I saw a great show last night. Jonathan Richman in a small club in De Moines. Amaaaaazing stuff. I've been aware of him for years, but hadn't "gotten around" to getting any of his records. That's just how it is sometimes, I suppose.

If you don't know who he is, he's probably most famous (outside of the music geek world) as the guy playing the musical interludes during the movie "There's Something About Mary," but he's a much bigger deal than being "the guy playing the guitar in the tree when Ben Stiller's doing that funny crying scene." He was an important forerunner to punk rock. His early band, The Modern Lovers, played really simple sounding pop songs that were totally bizzare at the time, but now sound a lot like the music that hundreds of indie rock bands play. Well, it sounds kinda like that. He had this really weird and awkward personna, and the band's music sounds almost like it was written for little kids.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6KSt1u_UE0


They are mostly remembered for this song, which is something of an underground classic (mostly cause everybody copied the Sex Pistol's cover):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPCHU-cBWwk


In the late seventies he switched his style up and started playing weirdo lo fi pop that was influenced by European pop music and by Latin Music. That's the style he's been working in since then, and that's what I saw last night. He is one of those mesmerizing performers who seem like they just ARE. Plus he's a brilliant guitarist. He managed to make the audience laugh at his goofy antics while being glued to him:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjFU98mEem4&feature=related&pos=3

It's really a strange balancing act he pulls off, and completely compelling.

For his first encore he played a song called "When We refuse to Suffer," which was particularly articulate version of the old "carpe diem" theme, if only because his goofy vulnerability really made the sentiment seem substantial. Then for his last encore was a song called "As My Mother Lay Dying," which had the audience in tears. I've never heard a bar get so quiet. It wasn't sentimental or melodramatic; it was just a really direct expression of an important memory. It wasn't cheap. I've not had quite that experience before at a concert. This was really different.

It was almost embarrasing. The lights go up and there's a room full of people deliberately not looking at each other.

The amazing was how those last two songs cast a new light on the rest of the show. A lot of his music is delivered in that "childlike" mode, but with that ending, he really changed what the whole thing meant. The "statement" he makes with his goofy stage personna became much more serious all of the sudden. This guy fucking means it. It was an amazing show really.

I'd post a link to a clip of those two songsI described, but nobody's put a vid of them on the youtubes. Here's another song from his latest record. This is what the first hour and a half of the show was like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yORR9d8hYZE&feature=related&pos=5

It was a pretty astonishing show, and I'd recommend that anyone reading this go see Jonathan whenever he comes near you. He's pretty special.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqQznJtTz3o&feature=related&pos=6