Jonathan Richman "I, Jonathan"

On episode 15 of Past Prime, Steve and Matty try to recapture
"That Summer Feeling" through the music of a wide-eyed, hip
shaking, Velvet Underground acolyte (and sometimes stonemason).
Our co-hosts return to "I, Jonathan," from 1992, when Jonathan
Richman was was forty-one, on the brink of a star turn with the
Farrelly Brothers, and in a reflective, autobiographical mode.
Many years after his famous brush with greatness in the early 70s
with The Modern Lovers and his, perhaps more famous, and
surprising pivot into music for grown up children, Richman
delivered what many considered by many to be his greatest solo
album. "I, Jonathan" is, on the surface, a breezy, delightful
trip from Boston to California, from the 1960s to the 1990s, from
a rooming house on Venice Beach to a lesbian bar in northern
California. Beneath the surface, however, it is also a revealing
look at an artist who'd spent decades getting simpler, more
acoustic, more elemental and closer to the core of something
innocent and true. Along the way, we get a handful of Richman's
very best songs, a little surf guitar, a killer Lou Reed
imitation and six minutes of that twilight, grass on the bare
feet, summer feeling.


To read more about Jonathan Richman's "I, Jonathan," check out
the full essay at Past Prime.