by Matt Hanson

originally published in Flak Magazine

            One of the greatest things ever said about Johnathan Richman, written during this era of his career, was that he "looked like Dustin Hoffman and moved like Mick Jagger".  It's the sweet combination of raging introspection mixed with rich swagger that makes this song great.  Summer is a time marked by each motivation- the long, lazy days off from school or employment are just itching to be filled with either pensive gazes at the darkening lake or booze and smoke lubricated strutting.  It's a season made for driving loud in a car, radio on, in love with everything which blurs and whips outside the window.        

            Richman took the two-chord grinding orgy churn of The Velvet Underground's 'Sister Ray"- one of the more delightfully punishing forty minute freakouts in rock and roll- and killed it with his crack team of musicians, some of whom became Talking Heads or Cars.  The jangly tangle of the guitars undulates in lockstep with the propulsive engine of the rhythm.  There's that dull, humming, throbbing sound of the muffled roar of the gears and wheels.  It feels like you're in a car, for God's sake.  John Cale, helming the booth, knew exactly what he was doing.  The keyboards begin to drift a little, almost tentatively, until they hit a stride that peaks in a few sustained notes of pure bliss.      

            Lyrically, Richman's clicking on all cylinders.  The song boasts of such decadent suburban joys as night cruising in Massachusetts ("128 when its dark outside...") and going to the Stop n Shop...with the radio on!  I have myself done this on several occasions and I can certainly vouch for that 3 am bag of Fritos being the most pleasurable act one could ever hope to find.  Richman knows whereof he speaks: "going faster miles an hour" just can't be put any other way. Neither can "the highway is your girlfriend as you go by quick....suburban streets, suburban speed...and it smells like heaven".  Yes.  Yes it does.   Fun fact: though Richman sounds like a sort of stoned, mumbling brooding tough guy on this and the many of the masterpieces on the record, he was in fact none of these.  He had a head cold as they recorded everything.      

            For many people, the climax comes at the end, when the man who left suburbia to sleep on Lou Reed's couch (!) pretty much loses his shit completely and starts scatting little phrases about his car, his state, the POWER of the AM, etc as the band chimes in with an anthemic RADIO ON every interval.  It's deranged, playful, goofy, and utterly sincere.  What's more summer than that?