the short list, pt.2: modern lovers
I wasn’t expecting the first of these posts to go on for quite so long, and I know you all have the attention spans of mice on speed. So I’ve broken up my almost-not-quite list of 33&1/3 classic album proposals into several posts, the second of which you are in middle of right now. This is your life happening. So let’s get to it.
In the early going, the album I thought I’d be pitching - that is, after the rat bastard writer Jeffrey Roesgen stole “Rum, Sodomy, & the Lash” from me, an eventuality to which I responded with characteristic grace - and the one that I’m still thinking I possibly should have picked: Modern Lovers - Modern Lovers. This is Jonathan Richman’s first album, the one with “Roadrunner” and “She Cracked” and “Pablo Picasso.” If you haven’t heard these songs, it’s my duty to tell you that you have been living in a drab, colorless world, and your food must taste like cigar ashes, and so for your delight I’ll post “Roadrunner” right here.
Modern Lovers is a mostly ignored classic, recorded in 1973 & released in 1976 - delay due to narrow minds at a record company, etc. As every review will say, Richman was a Velvet Underground disciple, and in fact John Cale helped out with production on this release. The Modern Lovers are godfathers to all rock geekery - Weezer, Nothing Painted Blue (more on them sometime), They Might Be Giants, Cake - if you like any of these bands, flip back to the original Modern Lovers album for some roots.
Original Modern Lovers band members later turned up in the Talking Heads and the Cars. Richman soon lost interest in this more punk-ified style & moved toward the “Ice Cream Man” phase of his career, the Peter Pan/Pee Wee Herman hybrid familiar to anyone who saw “There’s Something About Mary”. Remember the singing dude who keeps strolling into the frame, the one who gets shot at the end and falls in the bay? Well, that guy recorded a proto-punk classic that’s actually fun to listen to, as opposed to, say, 85% of punk. Genius.
Richman is on Vapor Records now, which is Neil Young’s label - this seems appropriate, since they’re both odd, uncompromising types, who I suspect would have great fun comparing sweater collections. He still tours, just came through Austin a month ago. Next to zero publicity, you have to hunt him down; I’ll try to post any time I hear of a tour. One of his more recent albums featured this excellent title and cover:
Obviously, I’m a huge personal fan of Jonathan Richman; I like that he dressed square in the early seventies and I like that he bragged about not doing drugs (”I’m Straight”) the same year that Dark Side of the Moon came out. Basically, I like the contrarian in him. He’s like the Dead Milkmen: not only anti-establishment, but also anti- the anti-establishment people. He’s his own man.
Anyway: I had to let this one go for the reason many of my favorites got the axe: 33 & 1/3 is getting more sales-senstive, and they stress that any proposed book should have the potential to sell 4,000-5,000 copies. Could a book on Modern Lovers do so? Maybe. But I thought my ultimate choice had a much better shot.
There’s also the fact that this was a retroactive classic. Richman basically disowned it, and in 1976, it didn’t make much of a splash. It was cobbled together from demos, and in that sense it’s kind of a fake album. So, in the end, no Modern Lovers from me.
More on the short list to come…