I was being humorous. Which was certainly Richman. Serious in an un-serious way, presenting a sort of low-level 'autistic' but fun-loving persona--at least in those early Modern Lovers days. Singing about rock n roll leprechauns, the joys of hearing the ice-cream truck (compare Jan and Dean's earlier
Popsicle), the beautiful mystery of a summer morning when 'flies are not yet flying and little nits are knitting and knats natting..."
Was he a genius? I'll reserve that description for Bach. But he was sincere and clever in those tunes. I have no idea what he's up to these days.
Also, I was mostly referencing the idea of hi-rez. His
Rock n Roll with the Modern Lovers was garage band quality. It fit the music for sure. But you don't need extra digits and extreme bandwidth for that sort of thing. Do you?
FWIW, my copy of the record (from an off the wall label called Beserkley) was about the poorest sonic quality record I owned. A lot of snaps, crackles and pops. This had to be around 1977 or so. Maybe '78. A lot of records from those days had horrible quality. Now, you sort of might expect that from Beserkley, but you got that with Deutsche Grammophon and all the rest, too. So I guess it was just a 'feature'.