The Modern Lovers is real, too.
I moved to Pittsburgh in 1988, and started buying CDs in the early 90s. A few years later, Jerry's Records moved to my neighborhood and I brought a box of records in to sell since I thought I wouldn't want to listen to records any more. Okay, big mistake. I never should have stopped listening to records, but I wasn't alone. A whole generation like me moved from records to CDs and now to MP3s. I did too, but then I came full circle. These days, a day doesn't go by that I don't listen to a record, a CD (in my car) and an MP3 (on my IPod).
But, back in the day, before I knew any better, I sold a few records. Some of them I have bought again because I missed them, like Jesse Colin Young's Lightshine, and Neil Young's On the Beach, and some I haven't, for a variety of reasons. Too expensive, hard to find, not important to me any more. One I just picked up again on CD because I really missed the music on it. Its great, but I really miss the vinyl copy I owned. The record is the first Modern Lovers album called The Modern Lovers, released in 1976. This original version of the band was led by Jonathan Richman and featured Jerry Harrison on guitar years before he left Richman to join Talking Heads.
My wife asked me what made me buy this record back in the day and I'm not sure I know the answer. I may have heard the opening track, Roadrunner --- "Roadrunner, Roadrunner, going faster miles an hour, with the radio on." --- on FM radio at the time and gotten hooked or I may have read something about it in the Village Voice, I don't know. But, in any event it was one of my favorite records. And I sold it a long time ago.
Listening to it in my car to day, it sounds as fresh and real as the day I first heard it 35 or so years ago.
A few days later, I was listening to some other music on a playlist with my son in the car. Riding shotgun on the cold fall day with the heated seat turned up and the heat blasting warm air in his direction, he skipped several of the playlist's great songs until he stopped on John Lennon's Imagine.
He turned up the volume and listened silently, rapt.
I asked him why he rejected so many other great songs in favor of Imagine.
"Its real, Dad, " he said.
I get it.
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I,m not the only one! Words I live by! I always dreamed vinyl would come back, so I never got rid of mine. I was lucky, I am from Richmond, Va., and found Jerry's in 2009! Have been able to make a trip up every year since! It is well worth the trip! Thanks for the blog!
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i distinctly remember the first time someone played a Jonathan Richman Record for me. I thought it was amateur, juvenile. I ciuld not fathhom why anyone would listen to him. Then I heard "Vincent Van Gogh" and i suddenly "got it.". it was real- straight talk -child like in its simplicity and truth- telling. I wish he would come through Pittsburgh!
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