Monday's Long Song

What a great band Galaxie 500 were. They split up in 1991 leaving three studio albums behind them (Today, On Fire and This Is Our Music) on the verge of a tour of Japan. Singer/ guitarist Dean Wareham calling it a day when the band had a tough time making what was their final album and in Dean's words 'clearly weren't getting along'. Later in the same year Rough Trade went bust and the other two, Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang bought the rights to their own music at auction. The three former Galaxie 500ers have been really careful with what happened to those recordings ever since and last year released a archival album, Uncollected Noise New York '88- '90. 

One of the many highlights of their back catalogue is their cover of The Modern Lovers song Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste, Jonathan Richman's sub- two minute sketch turned into a just shy of seven minute slowcore/ dreampop epic by Galaxie 500. It was on 1988's Today and later released as a B- side in 1990 and re- recorded for a Peel Session too. 

Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste

The bass and drums become an exercise in hypnosis while Dean's guitars (two of them, one chugging away like Lou Reed, the other spindly and bright like Sterling Morrison) create some tension. Dean's brittle, upper register voice singing Jonathan's lovelorn, tragic lyrics at the very edge of breaking down.

Dean Wareham is about to release another solo album, the follow up to 2021's I Have Nothing To Say To The Mayor Of LA. A few songs have appeared ahead of it including this one- That's The Price Of Loving Me is a gorgeously understated song, sublime chord changes and padding bassline, Dean's voice in a lower register now than it was back in the late 80s. Kramer, the man who produced those Galaxie 500 albums, is back at the controls and it shows. 

 

The Mirror

                                                      The Mirror, 12th March 1932

Sleeping Woman By A Mirror, 1932

We had a few days staying with friends in South London and took in trip into central London on Tuesday which gave me the opportunity to see the Picasso 1932 exhibition at Tate Modern (for free too courtesy of friend's Mum's membership card. The Picasso show is amazing, gallery after gallery of paintings done in a year long creative burst (inspired by his love affair with a younger woman Marie-Theresa Walter). Along with the paintings are sculptures, drawings, sketchbooks and a few paintings from earlier on in his career, arranged to re-create the one man show he held in Paris in 1932. Some of the portraits, large canvasses, were completed in one single afternoon sitting. The speed and intensity of the work is jaw dropping as is his use of colour. The paintings become darker towards the end, a recurring rescue of a drowning woman dominating (in the autumn of 1932 Marie picked up an infection swimming in a sewage infected river). It's on until 7th September. It frazzled my head a bit to see so many of these pictures together and close up. Well worth a trip out. 

There are quite a few songs that mention or are about Picasso. Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers are at the top of the pile.

Pablo Picasso

Coming out of South London our SatNav decided to take us north up to the Thames, though Crystal Palace, Norwood, Tulse Hill, skirting the edge of Brixton, and then crossing the river at Hammersmith Bridge. I don't think it was the fastest way out of the city. Maybe it knew the M25 was at a standstill. Or maybe it knew that having crossed Hammersmith Bridge we'd turn left and see Cheyne Walk and Edith Grove, home to the 60s Stones, the World's End Estate (home to Joe Strummer and where he wrote London Calling, by the river) and then turn up Gunter Grove (the infamous home of John Lydon and the base of Metal Box-era PiL). All seen through the window of the car while negotiating London traffic. I think London Lee of Crying All The Way To The Chip Shop fame knew this part of London well. Anyway, thank you SatNav for showing it all to me. 

Don't Go To Waste

This may be none of my business as a Briton but...

If you put me on the spot I'm not sure I can list the achievements of the Obama Presidency but he is important if nothing else as a representative of a type of change many people never thought they'd see in the White House. On top of that, America, you really don't want Mitt Romney as your leader for the next four years. Do you?

Galaxie 500 covering Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers.

Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste

Some People Try To Pick Up Girls

... and get called asshole, this never happened to Pablo Picasso. So said Jonathan Richman way back in 1972. Brilliant track, with a lovely riff and one great line turned into a whole song.

Pablo Picasso

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 !

I saw a man yesterday wearing a t-shirt with the slogan '1976 1988 Punk, Hip Hop, Acid House', which seemed like a pretty fair summary of what's been important culturally over the last 34 years. There are and have been writers and commentators more skillful than me to tie these three things together. But there are other parts of my record collection that fall outside these dates that are also important, and Jonathan Richman's Roadrunner is one of them.

Jonathan Richman first recorded it in 1972, as a Velvet Underground obsessed young man who had moved to New York to meet the Velvets and lived on a sofa belonging to one of them for a bit. His Modern Lovers also recorded it, produced by John Cale. Way ahead of their time, the first Modern Lovers lp is one of those punk-before-punk records. Roadrunner was issued as a 7" single in 1977 at the height of British punk, with Roadrunner (Once) on the a-side and Roadrunner (Twice) on the b, and another live version, Roadrunner (Thrice), was on the flip of a later Jonathan Richman single. All three are ace and I can happily play them back to back, although my copy of Thrice is the crackliest piece of vinyl I own. In Lipstick Traces Greil Marcus waxes lyrical about Roadrunner, spending pages just deconstructing the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 introduction. More recently The Guardian's Laura Barton took a road trip around Boston, Massachusetts visiting and passing all the sights mentioned in the song.

Roadrunner is about Richman's hometown, the romance of the road, the sights and sounds inside and outside the car, the joy of late night radio, and the thrill of a song with only two chords (although he sneaks a third one in briefly towards the end). It's massively influential, absurdly good, and doesn't sound like it came from a time before that chap's t-shirt.

'Roadrunner, roadrunner
Going faster miles an hour
Gonna drive past the Stop 'n' Shop
With the radio on'

01 Roadrunner.wma