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🦋 House Concert

This afternoon's show was fantastic. I have really been anticipating it for a month or more now, and it was worth the waiting for. The whole concert was acoustic, no amplification at all, just Robyn and his guitar, about 50 people in the audience -- his amazing voice and his guitar. (There was a pleasant cognitive dissonance between that and the much larger, packed Bell House show last night. Both shows were in best-ever territory but the two could not have been more different.)

He comes in to Mark's garage where we are sitting and starts talking about the show, says Thank you so let's see what it sounds like... I'm going to play as many of your requests as I have time to play. First a little context, I'd like to play a couple of cover songs. "In the unlikely event of a water landing, please locate the exits nearest you..." and starts strumming, blocking out chords, "Mark and Elaine will equip you with flotation devices should you not feel sufficiently buoyant.But remember... God wants you just the way you are..." His Dylan cover takes you away, seizes hold of you -- the music and the voice will have complete control over the events of the coming hour.

Thank you he says, and without a beat lost continues laying out his context -- "Dear Prudence" he dedicates to Michele and Montague, he plays a Barrett tune -- Thank you he says Thank you, that's what I'm all about. That's what I've been aiming for and missing all these years. What you're hearing today is what I've come up with over the years, how I've fallen short of my aspirations. But this is a collection of Robyn Hitchcock songs. And here starts playing his own music. He tells us that a song is always, properly considered, a form of invocation or of exorcism, a summoning up or a getting rid of. Plays for us devotional songs. (Last night's songs had been more of the exhortative genre.) After the set we went out to Mark's back yard and he played a few more cover tunes in the unseasonably pleasant outdoors. (It felt as my friend Jeanne remarked, "like being extras in Rachel Getting Married.")

The whole afternoon had a pleasant patina of starstruckness to it. It was weird and enjoyable to be chatting with and eating dinner with one's musical idol, to be able to listen to his music in such an intimate setting. Many thanks to hosts Mark and Elaine Costanzo. Set list below the fold.

Set list

1. Too Much of Nothing
2. Dear Prudence
3. Long Gone
4. Birds in Perspex
5. Vibrating
6. 1974
7. Surgery
8. I'm Only You
9. (phone call)
10. Sickie Boy
11. Gene Hackman
12. She Doesn't Exist
13. I Got the Hots
14. One Long Pair of Eyes
15. Dismal City
16. Chinese Bones
17. (set ends, we go outside)
18. She Belongs to Me
19. Crystal Ship
20. River Man

posted evening of Sunday, November 20th, 2011
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sounds heavenly.

posted morning of November 21st, 2011 by ek

wow. sounds like an amazing time.

posted morning of November 25th, 2011 by cleek

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