Before Jonathan Richman became the spritely endearing saint we have known today and for the past many decades he was some kind of a rock 'n' roll demon, the genuine article. Most of the surviving evidence exists on the essential album The Modern Lovers. It's true that the rock 'n' roll is still strong with him, and always has been, as I witnessed again for myself just a couple weeks ago. He was playing an acoustic guitar as usual and accompanied only by Tommy Larkins on a lovely shambolic drumkit, traveling the land with a compelling polyglot message of inner peace and childlike fun. "Pablo Picasso," by contrast, is raw, frustrated, and gripping, with Frankenstein rhythms and a corkscrew electric guitar that drills for the brainstem. I love it insanely. I love it to pieces. Arguably it fits with his series of latter songs about artists such as Vermeer, Van Gogh, and Walter Johnson, but not really: "Well some people try to pick up girls / And get called assholes / This never happened to Pablo Picasso." That's the gist. "Well he was only five foot three / But girls could not resist his stare / Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole / Not in New York." It's laugh-out-loud funny once you realize what he's doing and I never get tired of it as I never get tired of anything else on that great album. A few years ago, again with Larkins, I saw him do a version of it, but he's made it more "family-friendly" now, clipping off the swear word entirely, which I think is a bit unfortunate. But Jonathan Richman gets to do what Jonathan Richman wants to do. Those are the rules around here and the least any of us can do is comply.
Note: Countdown to wrap up next month (finally—I promise!) in order to enable me the opportunity for holiday cheering und so weiter.
The Modern Lovers record is my top choice in my collection. I think John Cale is playing something weird on Pablo Picasso. Bowie's version doesn't quite work.
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