Jonathan Sings! (On TV)

A great TV performance of "You're Crazy for Taking the Bus" from Jonathan. It's from Late Night with Conan O'Brien, but I am unsure of the year. I always love these clips from Conan, the idea of a totally uninitiated audience having Jonathan sprung on them. Sure enough, by the end of the song, the crowd is completely with him. It's great stuff.




In the vein of flashbacks from "Jonathan Goes Country", here's Jonathan playing "Since She Started to Ride" in Charlottesville at the Gravity lounge last Saturday, October 11th.

Dallas, TX :October 2, 2008

For that lucky half of the U.S., Jonathan is kicking off his east coast fall tour in Texas, and Pete Freedman of the Dallas Observer wrote a review of last night's show at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios in Dallas. Picture also courtesy of Pete Freedman.

Imagine, for a moment, that you're not in Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios. The concrete floors and walls and overall bare bones concert environment are out of mind.

Instead, you're in a living room.

Maybe it's your house. Maybe it's a friend's house. Either way, you're comfortable, relaxed.

And then in walks a buddy's cousin, or uncle. His name is Jonathan, and he's quirky, animated, eccentric and, most of all, entertaining (I mean, c'mon, he refers to himself in third person). Jonathan then pulls out a guitar and starts an impromptu troubadour set. It's hilarious, poignant and thought-provoking, all at once.

You're at a loss for words. This is one of the most entertaining things you've ever seen.


Read the rest over at the DC9 at night music blog

One of the things I love about this review are the little notes at the end. For example: By The Way: One of Richman's quirks is that he sings songs in various other languages--only, as he admitted to the audience at RGRS, he rarely takes the literal translative meanings to heart. He'd rather project his own meaning onto the words, he said, "because, well, [he] made them up."

End of the road Festival 2008

In his BLog "Stereo Sanctity", Ben has reviewed the End of the road Festival which was held at the Larmer Tree Gardens in beautiful North Dorset inthe UK. Among a large amount of artists featuring Mercury Rev, Billy Childish and others, British Sea Power did a complete set of Jonathan covers. Here is the "Stereo Sanctity" report about the event but the report on the full festival can be found "here".

Speaking of which, perhaps the best moment of the whole festival goes as follows; after midnight on the Saturday, and we’re all a bit flagging energy-wise (well, I am anyway), looking for something fun to keep us going… so we’re crammed into this packed tent where apparently some kinda (clearly not very) secret musical happening is going to be a-transpiring. So, hey, apparently it’s some guys from British Sea Power and some of their pals and, with no disrespect intended to them as a band, this does not really fill me with faith in imminent good times… BUT, they take the stage, and they say, hello, we’re going to be playing a set of Jonathan Richman covers. And they do!

You know that feeling, when you’re in a situation of some kind – in this case, an unknown musical unit setting up to play - and you think ‘who knows, maybe something fun will happen here – prob’ly not, but you never know’, and then the universe knocks you flat by presenting you with something so, so, so, so, so much more fun than you could possibly have expected? Like, the absolute PERFECT thing you want to happen at that moment? – well it was a bit like that. They mostly did stuff of the first couple of post-Modern Lovers solo records – ‘New England’ and ‘Ice Cream Man’ and ‘Government Center’ and ‘The New Teller’ and ‘Important In Your Life’ and ‘Abominable Snowman In the Market’ and ‘Martian Martians’, as well as ‘Cornerstore’ and ‘The Girl Stands Up To Me Now’ from later in the great man’s career, and probably a bunch of others, I forget. ‘I’m A Little Airplane’ went down a storm too – I mean, it’s never really been a favourite of mine on record, but the appeal of getting drunk and yelling along at the top of your voice to a song that mostly goes “WANGITY-WANG!, WANGITY-WANG!” is never to be underestimated. And, moving from the ridiculous back to the sublime as only Jonathan can, they did ‘The Morning Of Our Lives’, absolutely note/word perfect to the version on ‘Modern Lovers Live’! I could have wept. I think I probably did. I think I might weep again now, just writing about it.

Go and do whatever you do, British Sea Power guys – even if you release twenty six albums of fascist speeches and reversed dog barks, I’ll love you forever for pulling this one out of the hat.

Ben Haggar

Thanks are due to Ben for having kindly given the authorization to reproduce his text and to my friend JC Brochard for having pointed out this review.

Flyer for the High Dive, Champaign, IL - 25th Oct 08

Here's a Flyer for one of the upcoming shows.

If anyone happens to come across other flyers, let us know about them, or send us a scan, and we'll get them added to Jojoblog.

tour update Autumn 2008

Update: visit High Road Touring for more USA dates October 1-29, 2008

A number of new dates have been added for October 2008

Please let us know if you find out more dates!

we'll change tour info in the sidebar soon

Wed 1 Oct Austin, TX (The Parish)
Thu 2 Oct Denton TX (Rubber Gloves)
Fri 3 Oct Memphis, TN (Hi-Tone Cafe)
Sat 4 Oct Huntsville, AL (Flying Monkey Arts Centre)
Sun 5 Oct Pensacola FL (Sluggo's)
Mon 6 Oct Gainesville FL (Common Grounds)
Tue 7 Oct Tampa FL (Skipper's Smokehouse)
Wed 8 Oct Savannah, GA (Savannah Smiles)
Thurs 9 Oct Charlotte, NC (The Evening Muse)
Fri 10 Oct Chapel Hill NC (Local 506)
Sat 11 Oct Charlottesville VA (Gravity Lounge)
Sun 12 Oct Philadelphia PA (First Unitarian Church)
Tue 14 Oct New York NY (The Concert Hall)
Wed 15 Oct Great Barrington, MA (Club Helsinki)
Thurs 16 Oct Northampton, MA (Pearl Street, downstairs)
Fri 17 Oct Somerville MA (Somerville Theatre)
Sat 18 Oct Portland, ME (SPACE Gallery)
Sun 19 Oct Albany, NY (Valentine's)
Tues 21 Oct Rochester, NY (The Bug Jar)
Wed 22 Oct Millvale PA (Mr. Small's Theatre)
Thurs 23 Oct Athens, OH (Donkey Coffee)
Fri 24 Oct Newport KY (The Southgate House)
Sat 25 Oct Champaign, IL (High Dive)
Sun 26 Oct St. Louis, MO (Off Broadway)
Mon 27 Oct Iowa City, IA (The Picador)
Tues 28 Oct Ames, IA (The Maintenance Shop)
Thurs 29 Oct Lawrence, KS (The Bottleneck)

Confirm with venue before making travel plans

This Romance Will Be Different For Me

A great video from a performance in Spain, apparently for Radio 3.



Also this one, I Was Dancing In a Lesbian Bar and El Joven Se Estremece, from the same show.



The one strange thing about watching these, for me, is how quiet the crowd is. Nobody's laughing, nobody's getting into it, they just watch and clap politely at the end of every song. It kind of reminds me of when I took my best friend's cousin to a Jonathan show. I'm so used to the crowd being totally into what Jonathan's doing, it kind of floored me. Especially for Lesbian Bar. "Why does this seem so strange to me? OH GOD NOBODY IS SINGING ALONG". Tough crowd.

Live at Central Park SummerStage '00 Download

Boxing Duck! has a great live recording from 2000 available for download, the sound quality is absolutely brilliant as is the setlist, which contains three unreleased (I think, please correct me if I'm wrong) songs: Silent Treatment, Barcelona and I'm Not Obsessed With Her (lyrics can be found on JojoBlog here.

You can find the download links here. Enjoy!

Jojo new 7" cover

Courtesy of Juno records - click on the pix to enlarge