At some point in the mid-seventies, rock and roll turned on itself. It became its own worst enemy, fragmenting into dozens of complex hybrids of itself. It had become the domain of the ‘professional’ musician, featuring players and singers with superhuman abilities, and it aimed above the head of the average teenager.

Naturally, a backlash started to foment, which gave rise to bands like the Ramones and the Modern Lovers. Jonathan Richman was something to behold in 1976 – an anti-front man whose style bordered on what would come to be known as ‘outsider’ music. His lyrics were naïve and full of juvenile yearning, while his nasally vocal style was light years apart from the refined ‘professional’ style that had become prevalent in the ‘70s. As such, it would have been easy to dismiss the Modern Lovers, but you’d be wrong to confuse naïvete with ineptitude. Here, the ‘KISS’ philosophy prevails. It was counterintuitive and unfashionable to break things down to terms that were not only simple, but also genuine. These guys stumbled on the formula while teenagers, growing up in the suburbs of post-‘60s Boston. In 1972-73, among the milieu of heavy progressive rock, they were in their basement/garage doing this.

A little-known fact about this record is that the band recorded most of it years before its 1976 release. By the time “Modern Lovers” hit the streets, the band had been apart for over two years, so the album consists of a collection of demos that were made years earlier. The Modern Lovers were like the street rats of rock and roll, sucking up the muck of recent rock and roll history and unwittingly steering it back toward the inevitable. These songs marked a deliberate return to teenage concerns by capturing the raw energy of the Velvet Underground but applying it to simple teen angst in lieu of art damaged sex and drug addiction.

For an audience exhausted by Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Genesis, it conveyed a relatable innocence. Most people hated it, but more than a few recognized it for what it was. “The Modern Lovers” is an art project built without any sense of self-conscious pretense, one that challenged the mainstream.  Yes, Richman is a bit of a poser, but he’s a ‘pretend-poser’, acting out a self-confident self-image fantasy, allowing himself a slight rock and roll swagger. It’s the voice of an honest savant, with a cool rock and roll band that wants you to dance. Hell, even the Ramones wanted you to dance. 

A few things do bug me, though, and there are more than a few ‘WTF?’ moments. For instance, I hate it when he spells ‘Girlfriend’ ‘G-I-R-L-F-R-E-N’ just to make it fit, or rhyme, or to be clever-clever. His alleged passion for the girl in “Hospital” is thoroughly unconvincing (although that is likely the point), and Pablo Picasso takes a great idea and beats it into the ground, but taken as a whole, these are minor complaints. “Roadrunner” is an absolutely unbeatable celebration of getting a driver’s license. “She Cracked” is as positive a statement about a break-up as one could expect from an anxious teenager, and “Someone I Care About” is almost giddy as it weighs the possibilities of finding her replacement. All the while, the band plays with gleeful, contagious energy. “The Modern Lovers” stood rock and roll on its head, and in the process helped to revive it. Incidentally, two members would go on to become quite famous as founding members of the Cars (drummer David Robinson) and Talking Heads (Jerry Harrison). Well done, boys!

Featured tracks:

Roadrunner

Astral Plane

Old World

Pablo Picasso

I’m Straight

Dignified and Old

She Cracked

Hospital

Someone I Care About

Girlfriend

Modern World

Government Center

August 1976 - Billboard Did Not Chart