THE MODERN LOVERS

Every now and again a music lover will come across an album and experience the bittersweet sensation of asking the question "where have you been all my life?". What has proved unique about this album is that not only was I immediately wooed but that, literally, every single person I then played or recommended it to also fell into a state of dewey-eyed devotion towards a bunch of demos recorded by some young geek called Jonathan Richman and his equally nerdy mates in the early seventies. And, it was not just me and my friends, as this album is usually hailed as one of the most influential albums in rock'n'roll history, certainly within the progression of what became punk music in the mid- to late-seventies. Enraptured with the Velvet Underground from an early age, Richman got a band together (including future Talking Head Jerry Harrison on 'keys'), and set out to continue what Lou Reed and co had started. Not one but two record companies ended up paying out for John Cale (and Alan Mason) to act as producer and an entire demo for a proposed album was recorded in 1972. Unfortunately, Richman was a rather difficult child and no sooner did it look like the Modern Lovers might be The Next Big Thing (particularly on the basis on the iconic classic "Roadrunner") than Richman sacked the band and, essentially, took his ball home with him. He went on to a reasonably successful solo career but the Modern Lovers in their original incarnation never actually managed to record a proper album. Thankfully, the Cale demos were eventually dug out and belatedly released in 1976 in the guise of a proper album (although bootlegs of them had been appearing for a while previously). As it happens, there appears to be little way in which these songs could actually be improved as Cale's sparse production technique (cf. the Stooges' debut) is ideal for Richman's equally minimalist approach to songwriting and, as a result, this set of hastily recorded demos still sounds better than about 99% of professionally recorded official albums. It helps, of course, that the songs themselves are utterly - almost unbelievably - good. Stripped of any intricacy or pretension the songs rely on the most basic but brilliant of formulas. Richman, of course, drawls his way through the songs in the way any star-struck Lou Reed fan would and his guitar playing perfectly captures, if not defines, the garage rock essentials of simple rock'n'roll riffing and explosive solos, pierced through with the white light/white heat of feedback. In musical terms, then, this album pretty much wrote the rule book on super-cool garage rock. Conversely, though, and as one of the biggest paradoxes in rock'n'roll, Richman was only devoted to the likes of Lou Reed and Iggy Pop in the musical sense and thus chose instead to deliver a lyrical message utterly at odds with the usual drugs and debauchery bravado that rock'n'roll indulges in. Indeed, this is perhaps one of the most moralistic and almost puritanical rock albums ever. It becomes safe to assume Richman probably took a fair few beatings at school when one first hears his zealous disdain for drugs, casual sex, and, even, lack of respect for the elderly with his tirades at Hippy Johnny ("he's always stoned"), "cocaine sniffing tramps" and his brazen admission that "I still love my parents". Strangely, though, this very moralistic attitude and resulting gaping chasm between the music and the message actually succeeds in making this album not just cool, but granting it its own kind of cool, that only Richman can really pull off. Such a paradox would only be a mere curiosity, though, if the songs were not so astonishingly, in-your-face, great. With the timeless "Roadrunner" (by far the most well-known track on the album) Richman takes the distorted paranoid mess of "Sister Ray" and turns into it a new "Louie Louie"; the simplest of rock'n'roll classics that will be forever preserved in musical history. The euphoric rush of "Modern World" pre-empts much of the New York proto-punk that followed a few years later and the garage rock classic "Someone I Care About" overpowers the listener with its caustic contempt for casual sex underlining the genuine concern that a relationship is more rewarding if it places companionship above carnality. Indeed, despite Richman's puritanism, his lyrics brilliantly reflect the hopeless banality of everyday life with the aching ballad "Hospital" interjecting an anguished tale of attempted suicide with references to bakeries and suburbs. Furthermore, Richman does display a knowing wit with his laconic ode to Pablo Picasso (who was apparently never called an asshole, not in New York anyway), which opens with an extended, mesmerising throbbing intro, and his hypnotic drawl through "I'm Straight" which laments his intended sweetheart idolising the stoned Hippy Johnny ahead of his good - straight - self. A couple of the bonus tracks are merely OK and "Girlfriend" is unarresting (although his observation that you cannot enjoy a lot of art until you've experienced true love is, again, on the money) but, overall, you would be hard pushed to find much at fault. It is truly stunning, really, that someone could conceive, write and perform such a perfect album and then abandon it, almost on a whim, but, as the contents show, Richman was far from straight-forward. In the end, though, and out of all the hundreds of albums I have reviewed this is the one of the ones I feel safest recommending. There simply are not many albums comparable to this one and you would be a fool to pass up on it.

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Email me at: jackfeeny@yahoo.co.uk