After a week that severely kicked Doug’s keister as well as mine, we weren’t exactly brimming with excitement about going out in a crazy rainstorm. But go we did: first, a quick dinner at Orleans, then a mad dash through the wet and bluster to see Vic Chesnutt and Jonathan Richman, two artists I’ve loved for it feels like ever.

Vic opened, but not before a decent stretch of onstage tuning and what appeared to be rehearsing. I was happy to realize that various remixes of Book of Love’s “Modigliani (Lost in Your Eyes)” were lilting from the PA. Not that many in the audience had been born when that record was released — it was a strangely teenybopper crowd. I wasn’t sure what they’d think of the irascible Chesnutt (who shot a dirty look at the ones who yelled, “Whoo!” when he sang about a friend who smokes speed), but they were downright polite-to-enthusiastic.

Much as I love his music, I somehow missed that Chesnutt released a record this year. Subsequently, I didn’t recognize any of the songs he performed last night. A couple of songs were even newer: The first documented the current tour:

Touring with Jonathan Richman
Has been life-enriching
I am such a nihilist
And Jonathan is such a smile-ist
And it would be the vilest
Thing to bring you fuckers down
I don’t wanna bring you motherfuckers down.

He admitted he’d written the second new tune earlier that afternoon. “This is scary,” he said before starting. “I’ve got the lyrics here on the computer, though, so we’ll see.” The lyrics included a “Send in the Clowns” parody that was much improved by swapping in robots for clowns.
I wouldn’t say it was the best Vic show I’ve ever seen — it was much too short. But not having seen him perform in five years, it done my heart good. I’ll be humming “Neapolitan ice cream/Is never truly integrated/Until it’s too late” for the next few days. And it looks like iTunes has an EP that includes the based-on-a-true-story “Would You Sign My . . . ???.” (For the record, I believe that’s the most contiguous punctuation on this site up to this point.)

Jonathan was great, as he always is, and his moves belied his age. He performed several of the standbys — “Egyptian Reggae,” “I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar,” “Let Her Go Into the Darkness,” “Springtime in New York,” “Give Paris One More Chance,” “Summer Feeling,” and “Pablo Picasso” (artfully slurred for the all-ages crowd). No one thought to coach a little kid to shout out “Roadrunner,” unfortunately, and he didn’t play the oft-requested “New England,” or “Reno” or “The Girl Stands up to Me Now,” but “In Che Mondo Viviamo” and “19 in Naples” were sweetly sublime.

JoJo’s like a benevolent form of crack, I’ve decided, elevating my mood and worldview no matter how dismal things seem before he takes the stage. I didn’t even mind slogging home through a goddamn monsoon afterward. (We did, however, bail on the quadruple-40th birthday party at the Dilboy for Tomoko-Jim-Ted-Dave. I’m sure it was the place to be seen for all self-respecting southern New England hipsters, but I’m hoping Tomoko will understand what a week Doug and I had and can wait for me to celebrate her birthday for real in December.)