a week of not writing posts feels… weird. mostly due to my poor planning and my laziness during the summer, i haven’t been able to write last week’s three posts. let’s hope i get back into a proper rhythm!
the way i discovered the modern lovers was pretty interesting. it started with galaxie 500‘s cover of “Don’t Let Our Youth Go to Waste“, but I don’t consider it a cover because the modern lovers’ original recording of this song is live and sounds more like jonathan richman reciting poetry-galaxie 500 created the entire instrumental. that being said, i never thought of checking out the modern lovers until i listened to “Sister Ray” again, and wikipedia pointed me back to this song. a circular journey, i love those.
anyways, “Roadrunner” is one of those songs that’s incredibly simple and hard not to love-and at the same time, it’s revolutionary punk before punk even existed. richman’s vocal delivery is both energetic and deadpan in a way that’s cool like lou reed, but richman’s lyrics are freshly innocent and optimistic in contrast to reed’s provocativeness. it’s almost as if richman wrote this entire song after having the best grocery store trip of his life, marveling at the most mundane, minute details of his trip (“Suburban trees, suburban speed/And it smells like Heaven”). “Roadrunner” is just a really damn catchy song about what it is to love life. something i myself could really use.
give it a listen if you haven’t already!
p.s. the picture is kip driving a 1960 corvette, if you couldn’t tell.
q-street 