"One, two, three, four, five, six . . ."
Six? Was there ever a neater, more novel way to count in track one of a rock album? Not in my book.
Not if seven and eight deliver the punchy opening chords of the Modern Lovers' song Roadrunner.
The self-titled 1976 debut from the Boston-based band might never have seen the light of day if Jonathan Richman had had his way.
By the time the Modern Lovers returned from a short residency at a hotel in Bermuda in 1973, the singer/songwriter was already keen to shake off the Velvet Underground influences that had dominated his teen years, and was refusing to perform his old songs live.
He was turning toward the child-like, often-sappy songs of the next incarnation of his band and his later solo career.
Mercifully, the tracks recorded between 1971 and '72 (six of which were produced by the Velvets' John Cale) would be remixed and assembled for the 1976 Beserkley Records LP.
The Modern Lovers band that featured a pre-Talking Heads Jerry Harrison and pre-Cars David Robinson would have its day in the sun.
The Modern Lovers is an engaging piece of proto-punk, built on two-and three-chord riffs and simple ideas.
Richman's slurred, nasally drone suits his guy-next-door observations about rock'n'roll, girls and suburban life, and sets his delivery apart from that of more commercially acceptable frontmen.
Where the Velvets get dark and dirge-like, the Modern Lovers stay flippant and snotty, all the while sounding like a tight and tense unit.
Harrison's whirling keyboards underpin tracks such as Astral Plane, Old World, She Cracked and Pablo Picasso in a style that foreshadows '80s new wave, while the clipped, trebly guitars keep proceedings grounded in garage rock.
That the Sex Pistols would cover Roadrunner says much about the album's unlikely influence on what was to follow . . . though I doubt Richman would consider it a compliment.
