READIN

Monday, March first, 2010

🦋 Avoiding Confrontation

The first video from Propellor Time is up at The Museum of Robyn Hitchcock:

The video is (like The Day Before Boxing Day) directed by Hannah Bird and released on Groove Egg -- now I want to find out more about this.

posted afternoon of March first, 2010: Respond
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Thursday, February 11th, 2010

🦋 Propellor Time?

So YepRoc has no plans to release Propellor Time in the U.S., in physical or digital format. That's no good! If you are on FaceBook (and it makes a difference to you), go join the FaceBook group Persuade YepRoc to release Propellor Time stateside. That'll show 'em!

posted evening of February 11th, 2010: 3 responses
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Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

🦋 Propellor Time

Nice quote from Hitchcock: "We wanted to create a sprawling record like The Basement Tapes: so we sprawled for a week and then spent three years editing it."

Track listing:

1. Star of Venus
2. The Afterlight
3. Luckiness
4. Ordinary Millionaire
5. John in the Air
6. Propellor Time
7. Primitive
8. Sickie Boy
9. Born on the Wind
10. Evolove

↻...done

posted evening of January 19th, 2010: 1 response

Saturday, November 7th, 2009

🦋 At random

I found my iPod today! Have not seen it for months, and wondered occasionally on its whereabouts... Today it was sitting in plain sight on my desk. To celebrate, I shuffle:

• Pit of Souls, Robyn Hitchcock. Fantastic -- I don't really associate this style of music with Robyn but it is very nice for a change. Shades of Interstellar Overdrive!
• Djangology, the Hot Five. From Pet's picks. I can spend too much time on Hot Five listening for Grappelli's work and may miss some of the guitar. The violin solo about a minute ½ in is amazing though.
• Blue Moments, the Fletcher Henderson band.
• I'm Only You, Robyn Hitchcock. For you... (I like his play with pronouns, it reminds me of FaceBook a bit.) Live 2003 at the Great American Music Hall.
• Soldier's Drill, Rev. Gary Davis.
• The Clothes Line Saga, Dylan/The Band. Hypnotic. Wish this song was longer, it could easily have another verse and hold the mood.
• Morning Dew, The Grateful Dead.

  posted evening of November 7th, 2009: Respond
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Saturday, September 5th, 2009

🦋 Comme Toujours Here I Stand

This is kind of exciting to hear about: Big Dance Theater is presenting a new show called "Comme Toujours Here I Stand" based on Cléo de 5 à 7, featuring an original title song by Robyn Hitchcock -- a confluence of two of my very favorite artists! (And of an art form I'm not familiar with at all...) It will be premiering next month at The Kitchen in NYC; I'll certainly be there.

Speaking of Hitchcock, here are a couple of things I've seen in the last few days and been meaning to link to:

• See him singing a lovely new song, "Dragonfly Me", on BBC4 Today -- he performed this song yesterday at Pestival, I'm not sure whether it was written for the occasion or just a happy coincidence...
• On Jennifer Robbins' show "Cooking With Rockstars", he discusses how to make Food Pie:
  "Dead pheasant would be hung in the pantry or something for maybe a week after it dies, getting high... 'getting high' means -- as I suppose it often does in human terms -- slowly turning green..."

  I'm a little surprised to find Hitchcock not liking parsnips -- this guy who has always struck me as being the height of good taste!

posted morning of September 5th, 2009: Respond
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Sunday, August 16th, 2009

🦋 Random 10 while reading

Another difference between Inherent Vice and my standard category of novel-reading experience is, I like the reading a lot better if there is music playing in the background. Normally I have a hard time reading when I'm listening to music, here they seem to enhance one another. From my iTunes shuffle today:

1. It ain't nobody's business, Mississippi John Hurt
2. La-Do-Dada, Dale Hawkins
3. What Goes On, Robyn Hitchcock and Grant Lee Phillips -- this was a very nice coincidence because it came on just as I was starting to read the lyrics to the Spotted Dicks' new single "Long Trip Out" (which is on the radio in Doc's car), and suddenly I am singing them to the tune of "What Goes On", and they are fitting pretty well. Here is a verse of it:

   Long trip out, from the Mekong Delta...
   It's a last lost chance, when you need a friend,
   And you're flyin on out of
   Cam Ranh Bay at midnight,
   And you won't know how, to
   Get back home again.

   Then I spent a little while distracted, trying to find out more about "What Goes On" -- turns out it is a Velvet Underground song.
4. The Birds Were Singing, Carter Family
5. There'll be Joy, Joy, Joy, Carter Family -- the Carter Family threatening to distract from the novel, they do not quite work together.
6. Floater, Bob Dylan -- now this is more like it --
7. Till the End of the World, Ernie Tubb
8. Salty Dog Blues, John Hurt
9. Knockin on Heaven's Door, Dylan and the Band -- I was not actually participating in the music-listening/reading activity here, "Salty Dog" had reminded me that Lola needed to go out --
10. I Something You, Robyn Hitchcock.

...and later on in the shuffle, Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra plays the "What-cha-call-'em Blues" which go very nicely with the lyrics I am reading at this moment, to Carmine and the Cal-Zones' "Just the Lasagna". Conclusion, when there's music playing it's much easier to imagine Pynchon's lyrics being sung.

posted afternoon of August 16th, 2009: Respond
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Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

🦋 If that were air, it would be a long way to fall.

Robyn Hitchcock on "Words and Music from Studio A"! Some unreleased tracks, some interesting conversation. All solo and acoustic.

posted evening of August 12th, 2009: Respond

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

🦋 Come for the Robyn Hitchcock, stay for the John Wesley Harding

So I heard a while back about this tape of a John Wesley Harding concert which featured some performances by Robyn Hitchcock, called "A Bloody Show: Live at Bumbershoot 2005" -- and I had kicking around in my consciousness some occasional recommendations that I listen to Harding, and of course the obvious Dylan tie-in. So I put it on my NetFlix queue and forgot about it until it came in the mail yesterday.

Popped it in the player without much idea of what to expect -- I guess I was expecting some Dylan-influenced singing with guitar kind of thing. But wow! This thing is nothing like anything I could have expected. It is completely sui generis and is touched with brilliance. Harding is singing ballads that he has written (strongly and clearly derivative from particular folk ballads) with two other singers, either a capella or accompanied by a string quartet, sometimes Harding is playing guitar;* Robyn is narrating the performance reading excerpts from Harding's book Misfortune -- I had not known he was a novelist -- and great stage patter, from various of the performers.

The ballads are beautiful; I cannot find any recordings of them on the web so can only recommend that you watch the concert tape. Two lovely Harding performances are on YouTube, though. The song "Misfortune" is the first track on this concert tape, and is kind of what I had been expecting ("Dylan-influenced singing with guitar kind of thing"), and is just great:

* And more instrumentation -- a hurdy-gurdy is featured on "The Lady Dressed in Green"! And there's a full rock band on a few tracks at the end!

posted evening of June 18th, 2009: Respond
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Thursday, May 14th, 2009

🦋 And dreamt herself was such a faded form

YepRoc records has made the video for "I'm Falling" available online.

posted evening of May 14th, 2009: Respond
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Friday, March 27th, 2009

🦋 Goodnight Oslo: deep listen

Coming up! This evening is not quite upon us yet; I need to do things like put Sylvia to bed and tidy the kitchen, before it can truly be thought of as evening; but I am planning once all that is taken care of, to spend a couple of hours listening to and writing about the songs on Goodnight Oslo. (I did this a couple of years ago with Perspex Island, at the beginning of my infatuation with Robyn Hitchcock.)

I just noticed (at Hot Rox Avec Lying Sweet Talk) a really nice quote from Robyn, in a 2002 interview with Rolling Stone -- he is asked about what fan reaction he is anticipating to the forthcoming Nextdoorland, and replies:

They'll be initially pleased to hear it, and then they'll say it's not as good as Under Water Moonlight and then about five years down the line they'll probably get to like it on it's own merit," he says. "I can see the different layers of icing -- they'll like licking off the first layer, they won't like licking off the second layer, but once they've got through, the third layer's pretty good.

So, stay tuned -- more later.

(Update: Oh wait, strike that. The disc is in the car which Ellen drove to visit her friend. Oh well, something else... maybe I'll do some reading instead.)

posted evening of March 27th, 2009: 2 responses

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