En lille top-200 at starte ugen op på?

Er Suicide’s ‘Dream Baby Dream’ et bedre nummer end Leonard Cohen’s ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’? Amerikanske Pitchfork har i dag webpostet deres bud på intet mindre end 70’ernes 200 bedste sange. Rækkefølge og individuelle begrundelser kan nærstuderes lige her. Som eksempel på hvor inspirerende den slags kan være, dykker vi her ned i listens øvre mellemlag og tager # 62, Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers’ punk-klassiske ‘Roadrunner’…

Jonathan Richman’s Modern Lovers were one of rock’s great coulda-been stories, breaking up before almost anyone had heard of them. In the early 1970s, they recorded demos on both coasts, trying to score a deal with a major label, including the John Cale-produced sessions that were collection on their eponymous 1976 debut, and they recorded at least four studio versions of “Roadrunner” during this stretch. The original incarnation of the band never took off, but “Roadrunner” became a garage-rock standard.

In terms of its chords and structure, “Roadrunner,” was a straight rip of the Velvet Underground’s “Sister Ray,” borrowing Lou Reed’s two-chord riff with its sung/spoken verses that could easily be improvised in concert. But Richman, an intensely committed VU fan as a teenager living in Boston, turned the song inside-out. Where “Sister Ray” is a scuzzy celebration of the seedy underbelly of American life, “Roadrunner,” a snapshot of a kid driving Massachusetts Route 128 late at night, sees beauty around every corner, and music tints everything coming through the windshield. This kid is in love with the modern world, modern girls, and modern rock‘n’roll, but he’s all alone—he doesn’t feel alone, though, because he’s got the radio on. “Roadrunner” is among the best songs ever written about music’s companionship, how the right song at the right moment can connect you to an imagined community even when you feel like you’re the only person in the world. – Mark Richardson/Pitchfork

…Well now
Roadrunner, roadrunner
Going faster miles an hour
Gonna drive to the Stop ‘n’ Shop
With the radio on at night
And me in love with modern moonlight
Me in love with modern rock & roll
Modern girls and modern rock & roll
Don’t feel so alone, got the radio on
Like the roadrunner
Okay, now you sing, Modern Lovers…

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