Baby, you're a Richman: Jonathan Richman back in the '70s.
By Laura Mojonnier
One gets the sense that Jonathan Richman spends a lot of time alone in his room – staring at that telephone that never rings, practicing his Angus Young-style leg kicks, and listening to French lessons on tape. When he does get out of the house, his favorite activity is touring with longtime drummer Tommy Larkins, with whom he'll play the last shows of a four-night stint at the Make Out Room tonight through Thursday.
From his days as a teenage Velvet Underground fan-turned-Modern Lover to his middle-aged flirtations with Spanish guitar and Romance languages, Richman has been a hero to suburban loners for more than 30 years. He documents his chronically broken heart and his love of painters like Vermeer and Van Gogh with geeky charisma and rare candor, revealing a self-effacing wit that somehow remains totally unironic. This is the guy who once sang, "I go to bakeries all day long / There's a lack of sweetness in my life," after all.
Richman was in top form last night at the Make-Out Room. The venue's intimate atmosphere paired with a stripped-down setup – just Richman on acoustic guitar and Larkins on drums, peppered by the occasional cowbell solo – played to the songwriter's strengths as a performer. His always-amusing lyrics (did he really just encourage us to "behold the lilies of the field" three times?) and legendary stage banter were supremely audible, even when they weren't in English.
Dressed in a blue button-down shirt and sporting a graying goatee, Richman was wide-eyed and jocular, coming off like a guy who still wants to mess around and have fun even when his vulnerability has been betrayed. He smiled, he danced, he "fooled around" on the guitar, he attempted a little vibrato, he took an intermission, and he translated a song into Spanish. Watching Richman onstage, it's sort of hard to believe that he's a legendary cult figure rather than someone's funny uncle who got a little too drunk at Christmas and decided to play guitar for all the cousins. He seems like he just wants to hang with his new friends, the audience.
Richman mostly played cuts from his new album, Because Her Beauty Is Raw and Wild (Vapor), and 2004's Not So Much to Be Loved as to Love (Vapor), but he also did a few fan-favorite sing-alongs, such as "Dancing in a Lesbian Bar." Even his newer songs inspired crowd participation, especially the unreleased "Cell Phone Song," the obviously hysterical anti-cell phone diatribe he played right after my phone rang during a song break ("'But Jonathan, what will you do when there's no more payphones?'/Maybe I'll just walk to a real place with a real phone/Or just come over to your house!"). He reprised the song during the encore, by which point everyone in the room knew the words.
The one minor disappointment was the conspicuous lack of Modern Lovers songs. Apparently, he doesn't play them very often these days. Or maybe that was his way of getting the real fans to come back later and hang out.
JONATHAN RICHMAN
Through Thurs/19, 8 p.m., $15
Make-Out Room
3225 22nd St., SF
(415) 647-6888
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