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(Note: lots of great pictures of the show at brooklynvegan's blog, and more from Dave Kaufman. And another review at The Song In My Head Today.)
(Update: woj has the full setlist and links to a tape of the show at Internet Archive.)
"This music is a place that cardinally does not and never has existed." -- Robyn had opened the concert with some pure music, "Sometimes I wish I was a pretty girl" playing on a tape recorder as he walks in wearing a top hat, sits down at the piano and starts playing with the tape speed. He quickly tires of that, turns off the tape and plays "Nocturne"; then Terry Edwards walks out carrying some wind instruments and they perform "Flavor of Night" together. It was kind of a somber opening, I found -- but after Robyn started talking about his music, things warmed up a lot. Captain Keegan came on stage while he was describing the process of dissecting his lyrics as similar to looking at magnified pictures of rotting tomatoes online, wasting valuable time when you could be sending e-mails, and they launched into "Sounds Great When You're Dead" -- this is 
Photo by Dave Kaufman when the dim blue lighting became bright and red, and everybody started smiling and moving. "These songs are basically subtitles," said Robyn, "they flash up underneath while life is going on" and serve as a means of translation between understanding and feeling, or words to that effect. And played "I Used to Say I Love You." He had some technical difficulties with a loose wire during this song but recovered from it very gracefully -- the final line of the chorus is "And I've lost my illusions about you now", but instead he said as his amplifier crackled and retched, "And I've... ah, really fucked up this guitar, keep it going for a minute you guys, I'm just going to plug this in really deep here,..." and came back to reprise the chorus. There was a lot of chat about editing thrown in at various points during the show, because it was being filmed for inclusion in a documentary of the tour, for instance IIRC Robyn said something about editing out that bit with the recovery from the technical difficulties. I hope they would not; that was one of the really key lovely moments in the show. (Also lovely: in the program was a chronology of Hitchcock's life and work from his POV, similar to this one but expanded through 2009.) Robyn made his first of many references to the recent election when he said of November 4th, "suddenly the scheme of things did not suck." He talked about how he wrote IODOT during the Reagan/Thatcher years when there was not much to feel hopeful about, but he had flashes of hope such as the one that led him to write this song: and played "This Could Be The Day", with "Nubian slaves" inexplicably edited to "Nubian Dave". Then Edwards gets up from the piano and takes Robyn's electric guitar, the black one with white polka dots that matches his shirt, and Robyn says "This is gonna be in C. C, the mother of all keys..." and talks for a while about key signatures and editing -- "We've just survived 8 years of faith. Let's see where a little disbelief can get us." And the three of them sang "Sleeping Knights of Jesus", with some great edits to bring the song up to date a bit. Talked for a while about railroads as an embodiment of love as an intro to "Trams of Old London", and then talked about the physical skeleton of the city, as an intro to "My Favorite Buildings". "Catholicism is best described as a form of insurance. ... Oh crap, did the Lord cut off my mic? -- It's back, someone must have given him something." And they played "Mother Church", and Terry and Tim left the stage, and Robyn played a solo "I Often Dream of Trains" on electric guitar with all of his enormous personality focused into the microphone -- this song was stunning and brought a standing ovation, one which brought everybody back out for some encores. In the encores they played a song I didn't know but which I loved, and have asked the Fegs to identify for me;* and both songs from "Rachel Getting Married" (which Ellen hopes gets an Oscar for its music); and "Listening to the Higsons". And a special extra encore, after everybody had gotten up and started moving toward the exits, of "Goodnight I Say" -- which was funny and nice, because I had been thinking before the show about how this would be the ideal closing number. Anyway: too long and too unfiltered a post; I just wanted to get some of this down while I still remembered it.
 (Oh, I forgot, something I really liked: the last thing Robyn said at the end of the first encore, and I think as all the musicians on stage were playing the final notes of "Higsons", was something like, "Things never end. But for the purposes of editing, we're going to stop here." And the sound cut off, and the musicians exited. The extra musicians playing on the encore were Gaida Hinnawi on vocals and Amir El Saffar on horn, both from the cast of Rachel Getting Married.) (Another thing I just remembered: After Terry and Tim had left the stage at the end of the set, before Robyn played "I Often Dream of Trains," he spoke for a bit about the concert ending -- "This is the needle lifting from the dusty groove" -- he likened the end of a record or concert to the transition from sleep to wakefulness, the music being a remembered dream, and the transition from "then" to "now." "But this is still then," and started playing.) *And the responding Feg says, Robyn played this song on Wednesday too (at World Cafe Live), and she thinks she has never heard it before. Which I take to mean it's a new composition.... Another Feg says, it is called "I'm Falling" and is written for the soundtrack of The Fifth Beatle. It will be track 4 of Goodnight Oslo.
posted evening of Saturday, November 22nd, 2008
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Oh, I'm so glad you got all those moments written down. You're right, he did have some very clever segues that night. I gather that no two RH concerts are ever alike, so he can't script them ahead of time (though I wouldn't blame him if he hadn't thought this one out a little in advance, since it was going to be filmed after all). The sheer unpredictability of an evening with Robyn Hitchcock is what makes it so special.
I dream sometimes of being able to follow Robyn around on tour, watching him night after night, jotting it all down. But that would probably ruin his live-at-this-moment-and-never-again vibe. Better just just to let it happen when it happens and count it all a gift.
PS I think I heard him play "I'm Falling" this past summer as well, though it may have been something else from The Fifth Beatle.
posted morning of November 24th, 2008 by Holly A Hughes
Hi Holly -- thanks, I really enjoyed your write-up of "I Used to Say I Love You". I did a very miniaturized version of what your talking about by listening to tapes of some of his shows this last summer and recording how the patter evolved for a couple of songs.
I was kind of surprised at the opening of the concert by how much like the reviews of other shows on this tour it was seeming -- but he quickly started surprising me. The four RH shows I've seen have been very different from each other.
I'm just loving the "Fifth Beatle" songs, I hope they can get it into production.
posted afternoon of November 24th, 2008 by Jeremy
I loved the show and really enjoyed your review. What a great night of music. I have some (illicit :-) ) pictures that were taken during the show:
http://picasaweb.google.com/Davek729/RobynHitchcockPresentsIOftenDreamOfTrains#
BTW Amir El Saffar is a first rate jazz trumpeter. His own groups play a blend of adventurous jazz and Middle Eastern/Arabic music.
posted evening of November 24th, 2008 by Dave Kaufman
Nice pictures, Dave! Do you mind if I copy one to use as an illustration for this review?
posted morning of November 25th, 2008 by Jeremy
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