My Top 1000 Songs #953: Vincent Van Gogh

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

There's always going to be a twinge of disappointment hearing the first (and essentially only) album by the original Modern Lovers, an album as surprising and thrilling today as it must've been upon its (belated) release back in 1976, and then reconciling yourself to the entirely different music Jonathan Richman had already begun to produce by then and has been sharing ever since. Which isn't to say there isn't great joy to be found along the way, earnest sing-along whimsy throughout his stripped-down, childlike post-Modern Lovers work. But, oh, for just one more Modern Lovers album!

That bittersweetness can be felt most vividly on "Vincent Van Gogh," off 1985's long-out-of-print and sadly non-streaming Rockin' And Romance. (I was fortunate to replace my old cassette with a CD during the brief moment when they were available.) Richman had already tackled the art world on the comically profane "Pablo Picasso," back on that Modern Lovers record, snarky and dark, with a post-Velvets proto-punk grind. But for his second visit to a classic painter, he was quaint and adoring and full of sunshine, an acoustic 50s-styled doo-wop song that bears no noticeable relationship with "Picasso" aside from some sort of invisible through-line only Jonathan could see.

It's magical and sweet, and maybe not the sequel we all longed for after "Pablo Picasso," but it's what we got and we can still love it just fine.

That one's hard to track down, but Richman re-recorded it 20 years later, more consistent with his later sparse acoustic guitar & snare work and, sadly, lacking that chipper doo-wop style.

Live 1987: