Jonathan Richman

Come on everybody, surrender to Jonathan!

Angst rock, gangsta rap, Liberty X, teenage lesbians... What place does a performer like Jonathan Richman have in the modern world of pop? And, more crucially for him, are people still willing to fork out £15 to see a man in his early fifties behaving like a child? Richman, if you remember that far back, was the Boston-born freak-geek singer with the Modern Lovers, a band whose 1976 debut harked back to the Velvet Underground while inspiring the just-around-the-corner punk rockers – the Sex Pistols even covered "Roadrunner", which, with "Egyptian Reggae", was one of Richman's two bona fide UK chart hits.

Since then, Richman has carved a unique niche. He tired of rock (too loud), and chose instead to churn out self-penned nursery rhymes ("I'm A Little Airplane", "Ice Cream Man") for an ever-dwindling group of fans while selling songs to Sesame Street to pay the rent. Then, in 1998, he appeared in There's Something About Mary and suddenly found himself able to fill venues with people prepared to put all cynicism on hold while they'd happily, as the title of one recent album suggests, Surrender to Jonathan!.

And Richman's audience have always been forgiving: such are this man's charms that they were willing to put up with nasal vocals, crap dancing and limited guitar skills. But tonight, in a venue larger than those he'd become used to, Richman is at home. In fact, it is only at this stage in his career that his true position becomes clear: having finally mastered his instrument, Richman is now less cult sideshow and instead summons up the ghost of the chansonniers – telling stories musically and physically, conjuring his own perfect universe in an imperfect world (think Jacques Brel reborn as a children's party entertainer).

The stories have to be heard to be believed: "I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar" tells of the night our hero was out feeling self-conscious, before ending up in the eponymous venue ("In the first bar/ They'd all stand and stare/ In this bar/ Things were laissez-faire").

Childlike wonder combined with adult humour have always been central to Richman's work. And tonight, he dips back to the Modern Lovers debut to play a hilariously ad-libbed version of "Pablo Picasso": "Some people try to pick up girls/ And get called arsehole/ This never happened to Pablo Picasso". Tonight we find out why. "It's because he had self-confidence," Richman informs us.

But the evening's highlight is "Let Her Go Into the Darkness", in which he tells of the boy who can't bear to see his ex move on. In case the point is missed, Richman acts out their dialogue – "He's bad for you... he doesn't love you like I do." Her response? "You don't control me anymore. I can do what I like with my body." "It's happening all over the world," Richman announces, before repeating the dialogue in Spanish. Nigeria? Someone heckles. "It's happening there too," says Richman. Before the song's over, Richman has performed the patter in Spanish, Italian, French and Hebrew and the crowd are in hysterics of pain, pleasure and pure recognition. You had to be there.

And you had to be there when Richman played one poignant verse of "Not in My Name" and left no one in any doubt as to where he stood on matters in the imperfect world beyond. Strange as it is to be saying this at this stage of his career, surrounded as he is by the aforementioned angst-ridden lesbian gangstas, but Richman – no relation, more's the pity – has finally and triumphantly matured as an artist. And if you want proof, try this title of a new (unrecorded) song he is particularly proud of: "He Gave us Wine to Taste and Not to Talk About". Vintage stuff.