John Gushue . . . Dot Dot Dot

A little Jonathan Richman on ukulele

If you've known me since at least the mid-Eighties, you know I'm a big fan of Jonathan Richman. (Getting to see him play live twice were highlights, for sure.)

I found this cover of Action Packed just now, and am posting it because it involves a ukulele. I bought one for Nick last week, who took to it like toast to butter. I'm going to start a ukulele tag, just so he can keep them in one place.

You can't see much here, of course, but that's all right with me.

Jonathan Richman, My Baby Love Love Loves Me

Jonathan Richman still amazes me. I went through a major and extended Jonathan phase in the 1980s, fed by my friends Samantha and Rick, with interstitial bouts of fandom since.

This recent video of a live performance shows that Jonathan still has that stripped-down style, and is still a hoot.

Saturday playlist (tunes about radio version)

There are lots and lots of songs about the radio; so many, I had no trouble finding a list from what's on my hard drive. I usually put up a list of five; unable to make clean choices, I this week picked 10.

Van Morrison: Caravan. You could make a list alone around Van Morrison songs about radio; an alternate is the Enlightenment track In the Days Before Rock and Roll, one of several about his adolescent obsession with tuning in U.S. R&B ("Fats did not come in/ Without those wireless knobs"). Caravan is about the joy that comes with letting the radio set the scene for a party.

Reunion: Life Is A Rock (But The Radio Rolled Me). A chestnut from the AM era ... about AM-era chestnuts. The lyrics are one namecheck after another, sung at a frenetic pace: "B.B. Bumble and the Stingers, Mott the Hoople, Ray Charles Singers..."  One of my friends at school could actually rattle off these words, even though I'm pretty sure none of us knew much about the names in the song.

Talking Heads: Radio Head. A track from True Stories that may be best known for giving Radiohead its name ... even though the Texan accordion swing sounds nothing like Radiohead at all. And it's fun.

Elvis Costello: Radio, Radio. The other side of the coin to the tributes to radio, Costello ripped into the vapid programming of the late 1970s. It was also, famously, the song Costello played without approval on Saturday Night Live after a false start of another tune; you can watch it here. (It pissed off NBC, although it's been anthologized and taken as a proof of SNL's iconoclastic tone ever since.)

Wilco: Radio Cure. I love the sombre tone of this song, which seems to be about the healing power of radio, even though it is so downbeat.

Donald Fagen: The Nightfly. With Steely Dan, Fagen made FM, which gave the concept of grapefruit wine to the masses. But I like this song, and the fantasy of late-late-night radio that filled Fagen's imagination in the early 1960s.

Everclear: A.M. Radio. I'm not an Everclear fan, but I got a kick out of A.M. Radio, and its attempts to explain things like transistor radios to kids brought up on CDs (which, ironically, are now themselves old-fashioned of kids today).

The Modern Lovers: Roadrunner. Jonathan Richman's breakthrough song is one of the great driving songs of them all, but it's also all about the radio. "Radio on," to be precise. Chant it now.

David Bowie: DJ. A slice of weirdness from the Lodger era. Y

Rush: The Spirit of Radio. On a positive note, a rare love song from a band that is happy to say what fans they were of a radio station, in this case the still-loved CFNY in Toronto.

Saturday playlist

Some of the tunes that have been flowing out of the earbuds these last few days:

Guster: Backyard. This is a tune that I add to miscellaneous playlists I throw together for a walk or a bit of a work. I really like the instrumentation, which goes with a lot of Guster songs.

Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers: Dancin' Late at Night. If I'm gonna get it straight, I want dancing, dancing late at night ... Ah, 3 a.m. Given I'm asleep well before 11 most nights, this tune really seems like a relic.

Stevie Wonder: As. I always thought Songs in the Key of Life was remarkable - I saved up to buy my own copy when I was a kid - but it still slays me. A song like As is overshadowed by the hits, but it's wicked. My son and I have been cranking up the last three or four minutes in the car lately.

Thomas Dolby: The Flat Earth. This is a live version from Dolby's album The Sole Inhabitant, in which he plays - or rather layers - every sound you hear. The Flat Earth was a song I played a lot for a period in '84 or so, but have scarcely heard since; the live version is missing the backing vocals from Adele Bertei of Au Pairs, obviously, but the song sounds pretty lush.

Albert Hammond, Jr.: Everyone Gets a Star. A single from the Strokes guitarist debut, picked up from a Paste magazine sampler. Not bad. I still have trouble squaring Hammond fils with Hammond pere, the singer of It Never Rains in Southern California and co-writer of dross like Starship's Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now. Talk about rebellious youth ...

My Saturday Playlist queue was launched a few weeks ago. Check out the rest here.