[Boston MA]: Quiet is the new
loud. First struck by Richman’s constantly dopey expression, with the eyes of a
cult-member and a mouth that is always slightly open. I like some of his songs
just fine and I love his early Modern Lovers work, but the last time I saw him,
I was bored stiff. The music was the same tonight—Spanish guitar, tribal drums,
jazzy singer/songwriter, kind of jammy, mostly anti-pop—but the vibe with the
crowd was all different. It was an intimate setting, and his lyrics were
allowed to shine. Jonathan to the crowd: “Don’t just stare! What’s the point?” It was a poetry slam with a Sesame Street
sensibility. He managed to pull off a performance that approached The Mountain
Goats brilliance at live shows, giving off the feeling that we were privy to
personal revelations. The first time he started dancing like a painfully white
boy, it was hilarious. Jonathan on growing up weird: “My parents trusted me on
the way to bohemia…” Jonathan on the tactlessness of ‘picking up’ a girl: “Hey,
let’s pick up a 6-pack, 2 tires, and 2 girls…” Jonathan on your girlfriend
leaving you for her old boyfriend: “Well, she’s back with her old boyfriend…
Just let her go into the darkness… You want to tell her, her boyfriend’s no
friend…Just take them sheets to the Laundromat!” Jonathan on building walls
around yourself: “When we refuse to suffer, we refuse to feel, we can’t fall in
love, … but we can have sexual relations.” Jonathan on his pretentious
adolescence: “I talked with an accent I didn’t even have… in my affected accent
[Jonathan as the crowd’s response: his affected accent]… such a brat… I should
have been bullied more than I was.” The thing is, he’s still that adolescent.
He sang Pablo Picasso with a fake little accent. He loves to slip into singing
in different languages. The kooky dancing wasn’t funny after the first few
times. All of his overt attempts to be eccentric just create distance. Still
really enjoyed the show.
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