Although Roadrunner by the Modern Lovers is one of my favourite ever records (isn't that the case for anyone who's ever even slightly been moved by rock'n'roll?) it wasn't until after an interview with British Sea Power that I finally got around to investigating Jonathan Richman's solo career. BSP's guitarist Martin Noble was on a one-man mission to spread the gospel of Richman, and so he thrust a homemade CD mixtape into my hands and told me to go forth and educate myself. I soon realised I'd been missing out. Morning of Our Lives, Lydia, That Summer Feeling ... all incredible, but most of all I loved Corner Store and its simple yet succinct encapsulation of all that is wrong with big business spreading its tentacles.
Anti-capitalist sentiments in song often come accompanied by rage, yet Richman chose gentle country rock (it's taken from the album Jonathan Goes Country) to make a point that was purely personal. For Richman there was an emotional connection with the tiny store he bought his groceries in – now it had been bulldozed leaving a "ghost smell" and a shiny new mall he couldn't stand. Richman doesn't care about increased choice ("I don't care what the mall has got!") or that extra 20 cents in his jeans pocket: "I know it cost more money to shop there," he sings, "but this was love, this was lo-o-o-ove."
A love song to a convenience store might sound strange, but shops are a common feature in Richman's back catalogue, from Abominable Snowman in the Market to his journeys past the Stop & Shop in Roadrunner (an act Laura Barton recreated in this brilliant feature). Perhaps this is because shops – hanging outside them, stealing from them, spending the first money you earn in them – are such a central part of the innocent (and not so innocent) experience of being a teenager, a state Richman seems perpetually trapped in.
To sum up exactly how he feels, Richman attacks the chorus here with gleeful (you could say teenage) abandon: "Bam a nib a nib a nib way oh/Bam a nib a nib a way oh web oh/Bam a nib a nib a no Corner store Corner store". And because he's Jonathan Richman, somehow you know exactly what he's on about. Maybe he'll even play it tonight, at the Union Chapel in London.
