More reviews from the road

From reader Sarah, regarding Jonathan at the 9:30 club in DC:

I had the pleasure of seeing Jonathan last night at the 930 Club in DC. And
I do mean it was a pleasure, because Jonathan was happier, and more playful,
and more dance-y than he has been the past few times I have seen him. He
even took a couple of requests and I don't think he has done that too often,
at least where I have seen him.

He had a whole bunch of new songs, and so I don't know the names of them, so
I guess I will try and describe them. His new songs seemed to follow the
theme of making fun of elitist or modernistic things, and included such
subject matter as "gated communities", "affected accents" (one of the
funniest ones), and cellphones (as in "I don't wanna get a cell phone").
These songs all had very funny, satirical lyrics and they got the crowd
laughing. Vic Chesnutt preceded Jonathan and he sang some very funny,
satirical songs too, but his angle is somewhat darker and more cynical than
our Jonathan, but I did laugh quite a bit at his songs. I liked Vic a lot
and thought he was a great compliment to Jonathan's show. Also, it looks
like Vic and Tommy and maybe even Jonathan have made a CD together, so Tommy
accompanied Vic during the latter half of his set.

Jonathan did my favorite "I Was Dancing in a Lesbian Bar", which was the
best version of that song that I have ever seen, complete with lots of
dancing, lots of cowbell, lots of jingly bells, and many false endings, only
to come back with another verse or two. Needless to say, the crowd went
wild! I never get tired of that song.

In fact, he did several extended versions of songs, with Tommy doing drum
solos, and Jonathan doing cowbell and jingly bell solos, and flirting and
dancing towards the crowd. Tommy did a lot more complex drumming than I
have seen before also. After the show had finished, we asked Tommy about
some of the new songs we hadn't heard before, and I believe he said they are
not even on an album yet.

A tiny snippet from Backstage at the Narrows:

Your humble blogger went to talk to Jonathan Richman "backstage" at the Narrows about a half hour before showtime Friday night. There he was--a musical hero to your humble blogger, asleep on the couch.

I left, resisting the urge to snap a photo.

We chatted later, working out how I was to introduce him and his drummer Tommy Larkins.

He put on a quirky performance, picking up his guitar then putting it down constantly, picking up bells and dancing, wandering away from the microphone, re-arranging where the audience was sitting, etc. And the quirky crowd positively adored him.

The pictures are from the lovely Brooklyn Vegan

If you have anything for us over here on the Jojoblog, let me know!