{"id":23913,"date":"2022-10-18T05:30:07","date_gmt":"2022-10-18T09:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=23913"},"modified":"2022-10-18T08:37:11","modified_gmt":"2022-10-18T12:37:11","slug":"album-reviews-four-from-jonathan-richman-and-the-modern-lovers-part-2-of-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/10\/18\/album-reviews-four-from-jonathan-richman-and-the-modern-lovers-part-2-of-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Reviews: Four from Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers (Part 2 of 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Picking up where I left off<\/a> in my discussion of four Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers reissues from Omnivore Recordings\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll with the Modern Lovers<\/b><\/i> (1977)
\nBizarre in the extreme, the record opens with a traditional Japanese folk instrumental. The album cover looks like a children\u2019s record, and the song selection (\u201cWheels on the Bus\u201d ferchrissake) does nothing to dispel that impression. The thin production and dashed-off vibe has been considered \u201cpunk\u201d in some quarters, but I just don\u2019t get it. The primarily acoustic arrangements are anything but the \u201crock \u2018n\u2019 roll\u201d of the album title, save for the vaguely Jordanaires feel of the backing vocals. This is more a folk record than anything else, and is likely to leave fans of \u201cRoadrunner\u201d bewildered.<\/p>\n

\"\"Back in Your Life<\/b><\/i> (1979)
\nAfter classifying the \u201877 LP as rock \u2018n\u2019 roll, at least the crowdsourced brain trust at Wikipedia had the good sense to label this one \u201cpop rock.\u201d Credited to Richman and the Modern Lovers, half of the record is the singer completely on his own. The tracks with the band are pretty good, closer in spirit to the early \u201870s material, but only in comparison to the other records, which is grading with a very<\/em> steep curve. Richman deserves points for his honesty and lack of guile, though listeners could be forgiven for wondering if the whole thing was some kind of put-on. (It wasn\u2019t.) The childlike lyrics on tracks like \u201cBuzz Buzz Buzz\u201d suggest that Richman wrote these songs when he was 11. (He didn\u2019t.) By this point, Jonathan Richman\u2019s chosen musical path was set, and to expect him to do otherwise would be a recipe for frustration.<\/p>\n

\"\"Modern Lovers \u2018Live\u2019<\/b><\/i> (1977)
\nAha<\/i>, some potential listeners might have thought. Maybe this one will rock a bit<\/i>. Alas, no. Ostensibly live, this record sounds pretty much the same as the studio records. The live readings of \u201cIce Cream Man\u201d are a bit different from their studio counterparts, but the energy level still suggests that the players were seated in comfy chairs when they cut the tracks. The audience is digging it in an oddly dignified manner, clapping and laughing seemingly on cue. The between-song banter fits in exactly as one might expect. The playing is restrained almost beyond belief.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Jonathan Richman is an artist of merit, one whose work is important within the context of garage rock and even punk. But as his body of work has made plain \u2013 as as these four albums vividly illustrate \u2013 The Modern Lovers<\/em> is very much an outlier in his catalog. Approach these record with that understanding, and there are simple, innocent joys to be found within.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Picking up where I left off in my discussion of four Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers reissues from Omnivore Recordings\u2026 Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll with the Modern Lovers (1977) Bizarre […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23917,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,64,65],"tags":[4958,1622,4959],"class_list":["post-23913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop","category-reissue","category-review","tag-jonathan-richman","tag-omnivore-recordings","tag-the-modern-lovers","cat-51-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23913"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23994,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23913\/revisions\/23994"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}