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Saturday, March first, 2014
So there you are with about sixty other Fegmaniax sitting on
folding chairs in
Mark C.'s studio in Freehold (Central Jersey -- just around the corner
from where Springsteen went to high school), everybody's introducing
themselves and chatting and feeling psyched for the evening's show. And
Robyn Hitchcock comes in! He notes as he walks up to the stage how this
venue is a bit like an airplane cabin -- five seats on each side, please
keep the center aisle clear; take time to locate the exit nearest you, and
if you need to use the restroom, please use the appropriate one for your
class. If you think somebody else paid more for their ticket than you did
for yours, defer to them. "So everybody was here last time, right? ..." He takes off his coat and picks up his
guitar; wearing a hot pink shirt with embroidery and a green scarf that
gets tangled in the strap as he takes it off. "I don't wear glasses when
I'm performing, I just wanted to see you for a moment -- now I'll return to
my womblike state of myopia," and hangs his specs off the side of a lamp
next to the mic stand, and starts to play. "You'll never have the damned
thing out," he sings, and you sink into the beat of Surgery
(Gotta Let Ths Hen Out!, 1985†).
"This is a song about the emotional baggage you carry with you from
one relationship to another. I didn't figure that out for about 20 years
after I wrote it. Could you give me some delay on the vocals here, Mark,
this is sort of a rock & roll sea chanty." The Ghost
Ship (You & Oblivion, 1995). I wonder where my love has
been, tonight -- "Just imagine I'm Art Garfunkel:" Swirling
(Queen Elvis, 1989), which "I wrote when I was in the middle of
splitting up with someone, and also splitting up with with the second
person... it was a memorable experience." He explains how we
have to be angry, or we wouldn't be alive -- so "do you indulge
your quite justified rage at existence, or bite the bullet and inherit the
earth?"
From here he moves straight into The Devil's
Coachman (also from Queen Elvis). A bit of a digression
here about how his guitar strings are all worn out -- just yesterday they
were fresh and new, like tulips! "But thrash on tulips for a few hours,
they're not tulips anymore. You're just beatin' on that daffodil, baby! ...I
see we're just over Iceland now." Travel in the future, you learn, will be
much easier: just reduce yourself to a powder and FedEx yourself to your
destination to be rehydrated. "Wilbur! You're here! Welcome to Marin
County." All you've got to do is Ride... (Perspex Island, 1991) "Oxycontin
for mama, baby Jesus for the rest of us:" Madonna of the
Wasps (Queen Elvis again), going out to P. Buck.
"The practice known as vudu has been around for a long time. (Like
most things.) When you wish ill on somebody, a tiny grain inside you dies.
But you can't wish well on everybody -- can you? What do you think when
you look in the mirror? -- besides wishing for a face lift..." Wax Doll (yes,
Queen Elvis).
And now the harmonica is out! Drink a little coffee! ("We proudly brew
Starbucks™! ...How else can you brew Starbucks™?
shamefacedly?...") And a bit of tuning, tuning "as an agent provocateur,
pushing the string farther out of tune and then bringing it back so it
sounds better," leads into Queen Elvis (Eye, 1990) A bit of a digression
here asking whether the lamp by the mic stand (not the one he hung his
glasses on, a different one) is a Tiffany lamp... What distinguishes it
from a Tiffany lamp? Could it be made into a Tiffany lamp? Various
people from the audience are throwing in commentary, differing on a
variety of points, which is good -- "Consensus is very disturbing; if
everyone thinks along the same lines it usually means there's some kind
of fascism afoot." Maybe tonight you're dreaming... Arms of Love
(Respect, 1993). "If you're in Nashville, be sure to stop by the 5
Spot... especially if you like smoke and alcohol, like I do. (I'm from the
past, where it's not dangerous.)" More tuning -- "this guitar took a fall
today, coming into Amboy, South Amboy, it might be a problem..." -- and One Long Pair of
Eyes (Queen Elvis!) is the last of the back-catalogue tunes.
He closes out the set with two covers, Oh Yeah by
Roxy Music and She Belongs to Me by Tubby the Evangelist, and a
new song not yet released*, with the lyric "A window of bliss/ that
opened just once/ for the price of a kiss."
The encore happens in Mark's dining room next to the potluck supper,
and is 100% Basement Tapes tunes -- "Tiny Montgomery", "Lo and
Behold", "Quinn the Eskimo", and "Open the Door, Richard". You have some
baked beans and some pasta salad and a beer, and marvel at the glow of
happiness on everybody's faces.
 †(On the video tape of GLTHO -- It was not released on a record until You & Oblivion)
* (as far as I can tell -- not able to find anything about it on Google or in conversation with other fans.)
posted morning of March first, 2014: 6 responses
➳ More posts about Robyn Hitchcock -- gig notes
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Friday, February 28th, 2014
We're on our way south -- tonight in Freehold, tomorrow in Bordentown (and snow permitting, Monday in Sellersville). Excited! Will post gig notes.
posted afternoon of February 28th, 2014: Respond
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Sunday, January 26th, 2014
So a couple of weeks ago I was writing a murder tune based loosely on iconic murder tune "The Banks of the Ohio" -- I came up with "Braddock" as a good name for a town to be the setting; did a little research and found there is such a town, and it is pretty ideally located on the banks of the beautifully named Monongahela River, one of the two principal tributaries of the Ohio. Came up with "Veil of Mourning", which John and I played at our New Year's jam. And weird, this story seems to be sticking with me -- I spent some time last week listening to "The Cuckoo, she's a pretty bird" in different versions including Richard Fariña's, "The Falcon"; and the thing to do suddenly seemed to be to write a new version of the Braddock story, called "The Buzzard" -- so that's what I did. Check it out:
It was fun picking up my guitar -- I have not played it in a while.
posted morning of January 26th, 2014: Respond
➳ More posts about Guitar
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Saturday, December 7th, 2013
Lots of fun at the Mountain Station practice session today! Our practice set list:
- Bethlehem Half-step
- Lonesome Nickel
- Talking Heads weirdness
- Meet Me in the Morning
- Birds in Perspex
- Been all around this world
- Cole Durhew
- I Can See Clearly Now/ Here Comes the Sun medley
- Why Don't We Do It in the Road jam
Let's listen to "Birds in Perspex"! It is my favorite Robyn Hitchcock song; this is the first time we've ever played it and I think we did a pretty good job.
posted evening of December 7th, 2013: Respond
➳ More posts about Mountain Station
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Friday, November 29th, 2013
Ampersan: this is Orlando Guillén's "ABCD", from Muchachos desnudos.
posted evening of November 29th, 2013: Respond
➳ More posts about The Savage Detectives
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Friday, November first, 2013
One from the archives -- here are me and John a few years back --
posted evening of November first, 2013: Respond
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Saturday, October 5th, 2013
Let's listen to Cat Stevens.
Let's listen to Sam Cooke.
No link or video (natch), but one of my favorite memories of hearing a busker playing in the subway is of a young Latino guy in the Times Square station playing this song with a sort of Reggae beat, musta been back in '96 or something.
posted morning of October 5th, 2013: Respond
➳ More posts about Cover Versions
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I saw the Carolina Jug Stompers at last weekend's Hoboken Music Festival, along with a huge crowd; then last night I caught up with them (well just with WB Reid and his wife Bonnie, and jug master Luke Faust) in a much more intimate setting at Maxwell's -- there were about as many people in the audience as there were on stage. Fantastic music both shows.
posted morning of October 5th, 2013: 1 response
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Thursday, October third, 2013
The visuals in this cartoon are at moments strikingly reminiscent of the Codex Seraphinianus. Let's listen to the Soft Boys.
(I'm a bit blown away also by the quality of the mashup, which is Unavión Ounpájaro' s editing of "Fantastic Planet" by Deloux.)
posted evening of October third, 2013: Respond
➳ More posts about Logograms
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Saturday, September 28th, 2013
A couple of songs from roday's Mountain Station practice session.
posted afternoon of September 28th, 2013: Respond
➳ More posts about Dress rehearsal rags
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