Jonathan Richman Is Still Telling True Stories
Jonathan Richman plays two nights at the Aladdin this week.
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September of 1993. It’s the very first week of Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Jonathan Richman just played his song “Vampire Girl.” He performed it, the way he does, like a stand-up set but with a children’s performer’s exaggerated facial cues, and with more charm—and cooler dance moves—than any stand-up or children’s performer could dream of. Everyone at the show really likes Richman’s “stuff,” Conan says. They’re in the chairs now. It’s Richman’s first time on TV, Conan tells him, as if to confirm.
“No,” Richman says.
“Yes,” Conan snaps back, slipping into the nervy, incredulous mood he hasn’t really shaken since.
“Well, no.” Richman’s eyes grow wide, a smile cutting across his face, as if he’s about to pull one over on a buddy. “This is the first network TV appearance in the US of A,” he tells Conan, but he’s done loads of TV spots in Europe. It all feels like something straight out of a Jonathan Richman song.
Richman, who’s playing at the Aladdin Theater this Tuesday and Wednesday (July 1 & 2; $30+), and his former band, the Modern Lovers, were in fact “big in Europe” before the mainstream of the US of A came around to their winsome, proto-punk sound. If ’80s punk roots are a blind spot for you, don’t think he hasn’t touched your world: This is a guy whose catalog includes “I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar” and a cover of “The Wheels on the Bus.” You’ll at least know the song “Roadrunner” (famously in School of Rock) or the one where Richman sings “Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole” (which Bowie recorded a cover of in 2003).
The Modern Lovers were more of a myth than a materialized band—part of the world Richman conjured, which he was always best at doing with only a guitar and an audience to dance for. Still, the chronology is fun to follow: The band broke up in 1974, two years before its self-titled album came out. To make things more confusing, three months before that, Richman, who was by then on to new things, released a different album titled Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers. Then there was The Original Modern Lovers, an album of earlier demos, which came out in 1981.
“What I’m gonna do is, I’m gonna tell you a song, that is a true story,” Richman told an audience on a later Conan appearance. Mythos withstanding, everything Richman has ever put out feels exactly like that: a smiley Jewish boy in a boat-necked striped shirt from outside Boston telling you a true story. He turned 74 in May, but hasn’t slowed much. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited to see a rock star who should be 30 years past their prime.
More Things to Do This Week
VISUAL ART Pace Taylor
THRU AUG 10 | NATIONALE, FREE
Last Call at the Rainbow Cafe, a new suite of pastel drawings, feels a bit like Taylor’s take on the classic road movie. Taylor has been one of the fastest-rising stars of the local art scene in recent years. They’ve never shied from naming their cultural influences, which are often authors and movie characters. Here, they name Thelma and Louise, Smoke Signals, and Paris, Texas in the press release, and pose a surfeit of Americana references within a queer subtext. Figures rendered in the artist’s characteristically electric palette hang out in saloons pointing fingers and pistols, sip Rainier beers, smoke American Spirits, and, in the title piece, gaze out the back of car windows. The show is also (bittersweetly) timed to Taylor’s impending move across the country to Upstate New York.
THEATER Aw, Hell
PREVIEWS 7:30PM THU & FRI, JUNE 26 & 27; OPENS SAT, JUNE 28; THRU JULY 11 | REED COLLEGE PERFORMING ARTS BUILDING, $0–60
Dante’s Inferno is the jumping-off point for the Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble’s torrid summer romp through hell. It’s about—what else?—“the messy, disgusting, offensive truth of the human condition.” Renowned clown Emily Newton joins PETE company members onstage, and clown dramaturge Sascha Blocker collaborated on the production with playwright Chris Gonzalez and director Jacob Coleman. This will be gloriously weird, if that’s at all unclear.
MUSIC Wu-Tang Clan
8PM TUE, JULY 1 | MODA CENTER, $59+
Reporting on a recent stop of the Wu-Tang Clan’s farewell North American tour, the LA Times called the show not merely a concert but “a cultural earthquake.” Sounds about right, considering the combined cultural weight of the group, which formed in Staten Island in 1992. Surviving members RZA, GZA, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Method Man, Inspectah Deck, U-God, Masta Killa, and Cappadonna were all onstage with Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s son, Young Dirty Bastard, who gave renditions of his dad’s hits “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” and “Got Your Money.”
Elsewhere…
- Oregon strengthens its laws against banning books. (Oregon ArtsWatch)
- Hanging with Adelaide Beeman-White, the Hillsboro attorney who spends her non-billable hours in the Victorian era. (Oregonian)
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