Name: Essential Recordings: Vampire Girl
Brand: Rounder
SKU: 19733
Price: 23.84 USD
Availability: InStock

Essential Recordings

Rating

Album: Essential Recordings: Vampire Girl
#	Song Title		Time
1)	Vampire Girl	More Info...
2)	I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar	More Info...
3)	Harpo Played His Harp	More Info...
4)	Let Her Go Into the Darkness	More Info...
5)	California Desert Party	More Info...
6)	Dancin' Late at Night	More Info...
7)	Since She Started to Ride	More Info...
8)	You're Crazy for Taking the Bus	More Info...
9)	I Eat With Gusto, Damn, You Bet	More Info...
10)	Twilight in Boston	More Info...

Album: Essential Recordings: Vampire Girl
#	Song Title		Time
1)	Vampire Girl	More Info...
2)	I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar	More Info...
3)	Harpo Played His Harp	More Info...
4)	Let Her Go Into the Darkness	More Info...
5)	California Desert Party	More Info...
6)	Dancin' Late at Night	More Info...
7)	Since She Started to Ride	More Info...
8)	You're Crazy for Taking the Bus	More Info...
9)	I Eat With Gusto, Damn, You Bet	More Info...
10)	Twilight in Boston	More Info...

Performer Notes

Personnel: Jonathan Richman (vocals, guitar); Josef Marc (vocals, guitar, drums); Ned Claflin (vocals, accordion, organ, background vocals); Scot Woodland (vocals, congas); Tom Nelson (vocals); Brennan Totten (guitar); D. Clinton Thompson (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, mandolin, background vocals); Tom Brumley (steel guitar); Nick Sibley (harmonica, background vocals); Joe Terry (piano, background vocals); David Byrd (piano); Bobby Lloyd Hicks (drums, background vocals); John Avila, Ron Gremp (drums); Ron Butler (background vocals).
Audio Remasterer: Marcello Azevedo.
Recording information: Column One Recording, Springfield, MO; JG Sounds, Grass Valley, CA; The Bennett House, Grass Valley, CA.
Photographer: David Mckay.
Notorious New York cult singer-songwriter David Roter was once called "an unholy confluence of Woody Allen and Lou Reed." Though Jonathan Richman is a well-known devotee of Reed and the Velvet Underground himself, he might best be termed "an unholy confluence of Pee Wee Herman and Sha Na Na." Starting with his band the Modern Lovers, Richman developed a musical persona that seemed eternally youthful and na?ve; a trapped-in-the-late `50s teenager who still lived in an imaginary world of sock hops, bongo drums, and nascent lust. Like Herman, however, he acknowledged the passage of time, yet seemingly remained, as a middle-aged man, just as surprised and bemused by the crazy scene in "I Was Dancing in a Lesbian Bar," or the fact that friends would begrudge his favored mode of transportation in "You're Crazy for Taking the Bus," as when he was a high school freshman. Musically, the Boston native played a stripped-down, shambling, beach-party take on old-time rock & roll and pop, and was heavily influenced by doo-wop, occasionally even detouring into country and Latin music (represented here by the full-on Nashville Sound track "Since She Started to Ride" and the Spanish-language "Harpo En Su Harpa"). Overall, VAMPIRE GIRL: ESSENTIAL RECORDINGS is a good overview of Richman's classic Rounder Records material which, despite its brief ten-track length, gives the casual listener an effective tour through the artist's strange, childlike, oft-hilarious, and always perceptive mind.