MRR 249
This is my sixth year as a columnist for MRR. I’m still super stoked to be a part of this magazine. I want to take this time to remind people that MRR is now distributed primarily through DIY distros so get in touch about getting bundles to sell in your town and make sure your local distro/record store/infoshop is carrying MRR. I walked into the University of Maryland record co op in 1983, I knew precious little about hardcore/punk music. I bought a few 7”s, Government Issue, Vice Squad, Rudimentary Peni, and I saw and issue of MRR sitting on the counter. I picked it up because it looked cool and punk. I read that issue cover to cover and found out my local college station broadcast the MRR radio show and became an avid listener. I thought punk was a strictly American and English thing until I started reading the Brazillian, Japanese and Finnish scene reports in MRR and hearing the radio show. That shit blew my mind. Soon I was ordering BCT tapes and sending envelopes full of cash to Disorder and Toxic Shock and Ratcage distros.

In today’s information saturated world we forget how important a lifeline MRR was back in the day. When hardcore was still small and new MRR carried each months breathless report from the front. I still think Welcome to 1984 is the best comp LP ever and will never be topped. You might say that print zines are outdated. But nothing on the internet can compare with a consistent (twenty plus years!) monthly summary of what’s going on in hardcore punk. A quick calculation would lead me to believe that in the last 248 issues MRR has reviewed almost 40,000 punk records. Sure it’s easier to find information quickly on the internet, you can do a search for “gauze” and find factoids about the Japanese hardcore band, rather than wait for the new issue to have a scene report or review. But, you will rarely get the depth, critical thinking and continuity that a magazine like MRR can provide from a website. So keep buying, reading and contributing to MRR, now more than ever.

I’m pretty disgusted with the world political situation these days. The people who have managed to take over in the US have set the country on a course so reckless I really do miss Reagan. The insane neo imperialism, the dismantling of environmental protections, abortion rights, free speech, workers rights and swing to the radical right are shocking to the say the least. I’m amazed so many people buy into the blatant propaganda. I’ve studied quite a bit of history and one topic that continues to intrigue me is European imperialism in the 19th and early 20th century. One of the main things to understand about imperialism, is that although it was often justified for military, and economic rationales ultimately the drive for empire was psychological. Modern cost/benefit analysis have shown that the cost of maintaining overseas Empires was a break-even proposition at best. Economic exploitation of nations is much more profitably undertaken by control of industry and finance than outright force. Most efficient capitalistic countries got out of the empire business pretty quickly after the Second World War. A few more retrograde states (USSR, South Africa) persisted into the early 1990s. By the 21st Century it seemed that old-fashioned Imperialism had been more or less rejected by history. Indeed, neo colonialism has managed to reap huge profits for the elites both of the developed countries and the nations they exploit for the last fifty plus years. Japan for instance gained almost all of its war aims peacefully through economic domination of Asia rather than outright military domination. Neo colonialism is so effective because a big part of equation is the local elite that plunders it’s own nations resources in name of it’s own people then diverts the proceeds into Swiss bank accounts while the working class struggles. In this regard most developing countries just exchanged a foreign exploiter for a local one but nothing really changed.

The driving force behind most 19th century European Empires was not economic, or military but the desire to prove the fitness and superiority of the nation state. In an age when social Darwinism was in vogue the idea that different races were destined to rule or be ruled, lead many to believe that each race on earth was in a life or death competition with the other and the only the strong would survive. Ultimately I think this is what led most countries to set up overseas Empires and got tiny Belgium and Portugal into the business of conquering vast tracts of Africa.

In walks the Bush administration and the Neo Conservative National Security State. The manifest drive to dominate the Persian Gulf region was facilitated by the tragic events of Sept 11th and the so called war on terrorism. The bizarre doctrine of preventative war (as opposed to preemptive war) and the invasion and occupation of Iraq lead one to believe that decades of foreign policy experience has been thrown out the window. And indeed it has, because what we are seeing is a return to old-fashioned 19th Century imperialism. I think at the root of the Bush cliques drive to dominate the gulf and vanquish Iraq is this same sense that America has to prove that it is the strongest, most powerful, most righteous nation and all others must submit or perish. I fear that this is also the dying gasp, the final spasm of violence of a dying empire striking out to prove it’s still in the ring. And after all this bloodshed why is the gas still so expensive?

To me one of the most important “proto punk” artists of the 1970’s was Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers. Richman was from the Boston suburbs and was influenced by local gigs by the Velvet Underground. He got a group together in 1970 that struggled for a while until a red hot line up solidified in 1971. Richman is my favorite character from the proto punk scene of the late 60’s and early 70’s because he was so dug in against the hippie aesthetic of the day. I’d have to admit, I like the Stooges musically better and the MC5 had the political line. But Richman was so uninfected by all the flower power bullshit. Here we was wearing straight leg jeans, short hair, advocating a primitive form of Straight Edge and playing raw, rocking 50’s inspired rock and roll while everyone else was long hair, bell bottoms, drugs and overblown psychedelic concept albums.

The Modern Lovers classic material was recorded in 1972 over several sessions as demos for various labels, one set of demos produced by John Cale the others by Kim Fowley. Neither of these sessions generated enough label interest to garner and LP and only two tracks were released on a compilation in the Modern Lovers own era. Ironically, after punk took off in 1976 the Cale sessions were re issued as an LP (Modern Lovers, on Beserkely Records) and later the Fowley sessions were bootlegged as The Original Modern Lovers LP (Mohawk? records) Richman soon outgrew minimalist primitive rock and roll and became more of a poet/singer songwriter type guy and is still around today I believe. However, those two LPs worth of demos are what we are to examine today.

Grossly underestimated and overlooked, the Modern Lovers blasted out some of the absolute best fuzzed out, minimalist rock music of all time. Richman was disgusted with the excess and decadence of the late 60’s hippie scene and strove to recapture the high-energy excitement of the original wild 50’s rockers and 60’s garage scene. The Modern Lovers guitar sound was totally distorted and their organ was overdriven and fuzzed out as well. The best Modern Lovers tracks are stripped down to pure rock energy, there is not one note more than needed to convey the point. In an era where “minimalism” is being thrown around to describe all sorts of overproduced rock music, we need to hear what truly primal, stripped down, bare bones rock and roll is. Indeed, Don’t Let Our Youth Go to Waste is so stripped down and minimal that there are no instruments! Just Jonathan singing to the tune of the song. This is music so pure and direct it needs no embellishment. Richman’s lyrics celebrated the suburbs, rock and roll, and cruising in anthems like Roadrunner. His expression of lonliness and desperate alienation are palpable in songs like Girlfren, and Walk Up the Street. You can hear in his voice that this guy didn’t really fit in and was searching for something. And you just can’t beat the off the wall tracks like Pablo Picasso (never got called and Asshole). And while everyone else was fucked up on downers or exploring religious cults and shit here was a guy singing I’m Straight and doing it loud and proud. (the Crucial Youth cover of this track is pretty dismal.

I don’t think rock critics or label execs liked or “got” Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers in their day. True genius was there in the form as rock and roll poet laureate and some fuzzed out raw garage burning ragers. But this early form of punk was to go unheard until after bands like the Ramones and Pistols put punk on the map and in the headlines. I’d have to say though, that I rock the Modern Lovers a lot more than either of the aforementioned bands these days. The band didn’t stay together long enough to capitalize on the later wave of punk, which is probably for the best. Like a voice of pure mad genius from the wilderness the Modern Lovers had the shit nailed down before almost anyone else had a clue. I can’t recommend the classic Modern Lovers material enough. You have to use care when hunting this stuff down, because the Modern Lovers never recorded an album, so most stuff that’s available is cobbled together from demos and live tracks of varying quality. The essential material is the Modern Lovers LP (black with a blue heart on the cover) and the Original Modern Lovers bootleg of the Fowley sessions (has goofy romance magazine stuff on the cover) but use care because later editions and CD versions have different/missing tracks.

Publication Date:
February 1, 2004

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