always saw the Airplane as the Yang to the VU’s Yin. Or maybe the Dead… one of those two.

no its ccr. i've done research.

diddley-based death choogle wasn't really the airplane's thing. or the dead's thing. they were acid-based. and thematically vu and ccr are way more similar.

and i know what you are going to say, what about the doors? and yeah the failed poet thing is strong there but it falls apart if you look close enough. too many discrepancies. though i'm sure nico could have done a fine alabama song.

My brother and I went to see Jonathan Richman in Olympia last summer and it was a wonderful experience. It was a small crowd in a big theater and he invited us all down to the foot of the stage and turned it into a dance party that lasted the whole show. He was dancing, we were dancing, there were singalongs, there was clapping. It was all beautifully weird and friendly and felt like something we had stumbled into rather than buying tickets to. It was all the more charming because my neighborhood in Seattle was super crowded for Pride that weekend and it all felt huge and corporate, so to end up in a little theater in Olympia dancing with Jonathan Richman felt almost like stepping back in time. (Or to use a specifically Richman analogy, on that particular weekend Olympia:Seattle::Lesbian Bar:First Bar).

i'm just glad that jonathan richman used his powers for good because he totally could have started a truly scary death cult if he had wanted to. lots and lots of smiling....

(of course we don't know how many bodies people will find under those pizza ovens he built behind his house until after he's gone...)

xxp awesome

One day they encounter an ordinary object, a popular object, but they see its beauty, they encounter it with a sort of religious fervor, and they see that the world is filled with these things, that the world is thus itself beautiful. It is a sort of revelation. And they have a need to deliver this message about their love for the world, about the extraordinariness of the ordinary, and they see that a pop song is the way to do this because a pop song is, like a highway, both a perfect conveyance and a perfect example of this sort of ordinary, popular, beautiful thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDHczbgGgHY

And--I don't do this often, but I have to here--there was supposed to be a fourth, my own "American Pie" book, but (for reasons explained in the book--it was amicable) I ended up self-publishing.

4%--it's a long preface. Returning to thread to Jonathan Richman, who hijacked it fair and square.

"the thread"

This is one of those discussions that I'll be looking for two years from now and have no idea what thread it was in.