Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

Jonathan Goes Country is undoubtedly my favorite Jonathan Richman record as I return to it much more than the others, despite such classics as I, Jonathan and Back in Your Life,  having many amazing tracks. Of course, The Modern Lovers records are also filled with incendiary classics. Something about Jonathan Goes Country resonates more with me than most on a song-by-song album level. Almost all the tracks have a place in showing that Richman can make country records with the best of them. The album's composition adds to its cohesion: five covers that honor the country canon while adding Richman's inimitable spin and seven originals that fit right in. He reworks three ("The Neighbors," "You're the One for Me," and "Corner Store") from his earlier albums, although you would never know he didn't write them for the album.  The record has few lows and many highs, cohesively fitting Richman's sound and style into the country idiom while reta...

My wife, Carrie, and I hit the trails yesterday and took some cool pictures on the DeGray Lake Resort Island Trail. We were not expecting to find so much wildlife. We saw many deer and a fox family lurking near their den. Watching the deer reminded me of Jonathan Richman's version of Marty Robbins' "Man Walks Among Us." As the deer and fox either scurried away through the underbrush or stood silently and watched, I felt like we were trespassing in this beautiful area. We slowly made our way through and left the animals to their lives.

Although I've listened to The Real Kids self-titled record many times since I discovered them, it always seems refreshingly new to me. From the first notes of their arguably greatest song, "All Kindsa Girls," the Real Kids prove that they were doing something different than their peers. Just like punk bands, they were attempting to simplify rock music, trying to move away from the excesses of the '70s, and look forward to a more visceral, less cerebral, take on guitar music that owed as much to the early days of rock as anything the Ramones or the Sex Pistols were doing at the time. The focus is on fun and excitement. The Real Kids is pure fun; rocking guitars, harmony vocals, songs about girls, the sound of a bar band on perpetual overload, all mixed together into a satisfying, lurching, sloppy rock 'n' roll ride. The later Flamin' Groovies cover similar territory, but are never as fun as the Kids' take on all things rock. John Felice's son...