Third time a winner for Roadrunner as official state rock song?

By adamg on Sat, 04/22/2017 - 9:05pm

The Patriot Ledger reports that state Rep. David Linsky (D-Natick) has filed a bill to make Roadrunner by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers the Official Rock Song of the Commonwealth.

This is the third time the legislature will consider the measure. The first time, in 2013, the bill was sponsored by then state Rep. Martin Walsh (D-Dorchester).

Topics:

Entertainment

Politics

Free tagging:

Roadrunner

Ad:

Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!

Comments

Boring song

By EM Painter on Sat, 04/22/2017 - 9:26pm.

I vote nay.

Yeah

By anon on Sat, 04/22/2017 - 11:08pm.

I mean most of the iconic MA songs are by people from New Hampshire (Cars, Aerosmith, Boston) but still, seems like there's better options. Like 'Where is My Mind' or 'Poison'.

This really needs to be voted on in a referendum - we can't trust the legislature on this one.

And here's the last five

By anon on Sat, 04/22/2017 - 11:15pm.

IT'S EDUCATIONAL!

And you probably listen to

By lberms on Sun, 04/23/2017 - 12:46am.

And you probably listen to Journey and drink Sam
Adams

Im out on everything after 1981

By EM Painter on Sun, 04/23/2017 - 3:02pm.

Well I vote YES

By Miaow on Sun, 04/23/2017 - 11:02am.

I love Jonathan Richman and I love that song.
I've seen him perform live (alone, not in the Modern Lovers) and he's incredibly talented and witty.

And "where is my mind" although a great song, isn't even about MA.

There's no accounting for taste. But I'm looking at yours

By MC Slim JB on Sun, 04/23/2017 - 11:49am.

with bemusement. "Roadrunner" rules, in my book.

But I'm curious: what would be your nominee?

Roadrunner is unsingable

By EM Painter on Sun, 04/23/2017 - 2:58pm.

He's fine, I like Disappointment Rock as much as the next guy, Roadrunner is just not much of a song.

I don't have another nominee although I like Betty Carter's version of New England

Good to know what all the

By anon on Sat, 04/22/2017 - 9:50pm.

Good to know what all the important issues have been dealt with. Carry on.

I'll say this much

By Waquiot on Sat, 04/22/2017 - 11:59pm.

I never understood why Walsh was pushing this one. Linsky makes sense, since Richman was from Natick and the song, as a story, starts out there.

Turn the radio on!!

By lberms on Sun, 04/23/2017 - 12:45am.

Get with it!! J Rich and The Modern Lovers forever!!!

Roadrunner is one thing.

By Bill O. on Sun, 04/23/2017 - 8:04am.

My issue with that is we have never really addressed the longstanding tribulations of Wile E. Coyote. I mean, that's the true spirit of Massachusetts - never give up. We need a Blue-RIbbon Committee.

I donno, the song kinda

By Art Vandalay on Sun, 04/23/2017 - 8:20am.

I donno, the song kinda endorses Stop and Shop. Is this legal for an official state rock song? I sense some corruption here.

You don't know Natick in the '70s

By adamg on Sun, 04/23/2017 - 9:47am.

Richman is from Natick (hence the Linsky connection). And back then, everybody in town would at least drive by the Stop & Shop at the 9/27 strip mall (also where the Building 19 used to be). So it's historical (bonus: Stop & Shop was started in Mass).

Personally, I think it's brilliant marketing strategy. I am

By MC Slim JB on Sun, 04/23/2017 - 11:56am.

always trying to convince my company to invest in product placement by getting our name into songs by obscure local indie-rock bands that attract maybe 200 people max to their gigs. "Think of it," I say: "In 40 years, of one these songs could become huge, and we'll be on the lips of every blessed citizen of the Commonwealth. Wait, where are you going? IT WORKED FOR STOP & SHOP!"

Let's ask this guy:

By anon on Sun, 04/23/2017 - 11:21am.

“I don’t think the song is good enough to be a Massachusetts song of any kind.”

This guy? Jonathan Richman.

The 70s

By scollaysq on Sun, 04/23/2017 - 11:53am.

My Dad taught me to drive in the 70s (coincidentally, at the Natick Mall parking lot because in those days the mall was closed on Sundays, but I digress).

There was always a Stop & Shop to drive past.

Driving on 128 when it was dark outside was awesome.

WE ALL HAD THE RADIO ON.

There is no better song for Mass. Where else can you go faster miles an hour?

Natick Mall in the 70s?

By walkin' Horton on Sun, 04/23/2017 - 8:53pm.

I thought Natick Mall opened in the 90s?
Nitpicky I know, just wondering

You're thinking of the expansion and the condos

By adamg on Sun, 04/23/2017 - 9:28pm.

The Natick Mall actually dates to about 1965, when it opened with two anchors - Filene's and Sears. In the 1990s, they added the wing with the dead (fake?) birch trunks and the Apple Store and the sushi-on-a-conveyor-belt place. And the condos, because who wouldn't want to live at a mall?

In 1985 or 1986, Doug Flutie himself opened Flutie Pass between Shoppers World and the Natick Mall by cutting a ribbon and yelling out to his wife, "Laurie, you can go shopping now!"

I was there, during the 18 months or so I spent covering Natick, which meant a fair amount of reporting on angry fights between the Natick Mall and Shoppers World, each of which wanted to expand, and the culmination of a ten-year battle between Natick and Framingham over who would control the non-Rte. 9 path between the two malls (the two issues were connected; neither mall really wanted the road for fear it would drive customers to the other).

Eventually, Natick won the road battle (even though 90% of the short road is in Framingham) and the owner of Shoppers' World bought Natick Mall and decided that rather than having two richie-rich suburban malls killing each other, the answer was to have one big-box mall that only sort of looks like a prison and one richie-rich mall with dead birch trunks that for some reason still has a Spencer Gifts.

Ahem.

More fun facts: Before the Natick Mall was the Natick Mall, it was the Natick sewage beds, where sewage from Natick and evil archrival Framingham was pumped onto the ground to dry out. Must've been fun to drive by that, even if maybe sometimes the smell was masked a bit by the smell of baking bread from the neighboring Wonder Bread plant (which was first shut down and then bought and torn down to make way for the Natick Mall expansion).

That bizarro rotary-like intersection the mall made necessary where Speen Street and Rte. 9 meet is called the Beetleback because the editor of the South Middlesex News, on looking at a map of the proposed new interchange one day said "It looks like the back of a damn beetle!" and required his reporters to always refer to it as the Beetleback from then on.

Natick collection

By Pretzelnotloggedin on Mon, 04/24/2017 - 9:43am.

with the birch trees and Nordstroms/Neimans wing and conveyor belt sushi opened in 2007. Right in the midst of the Great Recession. Definitely not the 90's. Nitpicky, I know. But before the Collection was added that mall was actually one of the top-performing malls in New England (along with South Shore Plaza). And if retail closings don't stop, it will, at some point, become the largest empty mall in New England.

You're both kind of right

By Waquiot on Mon, 04/24/2017 - 10:07am.

Back in the 1990s they added the second floor. In the aughts they opened the weird wing and tried to rebrand the whole thing "the Natick Collection."

The mall seems to be doing okay to me, and I am there a lot more than I should be. The Wegmans construction is taking a lot more time than it should, but whatever.

And in the 80s ...

By adamg on Sun, 04/23/2017 - 9:35pm.

That's where, after I kind of stupidly bought a stick-shift car, despite not knowing how to drive one, I learned, more or less, how to drive the thing after picking up the car after work one night.

seriously?

By Fenwickian on Sun, 04/23/2017 - 12:44pm.

OFFS give it a rest

we don't need a state song

are we really wasting legislative energy on this

we have no higher priorities?

The deeper question is this

By Waquiot on Sun, 04/23/2017 - 6:58pm.

Why the effort to stop this? Not by you, but the official state anything (of which there are many) is a simple effort, akin to setting up a sick leave bank for a state employee (a surprising number of laws passed) or naming post offices on the federal level. This should have taken at most 4 hours of legislative time, including the committee hearing.

Why has this languished so long?