Jonathan Richman

Jonathan Richman at Avondale Towne Cinema, Atlanta, Nov. 12, 2016

Last night, long-time troubadour Jonathan Richman entertained an audience at the re-modeled Avondale Towne Cinema in, well, Avondale, a suburb of Atlanta.  To meet Richman's requirements for his intimate, marginally amplified performance, the bar was moved out of the performance space and the HVAC was shut down, but these small inconveniences were well worth the performance.

We first saw Jonathan perform in Albany, NY back in 1986 or '87, and since that date have seen him dozens of times - we have not knowingly missed a Jonathan Richman performance happening wherever we happened to be since that first show.  His act has evolved over the years, like all true artists, he never stays in the same place for long,  but his warmth, his authenticity, and his humor have remained constants throughout the years, and last night was no exception.

A great heart-warming show to take our minds off of the madness going on around us, at least for an evening.

Mynabirds

Mynabirds at the Earl, June 28, 2012

More difficult Rocktober decisions to make: on Tuesday, October 29, Peaches will be performing at Terminal West, MDW favorite Jonathan Richman will be performing at the 40-Watt in Athens, and The Mynabirds will be performing at Aisle 5.

While we're disappointed that Richman won't be performing in Atlanta on this tour, a mid-week road trip to Athens for an evening show can be brutal, so the choice comes down to Peaches vs. Mynabirds, and this video may very well have tipped the scales in favor of Laura Burhenn and company.

Keith Richards

Apparently, Jonathan Richman is back on tour (if he was ever off) and will be playing at the 40-Watt in Athens on October 29, but no plans have been announced yet about performing in Atlanta.

Here's a video from his performance last year at Bumbershoot (dude, I was there!).

A Highly Selective and Idiosyncratic History of Jonathan Richman

1983:

1986:

1988:

1990:

1992:

2001:

2004:

2008:

Video Mixtape

Bumbershoot, Day Three

The last day of my last Bumbershoot, and I have to admit it: this was my most enjoyable Bumbershoot yet.  Here's a late-night recap of the bands we saw today:

GOLD & YOUTH

Gold & Youth came on early, taking the stage at 12:30 and only being allotted a 30-minute set, but kicked off the day nicely with their moody anthems.  Highlights included, naturally, their closer Time To Kill.

LA LUZ

La Luz took the stage at the same early hour as Gold & Youth, but were allotted a more luxuriant 45 minutes to play, so I was able to catch the last few songs of their set after Gold & Youth were finished.

HOBA HOBA SPIRIT

Going through the schedule, I did not plan on seeing any band named "Hoba Hoba Spirit" or have any interest in hearing any band named "Hoba Hoba Spirit," but as I had some free time after La Luz, I wandered over to the Fisher Green Stage and to my surprise found myself enjoying the funky set of Moroccan punk ("Moroccan roll" as the band put it) by Casablanca's Hoba Hoba Spirit.  Even though one of the singers wore a Clash Sandanista t-shirt, sadly, they still had to sing a song called I Am Not a Terrorist to dispel any Western suspicions about them.  Later in the day, Jonathan Richman would say that the most promising thing he saw during a recent tour of the Middle East, the only promising thing in fact, were joint Israeli and Palistinian punk-rock bands. After they got the audience up and dancing, no small achievement in Seattle, Hoba Hoba Spirit even got them singing along in Arabic, an even greater achievement in these polarized times.

CAMPFIRE OK THE WEATHER

I saw Campfire OK in 2011 at my first Bumbershoot, so I noticed that they had a new and different lineup when they took the stage today.  However, I was still surprised when their front man, Mychal Cohen, announced that this was their very last set as "Campfire OK," and from now on they will be called "The Weather."  Anyway, still a fun set from an up and coming band.

DAKHA BRAKHA

This was the real surprise of the day.  Just like with Hoba Hoba Spirit earlier in the day, I did not plan on hearing any band named "Dakha Brakha" today as I was going through the schedule.  But as it turned out, this three-women and one-man band played native music from "the free Ukraine," and featured otherworldly harmonies, interesting rhythms, and exotic-sounding instruments, reminding us how far east the Ukraine really is.  It's not rock, but fans of bands like Dirty Projectors and Bjork should find them interesting.  I was mesmerized.  

ROSE WINDOWS

Psychedelic blues rock from a band that sounded like they could have opened for Janis Joplin or Grace Slick at the Fillmore West back in the 1960s.  Some people might mistake that remark for a criticism, but I mean it as the highest compliment.

MEXICAN INSTITUTE OF SOUND

Funky electronic hip-hop-influenced dance music straight from the heart of Mexico City.  The infectious beats had your humble narrator up and dancing, despite his sore feet from two-and-a-half days of Bumbershoot.

JULIANNA BARWICK

Wisely, the organizers set Julianna Barwick up in an indoor venue, so her quiet, ambient soundscapes wouldn't have to compete with the backbeats and noise from the other stages.  Still, it was quite a transition from the dance-oriented sound of the Mexican Institute to Barwick, but the sheer artistry and brilliance of her playing rewarded the effort, and the audience hung in there in total silence through her spell-binding set.

BOMBA ESTEREO

Back to the dance.  It was only 100 yards but it felt like a whole different universe coming from Julianna Barwick's ambient set to the latin-infused hip-hop dance music of Columbia's Bomba Estereo, but in this case, it was the desination and not the journey that mattered.  A great set and a whole lot of fun.

NADA SURF



Finely crafted indie-pop by 20-year veterans of the scene.  

JONATHAN RICHMAN

Not unlike with Julianna Barwick earlier, I wondered how Jonathan Richman's music would fare in a festival setting.  As it turns out, his improvisational and spontaneous approach is the perfect tool for keeping a large audience's attention, and he had the crowd in the palm of his hand through his hour-long set, which seemed to fly by far too quickly.

REAL ESTATE

Real Estate are one of my favorite bands, and a perfect nightcap to end my last Bumbershoot.  At one point, bassist Alex Bleeker asked the audience if anyone had been lucky enough to catch Jonathan Richman earlier and asked what he had played, and when someone offered Egyptian Reggae, guitarist Martin Courtney spontaneously launched into a note-by-note, perfect cover of the song's main riff.  Just from that episode alone, you can tell how much these guys love their rock, and wouldn't it be so much fun to just hang out with these guys, talking music and going through their record collections?  In any event, they played a wonderful set of their layered, jangley music, and it was all so lovely that at times I even forgot where I was, or that the festival was ending, or how much my feet hurt from standing on them for three days. 

So that's it.  Best Bumbershoot ever.  At least for me.

And now it's over.

His Life With The Thrill Kill Kult

There are a lot of pictures in this particular post. It might take your computer a moment or two to download everything.

1995, as it turned out, was a pretty good year in Atlanta for outdoor concerts and events. In April, something called the Sixth Annual Great Atlanta Pot Festival was held in Piedmont Park, finally giving him his chance to see the band Cypress Hill.

By 1995, Cypress Hill was already a highly successful Latino-American hip-hop outfit, considered by many to be early and seminal exemplars of West Coast rap. They had already released their first two groundbreaking albums by the time of the Pot Festival, and while it was a bit surprising to see a band of their stature at a small, marginally legal event like the Piedmont Park festival, The Black Crowes had previously headlined the 1992 event with over 60,000 people reportedly attending. What's more, Cypress Hill had always been staunch advocates for cannabis, as demonstrated in their breakthrough hit Insane In the Brain, featuring rapper B-Real's exaggeratedly high-pitched nasal vocals, for which he credits The Beastie Boys for inspiration.

Black Uhuru, one of his favorite reggae bands, headlined the Pot Festival.  For the record, he first heard Black Uhuru on WRAS, Album 88, when they started playing the song Anthem. The album of the same name went on to win the first-ever Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album.

That year, he also attended the Second Music Midtown Festival.  The 1995 Music Midtown line-up included Gov't Mule, Little Feat, Blind Boys of Alabama, Our Lady Peace, Collective Soul,  Edwin McCain, Chris Duarte, God Street Wine, Screamin' Cheetah Wheelies, The BoDeans, Matthew Sweet, Everything, The Band, Buckwheat Zydeco, Adam Ant, Bottle Rockets, Magnapop, Delbert McClinton, The Josh Joplin Group, Rebirth Brass Band, Cigar Store Indians, Bone Pony, Five Chinese Brothers (who were not REM under a different name, as rumored), Francine Reed, Gracie Moon, The Kentucky Headhunters, Matthew Kahler, Shawn Mullins, The Sounds of Blackness, Supreme Court, Jackopierce, Lonnie Brooks, The Cruel Sea, Memory Dean, and Murphy & Vidal.

He recognizes a lot of the bands from his pictures of that festival, but there are also a lot of bands he can't recall.  Here's who he can identify:

CAKE

This wasn't his first time seeing Cake - they had played the inaugural festival the year before, and their quirky angular songs were alt-rock radio staples that year.

TINSLEY ELLIS

A veteran bluesman with several smoking albums under his belt, Ellis looks to him now a little bit like Kenny Powers from Eastbound and Down.

NRBQ, WITH THE SUN RA HORNS

Another veteran band, the unclassifiable NRBQ, were touring that year with "The Sun Ra Horns," but which turned out to be only two of the recently deceased bandleader's sidemen, Tyrone Hill and Dave Gordon. He's heard that when the band played around the Arkestra's home base of Philadelphia, saxophonist Marshall Allen and percussionist Donny Allen had also joined them.  Still, a little Sun Ra is better than none and goes a pretty long way.  

THE VILLAGE PEOPLE

Let's see:  a leather-bound biker, an Indian chief, and a cop - it isn't hard to identify the band in these pictures.  Even in 1995, though, the band were an anachronistic holdover from the 70s disco era, but the audience still went nuts for them.  On a somewhat disappointing note, in interviews during this comeback tour and in some of their stage banter that night, they disavowed any association with the gay community and strenuously refuted any implication that they might be gay themselves.  Who cares dudes, and why turn your back on the very audience that brought you fame and fortune?  

THE STONE ROSES

Manchester's The Stone Roses were already nearing the end of their run as a band at the time of their May 1995 Music Midtown appearance.  Some of the original band had already quit and remaining members were apparently feuding, and the tensions were apparent on stage. 

Amazingly, someone captured the set on video, including the bass player's on-stage tantrum - fast forward to the 1:20 mark for the drama.  Shortly after this set, the band cancelled their June appearance at Glastonbury, and the lineup that played on the Atlanta stage that afternoon never performed together again.  

The sound and picture quality isn't that great, but seriously, who had an iPhone in 1995?

BUSH

Bush were still rising in popularity at the time of their 1995 music Midtown appearance, but their songs Everything's Zen, Machinehead, and Little Things were already getting heavy airplay on radio station 99X.  They'd return to Music Midtown in 2002 to play an evening set, but in 1995 they were still relegated to the daytime slot.

JONATHAN RICHMAN

Jonathan Richman had been a favorite of his for years, from back in the mid 70s when Roadrunner was a Boston radio staple and through Jonathan's quirky early 80s records that were broadcast on Atlanta's WRAS, Album 88. He caught Richman live for the first time in the late 80s at a club (QE2) in the back of a White Castle hamburger joint in Albany, New York, and he vowed that night that he'd catch every Jonathan Richman show he possibly could from then on.  He's kept that vow, and by now has seen Jonathan a countless number of times, more times by far than any other performer.  His next scheduled Richman show is in Seattle on Labor Day weekend.

So that's who he can recognize.  Here are some of the bands below that he can't.  Any help at all identifying any of these performers would be most appreciated.  Seriously, please.  Anyone?

He can't even tell if this first band is reggae, hip-hop, or rock, or some hybrid of all three.

Any idea who this studious-looking guitarist is?

Or these guys?

Or these?

Does anyone know who this all-female band is? (He assumes the drummer was probably female, too.)

Or these two ladies?

No clue below, but the hat suggests country, or at least alt-country or folk.

Meanwhile, beyond these festivals and concerts and shows, somewhere around the time of the murder in the red barn, he had become a fan of the Chicago-based My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult.  He even got a chance to see them perform at Pittsburgh's Rosebud.  By 1995, when he wasn't attending Pot Festivals or Music Midtown, even though he had already turned 40 by then, he was cruising the dark streets of Atlanta playing 13 Above the Night, looking for love, looking for adventure, looking for action, looking for anything that was out there to be found.

At least he wasn't in fucking Albany any more.