The Modern Lovers were an American rock band led by Jonathan Richman in the 1970s and 1980s. The original band existed from 1970 to 1974 but their recordings were not released until 1976 or later. The sound of the band owed a great deal to the influence of the Velvet Underground, and is now sometimes classed as “protopunk”. Their only album, the eponymous The Modern Lovers, contained idiosyncratic songs about dating awkwardness, growing up in Massachusetts, and love of life and the USA. (More from Wikipedia)
Many of the seminal bands in these rock movements released albums on the Bomp!, Voxx, Alive or Total Energy labels; most of them are not household names by any means, but they are recognized by those in the know as being important bands that shaped the history of rock and roll. Some of these better-known bands and artists are the Romantics, the Modern Lovers, the Dead Boys (and Stiv Bators individually), the Plimsouls (and Peter Case individually), the Beat (and Paul Collins individually), the Stooges (and Iggy Pop individually), Devo, Nikki Sudden, the Black Keys, and Soledad Brothers.
Melissa Etheridge paved the way for greater acceptance of gays in the greater American society and, not incidentally, opened the door for other lesbian musicians like Phranc, whom I have heard described as “everyone’s favorite Jewish lesbian folksinger”. Phranc has a strong singing voice and is quite adept at songwriting; she also has a punk rock edge that she has displayed on several of her albums. The above album that I own, Positively Phranc includes a rewrite of Jonathan Richman’s “Pablo Picasso” (originally recorded by Richman’s proto-punk rock band the Modern Lovers) as “Gertrude Stein”.
(October 2013)
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John Cale has also had an important impact on music following his time with the Velvet Underground, though mostly behind the scenes. John Cale produced several proto-punk albums, including the first album by the Stooges, The Stooges (1969), and the first album by the Modern Lovers that Reprise Records refused to release; it was later released on Beserkley Records.
(December 2013)
While they never quite reached those heights again, their later albums explored Gordon Gano’s upbringing as the son of a Baptist minister. James Christopher Monger writes in Allmusic of their second album (released in 1984): “After the surprise success of their landmark debut, Violent Femmes could have just released another collection of teen-rage punk songs disguised as folk, and coasted into the modern rock spotlight alongside contemporaries like the Modern Lovers and Talking Heads. Instead they made Hallowed Ground, a hellfire-and-brimstone-beaten exorcism that both enraged and enthralled critics and fans alike. Like Roger Waters purging himself of the memories of his father’s death through [the Pink Floyd albums] The Wall and The Final Cut, bandleader Gordon Gano uses the record to expel his love/hate relationship with religion, and the results are alternately breathtaking and terrifying.”
(November 2014)
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In 1972, Kim Fowley recorded some songs by the proto-punk band the Modern Lovers, building on previous recordings that had been produced by John Cale. As Wikipedia reports: “These included re-recordings of ‘She Cracked’, ‘Astral Plane’, ‘I’m Straight’, ‘Girlfriend’ and two versions of ‘Roadrunner’, as well as the songs ‘Walk Up The Street’, ‘Dance With Me’ and the a capella ‘Don’t Let Our Youth Go To Waste’. [Bandleader Jonathan] Richman also credited James Osterberg (Iggy Pop) as co-writer on ‘I Wanna Sleep In Your Arms’ as a way of acknowledging that the song borrows a Stooges guitar riff.”
The recordings were first released on Kim Fowley’s short-lived Mohawk Records (a subsidiary of Bomp! Records) in 1981 under the title The Original Modern Lovers.
(January 2015/1)
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