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Sunday, May 20th, 2007
The most laid-back of the songs on Moss Elixir is "Alright Yeah". It is a beautiful way to finish the record -- he's sorry to be going but he's sure we'll meet up again -- the lines "I've gotta split/ It's a quaint old-fashioned way/ to say good-bye.../ good-bye..." reliably crack me up, especially because of the beauty of the chord change at the end there, from Bsus4 to E (chords transcribed here). Here is how Mr. Hitchcock introduces the song in Storefront Hitchcock (he has just finished playing "Freeze", from Queen Elvis): I'll remove the third cone, and there's Captain Keegan and the tomato.Totally exterior [not sure this is transcribed correctly], and why not? Um, this is a really comfortable song. It's, it's, it's a musical equivalent of a sofa or a contour-fitted chair. It's unable to cause you any pain whatsoever. I mean, I mean unless actually hearing the harmonics of this kind of thing is painful, but it's designed not to upset you in the least, it's, it's not even bland. You know, you couldn't say "this is annoyingly comfortable." It's like, I was in a lobby once in Minneapolis, and -- the fact is, there was a whole hotel on top of it as well -- and I was in the lobby, and it was icy outside -- there were people with icepicks just hauling themselves along the surface, like they do when, you know, when they turn the screen horizontal. And they were inching their way along Nicollet Mall, and there was a howling blizzard, and inside it was just, there was this Muzak playing in the lobby, and I had a hangover. And I was carrying a meat cleaver, and I went up to the desk, and I said, um, "Could you turn the Muzak down please", and they said "I'm sorry sir, we can't", and... I took my cleaver out... and I said "Why not?" And they said, "because it's pleasing." Okay... if you start, then I'll follow you. After Hitchcock and Keegan play "Alright Yeah" -- the performance is if anything even better than on Moss Elixir -- come the credits, along a split-screen shot of Robyn playing "I Don't Remember Guilford". You know when you think you're right about things, that can make you very -- bitter. And if the rest of the world hasn't happened to go along with your...way of seeing things... and if the rest of the world includes someone you've been close to, then you feel worse. I don't understand the song but it is a lovely impressionistic piece.
posted evening of May 20th, 2007: Respond
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Friday, June first, 2007
Last night I downloaded and listened to Robyn Hitchcock's Games for May concert from last week -- the first set was a recreation of Pink Floyd's Games for May concert of 40 years ago, the second set was mostly Syd Barrett's solo tunes. It blew my mind. The opening number "Matilda Mother" was a little weak and unsure, but the band quickly got it together. Nearly every song is a keeper. You can download it from archive.org -- bear in mind that the FTP download, using Filezilla or some such client, is much faster than using your browser or media player to get the songs. My own favorite from the first set is probably "Arnold Layne" and from the second set (and the concert as a whole) the combination of "Interstellar Overdrive" and "Lucifer Sam" was just transcendentally beautiful. But -- I liked the Barrett solo tunes from the second set a lot too. "Terrapin" was great. It was really interesting listening to "Love You" and hearing Robyn and the female vocalist (who does not appear to be credited?) get their shit together after flailing for a verse or two. By the end of the song they were really in the groove. Hitchcock's between-song patter was as always, "eccentric" and "quirky", but more than that, fun and frequently insightful.
posted morning of June first, 2007: Respond
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Wednesday, June 27th, 2007
There's something in music I like, a quality I can't identify, that gives me this rush of pleasure that is strongly associated with wanting to sing along. I've talked about this before in relation to Perspex Island, and this afternoon when I was mowing the lawn and listening to Nextdoorland it hit me -- Robyn sings "Can you make it rain,/ Can you make it rain tonight" and I can't help it, singing along is just an instinctual reaction to the pleasure I feel. And then, just now I was sitting and listening to the Band playing "Up on Cripple Creek" and the same thing happened to me when Levon sang "If there's anything she can do --"... (A few nights ago Ellen and I were watching The Last Waltz and together we sang along with the whole song when they were playing "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", and that was a beautiful thing.) I want to know what this quality is.
posted evening of June 27th, 2007: Respond
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Thursday, August 30th, 2007
I am finding that the narrators I identify most closely with in this book are Esther (who reminds me fairly strongly of a like-named relative of mine) and Shekure. As I was reading this passage in Shekure's narration: Just then, when I saw that he'd opened his pink mouth like a child would have, I unexpectedly felt, yes, like putting my breast into it. With my fingers on his nape and tangled in his hair, Black would place his head between my breasts, and as my own children used to do, he'd roll his eyes back into his head with pleasure as he sucked on my nipple... I realized that I would never be able fully to understand it without also thinking about these lines from Robyn Hitchcock's Globe of Frogs: And when she feeds the flowers
Up they rise their pretty little heads
And when she waters them
They glow and smirk and smile in their beds For what it's worth.Update: Hm, well this post is getting me some interesting search engine referrals anyway...
posted morning of August 30th, 2007: Respond
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Friday, September 7th, 2007
A new DVD came in the mail today, for me to watch this evening. It is Robyn Hitchcock and Grant Lee Phillips' Elixirs & Remedies, concert footage from their "Grand Campaign" 2000 tour.
Here is a video of Hitchcock and Phillips performing Satellite of Love, which is not included in the DVD.
Do any of you have exposure to the music of Grant Lee Phillips, solo or in combination with Grant Lee Buffalo? I would appreciate recommendations of albums to listen to.
My expectation with covers sung by Robyn is, if they are of Syd Barrett tunes they will be fantastic, and otherwise the odds are about even for fantastic or awful. An interesting thing about this concert is that the two of them play many covers of songs by a wide variety of artists, and every one of them is successful. Maybe this is a product of their collaboration? "(All I have to do is) Dream" takes on many new dimensions with Robyn singing it.
Another concert from the same tour is available at archive.org.
posted evening of September 7th, 2007: Respond
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It is lovely to watch Robyn Hitchcock's interactions with his backup singers and musicians I am watching him sing "Cynthia Mask" with Grant Lee Phillips right now and see a similar vibe to what I have caught going on watching him with the Egyptians and with Captain Keegan. (A different species of interaction between him and Deni Bonet, a less overtly sexual one I think.) If you count yourself among the few readers of this blog and I have not yet raved at/to you about Robyn and the Egyptians performing an acoustic version of "Birds In Perspex (Come Alive)", well, I am doing so now by implication. Go watch it, really I can't imagine your thinking the time poorly spent unless you are Sifu Tweety Fish, whose musical tastes are a cipher to me. (And talk to me about it -- regardless of what I said above I would really like to know what reactions people have to that song, including those reactions that are less wholly enthusiastic than my own.)
posted evening of September 7th, 2007: Respond
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Sunday, September 23rd, 2007
Patsy Cline, is who. I would love to hear Robyn cover some of her songs, maybe especially "Heartache".
posted afternoon of September 23rd, 2007: Respond
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Friday, October 26th, 2007
O happy day! Robyn Hitchcock's box set I Wanna Go Backwards is published and arrives on my doorstep. Looks really good -- tomorrow I am going to spend some time savoring it. There is Black Snake Dîamond Röle, his first solo record, and which was the one album of his I got to know by heart when I was a teenager -- this print also includes nearly a whole nother record's worth of extra tracks, ones I love off of Eaten by her own Dinner, and ones I have never heard of -- I Often Dream of Trains, which a lot of Hitchcock fans seem to list as their favorite record; and Eye, which I love the songs that I'm familiar with but don't really know the record as a whole. Jer told me that when Eye came out he had started getting disillusioned with Robyn and the record reminded him of why he thought Robyn was a great musician. (I wasn't really listening to new records at that time because of not having a CD player.) And, and that's not all -- rounding out the set is a double album of demo tapes from the '80's titled While Thatcher Mauled Britain. Looks like this is going to be my afternoon activity tomorrow -- I had been planning to march against the war, but this fair-weather patriot is put off by forecasts of 100% chance heavy rain.
posted evening of October 26th, 2007: Respond
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Saturday, October 27th, 2007
My favorite thing about I Wanna Go Backwards, on first listening, may be the inclusion of "All I wanna do is fall in love" as a bonus track on Black Snake Dîamond Röle. I was not aware of that song before this afternoon but it is now one of my favorite Hitchcock songs. So I was glad to hear it -- all of that record was really nice to hear again, as was Eye (except I remembered how "Queen Elvis" kind of turned me off to that record -- but the good tracks more than make up for that). Also I was happy to see some key tracks from Eaten By Her Own Dinner on the bonus material for BSDR -- including the majestically weird "Happy the Golden Prince". ("So that's who I am!") The record of unreleased demo tapes, While Thatcher Mauled Britain (fantastic title), is going to take a few more listenings before I decide how worthwhile it is to me; most of the versions of songs I knew did not seem as good as the album versions, and I didn't listen that closely to the songs I did not know from elsewhere. But seriously, "All I wanna do is fall in love", what a magnificent song. Other extremely good things about listening to this collection: "Executioner", and multiple versions of "Raining Twilight Coast"....also: remember how I said that "She Doesn't Exist" doesn't do bitter as well as "Positively 4th Street"? "Nowhere Girl" is not aiming for quite the same thing as "4th Street" -- but it sure is bitter, and it sure is a fantastic song.
posted evening of October 27th, 2007: Respond
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Friday, November second, 2007
Belle inspires me to figure out where my iPod is and listen to some random songs so I can post them here. I'm getting lots of blues and lots of Robyn tonight.
- "Alma Waltz", Mississippi Mud-Steppers
- "Singin the Blues (Till My Daddy Comes Home)", Fletcher Henderson Orchestra
- "Broken Bed Blues", Kansas City Blues Strummers
- "Flavor of Night", Robyn Hitchcock -- this shares the quality of many of the songs on I Often Dream of Trains, where the song totally sounds like it's going to be amazing, fantastic, you can't miss its potential greatness, but somehow it doesn't quite make it.
- "Hard Way", Taj Mahal -- Janis gave me this CD in an effort to make me see how great Taj Mahal is; but I'm afraid his greatness eludes me. The instrumentals are occasionally awesome.
- "Sometimes a Blonde", Robyn Hitchcock. A solo acoustic performance at Maxwell's, in the catastrophic month of November 2004. I like this a whole lot. After the song, patter about waitress Desirée.
- "Terrapin", Robyn Hitchcock. From the second set of the April 2007 Games for May concert. With cellos!
- "I Miss You More", 13 Scotland Rd. I don't think this is my favorite song of theirs but after the long instrumental at the beginning finishes, it might be their best vehicle for Bill's voice.
- Medley of "Good Morning" and "In the Midnight Hour", by Robyn Hitchcock, who so much should not try to cover the Beatles. Oh man, this is a train wreck. What the fuck's going on Robyn? You have a really amazingly good singing voice when you're not trying to sing like John Lennon. (Though the cellos are a nice touch.)
- "Sittin' on Top of the World", Taj Mahal. Nope, still not getting it.
posted evening of November second, 2007: Respond
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