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Originally Posted by evollove
Yeah, you have posted that before. And I still don't get why one thing has to destroy another, instead of simply presenting an option. As a consumer, don't you sometimes want dumb and sometimes want smart?
Anyway, I can think of a lot of rock that is fun and political, so I'm not sure I see the boundaries. Chuck Berry's "Brown Eyed Handsome Man," the very dancable Gang of Four, etc. And maybe I'm just an empty-headed tool, but I'm pretty sure the politics in the rock I listened to in my formative years did have an effect, and I think I still retained a sense of humor.
!!! Johnathan Richman as Jim Morrison's weird, talented cousin suddenly makes the record even better.
I'm gonna spin this one later today, I think.
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How did we get on the subject of music? We're supposed to be fighting.
Faggot.
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I've always thought of Richman as kind of a "Morrison for the rest of us" -- the comparison definitely works, and I think it makes the Modern Lovers that much more interesting as a whole.
Incidentally, I once hear someone make a similar statement about Sonic Youth and The Beatles. I was arguing that SY's influence on more straight forward "rock-type" artists was probably less the result of people actually listening to their music and trying to replicate it than it was a by-product of their industry influence; all the networking, PR and marketing they did for bands from their larger community.
But my friend said that he'd always considered SY to be, essentially, a pop band in the tradition of the Beatles. A self-contained unit of four personalities, all of which contributed to the writing and sound of the band. Sure, they were a pretty extra-terrestrial kind of "pop" band, but they were like a perfect pop-rock entity, like the Beatles only from another dimension, often imitated but never replicated.
I thought this made SY even more fun to listen to. I'm still not sure if I agree, but thinking of them this way has made for some interesting comparisons. Suddenly "Karen Koltrane" feels a bit like "While my Guitar Gently Weeps" and Murray Street feels a bit like Abbey Road. It's empty speculation at best, but it kinda makes a lot of sense. Jim O'Rourke would be the Billy Preston of the bunch, I guess?