the Common Place

(Still dealing with post-flu lassitude, not up to much intellectual effort, but here’s a roundup of some Jonathan Richman artifacts for the common place book.)

Though my husband, the Bicycle Repairman, accuses Richman of being “Raffi for adults, ” he definitely has a place in the secret history of the 20th century. He’s been called a proto-punk for his his first album with the original Modern Lovers: The classic “Roadrunner” from that album is supposedly the first punk song, and it’s been covered by everyone, including the Sex Pistols. Though what Sid and Johnny were doing singing  about driving by the Stop’n’ Shop on a suburban highway late at night with the AM radio on, I’ll never know.

Here’s an extended tribute to Roadrunner  by Laura Barton in the UK Guardian: The car, the radio, the night - and rock’s most thrilling song.

I especially wanted to preserve this item in my commonplace book: Jonathan’s letter to Creem magazine in December 1973.

(letter via rockcritics.com )

The something about Jonathan that people love or hate is probably that he’s always refused to conform to other people’s expectations, even if it meant breaking up his group or having audiences yell at him. But there’s always this magnificent joy and generosity that comes through in his performances, that wanting “to make them feel better:”

Well we’ve got alot alot of hard work today
We gotta rock at the government center
To make the secretaries feel better
When they put those stamps on the letters

And they got alot alot of great desks and chairs
Now, at the government center
Where they put the stamps on all the letters
And then they write it down in the ledger

We gotta rock-a rock-a rock-a nonstop tonight
Uh huh, at the government center
Where they put the stamps on the letters
And then they write it down in the ledger

We won’t stop until we see secretaries smile
And see some office boys jump up for joy
Tell old Mr. Ayhern, “Calm down a while,
You know that’s the only way the center is ever gonna get better”

-Government Center, which is on the purple Modern Lovers album as well as some later ones.

And I also admire the way he can do this multi-lingually, in French, Italian, and Spanish as well as Bostonian English. I guess that he’s accomplished the goal he set in 1983 in the liner notes for Rockin’ and Romance:

I want to sing all over the world and have my records be in the ‘International Section’ of your record store, not far from Charles Aznavour and Maurice Chevalier, and guys like that.

From youtube, here’s the post-proto-punk Jonathan in 1978, singing about how he loves New England on the BBC’s Top of the Pops, and here’s the more mature SF Mission District resident, but still with that boyish openness. Also, I love this flip-book animation by Daniel Britt, done to She Cracked.

Bye bye!

(The photo above is from TwinTone Records’ Jonathan Richman scrapbook. )

PS: The Bicycle Repairman would like to clarify that his comment about Jonathan is not an “accusation,” and that he likes both Raffi and Jonathan a lot. OK, I guess you won’t have to sleep on the couch tonight after all.