Robyn Hitchcock/Soft Boys: Classic or Dud?

Stream of that gig:

http://soundcloud.com/villunderlondon/robyn-hitchcock-i-often-dream

i know i've complained about it (probably on this thread) but it's going on 7 years since i've seen hitchcock live. and before that i think i had a streak of seeing him pretty much every year from 1994-2005.

― tylerw, Wednesday, August 29, 2012 10:52 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This. My at-least-once-a-year streak lasted until the tour for Goodnight Oslo (with that unforgettable arrangement of 'The Lizard'!) but since then, nada.

this IODOT gig sounds cool! nice to hear some different keyboard touches (i guess they didn't want to haul a real piano up to the roof).

guess he's playing at mccabe's in santa monica tonight, where i saw many great hitchcock shows. urgh!

the "quicksand" cover is lovely, don't know if i've ever heard him do that one.

A 60th birthday concert at the same venue:

https://villageunderground.ticketabc.com/events/robyn-hitchcock-2/

Very cool. Also excited that the new album has a date!

new song for today, too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csWyalb2PQQ

Can't believe motherfucker is almost 60. I've been hunkering down with his stuff for 27 years.

What's the skinny on the new album? Electric band? Troubador mode?

It's not the Venus 3, but other than that I don't know. He's been playing a lot with the band in that clip, so it could be a Robyn & friends record.

Would love to see some more action from the Windsor/Noble/Edwards lineup.

cool news. new song sounds good!

This is mostly for Gerald McBoing-Boing, who pestered me for awhile about my claim that every RH record can and should be boiled down to a brilliant EP. It's my long playlist of the finest of Robyn (within the constraints of what's included on Spotify). Roughly chronological order. If this were on CD-Rs it would be a 6CD boxset.

Verities & Verdigris: The Gold Of Robyn Hitchcock

http://open.spotify.com/user/1213493496/playlist/2tcoKqzbBfeKPg2NlA1a47

(The most tragic omissions due to Spotify unavailability are:
'It's Not Just The Size Of A Walnut'
'Salamander'
'I Wanna Be An Anglepoise Lamp'
'Luminous Rose'
'The Ghost Ship' (playlist is pretty much worthless without this)
'Lysander'
'Birds In Perspex'
'Watch Your Intelligence'
'Arms Of Love' (had to sub in the live one)
'Ring Them Bones'
'City Of Women'
'I Love Lucy'
'Sudden Town'
'Strings'
'Narcissus'

But what can ye do?)

(My all-time favorite guitar solo on 'The Pigworker', in case anyone's curious)

that's one of those weird rare songs where i don't like it all that much but think the solo rules

the solo on 'When I Was A Kid' almost equals it. Rew is a monster of body vibrato.

haha yeah, the guitar work on pigworker is insaaaaaane, like hendrix playing w/ beefheart.

Oooooo, lovely! I will dig into this over the weekend but a cursory look shows we're well on the same page: "September Cones", "You've Got" and "She Reached For A Light" jump out at me! The only glaring omission I see is "Glass" from "Fegmania", that's one of Robyn's fairly straightforward, deeply penetrating songs.

September Cones is such a great song. I still hope to see him play it one day (and If We Had A Baby, which really isn't going to happen).

is if we had a baby on anything or is it just a bootleg thing?
september cones really is an incredible song -- i guess he was playing it live a bit a few years ago. a shame that the you & oblivion album is kind of written out of his history at this point. i might even put that in my top 5 hitchcock albums.

You & Oblivion and Invisible Hitchcock would both be in my top 5. Rest in pieces, you odds and sods masterpieces.

maybe some enterprising label will convince him to put you & oblivion out as a double LP on vinyl or something. has anyone ever asked him about the creepy little girl in between the tracks on that album?

no idea. Pre-internet interviews are sometimes hard to find. I don't remember him doing tons of press for the Rhino reissues - lots of the same press release quotes everywhere, and the liner notes, but not much else.

September Cones is such a great song. I still hope to see him play it one day (and If We Had A Baby, which really isn't going to happen).

― colette, Saturday, December 1, 2012 2:35 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This was me, not realising I was logged in as my wife.

As far as I know If We Had A Baby was never released: http://www.jh3.com/robyn/base/song.asp?squid=318

I have 'If We Had A Baby' somewhere. I think on the 'Demos And Rough Sketches' boot comp that also includes 'Lobsterman' (which would go on the playlist if it could).

He played 'September Cones' memorably at the Maxwell's Hoboken all-request shows in 2004. I had just moved to NYC. Here, Archive has it!:

http://archive.org/details/robynhitchcock2004-11-14.flac16

Also, I should have included in my list of 'damn you spotify!' (or rather 'damn you A&M!') unavailables the amazing 'Chinese Bones'. The best song on its album some days (other days it's 'Vibrating').

And I added 'I Wanna Destroy You' and 'Queen Of Eyes' at the very last minute because even though I myself am completely sick of them, they're great songs and everyone loves them and I can't have people thinking I'm crazy.

Re: You & Oblivion and Invisible Hitchcock, I mean they're both pretty much on I Wanna Go Backwards all mixed up with each other, and in fantastic sound quality. But I know what y'all mean, I miss them as entities.

True, most everything is somewhere. But Invisible Hitchcock used to be my easy primer for the breadth and depth and weirdness of Hitchcock; a perfect introduction for someone who at best knew Balloon Man or something. Alas, now no perfect sampler exists.

There are some interesting 88 and 89 Egyptians shows up on Archive now, by the way. The 89s in support of REM. Short 10 song sets but it looks like they varied their set lists a lot. The 88 one is well recorded as is one of the 89s.

Also, Stewart Russell has posted some 2001 Edinburgh shows including a solo electric instrumental I never noticed before: 'Your Feelings Are The Last Thing To Die'. It's really beautiful!

And ooo! ooo! I found another RH Incredible String Band cover! 'Nightfall' in this Edinburgh show:

http://archive.org/details/Robyn_Hitchcock2001-08-04.aud.flac24

Which makes, to my knowledge:

'The Yellow Snake'
'Chinese White'
'Way Back In the 60s'
'Nightfall'

If an RH cover of 'Job's Tears' turned up I would shit and die.

Alas, now no perfect sampler exists.

Yep Roc put out a tiny sampler called "Chronology" recently but, good lord, how is there no comprehensive career overview for a man with such a huge back catalog? You could pick up the A&M "Greatest Hits" and the Rhino "Uncorrected Personality Traits" comps but then you still have no Soft Boys or anything since "Moss Elixir"!

I hate a lot of the choices on "Chronology" I gotta say

new old Hitchcock:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqRq2T1cJuA

nice -- don't think i've heard that one before? also don't think i've ever seen that clip for one long pair of eyes there at the end....

I'm excited to hear he's combing the archives. Did I hear right at the end? He sorta says there will be a live show broadcast on the youtube channel? I'm assuming he mean's the birthday show, and if so, that'd be amazing.

OK, Robyn, OK, I subscribed to your YouTube channel.

BTW, I pared down my RH 'box set' to a much more more concise double disc of strict cream:

http://open.spotify.com/user/1213493496/playlist/3dfBUkUJrekhx5v6UQsXF4

In my email just now:

Yep Roc Records is excited to announce the March 5, 2013 release of the new Robyn Hitchcock album, Love From London.

Hitchcock describes his songs as "paintings you can listen to." Love From London "celebrates life in a culture imperiled by economic and environmental collapse," he says. "We are surfing on the momentum of chaos. If a consensus on global warming comes from the people, then the media, the politicians, and the corporations will have to adapt to it. Rock and Roll is an old man's game now, so I'm staying in it."

The record was produced and engineered by Paul Noble, and features Noble on bass, guitar, keyboards and vocals; Jenny Adejayan on cello and vocals; Lizzie Anstey on vocals and keyboards and Jenny Macro, Lucy Parnell and Anne Lise Frokedal on vocals.

Personnel list leads me to think this will be in the same general sound world as Tromse Kaptein...

Yeah, that was my thinking as well - and I wasn't impressed with "Tromso" aside from a few tunes. Granted, he's just come off a trilogy of his best work but still...

Same reaction to Tromso over here. We'll see...

Tromso was a bit boring, yeah, but I thought that was as much the songs' fault as anything else -- if he's got a good collection of tunes, i'm optimistic.

That's my hope-- that Tromso was the second tier of this batch.

I think Tromso sounds like all the songs the Venus 3 rejected over the past x number of years. There are a few solid ones, but as always, it takes other people -- for the recent past that's been the Venus 3 -- to let Robyn know what is good and what is naff. I hope to hell someone in the current circle of friends can do the same.

perhaps someone at Yep Roc is that person (he's always released his inbetweeners on odd labels)

Possibly. It's nice to think so.

Y'know, I haven't really caught up to his last several web singles, the ones he releases on his site for free and then they go pay-only after a few months. How have those been?

He's put out 4 of those phantom 45's and there are probably 2 keepers in the 8 songs.

I'd have to give them another listen but, yeah, nothing struck me as memorable. Just reading the titles I can only recall the tunes to "There Goes The Ice" and "Thank You, Time Girl".

Wow, "Love In The Garden Of Light"! I heard that live in Chicago in 1992 and I remember it vividly.

That was on the old fan club cassette bootleg "Unhatched Crablings". Solid tune but I can see why it didn't make it onto "Perspex" or "Respect".

Someone hacked Matthew Seligman's twitter acct, I got an obvious 'i am a virus please click this link' DM from him today. Would be p excited if actual Seligman DMed me.

I met Matthew after a gig once and he was just as happy to engage with fans as we were to chat with him. Same for Kimberley.