You see, Serge, the problem with all these reviews and ratings is that sometimes people take them seriously. Take the case of the nice little (I’m not going to tell you exactly what it is, so let’s say, nice little joint), quite possibly near to the Bush Hall. It’s always had a good reputation for its food, but was recently on the receiving end of a five-star review in an unnamed national newspaper. Boy, can’t you tell. At 7.00pm, when normally you might see a few gigsters taking protein before going into action and a few lovestruck couples, refugees from the cruel grasp of Blomfontein Road, it’s packed. And these aren’t your normal Shepherd’s Bush crowd: rather it’s hoity-toity Chiswick types, maybe even a few from Notting Hill.

Richman is in London for four nights: Dingwalls, the Borderline, the painfully groovy Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen and tonight, the first of the visit, the pretty little Bush Hall. He’s on stage with a miked-up Spanish guitar, dancing shoes, and drummer Tommy Larkins. He’s not only shorn of his band, the Modern Lovers, but his thick long black locks are gone too. With close-cropped hair, goatee beard, and the intense, quizzical, almost pleading expression with which he engages the audience, he could be a Shakespearian actor making a fairly good fist of Richard II, rather than a rock and roll singer. He’s grown up (he is older than me after all) over the years and his more recent material marks a most reflective and thoughtful view of the world. Not that his childlike, naïve and very often, absurdist, sense of humour has gone, simply it’s now moderated by a distinct and sometimes pungent, whiff of mortality.

This captivating set was nicely balanced between recent and older, reworked material. Songs like ‘You can have a cell ‘phone’ and ‘When we refuse to suffer’ show an impatience with the modern world (he doesn’t have a website and I doubt he has a cell-phone); this somewhat at odds with the sentiment of ‘Road runner’ which he rightly refused to sing despite some requests although I suspect that ‘Cell phone’ might share the same two chords as ‘Road runner’. The tender ‘Le printemps des amoureux est venu’ was sung in a French less accomplished than his Spanish, and like almost every other song afforded an opportunity for Richman to place his guitar gently in its case and dance for us, half break-dancer, half shaman.

And talking of assholes – why is it that some people just can’t keep their mouths shut at gigs, and are so selfish and rude that they don’t even think for a minute that it might disturb someone else? When the worst offenders were asked, not for the first time, if they could lower their voices, the response was so foul-mouthed and aggressive as to make one wonder what people like this could have been doing at a Jonathan Richman concert, unless it was just to provide a rhyme for Picasso. Don’t they get it – or are they just like our banker dining companion? Well even the prize assholes did in the end, and maybe it was just the strength of Richman’s performance that shut them up as he sang his final song, ‘As my mother lay lying’, his description of watching his mother die. Not many artists would choose to end a show with a song like this, but in Richman’s case it was a tour-de-force that brought a brilliant show to a worthy end. - Nick Morgan (photographs by Kate)

Listen: Jonathan Richman's page on MySpace

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