V01-T07 Vincent Van Gogh

.....Like many of Jonathan Richman's best songs, this one was inspired by his actual experiences in a museum:

Volume 1: THE PITCHFORK APPROACH, track 7

• 02:27 "VINCENT VAN GOGH" (Jonathan Richman)
• performed by Jonathan Richman
• original source: LP ROCKIN' AND ROMANCE TwinTone TTR 8558 (US) 1985
• and my source: the same

.....I believe this may be the only Jonathan Richman album I don't own on CD, only because it has never been mass produced in that format. A quick check at the label's website reveals that they have been offering "burn on demand" CD's for $15 plus postage since 2004. At the time I was putting together this compilation Richman was occasionally rerecording songs from his back catalog for his then-current label Rounder. He had already remade "I Must Be King" and reworked "Down In Bermuda" into a monologue. The year after I put this together he rerecorded three more in Spanish. This particular song was rerecorded in 2004.

.....Jonathan Richman is the perfect example of an artist who was failed by the label system. Passed over in favor of crash-and-burn one hit wonders and lip-synching clothes racks, he now has forty years of performing and dozens of albums to his credit. And Milli Vanilli? Christopher Cross? David Soul? I could fill a bus with similar chart-toppers from the past forty years and drive it over a cliff and it would not make a whit of difference in your life. More to the point, the music industry that spent millions of dollars shoving them in your face and hitting you over the head with them would barely shrug at the news of their deaths. Nine times out of ten the person who recommends Jonathan Richman to you wasn't paid to do so. They simply can't not recommend him. And even though he's done numerous songs in the first person, "VINCENT VAN GOGH" in a sense would make for a character study of him as much as it would the painter. Both created vibrant and colorful depictions out of a need to manifest what they felt. It would be difficult to believe for either of them that what they did was an affectation, that they would produce for so long and so consistently for so little reward. Richman at least gets the appreciation of live audiences during his lifetime. It's a shame that many people know him only as the troubadour in the movie "There's Something About Mary" or from his handful of appearances on Conan O'Brien's Late Night television series.

.....YouTube has a live performance of this song from June 2009 as of this writing, FYI.