*This post isn't funny, and it's been too long since my last one, so this picture hopefully reaches my joke quota*
The Modern Lovers - "I'm Straight"
The Modern Lovers - "Hospital"
Sadly, writing snide away messages will never be considered poetry. Since this closes off one opening of me becoming a bard, the only option I have left is the Leonard Cohen route, ever-sharpening words and phrases you come up with from your lofty tower, refining them until you eventually have a finished work, as notable for it's perfection as it is for being completed LONG after the intial inspiration has dissipated.
While the away messags are more than enough to give my ego a half-stock, there are moments that I wish I could be the Lou Reed-style benzedrine poet. Wide eyed and literal, notable for the feeling that jumps off the page, rather than the clever turns of phrase and diabolical vocabulary.
Now, beating a dead horse has long been a favorite pastime of mine. However, elaborately describing Lou Reed to the ten people that read this (and uncoincidentally, the only ten people I know that even know who Lou Reed is) would be self-defeating even for myself. Today, I turn a magnifying glass on a writer of similar style and quality, but lesser renown.
Jonathan Richman formed the Modern Lovers in 1973, recorded an album for John Cale, and then broke them up shortly thereafter. In 1976, when the flood of punk rock records also brought a few more artistically-leaning projects (Richard Hell and his ilk), Richman decided to cast his three-year old record into the mix.
Without making this post much longer, I guess what I'll say is amazing about Jonathan Richman product (this album in particular), is the space. I've always preferred British guitar players to American ones, due to their ability to pull back, and not inundate the listener with noise, simply as a means of showing technical proficiency. A Richman composition takes that framework, and then applies it to the narrative as well. The actual time-elapsement of a song is rarely any more than a particular moment, but there are glimpses into facts or tones that provide context. Chronologized and Kaleidoscopic are two words too pretensious to be linked by a hyphen, even by myself. However, they work in tandem better, and more inventively, when employed by Jonathan Richman than they do isolated in the hands of a lesser songwriter.
