You all know how much I love Jonathan Richman so naturally I'm not going to pass up this opportunity to give my hero a little bit more exposure.
Jonathan has been recording his wonderful music for well over 30 years now - the first Modern Lovers album was released in 1976 but most of the tracks had been recorded four or five years earlier - so it's actually closer to 40 years. In that time, his songs have covered a huge variety of themes, ranging from homages to his his heroes (Vincent Van Gogh, Harpo Marx, Walter Johnson) to songs extolling the virtues of his favourite places (Give Paris One More Chance, New England, Bermuda, Nineteen In Naples): from children's songs (Hey There Little Insect, I'm A Little Dinosaur, Ice Cream Man) to songs celebrating the joys of life (The Morning Of Our Lives, Fly Into The Mystery, That Summer Feeling). This is what makes it so easy to recommend Jonathan Richman over on the mothership - it's relatively rare to have a theme which Jonathan hasn't covered at some time or other (revenge was a recent exception).
But the theme that occurs most frequently in Jonathan's work is that of domestic relationships - whether things are going well for him or not, it seems like there's nothing Jojo likes more than to bare his soul and share his thoughts, troubles and joys with the world. So here's just a small selection from the Jonathan Richman canon covering the whole gamut of relationships from start to finish. I've tried to be clever and create some sort of narrative which may or may not have worked...
2 comments:
Well, that was a joy, TB! The time I was exposed to Jonathan Richman was around the time I was getting heavily into jazz and, as that new universe opened up, I never kept up with what he was doing. That left me with a very small selection of Jonathan Richman songs, of which I was extremely fond, and a vague sense that there was plenty more where that came from. It's wonderful to have some titles with which to start the catching-up process.
Oh, and I've just noticed your comment back to my gargantuan post last night on the mothership - you're too kind but dig the freaky simultaneous mutual appreciation! Must be that Everton-Spurs axis of blue misery thing in preparation for us both getting dumped out of the Carling and UEFA Cups over the coming week or so.
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