Interview #15 : Greg "Curly" Keranen

Thanks to Bob, I managed to contact Greg “Curly” Keranen who must be the ultimate Modern Lover, the musician whose collaboration with Jonathan has lasted the longest time, though Tom Larkins must be close. He is still involved in Jonathan projects today and they are close friends.

(picture courtesy of G. Keranen)

Curly as a bass player became famous for the opening lines of “Egyptian Reggae”, He started to work with Jonathan already when he was in the Rubinoos. He is part of the historical Modern Lovers line-up which recorded “Rock’n Roll with the Modern Lovers." He was also with Jonathan at the time of the Rockin Robins.

All the details are explained by Greg below and the infamous “lost full orchestra album” story is eventually clarified. Greg has also been interested for ages in Brazilian music, bossa nova and jazz; he even played with Stan Getz who is the perfect link between both musical channels. To us he is Greg “Curly” Keranen, to the bossa nova fans he is João Dilberto, his alter ego, moreover he is a trained computer expert. He has his own website which I encourage you to visit at http://www.dilberto.com.

I started by mentioning to Greg how the "Beserkley Chartbusters vol.1" LP had been important in my life -so to say- as well as the following albums of Jonathan and his Modern Lovers on that Californian label.

Today these albums still produce happiness in me, just simple stupid joy. These records were a way to escape the greyness and they made me smile as will do a Jonathan concert today.

Greg, you were part of that magic, specially on that "Rock'n Roll with the Modern Lovers" LP.

The most important records for me were:
1964 - The Beatles - I Wanna Hold Your Hand; Meet the Beatles LP
1973 - Chick Corea - Return to Forever LP, Light As A Feather LP
2006 - Sylvain Luc

Though I can't speak for him, I know some of the most important, for Jonathan, were:

Buddy Holly
Velvet Underground
Iggy & The Stooges

Recently, we've been talking about how different types of musical temperament affect you - Equal Temperament versus Just Intonation, etc. Jonathan bought me the Albert Ayler 'Holy Ghost' boxed set a few weeks ago, and I volleyed back with a Keith Jarrett 'The Impulse Years'.

-Speaking of which I shall ask my first question about the song "Dodge Veg-O-Matic". In the CD reedition of that song, there is a spoken intro part. Was that you making fun of Jonathan about this old car ?

No. That was Leroy Radcliffe. That record was very much like our rehearsals - we were always joking around and playing roles. One of the great things about Jonathan is how he is able to mix comedy and sincerity - a lot of people can't figure out how to handle it - they want to know: is Jonathan really serious or not? They want things to be black or white. Jonathan is all about color.



Curly, Jonathan and Leroy

- You were a founder member of the Rubinoos, a major power pop band in its time.The Rubinoos used to be a backing band for Jonathan after the 1st Modern Lovers disbanded, what was the setlist Jonathan would be performing then and what was the audience reaction ?

I don't think the Rubinoos ever played a live gig with Jonathan except for possibly sitting in with us at the "Longbranch Saloon" in Berkeley, and a bit of a publicity stunt rendition of "The New Teller" and "Government Center" that I think we played on the street in the San Francisco Financial District around the time the record came out. Therefore, there was never a 'set list', except for the tunes on the Chartbusters LP.

- With that band you had a few songs on the "Beserkley chartbusters vol I " record, as did Greg Kihn, Earthquake and Jonathan. Did you enjoy recording with Jonathan on two of his songs ("Government Center" and "New Teller") ?

Absolutely! It was Rock and Roll - the real thing!

That was the kind of music that we originally created the Rubinoos to play, but by the time we met Jonathan, The Rubinoos had become something completely different - a 'pop' band. Originally, we were an Oldies band, doing songs by Bill Haley, Chubby Checker, The Troggs, etc. I never really cared much for 'pop' music - my passion was jazz - but I played in the band because they were some of my best friends and it was a chance to play on bigger stages. But my heart wasn't in it; I left the Rubinoos soon after meeting Jonathan.

Unlike all of us in the Rubinoos, who thought we had to become 'entertainers' to be successful in the music business, Jonathan was a real entertainer - and a real person! I had never met anyone like him before. All I really wanted to do was to play music and have fun. Jonathan took care of the entertainment and the fun, and the music took care of itself.

- On that same record is my favourite version of "Roadrunner". Were you on it or was it strictly Earthquake backing Jonathan? What are your memories of those sessions?

Earthquake backed Jojo on Roadrunner. I wasn't involved in the sessions except possibly to add
some handclaps or backing vocals.

The sessions went down quickly - maybe two takes. Jonathan was doing push-ups and eating a lot of health food at the time, running a lot. He was healthy and very high energy and feeling really great to be finally free of the music "industry" in L.A. He really fell in love with Berkeley - singing and playing on the street all the time, on campus, sleeping on floors, etc.

- Was it the first time you were confronted to Jonathan ? Had you seen him in the previous years when he was on the west coast with the 1st line up of the Modern Lovers? If so, how were the gigs?

I hooked up with Jonathan because, after he disbanded The Modern Lovers, The Rubinoos manager, Matthew Kaufman -founder of Beserkley records and self proclaimed "reigning looney"-, had signed Jonathan to do Beserkley Chartbusters and Jonathan didn't have a band.

Jonathan had played a gig, with his original Modern Lovers band, at a local club in Berkeley,
called "The Longbranch Saloon", where all the Beserkley acts used to play. Everybody loved him but I didn't see that gig and had never heard of Jonathan. I was sort of thrust into the situation of meeting Jonathan because it was Matthew's idea. Jonathan really loved our innocence, after having just "Escaped from LA" with a big record company and a band with a lot of egos trying to force him down a "career path" in the rock industry.

- You recorded the beautiful "Rock'n roll with the Modern Lovers" album. The band at that time seemed ideal for the sound Jonathan wanted to get. Could you tell us about the conditions of recordings? There was also those reports saying that Jonathan was applying some para-military like style of life to his band, with fitness program and proper diet; could you comment on that? Were you all happy with this?

You're right - it might possibly have been the most 'perfect' alignment between Jonathan and a band that has existed.

I think that this record marks the point where Jonathan finally found a new identity that was
all his own - he had clearly gone beyond the 'Velvet Underground' period.

At the time, a lot of people weren't quite ready for that evolution since the first Modern Lovers
demo sessions had only just, finally, just been released, after being acquired by Beserkley Records. We played an important concert at Town Hall in New York right after that record came out and it was attended by a lot of fans and artists who expected to hear the original Modern Lovers songs. Sure we played the hell out of "Road Runner," but by the time we got to the 10th encore of "Ice Cream Man" there was a bit of booing from the audience. Reactions were really mixed, but that show succeeded in getting a lot of attention.

That mythical LP, Curly right on acoustic bass


But let me back up a minute.

The acoustic bass was a really important part of that evolution in Jonathan's music. I had started acoustic bass, along with electric, on Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers LP but by the time of Rock 'n' Roll With the Modern Lovers, we had stopped using the electric bass entirely.

It was like returning to the roots of Rock and Roll - we were playing Joe Turner songs (who I actually played with at the same time, incidentally) - when bands like the Talking Heads
were going in the opposite direction - towards technology - while Jonathan was moving away from that; moving more toward jazz.

After Chartbusters, Jonathan still didn't have a band but it was time to make the first, really official, Jonathan Richman LP.

I had been riding my bicycle around Europe in the autumn of 1975. I was in Barcelona on the day of General Franco's funeral - communists and fascists in the streets, lots of guns, and really great paella - and I phoned home to learn that Jonathan had been trying to locate me to join his band. I went to Andalucia for a week or so and then flew home.

I called up, talked to Jonathan on the phone, then to his manager, who offered me the gig.

I was only 17 then, but I had one condition - if Jonathan wanted me to play acoustic bass, then I needed a really nice one. Stanley Clarke and Eddie Gomez were my idols then but all I had was a plywood Kay bass. That would have been fine for Jonathan, but not for me.

Anyway, Beserkley agreed to buy me a better bass, which they later did, in style. I packed up and moved to Boston. That was the time that I joined the Modern Lovers.

When I got to Boston, Jonathan had already teamed up with Leroy Radcliffe and had re-hired David Robinson, who had been the drummer with the original Modern Lovers band.

It was surprising to me that Jonathan had invited David back since he was quite determined to forge a new path from the sound, and politics, of that band. David really loved Jonathan's music and had agreed to completely follow Jonathan's direction, this time around.

I really loved David's playing - especially when we played Road Runner! David loved that music but Jonathan held us all on a very tight leash - he was afraid of slipping back into the 'old' sound, especially in terms of dynamics - he wanted to play quieter, not louder.

This was really frustrating for David - I also really wished that Jonathan would just let go and
rock harder - but that was not to be. Every time David started getting into it, Jonathan would tell him to quiet down.

One day, at a rehearsal, Jonathan tried putting a towel over David's snare and still, it wasn't quiet enough for him! Jonathan's standard back then was that he wanted to make music that would be accessible to even a baby's sensitive ears. He still wanted to play Rock and Roll with a lot of intensity and playfulness, but felt that it should never damage anybody's ears. What a concept! His former idols, The Velvet Underground, were into heroin; Iggy Pop was into self-mutilation. Jonathan was into health food, loved singing for people in nursing home, and babies.

That was enough for David - he quit on the spot. He just couldn't understand it and, wasn't really technically prepared - what Jonathan really needed was a drummer with jazz chops.

David's departure was a tipping point that released a lot of tension for everybody. It was best for David since, soon thereafter, he started the band, The Cars, with Rick Ocasek and got to do just what he wanted.

We didn't have a drummer for awhile, after David left. This brings me to the next huge evolution in our music - our next drummer, D. Sharp, whose first name was David but everybody called him "D. Sharp".


D. Sharp was one of the busiest and best jazz drummers in Boston at the time. We only happened to meet him because we had decided to rent his basement as a rehearsal space. D. Sharp's wife, Nancy, used to serve us all macrobiotic lunches and D. Sharp would hang out and jam with us, then run off to play a jazz gig somewhere.

D. Sharp heard something in Jonathan's music that nobody had ever heard before - jazz. But not just jazz like the 'Roots of Rock' type of thing - Joe Turner, Illinois Jacquet, etc. D. Sharp loved Jonathan because he thought he was really "out there" - truly 'avant-garde' - more like Sun Ra than the rest of Rock and Roll.

A good example was the snare drum issue. Whereas David Robinson quit because he was muffled to death, D. Sharp delighted in finding a musical solution: enter the 1947 De Soto hub cap, cum 'snare drum'!

In place of the traditional snare, D. Sharp placed a 1947 De Soto hub cap, which he played with mallets, along with an assorted array of pot lids hanging from a rack, a huge African drum, covered with zebra skin, Brazilian cuica, etc. On a song like "Afternoon" he used to actually play the AIR, with brushes, as Jonathan sang, "...the wind...I am, I am..."

I get chills up my spine just thinking about that stuff. It was really deep. The deepest was when we just practiced outside somewhere. Jonathan wrote a lot of songs about the city, bleak, industrial zones - but it was the natural mystery behind such things that he was really trying to evoke. We were so close that we would rehearse for hours and nobody would say a word to disturb the trance. It was a continuous flow of music and spirit that possessed us all. Lots and lots of eye-contact. All the time. That's something that most people are very poor at - they are so self-centered. It takes a lot of practice to learn how to shut off all the nervous energy, the trivial conversation and to approach music like it is a natural force, or prayer, to be channeled, nurtured and respected.

You might say Jonathan was closer to a mystic than a drill sergeant :-)

There were times when we used to do push-ups together, jumping jacks and vocal exercises. Mostly that was in the period between David Robinson and D. Sharp - when Jonathan seemed to need to know he was still in control of his band. Leroy and I enjoyed it so it wasn't a big deal. After all, Jonathan was our employer. The thing was that he saw music and diet and exercise as being inter-related - he sometimes directed us in exercising but he never told us what to eat, though alcohol wasn't allowed at gigs.

When D. Sharp joined the band, Jonathan relaxed a lot! First of all, D. Sharp was older and a bit more experienced than the rest of us, and he wouldn't be dictated to. Also, Jonathan felt less threatened by 'rebelliousness' from the band since the music had evolved to a higher level.

- What is your favourite song of all the songs you played backing Jonathan ?

Probably the ones I didn't have to sing on.

"Afternoon" was our favorite 'spiritual'
"South American Folk Song" was maybe the most fun
"Road Runner" had hypnotic power and sex appeal

- Tim Mitchell mentions in his book ("There's Something About Jonathan") that there was an album recorded with a full orchestra at the Gold star studios with Phil Spector's engineers which Jonathan rejected even though Matthew Kaufman described the result as just magic. Apparently you were one of the happy few who heard those tapes, what did it sound like ?

So the true story has never been exposed yet?
Yes, I heard the tapes, but they did not make me happy.

Actually, I was the one responsible for Jonathan deciding to ditch those tapes, to the great dismay of Matthew Kaufman who had already spent a fortune producing those sessions with the likes of Steve Douglas, Carol Kaye, etc.

What happened was that I had just dropped out of College at the University of Chicago, in my senior year, to rejoin Jonathan's band. We met up in Berkeley and he was really excited to play me the tapes. One song I remember was "Let's Take the Long Way Home", which had originally been recorded by Bing Crosby.

They had recorded a full string section, just like the Bing Crosby record! Imagine hearing Jonathan's voice in place of Bing Crosby's - it was horrible. In that kind of setting, all I could hear was how out of tune and nasal Jonathan's voice sounded, and how awkward it all was. The kind of hyper-emotional passion Jonathan was trying to evoke might have worked with solo guitar, but not with an orchestra, and the memory in the mind of the listener of how Bing Crosby would have sounded, in contrast - smooth and confident, not wavering.

One of the reasons that Jonathan and I have stayed such good friends for so long is that we have always been perfectly honest with one another. On this occasion, I told him what I heard and he listened to it all with new ears and decided that he agreed with me. That was the end of it - a failed experiment.

-You were part of the glorious Rockin Robins period, how do you consider that time in Jonathan's career?



Greg -on the left- with the Rockin' Robins

It was a lot of fun! I think there is something very fresh about the female energy that they both added. That was a great change of direction from the all-male bands Jonathan had had for years. However, there was some frustration during that period in Jonathan's personal and business life since he was yet to be united with his first wife, Gail, and, during this time, problems with management came to a head and culminated in Jonathan's decision to fire Matthew Kaufman and leave Beserkley Records and to hire a new manager, Norman Epstein, and sign with a new record company, Sire Records.

- Do you still see Beth and Ellie?

Not for many years now, unfortunately. Beth is a successful independent film producer who does documentaries and got married and lives in the Pacific Northwest, last I heard.

Ellie, Jonathan and Michael on stage

- How was life during those tours you were doing over the US and in Europe? Were the audiences differently reacting, in the US and abroad?

Europe was definitely more intense. I only did one European tour with Jonathan and it burned me out! Too many tiny clubs with low ceilings and cigarette smoke so thick that the tar would be dripping with sweat down my glasses on my way to the stage! Too many clubs where some punk had committed suicide the night before.

I really hate the punk rock scene - definitely not healthy for the ears. In spite of Jonathan distancing himself from all of that energy, some of his biggest fans were people like the Ramones and we would always get booked into punk rock clubs where we had to wear earplugs all the time we weren't on stage. Ridiculous.

I left the band after our last gig in London and moved to Ireland and studied classical guitar for 9 months, then went to Spain to study flamenco guitar and renewed my love for jazz and Brazilian music after that.

- What is it according to you that makes Jonathan concerts different ? I mean I have
never seen so many people smiling in front of a performer.

I'm sure it is different for everybody.

Aside from intangible words like "charisma" and "personality", for me it is the level of honesty and humanity that Jonathan brings out in his story-telling. Maybe I said it before, 'color' - Jonathan is multi-dimensional. He is like a fine film - one where just when you thought you identified the 'good guys' and the 'bad guys', it turns out that the characters actually are real people, with good and bad and everything in between.

Jonathan makes me smile because he reaches out and is not afraid to touch and to be touched and to be really honest and vulnerable and funny too.

-You are from the West Coast, did you understand what Boston meant to Jonathan when you went there with the band ?

Sort of. I drove around to all the places that Jonathan sang about, like Route 128 and the Fenway, Combat Zone, etc. I lived there for a couple of years and enjoyed it. But for Jonathan it was different - maybe not always enjoyable but it was where he grew up and it affected him. For him, it was driving around in cars beneath the buzzing power lines and wandering, lonely, around the Gardner Museum. For me, it was the the fog from the SF Bay, smell of Eucalyptus trees in the East Bay Hills, acid trips and hippies :-)

- You have been one of the musicians who played the most with Jonathan through the years, what do you think of his current songs ?

Jonathan is always coming up with something new and fresh and I always am blown away with one or two songs that he is writing. Recently, we've been recording a new song that deals with the subject of death. Both Jonathan and I have lost a parent in recent years so I felt moved by hearing a really honest look into those emotions.

Also, Jonathan has taken a deep interest into flamenco in the last several years and I am amazed at how naturally he has been able to incorporate some flamenco ideas into his music and make it his own! Flamenco is technically quite difficult and can sound pretty bad when played with a 'macho' feeling.

A lot of Jonathan's previous music comes from a very simple tradition of rock and roll harmony - which can be boring since it only uses diatonic harmony, with little use of modulation or passing tones. That would probably be my biggest criticism of his music, for a bassist it can get boring.

Now I am hearing him venture out more - when I met him, he used to absolutely hate major seventh chords, for example, and didn't like dominant sevenths or ninths that much either. Now he is playing lydian and phrygian modal chords a lot, plus making more mistakes - which is what he likes the best! :-)

This has to do with listening and studying flamenco and jazz a lot more. Jonathan is always
learning and never afraid to try new stuff. As Miles Davis once said to Herbie Hancock: "There
ain't no such thing as a wrong note - until the note that comes AFTER the wrong note!"

- I know that you are more than keen on Brazilian music and culture. I recently saw again the old Glauber Rocha movie "Antonio das mortes" and when came the title track song I could not help but think that Jonathan was quite similar in his own way to Antonio das mortes, favouring innocence and loyalty versus profit and business. I just have to quote this beautiful unreleased song "My name is Jonathan and I can't stand seeing people with their feelings hurt?". Could you comment on that?

That was a great song. Jonathan has written a lot of songs like that that never get released but which convey a simple and powerfully honest emotion.

Jonathan and I attended a João Gilberto concert together a couple of years ago and he was really blown away. João had such a strong, beautiful voice and his guitar playing was so masterful and rock-steady. We have talked about that many times.

- What made you evolve from the Jonathan type of music to bossa nova which you play nowadays ?

Well, partly it was just a natural consequence of growing up listening to jazz. As a baby, my parents listened to a lot of jazz and occasionally hosted dinners for the likes of John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman when we lived in Chicago. Then we were all listening to Bossa Nova in the 60's and the first Return to Forever LP with Flora Purim and Airto was perhaps the deepest musical experience for me.

I was not attracted to Jonathan's music so much as I became his friend and collaborator. Aside from Jonathan, I haven't really played much music besides jazz in the last 30 years or so. And, as D. Sharp put it - Jonathan has a lot in common with jazz.

As a bassist, however, I got to the point where I was tired of always being a sideman and having to depend on finding at least one other person to play with on gigs. I decided to return to my first instrument, the guitar so that I could play solo, at least occasionally. I still play bass but I won't compromise anymore. I am not interested in playing on anybody's gig unless I really like the music. It is hard finding other musicians who are willing to find a win-win - mostly the guy who organizes the band and finds the gigs considers it his or her right to call the tunes. There is so much great music out there - life is far too short to sacrifice an hour of time for $50 or even $100 on a gig.

Actually lately I'm more focused on solo jazz guitar and blues than on Bossa Nova. But bossa nova is wonderful music and I it is something that I can play solo and everybody seems to like.

But I've kind of given up on trying to sing like João Gilberto.

- Any anecdote related to Jonathan ?

Gee. I've been typing for over 4 hours at this point. I wish I could think of something simple but nothing comes to mind at the moment. Sorry. Remind me in a few weeks and I'll contribute an anectode for your blog.

Thanks Greg it has been a pleasure to discuss with you.

-- Jacques_

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Pablo Picasso, Dancing in the Lesbian Bar

Jonathan Richman (live 2002)
Uploaded by mrdantefontana

I think this is from Take Me to the Plaza

record stores

Over the years it's been obvious to me that the motley fans of Jonathan Richman usually have a few things in common: they're rare, they're devoted (they can't say exactly why and sometimes they may even deny it), they're musicians or know music in some personal way, and they frequent record stores- the endangered 'corner store' varieties being favorite haunts.

Sasha Frere-Jones is the pop music critic at The New Yorker. He's never, to my knowledge, written about Jonathan but this week he has an interesting writeup on Scritti Polliti.

Anyway, lately he's been compiling different people's nostalgic stories of record stores on his blog, S/FJ, good and bad and indifferent, but somehow all familiar.

The original call for tales is here, along with Sasha's musings in response to a story in The New York Times by Alex Williams called "The Graying of the Record Store" that includes this line:

Dave Marsh, the rock critic and author of books on popular music, noted that rockers like Jonathan Richman and Iggy Pop honed their edgy musical tastes working as record store clerks.

Record store tales at S/FJ:

Part 0 (not finished yet)
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10

Another Fine Man Behind Bars

Jonathan Richman Interviews Damien Echols of the West Memphis Three

By Jonathan Richman

I’ve just met a remarkable man. Let me tell you about him.

He’s one of the “West Memphis Three” (Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jesse Misskelley) who have been in prison since 1993 for the murder of three eight-year-old boys. This happened 15 years ago outside of West Memphis, Arkansas. Damien Echols is on Death Row and one glance tells you he does not belong there.

We (myself and my drummer Tommy) got to Grady, Arkansas at 3:45 PM. We had been given advanced permission to interview Damien Echols, and although visiting hours ended at four, they very nicely gave us a full hour to talk with him.

A guard escorted us across the vast lawns to death row. He was pretty friendly, actually. We’d both spent time around the Marysville and Yuba City part of California so we had a little conversation about that. There were, of course, guard towers looming over you. These particular ones had guys behind Plexiglas starin’ at ya.

The prison seemed even crueler than I’d imagined. Not for squalor and overcrowding, but for the opposite. It was a brand new, sterile, ultramodern, ultra-isolated fortress. No possessions are allowed except they be made of paper. No books can be sent from a home address. No food, no vitamins, no CDs, or tapes nor can a prisoner own a CD player or recording device. There are virtually no windows unless you count the skinny rectangle made out of tinted Plexiglas that “If you twist your body enough you can see two inches of sunlight”. According to Damien, who also explained the lack of recorders and things, “They’re afraid you might record the abuse that goes on here.”

So that’s the next thing, it seems that no matter how much abuse we think goes on in a prison by the guards, we might triple it. This, at least, is the impression you get after talking to Damien and later with his wife.

“Have you ever taken a general psychology course?” He asked us. He told us of the school experiment in which students are divided into “Prisoners” and “Guards”. These experiments must always be stopped early before somebody gets hurt because the “Guards” enjoy it too much. So, why is there so much abuse here? Because there’s abuse in all guard-prisoner relationships, he said.

“You become like a dog, cringing when they’re around. You hide anything not to draw their attention. In the movies or on T.V., they show everyone on Death Row to be like Hannibal Lector. But the guards are the ones to be afraid of.”

Talking to him also gave the impression that the day-to-day tension from the abuse was more than he could tell you. Combined with the meager food, (Tommy asked him what he’d eaten that day, Answer: “A bag of chips, a pack of Skittles, canned chili. It’s in these pouches, they won’t let you have cans, so I put hot water on it….” What about breakfast? “Honey Nut Cheerios, but things like that you have to buy.” He explained that the prisoner barter system ranging from trading cigarettes to services rendered. “If you don’t have money in here, you’ll starve.”) lack of exercise, lack of sunlight and the stress from daily harassment from the guards makes health difficult, Especially if lack of sleep is part of this equation.

Since we are on the subject of food, Damien also told us that the prison grows vegetables in their own garden and feeds it to the prisoners….you’ll notice that the vegetables weren’t on his list for that day, so I say…DAMIEN: EAT YOUR VEGETABLES!

“You never go outside?” Asks Tommy. Damien shakes his head no! “They call it outside but…you know what a grain silo is? We go into a grain silo. You have to watch out for the pigeons…”

After this Tommy asks if he’s not afraid to be so candid. If there’s that much abuse won’t he likely be attacked?

“No. The only reason they’re not is because I say it. Once, (after some public statement) they said I was making them look bad. Oh, they beat me some…they starved me…” Then he told us how a priest heard about it so they had to stop. “So the only reason they didn’t do more is because the things I say get attention in the press.” He paused for a second and he said the rest slowly and deliberately, “…pretty much the only thing they’re scared of now, is that people will find out what they’re doing.”

He did say that if they couldn’t get at him directly, “They take it out on Jason [Baldwin], I mean they demoted him. They have him sweeping floors and they tell him why and they tell me why [he’s being singled out].”

But all this hasn’t stopped Damien. “In here I’ve handwritten five books.” And he does mean handwritten. Having gone in as a teenager in 1993, he has never touched a computer nor a cell phone nor a DVD for that matter.

Having read his Almost Home Vol. I, which goes by real fast, I want to read the other books. I asked him what he wanted to say to our readers. He said he wanted people to know about Almost Home Vol. I. He said you can get it on Barnes and Noble.com and Amazon.

His case is now being taken up again along with that of the other West Memphis Three. An appeal is now in the works.

And thus Tommy and I met this calm, outspoken, straight talking person. He has much presence. His eyes are real dark and alert. He smiles easily, especially considering the circumstances. He also listens well. It’s not hard to picture him someday when he’s out of prison as a community leader, a distinguished author. He seems to have that type of concentration and discipline. There’s nothing sloppy about him.

Note that I said “when” he’s out of prison. It’s not exactly a foregone conclusion. In fact, this country has many statesmen-like people on death row who were put there by strange logic: Mumia Abu Jamal, Leonard Peltier and Ruchell Magee come to mind. But Tommy and I left with the feeling that he’d make it out of there somehow. If you’d like to learn more about this case let me recommend a video to you: a documentary in two parts called Paradise Lost I and II. I don’t want to tell you too much, but I will say that you’ll learn…nah…watch it for yourself.

Visit www.wm3.org for more info.

This article originally appeared in Mesh Magazine, San Francisco

Another interview with Damien Echols about his art practice on Death Row can be found here

Jonathan and Damien

The smell of the air
and the wind on my face
makes me remember
other places
and other times
when I wasn't
in hell

-- Damien Echols

Another Fine Man Behind Bars
Jonathan Richman interviews Damien Echols of the West Memphis Three

Jonathan hasn't been touring lately but he has some public appearances in California lined up for May and June.

12 May: Reading poetry by Damien Echols at 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco. Jonathan will be auctioning off one of his own artworks to help pay expenses for The West Memphis Three defense fund
16 May: Paradise Lost 2: Revelations Film Screening at The Attic in Santa Cruz. Jonathan will be speaking about his visit with Damien Echols on Death Row. Greg 'Curly' Keranen will be performing as João Dilberto (heads-up: Curly has Vincent Van Gogh mp3 on his website).
3 June: Benefit for The West Memphis Three at Great American Music Hall in San Francisco on June 3 (see show info) with Mark Kozelek, Chuck Prophet, and Tommy Guerrero. June 3 is also The West Memphis Three Worldwide Awareness Day.

Henry Rollins, Jello Biafra and Jonathan Richman to Speak at "Skeleton Key" Art Auction Benefit for WM3

On May 12th at 6:00 PM, 111 Minna Gallery (111 Minna Street between New Montgomery & 2nd St.) hosts a reception for "Skeleton Key," an art exhibit featuring pieces by death row inmate Damien Echols and several other artists to benefit the WM3 Defense Fund. This one-night-only event includes music, speaking, and poetry readings by punk legends Henry Rollins and [tentatively] Jello Biafra, veteran rocker Jonathan Richman, Penelope Houston of the Avengers, Michale Graves (former singer of the Misfits), Jacob Pitts of Strangers With Candy, and former San Francisco Supervisor Matt Gonzalez. Richman will auction one of his own creations to help the defense fund prove Echols' innocence. The gallery showing opens at 12 PM, and includes works by Winston Smith, Shepard Fairey, and Jonathan Richman. Visit 111minnagallery.com or call 415.974.1719 for more info. Donations will be accepted at the door.

The Premiere of Damien Echols' art (6:00 PM - 2:00 AM)
ONE NIGHT ONLY

May 12th @ 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco

Gallery opens for showing 12noon
Reception: 6PM to 2AM
Address: 111 Minna Street (@ New Montgomery & 2nd Streets)
Phone: 415-974-1719

Henry Rollins\, Jonathan Richman\, Matt Gonzalez \, Penelope Houston and Jacob Pitts will be speaking and reading Damien Echols' poetry. (Tentative: Jello Biafra)

Michale Graves and Jacob Pitts will be providing acoustic sets.

Artists include:
Damien Echols

Anne Regan (collaborating with Damien Echols)
Bob Gruen
Carol Queen
Floria Sigsmondi
Grove Pashley
Jayne County
Jonathan Richman
Lorri Davis (collaborating with Damien Echols)
Mick Rock
Norman Reedus
Shepard Fairey
Winston Smith
DJs: Justin McNeal and Marco Vega

Also of interest:

Almost Home: My Life Story Vol 1(book)
by Damien Echols
The Last Pentacle of the Sun(book)
Writings in Support of the West Memphis Three
Devil's Knot by Mara Leveritt (book)
The story of The West Memphis Three is chronicled online in the CourtTV Crime Library

Margaret Cho also visited Damien Echols on Death Row.
You can read it about it here

Thanks to Allan Hough for his help.

Jonathan Richman: rebellious straight-man, Warhol fan, insect-lover, roadrunner (but not in jogging shoes)

How to get Jonathan Richman? You might ponder the introduction to his signature tune, Roadrunner, in which the singer starts off by counting to six. Or you could examine the irony of the fact that Richman, a gifted lyricist, has had only one hit record, Egyptian Reggae- an instrumental.

Usually, Richman shies away from offering answers. He is a reluctant interviewee, quite unsuited to self-analysis. And yet, on his DVD, Take Me To The Plaza, he is, if not exactly explaining his art, talking around it. At first, he explains that many of the printed interviews with him have been fictional. Interview magazine in the early 1970s: he never said half that stuff. The Kansas City Pitch: that interview never took place. NME, he says, printed interviews that never happened.

He talks about his records. Two-thirds of them were nothing to do with him. There are ugly covers. "There's one of me in a tracksuit, running, with some sort of transistor radio or Walkman. I found that especially revolting."

Roadrunner, of course, is nothing to do with jogging. It is a bleak and lonely song about Richman driving around Massachusetts in his father's station wagon, finding beauty in the mercury vapour labs, and solace in the rock and roll on the radio.

He viewed his first album, The Modern Lovers - a classic - as a collection of demos but, 30 years on, his opinion has softened. He likes the guitar solo on Girl Friend, and Pablo Picasso - who was never called an asshole - because it has John Cale, ex of the Velvet Underground, on piano.

He likes I, Jonathan, dislikes Jonathan Sings, but his favourite is Her Mystery Not of High Heels and Eye Shadow, from 2001. The live album, Live at the Longbranch, released by Ernie Brooks, the Modern Lovers’ bass player, is OK, in that it sounds terrible. "The great stuff is really great and it's so-oh embarrassing. I blush when I listen to those things. I was such a brat."

Some of his records are, he says, too precious. The children's songs - perhaps he means Hey There Little Insect, or Abominable Snowman in the Market - were misunderstood. They were meant to move people, not to be cute. "The good thing about my old records is that I was given complete control. The bad thing about my records is that I was given complete control."

He offers fragments of biography. He was heavily influenced by Roy Rogers singing The Happy Hungry Chuck Wagon Song. If you listen to the music from Zorro, you can hear where his guitar got its cartoon colours from. As he grew older he liked Little Richard, Little Eva, Frankie Lymon, the Crystals, the Chiffons, the Lovin’ Spoonful, the Stooges, the Kinks, the Rolling Stones and the Who. His fondness for the Velvets blossomed when he swapped a Fugs record for one by the VU.

Sweet, soft Jonathan. So private, so eternally mysterious. I arranged to call him and a familiar voice, half-cheerful, half-anxious, boomed from the telephone.

"Hello!?" the voice said. "Just a second! Don't go away!" After 45 long seconds, Richman returned. "Hi! I'm ready."

We talked awhile. Tiny talk. About his audience, which is aged 20-25, because "they're the people who go out". His role in the Farrelly Brothers’ comedy, There's Something About Mary, was "a lot of fun". It also got him recognised "for a few minutes". Every show is different, he said. "It never doesn't change."

We could have gone on like this forever. Everything was nice. It was like breathing on Andy Warhol’s mirror.

"I started out making drawings and paintings. It was really hearing the rock band the Velvet Underground ... I wanted to try and make an atmosphere like that with musical instruments. I didn't play anything at the time and some people still say I don't play anything now, but I just showed up with a guitar and started to make a bunch of noise.

"Painting is good, but you're in your room painting it, or on the sidewalk, and then you show it to people later. With this thing you make it up right there in front of people."

At 18, Richman moved from Boston to New York, to follow the Velvets. He wanted to explore the scene surrounding Warhol's at the Factory.

"It was really starting to break up, so I was on my own. There weren't so many films anymore. If I’d gotten there three years earlier then I would've seen more of the wild stuff."

Warhol, he said, was "very nice. A very honest person, like, uh, I very much liked him."

The public front of Warhol was true?

"I'm not too sure about what the public front is. I was really young and he was just a very nice person to me."

When the Modern Lovers relocated to California, Richman encountered another legendary figure, Gram Parsons. They used to play softball together and there are tales of an inebriated Parsons struggling to complete a round of miniature golf. Gram played guitar for me sometimes. If he'd lived, he mighta sang on a record or two with me. He offered. I didn't offer to sing on a record with him because I didn't want to embarrass him."

Tiny talk exhausted, it seemed safe to ask Richman about his own material. I suggested that critics always claimed his lyrics were naive.

"I don't know," he said. "What do they mean by that?"

Perhaps, I said, it is because some of his songs have a childlike quality.

"I can't tell. Some of them were just supposed to be made up for children."

We talked about rock and roll. Richman’s records are pure and direct, but they seem, at first, to lack rebellion.

"I don't know what you mean," Richman said. "I don't know one way or the other. I don't know whether I did or didn't do that."

To fully understand Richman, you need to go back to the start, to that wild live album. There you can hear that, actually, Richman could hardly have been more rebellious. On the song, I'm Straight, he boasts about the fact that he doesn't take drugs. He was singing to a hippie audience. "The audience hated it. They were supposed to."

They were supposed to, Richman said, because he was angry. "They weren't supposed to like it, and they didn't."

By now, he was trying to get off the phone. We had picked at the enigma long enough. I asked him about his earliest memories. One was hearing opera, Carmen or Aida. He hummed the tune. "Dum dum dum dum, dum-te-tum-te dum."

Was it a happy memory?

"Well," said the author of I'm a Little Dinosaur, Here Come the Martian Martians and I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar, "songs are different. Happy or sad."

-- Alastair McKay

via Alternatives to Valium

Review: 20 June 2005 9:30 Club Washington DC

Jonathan came to the 930 Club in Washington DC last night in fine form. He seemed happy and he looked good in his green shirt, and even Tommy was smiling off and on. There were some interesting new features to the show--- some good and some bad. Tommy had his drum set about 1-2 inches from the edge of the stage, and Jonathan was set up further back. At the beginning and several times during the set, Tommy would play a drum which doubled as his seat, called "Cajon", which I had not seen before. He played it by hand at about his knee level, and it gave a great sound. Unfortunately, the drums being in the foreground led to some diminution of Jonathan's voice in some cases, but not often. The drum seat was hollow and had a microphone behind it. So Tommy is really getting more visibility in the world of Jonathan shows now. Jonathan had to tell the 930 folks to shut off the A/C which is standard for most of the shows he does.

Also unfortunate was the lighting in the show. The whole time, there was backlighting of Jonathan, which led to blinding of the audience and to see Jonathan's face, I had to shade my eyes often or just see a silhouette. The lighting man was over-zealous, I thought, although Peter thinks that Jonathan himself asked for the backlighting so he could see the audience or to discourage photography. I was certainly discouraged by it. I would be curious if other Jonathan fans had noticed him being backlit like that in other shows, which would be a disappointing trend, for those of us who like to stand up front, especially. During the song "The Lilies of the Field", the light man showed some lilies behind Jonathan's head and people started to giggle a bit, so Jonathan turned around and saw it, then interrupted the song to ask the light man to please not show any pictures behind him like that. He just wanted straight, normal lighting. Maybe the light man was smoking something unusual last night!

I believe that Jonathan did 2-3 new songs last night, including "Boston in Wintertime", a song about a house of prostitution in Spanish, and an song he and Tommy worked on the night before, which includes the phrase, "Pretty is pretty for sure, but it isn't everything". All three songs were great, I thought. He did two encores, during which he did the brand new song about being pretty, and the second encore included "Nishi" and "Walter Johnson", a capella.

Here is a set list for those who like to know:

"The World is Showing Its Hand"
drum duet with rhythm sticks and cowbell by Jonathan
"Che Mondo Viviamo"
"Springtime in New York"
"Lesbian Bar" with cowbell
a French song-- about stars that shine like that (?)
"19 in Naples"
"Pablo Picasso"
"Give Paris One More Chance"
"Her Mystery Not of High Heels..."
"Boston in Wintertime"
"Egyptian Reggae"
"Let Her Go Into the Darkness"
drum duet
"Cosi Veloce"
"Lilies of the Field"
"Vincent Van Gogh"
house of prostitution song
"He Gave Us the Wine to Taste"
"My Baby Love, Love, Loves Me Now"
1st encore: song about pretty is pretty for sure, but isn't everything"
2nd encore: Nishi and Walter Johnson

----overall, a pretty good show, not the best, but not the worst either.

-- Sarah

Pictures from this show

Zum Interview....

Jonathan Richman

photos by Alissa Anderson, interview by Jeremy Crown.(an abridged version of this interview appears in the Fall 2004 issue of Herbivore.)

Jonathan Richman is in complete control of the situation: the dingy dimly lit venue, the standing sweaty faithful, and the sound guy, wherever the hell he is. The mics are turning on and off like a kid messing with a light switch, but Jonathan is still singing, no longer in front of the microphone but playing to the crowd. Onstage at the Make Out Room in San Francisco’s Mission District, Jonathan seems at home; dancing with his flamenco guitar off to the side, his left hand down by his leg with his palm out and fingers extended. He really is shaking his hips, like some sort of invisible hula-hoop. The man’s on fire, almost literally; it’s like 100 degrees in this place because he doesn’t want the fan on while he’s playing because of the noise. I don’t blame the guy, but my shirt is sticking to my chest. Somehow, his shirt is still separate, almost loose-fitting. From all the dancing, I guess. It’s no sweat for Jonathan though, he’s been at it for thirty years. Jonathan started playing music at age sixteen in and around Boston, spurred on by his heroes The Velvet Underground. Three years later at age nineteen he formed the Modern Lovers and recorded a demo with The Velvet Underground’s John Cale, unknowingly setting the stage for what would be a new way of looking at music: punk rock. Those years also marked a less publicized milestone—after talking to a rock club janitor he had befriended, he became vegetarian, a decision he has stuck with ever since. In the intervening years he has toured the world many times over and released almost two dozen albums, the most recent of which, this year’s Not So Much To Be Loved As To Love (Vapor/Sanctuary), is one of his best. Those not familiar with his storied career may at least recognize him as the balladeer in the Farrelly Brothers’ romantic comedy There’s Something About Mary, where he and his longtime drummer Tommy Larkins set the scenes with musical commentary and, ironically, play hot dog vendors at one point.The first time I met Jonathan, in my little shop in San Francisco, he was humming a single note while his wife tried on shoes. I remember he was eating a vegan donut and after he finished, walked over to me and said, “So what do you think of Matt Gonzalez?” (Matt is the President of the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco and was the Green Party Mayoral Candidate at the time.) Jonathan had publicly supported Matt, playing a show as a fundraiser for him. We talked about the mayoral race and the current president and other political issues, themes that continue to this day between us. He’s a very political guy but not in any way that is very public. He may say things during one of his shows, like on the Take Me To The Plaza live DVD (Vapor) in which he talks about the war in Iraq. But his first real overtly political song comes on his new album with “Abu Jamal,” a slow pump organ-driven track about the imprisoned writer who has incited an anti-death penalty movement. Jonathan seems to be the type of guy that really stands for things and believes in them and is willing to go Downtown and flyer for them. At the same time though, he’s not a rigid dogmatist; rather his ideology is optimism. He believes in life being beautiful and maybe a little tragic; whether it’s “Springtime in New York,” “Lilies of the Field,” or “Dancing in a Lesbian Bar.” The beauty is there and in front of us all, it just takes Jonathan to remind us, to sing it in our ear (maybe in Spanish, maybe in Italian). Sitting in my shop again on a brisk San Francisco summer day, we talked about the politics of life and speaking for those who cannot speak: the animals, the glass bottles, the bowls of oats. And like the man says, if you’re ever in a jam, “just add raisins and you’re livin’ like a king.”

Being Vegan

Zum: Do you identify yourself as a vegetarian?

Jonathan Richman: It’s a great question. Right now I identify as vegan. I’m not strict, 100%. Every once in a while in some country, someone’s mother will make somethin’ and I’m not gonna ask grandma...you know like she’s there, she’s got her apron on and she spent four hours and I’m a guest at her house. I’m not gonna say, “Excuse me is there oleo Margarine and is there hydrogenated this-and-that. Nah, I eat somethin’. You know, I do the best I can. (laughs). Left to my own devices I’m mostly a vegan.We can talk about how it is traveling and staying vegan.

Zum: Is it harder now to be vegetarian and travel now?

JR: Oh it’s much easier. Like going to Germany in 1970, it was sausage and sausage and sausage and sauerkraut drenched in whatever. It’s easier now. There are health food stores on every corner, all over the world. All over where I travel anyway. Even if there aren’t, if you have to travel you can take a few things with ya. Like, take a bag of oats. You can just add water to ‘em, you don’t have to cook ‘em. You get a bowl and oats. Take some sea salt…Add water, you got a meal. (laughs) A few raisins, you’re livin’ like a king. (laughs)

Zum: When did you first think of yourself as a vegetarian.

JR: Well, when I was 17 I knew this older guy. He must have been old like 26 or 24 (laughs)… And it was at this rock club I hung out at and he was the janitor and later became a friend for life. And he said things to me like, “Hey, did you ever think of being a vegetarian?” and I said, “No, can you do it? Can you live like that?” and he said “Yeah..” I said, “and you don’t, like starve to death?” and he said, “No.” And he was a big strong muscular guy himself and he said, ”I’m one” and I said, “That’s great.” And so I tried it. My mother had a fit. All of the sudden, “you mean you don’t want the corn beef sandwiches?” You know, like she would always make. And I tried it without it, and I made the mistake that new vegetarians make which is going to yogurt and sugar, like fruit-flavored yogurt with lots of honey in things. Cause you want something other than just the raw carrot. And if it’s not gonna be meat, a lot of times the temptation is to go to lots of dairy products and especially you end up getting sweetened stuff for some reason, I’m not quite sure what it is. And that was not doing it. My mother called that one right, she said, “You’re getting sick because you’re eating too much sugar,” and she was right. So that was when I first got interested. I was more or less a vegetarian from then on.

Buying Chickpeas in Spain

Zum: I know you like Spain a lot and you have songs in Spanish on your new album. However, I found that in France, when I was just vegetarian, that it was hard to get across what vegetarian really meant.

JR: Yeah, in fact sometimes in France I can think of instances where a friend of mine would take me to a certain place and the guy who ran it was a friend of his. And my pal never brought me back there again ‘cause it was too embarrassing for him. They get too offended. They question your manhood…they have all kinds of problems with it. (laughs) It is a fixed system—it’s changing. But that generally is the way it’s always been. That’s restaurants, but you can go around this by going to a grocery store and get some oats and get a can of chickpeas…. There are loads of good things you can eat. In restaurants it’s much harder as you say ‘cause then there is a social question. “Is this person gonna be insulted?” A lot of times the chef will, but the grocery clerk isn’t gonna be offended when you just buy chickpeas.There are now vegan restaurants in Spain. We went to one in Salamanca. There are vegan restaurants in Madrid. There’s also in Spain, articles in the daily papers against bullfighting.

Zum: Do you think that’s a movement really?

JR: Yes, and this is a big change for Spain, that you could even find such articles on the editorial pages of the daily papers; and long articles too.

Zum: Do you notice a good response to that from people you talked to?

JR: Actually I didn’t talk to anyone, I just read the papers. But I noticed, well the city of Barcelona has already passed a resolution to make Barcelona a non-bullfighting city. It’s major. It’s not legally binding but there is a group that had enough of a majority that they could make a resolution like that.

The President

Zum: It’s hard… especially with the Bush Administration, I feel that Americans are always in everybody’s face as far as our opinions (i.e. Iraq, etc). I can’t change what Bush does but I think that maybe if I can present myself in a more even way then I'll feel as though I can give myself a better name as an American. You know what I mean?

JR: No, ‘cause too much emphasis is being placed on who’s president. I think we’ve been like this for years. Some presidents are worse public speakers than others, but the program is similar. There has been a basic party line, no matter which party it is.

Zum: Well, it’s hard to know what to do. You feel a little disenfranchised.

JR: Well, Paul McCartney said that being a vegetarian is one of the best single things you can do for environment and for other things. I don’t know how much we can do about what other people do, but I think we can do something ourselves.

Farm Sanctuary

Zum: I know you’ve gone to Farm Sanctuary in Orland (Northern California). How has that experience been for you, just spending time there?

JR: Farm Sanctuary is great. To be with those animals is something that affects you inside. Because you get to be quiet with them, they’re not in a tense situation where they’re about to be shipped off and be sold. So there is a sort of calm to the place. It’s very nice, I recommend it.

Little Lord Fauntleroy

JR: Why don’t I tell you what its like to travel around the states and get vegan stuff?

Zum: Yeah

JR: Ok, here’s what its like. You pack up some stuff first. You can get lots of stuff, you can get oats, you can get cans of beans, you can get all kinds of snacks if you’re driving, like corn chips and stuff. You can get instant hummus, you know, where you just add water…So to me one of the key things is getting your water out of bottles made out of glass. So, we travel around in a van now, I’ve had it for a long time—this van for several years. So that’s enough room so you can pack about a dozen glass bottles of water. Then the water…that’s got to be good. So we order from this company EcoWise in Austin, Texas. Their phone number is 512-326-4474 (laughs). Their brand of filter, just say “the one that Jonathan uses” and they’ll know what to send ya. (laughs) ‘Cause we order ‘em for friends, cause they even filter out MTBEs.That’s what’s in your drinking water because of gasoline. MTBEs were an additive to gasoline in certain high smog parts of the country like California. They knew how dangerous it was even way back but they insisted on using it anyway. They knew that it was dangerous enough so that it would get into wells and aquifers. So it’s in aquifers I believe as far east as Kansas. You don’t want it. It’s not water, you don’t want it. Get yourself a water filter that can filter out MTBEs.

Zum: And you just get this to put on your sink?

JR: In this case, yes. And like I say, I like that company Ecowise and I trust their stuff. So we’ve been using those filters for a while.

Zum: So you just make enough that you can go on your trip with it?

JR: Well, that’s good but then sometimes I’ll just stop at health food stores and get that purified water and in super markets I’ll get a refill there. But I think that vegans and other people should consider not using plastic bottles anymore. Both because you might notice it tastes different, and whatever taste it has, that’s something you might not want. And also, what could be a worse environmental disaster than 40 trillion plastic bottles every day being used just for drinking water to be thrown away.

Zum: And you can’t always recycle them.

JR: And even when you can, people have explained to me that it’s a limited thing with plastic how much good that recycling does. And also, one of the reasons I travel with my own glass bottles is because let’s say I’m playing at a night club and the usual way it’s done in the music business is there is a rider that goes along with your contract where you tell the club owner everything he’s got to provide for you. These are usually elaborate. We don’t have anything on ours. But usually people want all kinds of M&Ms and wine and things and one of the things they want is drinking water, and they’re fussy about it. But it’s all in plastic bottles. The lead singer then flounces around and drinks 1/8 of his bottle. All the other 7/8ths of it gets swept up by the crew afterwards you know. Little Lord Fauntleroy drinks 1/8 of it and the rest of it gets wasted. All this stuff gets demanded and people drink or eat 1/12 of it. I think people gotta stop using plastic bottles and I want to do my bit. Also I don’t want to drink that stuff myself. I guess it was some young schoolgirl who did a science report recently…I heard about this on the radio, on the effects of plastic. I don’t know the specifics of it, but it’s alarming. Even when it’s just when things are bottled with it. So I can’t say for sure, but that’s what I’ve heard. And let your stomach tell ya, just the taste of it tells ya something. So….you get your water, you get your oats or whatever you like…The thing is you can travel around the country and be a vegan. You can eat like a king that way. There are these different products, like Tartex makes these vegetarian pâtés in a can with yeast in. Yeast is good for vegetarians you know ‘cause you gotta have some of those vitamins. And there are different ways of getting yeast…Let me see, there are just so many things you can do. And then there’re lots of vegetarian/vegan restaurants now. The United States is actually full of ‘em, it’s spreading. Now almost anywhere in the States I’ve gone you say the word “vegan” and they know what you mean at least. They may not have seen one before, but at least they’ve heard of ‘em.

Business Opportunities

JR: I’m surprised San Francisco doesn’t have more information about macrobiotics. That’s one thing that if any of your readership out there is looking for an enterprise, I think there is room for a macrobiotic food shop and bookshop and restaurant here in the city.

Zum: Do you ever want to do anything like that? Open a business or…

JR: You never know, who knows what will happen. I’m still busy just learning how to play guitar…(laughs). Truly.

END

The original article, with photos, is available here...

http://www.zumonline.com/zine/?x=107

The Tractor Tavern, Seatle, 13th & 14th December 2004

(Lifted from Plan B mag...)

He's not wearing a guitar strap.

How could he? It would destroy the fluidity of his dancing; dropping to his knees, twirling his acoustic, resting a foot on a handily-positioned paint pot; a flamenco flourish here, a strutted samba there; high kicking, low kicking; dropping his guitar altogether and pointing straight to his heart; urging us onwards with his eyes and broad smile, eyebrows arched; the very picture of projected happiness; never lost for a description of New York in the springtime, switching from French to Italian through arguments in Tel Aviv and Damascas with deceptive ease; clacking together electrified blocks and adjusting the soundboard to allow drummer Tommy Larkins even more clarity; shouting across to the side to close the back door.

This is my kind of heaven: two low-key shows from the man whose witty, poignant and minimalist vision of rock'n'roll has helped inform almost everything that I have loved about music ever since he started strumming his guitar, over three decades ago. Jonathan is in love with an ideal of rock'n'roll that ceased to exist the moment the Colonels took over from the street corner balladeers. Me too.

This is pure. This is precious.

The two nights blur into one: Jonathan leads the audience in a rendition of 'Happy Birthday'. Jonathan asks us plaintively "Will we return to our drab and stagnant ways?" while people laugh anyway. Jonathan blesses us under the sign of the cross after a gorgeous extended version of 'My Baby Loves Me Now' from the new album. Jonathan causes fans to chuckle afresh at stories he first told 30 years ago ('Girlfren', 'Pablo Picasso', wherein the troubadour makes great play of refusing to rhyme "Picasso" with "asshole" because – what d'ya know – it doesn't!). Personally, I could've taken a little more of the incisive two-minute pop of 'Give Paris One More Chance' and a little less cutesy 'Lesbian Bar' banter: but there again, it's a thrill to see Jonathan dance. (He was the first person ever to dance to Ramones.) Also, this artist continues to grow and refresh anew each time he breaks into one more false ending for (the tear-jerking) 'Let Her Go', each time Tommy shoots him a sidelong glance and teases a few minutes out the snare.

Earlier, I was asked if I'm ever nervous before interviews: Yoko Ono at the Dakota is my standard reply. Add to that, Jonathan at a friendly, warm Seattle pub venue: completely unprepossessing and able to make every audience member feel he's serenading them alone. I'm unable to say hi. He's an entertainer – and the mask may not be the reality. (Although a rare glimpse into the dressing room shows Jonathan and Tommy wreathed in smiles.) I don't want to break the spell.

The fact neither night is sold out (whereas such achingly ordinary-by-comparison shows by Neko Case and Iron & Wine, at larger venues, are) is not a damning indictment of anything. It just shows how special Jonathan is, that he continues to entertain and perform for us: and for us alone.

Words by Everett True.

http://www.planbmag.com/content/view/55/40/

.............................
And here's a neat review from the previous year... same venue, different Mag...

Copacetic Zine...

Reviews
Jonathan Richman, Tuesday, January 21, 2003 • Tractor Tavern, Seattle

Last night, before seeing our beloved Jo-Jo, we managed to watch the first half-hour of American Idol. Here were thousands upon thousands of young adults, all desperate and vying to be the next pop sensation. We watched a little of it, then put on our sneakers to walk a block over to the amazingly cool Tractor Tavern here in Ballard. What an amazingly cool little club! All their employees were as nice as could be, and very professional. I'm impressed!

After a delightful opening act of two charming Hispanic men singing traditional Mexican folk songs, the amazing, legendary Jonathan Richman took the stage with his loyal sidekick, Tommy Larkins. Now, here's a man who would never make the cut with the AI Judges. His voice, while rich and expressive, is also quirky and distinctive. His look has never been trendy, and hasn't changed a bit in the last 30 years: here is a man who always looks classic and never ages, not even with the grey goatee he's now sporting. But, you know, to me, this man personifies entertainment. He is the ultimate performer, pouring his heart into it, keeping a close eye on the crowd, making sure people are happy. Mike and I talked briefly with him once after a show in Austin, TX, and when I thanked him for putting on such a great show, he told me, "I just want to make people happy." To me, he's definitely an American idol, as cheesy and insanely corny as that sounds!

And I definitely think Jonathan made everyone happy last night! He actually played two sold-out shows here in Seattle (we tried to get in last night too, but couldn't manage). The crowd was packed with fans who could sing along to every word (and like the guy behind me, sometimes did!) Some of the fans were a little too enthusiastic, constantly shouting at Jonathan and Tommy, even during the quiet parts of their songs and stuff. Not cool! As someone shouted out from the crowd, "No talking to the bus driver!" AMEN!

Jojo charmed with a great set-list of classics like "Pablo Picasso", "Her Mystery Not of High Heels and Eyeshadow", "Rooming House on Venice Beach" and tons more. When he sang "Springtime in New York", a couple who had traveled from said city just to see him shouted out, "New York misses you!" and Jonathan, in a cute wide-eyed shocked way, replied into the mic, "It does?!" Hee! He's so cute!

He and Tommy seemed to be in great moods last night. Jonathan was really chatty, which I love, and was beaming endearing grins all night. Tommy looked like he was trying hard not to laugh most of the time. At one point in the show, Jonathan called out in his thick Bostonian accent, "How ya doing over there, Tommy?" and Tommy replied, "Great, how about you?" and they smiled at each other. It was so sweet! And Jonathan broke it down during "I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar", doing a pretty extended dance groove for us! He was just feelin' it last night! : D

Oh, and when he did "Let Her Go Into the Darkness" he broke it down in the middle and did this hysterical spoken bit, saying "Okay, now, don't be this guy..." and then going into a fake-speech-to-the-girlfriend thing. "'Cause you know, she's just gonna come back with this..." and then Jonathan went all high-pitched and girly, saying, "You can't control me!!!" The audience was totally cracking up! And then Jonathan said, "You know, as we speak, a conversation like that is happening right now in...Madrid!" and then Jonathan did the two voices again, but in Spanish!!! Then he goes, "And it's also probably happening...in France!" and then he starts in again in French! Holy moly, this man is multi-lingual! He also did Hebrew!!! Ab-so-lutely hysterical!

They played for about 90 minutes, and not a bad moment in the set! After receiving a roar of applause, Tommy left the stage, and JoJo closed out the set with a performance of "Walter Johnson" with the audience helping out on the "bom babom babom babom babom babom babom"'s. JoJo seemed really into it, stopping the song, saying, "Okay, here's a quick story about Walter..." and then "Okay, one more story..." and sharing these cute little anecdotes about this former baseball player from the early 1900's. Jonathan is so amazing. It just blows my mind that he's in his 50's, like my parents are, and that he's been writing and performing music longer than I've been on this planet. He has such obvious love and passion for performing, and it warms my heart to him every single time we see him. Like I told Mike after the show, Jonathan is the Walter Johnson of indie rock! Whatta charmer!

And then we came home and watched the rest of the American Idol season premiere. And I couldn't help but remember the lyrics from one of the songs JoJo sang for us earlier that night (paraphrased here, 'cause my memory's not good), "It's better to love, than to be loved." Something for these poor kids to remember when no one remembers their name a year later.related links•

http://www.copacetic-zine.com/concerts/jojoinballard.php

check out some more pics of the show at photophonic.com!

Jonathan Richman Grows Up

Addicted To Noise Philadelphia correspondent Chris Nelson reports: The last time Jonathan Richman played the Theatre of the Living Arts in Philadelphia, he left the stage for intermission, only to return a few minutes later. Squinting into the spotlight, he asked, "Would anybody mind if we moved these chairs?"

That night was the first time Jonathan had been booked in the TLA, a former movie theater that holds 800 people standing, or 400 when temporary chairs are set up. Since Jojo used to play a Philly room that held just a hundred people, it must have seemed natural to arrange the TLA for its smaller, seated capacity.

It didn't, however, seem natural to Jonathan. "You see," he explained, "I need to see people dance,and you can't dance with all these chairs on the floor." Now, rock stars are known for encouraging people to rip up their seats, but Jonathan was politely asking for the management's permission to do so. "I'll help move 'em if you want. We can all pitch in, and stack 'em in an orderly fashion on the side. What do you say?" he asked the crowd. Five minutes later the floor was cleared, the chairs were stacked, and both Jojo and the audience were much happier.

When the Modern Lovers founder returned to the TLA on Tues. night (April 9), almost a year to the day from the collective chair-piling gig, the management made sure that the chairs were not set up. They know Jonathan now.

For his part, Jonathan seems to know his loyal audience wherever he goes. He certainly sensed that Philadelphians, aghast at a snowy evening this late in the year, would love nothing more than to see him to start the show with "That Summer Feeling."

Jonathan's onstage relationship with his fans rivals that of artists like Springsteen or the Grateful Dead, although his is on a much more intimate and human scale (in contrast to the dramatic, often larger than life, scale of Springsteen's shows, or to the communal nature of Dead concerts).

For example, three songs into the set, Jonathan knelt down at stage right to tune his guitar. Breaking the silence, someone a few feet back on the floor asked quite graciously, "Hey, Jonathan...?"

Jonathan: "Yeah?"

Fan: "Will you play 'When Harpo Played His Harp' sometime tonight?"

Jonathan: "OK."

When he was finished with his guitar, Jonathan stood up, walked over to the microphone, and immediately began a delicate, and then eventually rocking, delivery of "Harpo."

This is a standard transaction at a Jonathan Richman performance. That's not to say that Jonathan strictly caters to his fans. Several songs later, someone asked as politely as the first request maker for "Dodge Veg-O-Matic." Jonathan smiled broadly, but shook his head before beginning "Fender Stratocaster" instead.

Without question, Jonathan's biggest assets as a performer are his honesty and sincerity. That's especially true for the latest stage of his career, largely defined by his string of releases since the late '80s on Rounder Records. Contrary to the first phase, which gave us Jonathan the proto-punk, or to the middle years, which saw him turn to child-like themes, this current period finds Jonathan examining ever more adult, and sometimes dark, subject matter.

Take his second number of the show, "Let Her Go Into the Darkness." With its title refrain cautioning against protection, and followed by the difficult advice to "Let her learn from all the things there," the song pricks the listener under the skin to explore very intimate, real life moral decisions. "To Hide a Little Thought," from the same album (last year's You Must Ask the Heart), delves into similar territory. Because of the honesty and intimacy of both Jonathan's writing and delivery, these songs have the potential to strike the listener's heart in darker places than the work of more sinister sounding bands such as Ministry or Korn. Indeed, Jonathan Richman has the skill to probe ethical dark sides as well as Springsteen did with his Tunnel of Love material, although Jonathan's explorations may be even scarier because his performances are more intimate and less dramatic than Bruce's.

Of course, Jonathan can rock out in his own way, too, as evidenced by his inclusion of songs like "Vampire Girl," "Fender Stratocaster," and "I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar" at the TLA. Watching Jojo step away from the microphone to ditch his guitar, than shake his hips and belt lyrics a cappella, is one of the prime reasons to go to his shows.

And while Jonathan's long been known for traveling by himself, lately he's been bringing drummer Tommy Larkins on the road with him. Larkins, a master of understated and attentive playing, superbly complements Jonathan's presence. At the TLA, even his drum solo was subtle.

The pair's last song before a single encore was a tender new number called "Surrender." You'll be able to find it on Surrender To Jonathan, Jojo's upcoming release for Neil Young's Vapor label. If you've never caught Jonathan's show before, catch it now. And if you bone up on the Jojo songbook ahead of time, feel free to make polite requests. There's a good chance he'll indulge you.

-- Music News of the World Addicted to Noise 10 April 1996

Jonathan Richman: Hopeless romantic

Michael Felci
The Desert Sun
February 12, 2005

Since the inception of the original Modern Lovers in the early '70s, songwriter/frontman/guitarist/mastermind Jonathan Richman has enjoyed a unique status as unlikely proto-punk pioneer.

Yet at his innermost core, the former Velvet Underground devotee has remained a hopeless romantic (not unlike Rimbaud) who's precious music refuses to be bound by the popular trends of the day.

All of Richman's legendary eccentricities were on proud display Thursday at Pappy & Harriet's in Pioneertown, as he (and an accompanying drummer) doused the appreciative crowd with a canon of classics - all done, of course, in the key of Richman.

Sounding like a stripped-down acoustic version of the White Stripes, the duo opened with a strange spiritual hymn, titled "He Gave Us The Wine to Taste."

Repetitive and sparse, the song's instrumental breaks provided an opportunity for Richman to showcase his more than capable rhythm guitar sensibilities.

The pair then slipped effortlessly into "Pablo Picasso," a fan favorite since the early days of the Modern Lovers back in Massachusetts.

Chronicling the Spanish painter's unparalleled luck with ladies, the track beamed with nonsensical lines like, "Though he was only 5 feet 3, girls could not resist his stare... Pablo Picasso never got called a..."

Shaking wildly, face contorted and fingers moving fast as ever, Richman then moved onto elongated versions of "I Was Dancing In A Lesbian Bar" and "Let Her Go" before tackling several cuts from his 1993 Spanish-language album, "Jonathan, Te Vas a Emocionar!"

Finally and perhaps strangest (which is saying something) was "Give Paris One More Chance," in which the spastic singer recalls only enjoying the city of love the second time around. (No word yet on whether the the French Bureau of Tourism plans on using the track as part any advertising campaigns.)

Conspicuously absent from the set were more well-known numbers like "Ice Cream Man" and the seminal pop-punk classic "Roadrunner."

However, when it was all sung and done, the people had gotten what they wanted - the real Jonathan Richman.

--
Thanks to Adam for this!

Jonathan Richman, Citizen

from OC Weekly

The modern lover lives in the modern world

by Jim Washburn

Jonathan Richman has been listening a bunch to Aqnazar, a one-named, timeless-voiced singer/accordion player from Tajikistan. It’s not the easiest stuff to find, so he thought you might want to know the website for Aqnazar’s French distributor: www.budamusique.com.

Jonathan hadn’t made it past the "www-dot" part, though, before being interrupted by peals of laughter from his household, this because web addresses spring from his mouth about as often and easily as live kangaroos do. He does not care for computers, has never used one, nor to my knowledge has he previously uttered a word of the computer-speak the rest of us take for granted. "Anything for Aqnazar," he explains.

It’s a changing world. When Jonathan and his long-suffering drummer Tommy Larkins appear at the Santa Ana Gypsy Den this Sunday and Monday, longtime fans may be equally surprised to see them tooling around in a Mercedes-Benz. Jonathan’s never much stood for luxury items, but again he has a ready excuse.

"It’s an old diesel Mercedes, and I’m running it on bio-diesel. You can run it with pure vegetable oil if you convert it for about $700, but you can run it as it is on this fuel called bio-diesel, which is mostly vegetable oils and some alcohol. So I’m running on no petroleum products. If it spills in your garage and your animals lick it, they won’t even get sick. It’s non-toxic! How about that!"

Bio-diesel is clean-burning, frees us from foreign oil, comes from a renewable source (mainly corn and soy) and, Jonathan says, smells like fried stuff.

Does it come falafel-scented?

"You need the converter for that."

I used to wonder if Jonathan was an idiot. At Anaheim’s Beggar’s Banquet record store in the late ’70s, we laid in a pile of his cutout Berserkley label albums for $1 apiece, so we slit a few open. Oh, the merry laughs we shared with customers, listening again and again to this naive nerf singing about little dinosaurs, true love and how it was the morning of our lives. Har de har har.

Then one day, sort of like what happens when you watch the Reverend Gene Scott long enough, I realized, "This guy is lots smarter then me." Everything I truly valued in rock & roll was right there: magic, adventure, rhythm, mystery, intimacy, emotion—without the amped-up armor or smug poses most rock was dressed in then. And he had life figured out. His song "Affection" said everything one really needs to know in life, which he pretty well reiterates in the title of his upcoming Vapor label album, Not So Much to be Loved as to Love.

When I first interviewed him in the early ’80s, the first thing he said was "If this starts sounding too much like an interview, I’m hangin’ up." His songs may be open, naked and direct, but his interviews have tended to be famously less so, with good cause. Critics’ misquotes and preconceptions aside, he’s been guarded in talking about anything that could intrude on the rapport that occurs between listener and song, which oftimes seemed to be most things.

Maybe he’s decided songs are more durable than that. Talk a good song to death, write books about it, drag it through a Hummer commercial—it’ll still hit your heart. Or maybe these dire times are impelling him, as they should us all. Whatever the reason, he’s talking—and singing—about things he hasn’t previously.

On his recent concert DVD, Take Me to the Plaza, for example, you’ll find him voicing his opposition to the war in Iraq with the song "Not in My Name." Tuesday, he’s playing a benefit in Hollywood for Voice of Democracy, also featuring the documentary Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War, Green Party firebrand Medea Benjamin and others. Jonathan’s added his name to the anti-war organization’s masthead, alongside Noam Chomsky, Dustin Hoffman and others. (You’ll find heaps of info at www.vodemocracy.org.)

"Not in my name, indeed," he says of the war the Bush administration has foisted on the world. That his songs now venture into the topical "surprises me, too. All I know is that what I have to do with my songs is tell how I feel. That’s all I’ve ever done. As long as it’s how I feel, then to me it’s one of my kind of songs no matter what the subject is."

After living for a long time in ultrarural parts of northern California, he moved a few years ago to the Bay Area and is loving it, from being able to sit in with musician friends and absorb new musical styles to taking to the streets in the anti-war demonstrations.

"It’s really satisfying to be able to feel a part of things and not just read about it. If you only read the major newspapers and watch TV news, I don’t think you’re seeing how America really is. I think it has a whole lot more little groups trying to help one another, a lot more unity and communication, than you would believe, given what you see on TV. On Martin Luther King Day, it was great to see the Longshoremen support the Safeway strikers in Southern California, but you didn’t see that in the news much.

"Lots of good things are going on. Medea Benjamin is part of an organization called Global Exchange. Among other things, they insure that the products sold in their stores are ones where the people who made them get a fair working wage: fair trade, not to be confused with free trade. I think when Americans learn about the difficulty other people have getting paid what they should, there’s a certain number who will respond to that."

I mentioned something about how Wal-Mart is driving the whole planet the other way, to which he rightly responded, "Yes, but they’d be helpless if people didn’t shop there. You can’t just blame corporations because every advantage they have—advertising, lobbying—they got through having money, and they got the money from people buying their stuff. I’m saying the buck stops here, with us Americans. If we don’t like it, then we’ve got to make sure we don’t use or support it. That’s why I’m driving the bio-diesel car now."

We got on the subject of a bootleg DVD of live Rolling Stones performances from the early ’60s and how maracas just aren’t deployed as well these days. I get maudlin if left to dwell on how much more fun things used to be.

Many of Jonathan’s songs wax nostalgic for days gone by, but he’s not anxious to see them come back. When he lived in the Sierra hinterlands, one of his far-flung neighbors was the great activist folkie U. Utah Phillips, who was prone to point to advances in racial and women’s rights, organic foods, and such, and suggested, "Maybe we’re winning and we don’t even know it."

"That’s the exact phrase I keep in mind," Jonathan said. "Name an era, pick a year that seems like fun. That Stones stuff was made in 1963-64, right? At that time, black entertainers in Las Vegas couldn’t stay at the hotels they were performing at. It was the same time the freedom riders were murdered in the South. Some things may have been better then, but a lot of things were definitely worse."

The media, of course, has changed, as in: good luck hoping to ever hear anything good on commercial radio again.

"So? There are still a lot of things that people can do. People give shows in their houses. There are always ways around things. It’s not time to despair."

Not So Much to be Loved as to Love will likely be released in April or May, and it will feature Jonathan and his nylon-stringed guitar, Tommy on drums, the wondrous sometime Tom Waits sideman Ralph Carney on horns, and Miles Montalbano on bass. It’s got an atmosphere, Jonathan says, and if you’ve seen his live shows, you know he knows a thing or two about atmosphere.

So what about the songs?

"Some are in Italian. Some are in French. Some are in English. That’s about it."

But wait, there’s more. How does the CD compare with his live shows?

"It’s easier to put in your pocket."

Jonathan Richman, with Tommy Larkins on drums, performs at the Gypsy Den, 125 N. Broadway, Ste. D.,

Santa Ana, (714) 835-8840. Sun.-Mon., 9 p.m. $10. All ages; They also perform in a benefit for Voice of Democracy at Laemmle’s Fairfax Theater, 7907 Beverly Blvd., Hollywood, (310) 842-8794. Tues., 7:30 p.m. $10.

--
Thanks to Adam for this!

Alive & Kicking – Jonathan Richman

December 13 & 14, Tractor Tavern
By Chris McCann
from Nadamucho.com

In one of the songs on his newest album (Not So Much To Be Loved As To Love), Jonathan Richman sings, “He gave us the wine to taste, not to talk about it.” On one level the lyrics tell the story of a wine tasting, but they can also be read as a gloss of Richman’s three-decade career making music that begs for empathy, not analysis.

Listen to any of his albums and you realize this immediately - his plaintive, painfully sincere voice embraces in one song the difficult truths of a mature relationship (as in “Couples Must Fight” off of Her Mystery Not of High Heels and Eye Shadow) and in the next the joys of a peanut butter sandwich (“Love Me Like I Love” from I’m So Confused). Richman (or “Jojo” to his devoted fans) writes about what it’s like to live in this world and why it’s worth it.

Richman’s career started back in the early ‘70s when he animated the seminal Boston punk band The Modern Lovers with his disaffected, lonely songs about drug-addicted girlfriends and fractured relationships. However, as the years progressed, Jonathan in many ways regressed into a fascination with the childlike, as he penned songs like “Abominable Snowman in the Market” and “My Little Kookenhaken.”

In the late ‘80s and ‘90s, he continued his exploration of the vast and ever-shifting geography of his passions with a foray into country music, an album of songs entirely in Spanish, and dozens of tunes about everything from parenting to cappuccino bars. Since he moved to the Vapor label in the mid-90s, he’s made four strong, quirky albums that detail his enduring love affair with the world.

His newest album includes songs about Vincent Van Gogh (actually a re-recording of an older song found on the out-of-print Rockin’ & Romance album from The Modern Lovers), a protest song (“Abu Jamal”), and a typical Jonathan offering that celebrates the glory of newly mowed lawns and ozone (“The World Is Showing Its Hand”). On other tracks, he croons sweetly in both Italian and French, backed ably by bassist Greg “Curly” Keranen, who first played with Jonathan in the ‘70s, and touring partner Tommy Larkins on the drums.

But you must see Jonathan live to truly understand the source of his enduring popularity. He ambles out onto the stage and strums the first few, simple chords of a song about springtime in New York or rocking out at the Government Center. Then he stops and grins. Or tells a story. Or does an improvised jig while Larkins brushes the drums behind him. The songs don’t just come to life when he’s up there on stage - they positively dance.

Jonathan’s playing two shows at the Tractor this week, and as always, he’ll be pouring out his heart for all of us. Don’t think too much about it - just go taste the wine.

Note: Jonathan Richman plays the Tractor Tavern December 13 & 14.

--

Thank you to to Adam for this.

Song Club: I Eat with Gusto, Damn! You Bet

from Ramon's Jonathan Chord Pages

Jonathan Richman version - Lyrics (spoken poem)

Hello Everyone, it's time for poetry
I submit to you the following it's entitled:
"I Eat with Gusto, Damn! You Bet"
By one Jonathan Richman.

When I eat like I do it,
I use not fork nor spoon
No grace or culture to it
When I call my own tune.

For I eat with gusto, damn you bet
A regular K-9 cruncher
Except truth be told I'm sloppier yet
Than many a dog food muncher
I eat a pound I eat a ton
And no there ain't much I cuts up
And while I'm having merry fun
Bystanders puke their guts up.

The FBI sent someone by
Who handles health affairs
I had not finished my cream pie
When he chanced up the stairs
Why did he turn the other way?
Why did he leave so quick?
Will he come back another day?
Did something make him sick?

I eat with gusto damn you bet
A regular doggie diner
"No don't bring me napkins waiter sir,
Just bring some trash can liner."

Whilst wandering by a juice bar
I spied a tempting beverage
Since I would have been last in line
I used my fearsome leverage
For in my pocket was some food
Which I took from the wrapper
The patrons watched it being chewed
And of course headed for the crapper.

For I eat with gusto damn you bet
For gusto I'm the boss
For yay my nose it is in the salad
And lo my chin it is in the sauce
I eat with gusto damn you bet
We're sailing around the cape
"Keel-haul him," said the Bosun
"There must be no escape."

One sunny day in Paris an elegant cafe
A phone call there a phone call here
And the gendarmes took me away

I said "qu'est-ce qui se passe ici"
I said " mais qu'est-ce que c'est"
They said "Such eateeng eet ees creeminalle
And crime eet does not pay."

For I eat with gusto damn you bet.
My banner yay unfurled
My shirt is covered with mustard
And my hair with ketchup curled

Goodbye to Egypt, Greece and Rome
The ancient world goodbye.
May squalor be my summer home
And filth be my neck tie.

For I eat with gusto damn you bet.
Uh, And Uh, I eat with gusto damn you bet
My country tis of thee
I eat for social progress
I eat for victory

Somebody died who watched me eat
In a restaurant one spell
He woke up and saw me eating beans
And knew that he'd gone to hell

For Uh, "He eats with gusto damn we bet."
They're calling from the south
They want to stop my gusto
They want to close my mouth
"You eat with gusto, yeah that's great
Now let us off this bus."
Wait a minute I haven't finished eating up stuff yet.
"We'll call you, don't call us."
--

Has anyone seen JR do this live?

Back to Jojoblog

Review: Lincoln NE 20 November 2004

by gr_chereck:

I caught Jonathan's show in Lincoln, Nebraska this past weekend. (This was my 4th JR show, my 2nd at Knickerbocker's in Lincoln.) First of all, I should mention that sometime during the 2-year wait between this show and the last one my dad and I attended (in Kansas City, MO), I had told my mom that the next time I got an opportunity to see Jonathan, I would take her along...

Well, on the night of this show, my parents and I made it to Lincoln 2 and 1/2 hours before Knickerbocker's opened its doors, so we checked out a used-record shop where Mom and I went ahead and bought our tickets. (Dad had thought that money would be too tight for all 3 of us to attend, so he decided it would be best for him to accompany us to Lincoln and then wait in the bar while we watch the concert...) Anyway, shortly before the doors finally opened, Mom and I were waiting in the car; Dad was wandering around outside, having a smoke -- and who should he run into but Jonathan himself! He instantly recognized Dad and thanked him for the copy of Leonard Cohen's Ten New Songs CD that we had given him at the Kansas City show 2 years ago; he also offered to make the 3 of us his "special guests" and let us see the concert for free. Dad told him that we had already paid for 2 tickets, and Jonathan offered to let Dad in for free; but Dad said he would rather take my ticket and have me be Jonathan's guest! :D

Before the show, I watched Jonathan do soundchecks; he signed my copy of Not So Much To Be Loved As To Love (I told him I loved it, he said he was especially proud of it), and he talked with my parents and me about music. He mentioned that he receives a lot of CDs and stuff like that from his fans, and he usually gives them away -- but he had fallen absolutely in love with the Cohen CD Dad and I had given him.

The opening act was Jesse DeNatale, a San Francisco-based singer-songwriter (who played from 10 to 10:35 p.m.). Just one guy with a guitar and a harmonica, he sounded like a folkier Tom Waits, or a less-nasal Bob Dylan -- needless to say, Dad and I especially enjoyed his set. :)

Then Jonathan came out with Tommy, and they played from 10:50 p.m. to 12:15 a.m. Numerous times throughout, Jonathan would step away from his mic to dance to Tommy's drumbeat, or to sing directly to the audience without the aid of amplification. There were also a few times where he would be playing percussion or a random tune on his guitar to Tommy's drumbeat and he would say something like, "This isn't connected to a song -- we're just foolin' around!" He also ad-libbed spoken bits and altered lyrics during several numbers (as usual). XD

Some highlights: During "Let Her Go Into The Darkness," Jonathan improvised a hilarious, lengthy spoken bit that went from English to French to Italian; before he went into "In Che Mondo Viviamo," he said he had wanted to write a song about "what a world we live in," but he thought it made for a crummy title, so he decided to write it in Italian; as he played "Les Etoiles," he translated some of the lyrics into English; and at one point he mentioned that someone who was in the audience that night (*wink*) had given him a great Leonard Cohen CD, and that he loved one song on it in particular... and he went into his cover of "Here It Is" (which was done in a radically different arrangement from Cohen's original, but Jonathan played and sang it with a lot of depth and feeling). :D

After the show, I had my picture taken with Jonathan (whom I thanked again for the autograph and congratulated on an excellent show), and then with Jesse (the opening act); then Dad bought a copy of Jesse's CD and had him autograph it for me. All in all, a wonderful night! :)

###

This is an approximate setlist from the Knickerbocker's show on
Saturday night:

Key:
O - Songs I also heard at the 10/4/01 Omaha show
L - Songs I also heard at the 2/28/02 Lincoln show
K - Songs I also heard at the 11/23/02 Kansas City show
* - Brand-new and/or previously unrecorded songs

Egyptian Reggae -- O,K
Give Paris One More Chance -- O
Springtime In New York -- O,L,K
My Baby Love Love Loves Me
Let Her Go Into The Darkness -- O,L,K
The World Is Showin' It's Hand -- K
In Che Mondo Viviamo
I Was Dancing In The Lesbian Bar -- O,L,K
Here It Is -- * (cover of a Leonard Cohen song) :D
Silent Treatment -- *
He Gave Us The Wine To Taste
My Love For Her Ain't Sad -- K
Ocean Beach -- *
Les Etoiles
El Joven Se Estremece -- K
Joy Over Sorrow -- *
You Are The Light Of The World -- *
No Hablo Mi Palabra Del Amor(?) -- * (new Spanish song)
Her Mystery Not Of High Heels And Eye Shadow -- O,L,K
Not So Much To Be Loved As To Love -- K (encore)

-- gr_chereck

Review: Space, Portland, 13 Nov 2004

Found via Google News:

Monday, November 15, 2004

Richman rewards fans, old and new

By AIMSEL PONTI

Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc

REVIEW

Jonathan Richman

Where: Space

When: Sat., Nov. 13

Delving into Jonathan Richman's past is like taking a class in the history of new wave and punk. This guy had his hands in both movements back in the 70s and at 54 he is still a viable act that left an impressive crowd at Space wanting more on Saturday night.

Richman, originally from Natick, Mass., formed a band called The Modern Lovers in the early 1970s. Also in the band were Jerry Harrison, who went on to join Talking Heads, and David Robinson who ended up with The Cars, two other huge notable new wave acts to have New England roots.

Richman flies under the radar of the mainstream but has a devout cult-following.

It wasn't so important to be well-versed in Richman history to enjoy his show; one just had to be open to the experience. Although it's tempting to find a more impressive vocabulary word, the best way to describe the show was downright delightful. The beauty in many of his songs are their simplicity; that's the genius.

Richman does not give his songs unnecessary window-dressing, but delivers honest, straight-from-the-heart songs about love, life and things that touch and inspire him.

With his acoustic guitar and the keen percussion from drummer Tommy Larkins, Richman touched on many points in his career as a solo artist and member of The Modern Lovers.

His voice is sweet and sometimes almost childish but that's just the thing that makes it work. A friend described Richman as David Byrne meets Lou Reed meets Adam Sandler. That made perfect sense, as it combines elements of musical talent, a timeless coolness and a quirky sweetness.

Performing about 25 songs over a 90-minute set, Richman gave us Modern Lovers classics like "Pablo Picasso," and "Springtime" interspersed with plenty from his latest record Not So Much To Be Loved As To Love. Songs like "Vincent Van Gogh," "My Baby Love Love Loves Me," and "Behold The Lilies Of The Field" were all well-received.

He also is somewhat of a multi-linguist, singing the new ones "Cosi Veloce," (Italian) and "Les Etoilles." One of the best songs of the night was from 1992's I Jonathan record, "I Was Dancing At The Lesbian Bar," both funny and danceable.

Two other gems were "The Night Is Still Young" and "Nineteen In Naples" from his 1998 I'm So Confused release.

Richman had such a comfortable stage presence, disarming with a sincere airiness to go with his expressive eyes.

His words tell it like it is: "He loved, he loved life so bad, he had twice the color other painters had," sang Richman. Throughout his show he encouraged the audience to keep the beat, which many people did. It was an unexpectedly absorbing evening of music. Make no mistake, though, Jonathan Richman's No. 1.

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With thanks to Adam.

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It's A Thing He Has ...

by Your Diva, Robin Pastorio-Newman

When Jonathan Richman tours, people go a little crazy. He usually plays one date in an area and moves on to the next, leaving packs of rabid fans stomping individual feet and muttering naughty words. Last time he came through New Jersey Jonathan --

"Who?" you yawn.

"Jonathan Richman," Your Darling, Your Diva, Your One True Love sighs.

"Jonathan Richman who?" you insist.

"We’ve been through this before. Did you see There's Something About Mary despite its being a humiliation humorfest? He’s the gentleman walking around and playing guitar. His music has been featured on many soundtracks. His song 'Ice Cream Man' currently graces a Kohl’s commercial, and if you’d ever devoted two important hours to watching Repo Man, you would have heard 'Pablo Picasso.' His song 'Roadrunner' is one of the best things ever recorded. It’s not about a bird."

"Oh. That guy. Listen, I’ve been busy..." you opine, but really, let’s move on, shall we? Last time Jonathan came through here, he’d played the Court Tavern in New Brunswick and that was that for this area, which meant the Court was packed to the rafters with crazed Jonathan fans who weren’t polite about wanting to hear any noise their quiet hero made.

You: Are you going to see Jonathan Richman on Thursday?

Your Friend: Nope. Don’t feel like being shushed.

Jonathan plays early shows. It’s a thing with him. Other artists and bands want to play later, Jonathan plays earlier, so the bar got calls all day long about what time he’d go on. The official party line held that he’d take the stage between 9 and 10. Our party sat down on upstairs barstools at 8:30 and the upstairs bar filled to uncomfortable, then hassling-the-doorman capacity before 10. The door to downstairs opened after 10. Then real weirdness began.

The downstairs air conditioner was off. Thursday, the temperature soared to 100 degrees in some places and by 10:30 p.m. hadn’t dropped much. The bartender reported that Jonathan wanted the AC off, "Some kind of phobia or something." Oh. A phobia. Well, he’s allowed, right? You’d order your rock stars factory-fresh and full of phobias if you could, wouldn’t you? Sure. As the basement filled and time passed, the temperature and humidity made the normally dank room feel like an indifferent Texas teenager’s forgotten terrarium, where a couple hundred people passed for the tiny frogs. Finally, close to 11:30, Jonathan strapped on the guitar. A voice from the crowd: "What’s with the air conditioner?"

"I had them turn it off because air conditioners can be quite loud. We’re going to have a musical experience, not a comfortable experience." Which statement kind of answered his next question: "Why doesn’t anybody dance anymore?"

You got me, brother, but I’m busy in this face-plant where I fainted from the heat.
The crowd loved song after riotous song. "I Was Dancing In the Lesbian Bar" caused a roaring singalong. Soon, the heat, the late hour, the incompatible fans, some indefinable something caused some lunkheads in polo shirts to talk near the stage, louder than the performer, who was most certainly well-miked. And it wasn’t just one lunkhead, there were lunkhead pockets throughout the room. Conversations about stocks and options floated down the bar. It was bizarre, and who has the patience of the forebearance to pay $10 for a show they can’t hear over some drunken idiot’s lame financial advice? It was about this time it became clear our evening was nearing its conclusion.

So there you are in a club basement with 200 of your closest friends packed body to body and you’re each wondering if the life insurance your job offers will pay your beneficiaries in the event you die a beer-soaked sweltering death when you could’ve just as easily gotten up off your barstool and made a break for the exit and since staying until you pass out is probably walking that fuzzy accident/suicide line beyond which your unprepared family has to cough up the cash for interment you get up and go home Later you may discover the two pints of water you drank while watching a few minutes of Julia Child on Biography -- very interesting, by the way -- does not stave off the kind of dehydration that keeps even the experienced swinging rock fan in bed most of the next day.

But it was Jonathan. And people go a little crazy.

©2003 Robin Pastorio-Newman

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Did you like this? We knew you would. Thank you to Rob, and to Sean from Altrok.

For more delicious dish from Jojoblog's Diva, read this.

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