Well, in that case, me three! As it happens, I have a Jonathan Richman story of my own, though I’ve never actually met him.
Years ago, I ended up living for a year or so in Springfield, Missouri. I became acquainted with Lou Whitney, who ran a well known recording studio out there called Column One. Lou and some of the studio musicians had recently finished working on the album “Jonathan Goes Country,” so I occasionally got to hear this or that anecdote about the project.
Lou said that he and Jonathan used to get into these deep philosophical debates that would go on forever. On one occasion, sometime after midnight, Lou simply fell asleep with Jonathan still holding forth. Around day break, Lou woke up with a creepy sense that something was hovering about an inch away from his face. It turned out to be Jonathan, who must have been waiting for hours to continue the conversation, and who then said (yes, in exactly that voice of his) “An’ another thing . . .”
Thanks! Your 50s/60s mixes are always interesting to me, and they generally turn out to contain a few tracks that I know but many that I don’t. Sometimes, I find that you’ve included something that, while it’s a long-time favorite of mine, is also improbable enough that I’m surprised to see it resurfacing at all. In this case, what I have in mind is the Jim Oertling track, which I think of as what might have happened had Johnny Horton at some point lost his lustre and been forced to record in somebody’s garage. Don’t get me wrong: I love that recording (which I first heard as a repro/bootleg single back in the 1980s or so). But the song itself does seem like a blend of the ridiculous with the sublime, what with its being about some guy’s obsession not exactly with a great white whale but only with a fairly sizeable fish.
That’s a great synopsis of the song. I like it too. (by the way, I went to a Jonathan Richman concert and he was sitting at the bar, and I told him I really liked the album I, Jonathan. He turned to me and said in his weird way, “I like it too!” whenever I say or hear that I hear it in his voice.)
DJMCBLUES2 MUSIC
Thanks!
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Well, in that case, me three! As it happens, I have a Jonathan Richman story of my own, though I’ve never actually met him.
Years ago, I ended up living for a year or so in Springfield, Missouri. I became acquainted with Lou Whitney, who ran a well known recording studio out there called Column One. Lou and some of the studio musicians had recently finished working on the album “Jonathan Goes Country,” so I occasionally got to hear this or that anecdote about the project.
Lou said that he and Jonathan used to get into these deep philosophical debates that would go on forever. On one occasion, sometime after midnight, Lou simply fell asleep with Jonathan still holding forth. Around day break, Lou woke up with a creepy sense that something was hovering about an inch away from his face. It turned out to be Jonathan, who must have been waiting for hours to continue the conversation, and who then said (yes, in exactly that voice of his) “An’ another thing . . .”
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Great story, Jonathan as expected! Thanks for sharing, it made my day.
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Thanks! Your 50s/60s mixes are always interesting to me, and they generally turn out to contain a few tracks that I know but many that I don’t. Sometimes, I find that you’ve included something that, while it’s a long-time favorite of mine, is also improbable enough that I’m surprised to see it resurfacing at all. In this case, what I have in mind is the Jim Oertling track, which I think of as what might have happened had Johnny Horton at some point lost his lustre and been forced to record in somebody’s garage. Don’t get me wrong: I love that recording (which I first heard as a repro/bootleg single back in the 1980s or so). But the song itself does seem like a blend of the ridiculous with the sublime, what with its being about some guy’s obsession not exactly with a great white whale but only with a fairly sizeable fish.
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That’s a great synopsis of the song. I like it too. (by the way, I went to a Jonathan Richman concert and he was sitting at the bar, and I told him I really liked the album I, Jonathan. He turned to me and said in his weird way, “I like it too!” whenever I say or hear that I hear it in his voice.)
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