Have you got this? It's one of their earliest recorded sessions. This one is produced by Kim Fowley; I think another was produced by John Cale. What I like about the sleeve notes is their open contradiction. Some unnamed rock hack or label impresario has written four pages (all in courier font, of course) about the early history of Jonathan Richman and his band. Then there are two pages from Richman himself (still courier, but smaller point size) where he weighs and dismisses much of what has been said, "Well let's start with the cover. It says 'Original' Modern Lovers. Not so." He goes on to explain there was an earlier line-up than the one on this recording. Then he disputes the year of the recording. Best of all, he demolishes his own performance, referring to "defensiveness and artificial singing from beginning to end." He continues, "Is that all Jonathan? No, it's stilted and constipated too." Other adjectives he uses: effeminate, labored, self-conscious, vomitty, artsy-fartsy, contrived.
Does that make you want to hear it more or less? Yep, me too.
But the real reason I bought this album was the song Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste. I was absolutely in love with Galaxie 500's cover of it, with its lyrical Cortez-the-Killer-style guitar, and imagined the original must be pretty interesting. So I hunted the web for albums that had that song on. This was in 2000. I bought the live album, Precise Modern Lovers Order, then, and felt cheated when the version of Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste was an a capella one, less than two minutes long (compared with Galaxie 500's nearly seven minutes). This nagged away at me, until 2003 when I decided I had to get this Bomp records collection, the only other (legitimately available) recording of the song. It's a capella, too. 1 minute 39 seconds.
 MusicBrainz entry for this album
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