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Robyn Hitchcock
And when the sun goes down on her
So beautiful, my heart just stops
Robyn is one of my very favorite musicians. I liked his early records a lot as a kid, then mostly forgot about him, and rediscovered his music as an adult.
He has a huge catalog of records; the two that played possibly the largest role in rekindling my interest were Moss Elixir and Perspex Island.
Nearly all of Robyn's lyrics are online at The Asking Tree. You can download a huge number of live recordings for free, from Archive.org.
READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
These tickets have been burning a hole in my pocket for a couple of weeks now -- tonight Ellen and I are going up to Ridgewood, to listen to Robyn Hitchcock! I'll be wandering around in an expectant haze all day, more than I usually am I mean. The venue is a place called Blend -- looks like a good place to hear music.
Mostly I'm excited about going to a concert with Ellen, which we have not done together in too long a time.
posted morning of July 12th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Music
That's what Robyn Hitchcock's grandma used to say, or so he told us this evening -- he said nobody ever turned into his grandma, so he dedicated "I'm Only You" to her. This was the second song, after "The Museum of Sex" -- I was happy to hear him open with this song after I had opened my mix tape with it.
"I'm Only You" was followed by a long digression on digestion, and whether and under what circumstances we would feel comfortable discussing our digestions, leading into "a digestion song", viz."The Cheese Alarm", which made Ellen (and me) laugh out loud with its urgency. "Please! Somebody ring the cheese alarm!" Robyn conducted a dialogue with the audience after, asking if WALL-E is any good -- "Yeah!" -- "That's good to know... Can you all hear this?" -- "Yeah!" -- "That's good to know -- it's reassuring to think this is all not just going on in here..." and played, with much dancing during the solos, "I Got the Hots for You" and "Glass Hotel".
"Thank you --" and as he started playing "Idonia", "This is about someone who left a hole the shape of themselves in somebody else's life." As he was retuning to play his next song, people in the audience were calling out requests, and he said with just enough of an edge to get them to stop, "You know there's a thin line between a devoted admirer and a creep... To be a slave to love -- what a thing!" and sang "The Idea of You".
A long digression about the Victorians -- "It's possible that the Victorians were frightened by sex... Victorians wrote mostly in longhand, no e-mail. But biologically they were much the same as us..." reflecting on the possibilities of interbreeding between modern humans and Victorians, getting particularly interesting if the Victorians in question are your own ancestors; "Screw your great-grandparents! Whole empires have been founded on worse. But this song is not really about that:" and launched into the hilarious "Victorian Squid". "Thank you -- it's all true."
The next song, "Creeped Out", went out to "a friend of mine -- it's her birthday on Monday. Happy birthday, friend!" and while he tuned up for the next song, he said: "There's something insanely simple about watching somebody perform songs he's written -- it's like somebody sending you YouTube videos of cats..." and dedicated the song, which was "I Feel Beautiful", to "Michèle and our cat". Ellen thought this was a really smart lyric, and I agree.
"How many people find the idea of eternity relaxing?" Not many -- mostly we want finitude. Robyn played "Oceanside", which was maybe the only song of the evening that really had me wishing for a band behind him. "This isn't exactly about Arthur Lee -- it's just around him..." and sings "The Wreck of the Arthur Lee", which I guess I had not realized was about a person. "It's a funny thing about eulogies -- essentially it's sad -- ... what really makes people cry at a funeral is the jokes," by way of explaining why he had written "Underground Sun" so upbeat -- it's about a friend who died, who was "definitely not a dismal person." "When people are dead they don't have an age."
"I'll leave you with a blast of folk-rock sound," Robyn tells us as he dons his harmonica, and plays "Only the Stones Remain" with a downright amazing harmonica part. But we clapped and clapped, and he came back out to perform a long encore -- wearing his purple shirt with iguanas rather than his orange shirt with dingbats. "You've Got Heaven"* was the first song in the encore, and Ellen's favorite song of the evening. Then a song I don't know (and can't find at The Asking Tree), with the chorus "I'm gonna see you in the afterlife." And finally, after a long digression about cones (during which he wished us all "an incredibly long rest of your lives"), Olé Tarantula.
Nice -- a totally satisfying evening. The level of energy he projects from the stage just takes my breath away.
*Wow! "Heaven" is from the early eighties -- somehow I had got fixed in my head that it was from a recent record. I think it sounds much more like late-nineties Hitchcock than do any of the other songs on "Gotta Let This Hen Out".
I want to start putting together a mix tape of love songs. Seems like the right thing to do right now. Now it would be really easy to put together such a tape using only Robyn Hitchcock tunes but I don't want to roll that way... I think I will include "I Feel Beautiful" and either "Arms of Love" or "Heaven". (So many choices! My first thought was to open the mix with "Birds in Perspex" and end it with "Ride".) Anyway: time to start thinking about non-Hitchcock love songs...
posted evening of July 24th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Mix tapes
Over at the Fegmaniax-l, they've been discussing the evolution of Robyn Hitchcock's stage patter. I thought I'd try transcribing some song intros from a couple of weeks ago; these are taken from the July 12th show at The Blend in Ridgewood, and the July 15th show at The Turning Point in Piermont. I can't swear to the accuracy of the transcriptions but they are pretty close. Note they're not nearly as polished as the song intros I transcribed from Storefront Hitchcock; this makes me think he's doing them pretty much off the cuff, whereas for the movie he probably rehearsed a bit.
Well, if you really love somebody, my grandmother used say, you turn into them. ...Nobody turned into my grandmother. So this is dedicated to my grandmother:
"I'm Only You", Turning Pt.
If you really admire somebody, one thing you can do is... try to turn into them. Now this hasn't paid off with things like, the Christian church; but, if the object of your devotions is, nailed, to a piece of wood and... bleeding to death horribly, how much do you wanta turn into them? This is an issue that is raised by the whole concept of the imitation of Christ; um, I'm not gonna deal with that at all. This song is... much much lighter than that. It is, a soufflé, that wafts over the field of human agony rather like a U.F.O.... flits across Arizona and decides to settle in New Mexico.
"Victorian Squid", Blend
It's possible that the Victorians were frightened by sex. ...It's also possible that there's a 7-11 on Jupiter. It's possible that Bush and Cheney will suddenly cause the constitution to be mutated so Bush can seek a third term, and, ah, and mandatorily get it. Some possibilities are better than others. Or... more possible. Anyway, not many Victorians are left, apart from everything they wrote, and they wrote a lot, mostly because they, they wrote in longhand and there was no e-mail. So if they wanted to journal or blog they had to write it down by hand in, you know, with proper ink and stuff like that. ...But biologically, they are much the same as we were, many of us indeed have Victorian a-ancestors, or people who came from that period. And if push came to shove and we had to mate with, those of us who choose to mate or are physically capable of mating, with, ah, other humans, if we had to mate with Victorians, we probably could, and it's quite possible we could have offspring, which would be interesting, especially if they were our great-grandparents who we were mating with; ...but you know, if there's a chronal fissure in the fabric of the cosmos, beggars cannot be choosers, you just have to get on with it, and screw your great-grandparents. Whole empires have been founded on worse. ...And, this song is not really about that. It's an out world. Okay!
"Victorian Squid", Turning Pt.
A lot of people might like to think that the Victorians were, sexually repressed, and... all they could do was have starched colons, and build empires, if they were British, and over here, think that they were free of Britain, and, smoke the same cigars. All forged with iron, and no climaxes... And, y'know, they're probably right, cause, what do we know, we're, I mean, they're all gone; there are very few Victorians in our lives on a day-to-day basis. You might read the works of Trollope, or ah Charles Dickens, but increasingly you won't understand what they're saying, because the language has mutated. So... but, and which is a drag, because they were artists, they were trying to leave a legacy; well they were initially trying to make a living. In fact, before that, they were trying to break rocks of solid stone, boy salt,... basalt? Basil -- solid rocks of basil, that's right. They were trying to cleave these rocks, solid rocks of gravel, they were making a solid road 16 miles long, they were in Sing Sing and Riker's Island, that's where Jane Austen met George Eliot, they were breaking rocks down there. Their asses were bad, and at night they'd go out, fornicating in the baths, with a, blimp... The blimp was above the bath. Kind of um, you know, monitoring them, it was a primitive form of bodyguard; you couldn't afford huge people with sunglasses and holsters and things in those days, so you took, if you were a hard-ass villain breaking rocks of solid gravel out in the penitentiary, then the time came and the warden said "Hey buddy, don't you be no square, go in to Hoboken for the evening and boogie," they would then, the warden would tether you to a blimp, and, um, the blimp would be... It was kind of nice, really nice twine would come down through the chimney of the hostelry you'd be in, boogie, but don't forget, in those days there was no e-mail, but you could smoke. People really knew how to rip it up. And so there's, there's all these convicts would be in there, with these nice chimneys, ventilating the smoke, and also there were a few little pieces of, of silk and muslin and taffeta coming off their ankles, going up to the waiting attendant blimps above them, while they boogied. And then, every so, when it was time to go, their asses would be hauled up by the silk and twine through the chimneys, and then they'd be brought dangling headfirst to the penitentiaries. But by Friday, next Friday, they were ready to give it another go again, cause they'd had a rough week, and they thought anything was better than just spending the night in, you know, watching, um, watching DVD's. Cause there was no Netflix in those days... Hard to believe. So anyway: the Victorians were a rough bunch, everywhere, it's true. So this song is just a kind of mythological... you know, ah, it's my fantasy of what Victorian life was like. I know that the reality is what I've described. So, you know... bear with me, I know it's a feeble picture. But, who wants a strong picture? You know, a strong picture, you'd be driving down the road in your, in your pickup, um... you know, might even lose a wheel, it wouldn't matter, you'd be confident: and then suddenly, there's a strong picture, and you smash into it. Because strong pictures are always left in the road; doesn't matter, could be by Braque, by Picasso, or, or, an older one by... Van Eyck or something, you know, and um, you just smash right into them, your truck is written off, totalled, So remember, weak picures have their place. And if you're going to see the Mona Lisa, that little guy comes busting through the screen, and smashes up against the glass, you know, everything's drenched with blood, in the Louvre, you can't really see the Mona Lisa because of all the dried blood in front of her. Which pisses her off, she's called the Angry Mona Lisa. She's encased, she's just behind this wall of dried blood, I think it's a paradigm of what happened to Christianity; but they were asking for it! ...You know if they'd had a penguin, and a nice un-crucified penguin on a green cone, how much more peaceful would life have been? ...And you know, is that any more meaningless than some poor guy nailed to a tree and bleeding to death, I'd rather see a penguin on a green cone. Okay! here we go.
So it seems like Robyn Hitchcock has written some of the soundtrack for an as-yet-unmade movie about the life of Brian Epstein. He sang two songs from it at the Turning Point show; the first one especially is beautiful, and catchy as hell. The lyrics do not seem to be on the web yet, so here is a quick transcription (the titles are my own, just taken from the choruses; I don't know what Robyn calls these tunes):
This is from a forthcoming movie about the life of Brian Epstein, which hasn't been made yet; but it's been written. Not sure if it's in "development" or "turn-around"...
Knock yourself out yesterday, tomorrow will be fine
It's all for the best you say, somewhere down the line
Everything is fine, Everything is mine.
Pharoah's tomb is empty now, you can crawl right in
Bandage up your sin, bandage up your grin
Oh I, am in a hurry for the sky
Yeah I, am in a hurry for the sky
You can easily confuse, money with success
Success is always relative, money's absolute
Money is acute, money be my girl* -- Yes...
Oh I, am in a hurry for the sky
Yeah I, am in a hurry for the sky
Number 2 said to number 1, you fix us up oh we've finished son
Number 3 said to number 2, I wish I could trade boots with you
Number 4 said to number 5, How does it feel to be eaten alive?
Number 5 said,
I, am not an integrated guy,
Yes I, am in a hurry for the sky
Hurry, for, the, sky...
* On the record it is "money in your dress". Not sure if this was heard right in the live version.
Tryptizol, Librium, Carbitol
Here's another song from the Brian Epstein saga; in this one, Brian's getting near the end, and he has a cocktail* that sustains him:
Ah, I feel so close in my head,
I feel so close to my bed;
You've got me spinning around.
I, feel like a big chandelier,
Could crash any time around here;
You've got me spinning around.
When, the world revolves around you,
And then you revolve too...
You've got me spinning around.
Tryptizol is a brand name for Amitriptyline, an antidepressant.
Librium is a brand name for Chlordiazepoxide, a sedative.
Carbitol is a brand name for 2-(2-Ethoxyethoxy)ethanol, a solvent used in mixing drugs; it was named as the cause of death in the coroner's report on Mr. Epstein's death.
I spent a lot of time on this, to be with you So please don't lock away your eyes
My main thought listening to Element of Light last night was, I've listened to these songs often enough that they are part of the fabric of my consciousness; and yet I am still surprised listening to them, by the pure lushness of Robyn's voice.
This is a great album, many fans seem to think it is his best. I don't feel that way, but it is definitely up there among my favorite things. It's also the only record of his that I actually bought as a kid, so I've had it kicking around my space all these years.
This morning I had it in the car stereo driving to work, and by fortuitous coincidence, I got to work and parked precisely at the end of Side A (back in vinyl days); and my drive home in the evening lasted exactly as long as Side B. So I got to listen to the record as it was intended back in 1985, and I think that is kind of important for this record. "The President" just makes more sense as the last song on a side; and "Raymond Chandler Evening" works much better as a new beginning than as the track after "The President".
The bonus tracks (10 of them!) are mostly just fine. I'm especially happy with "Tell Me About Your Drugs", which I've never heard before (actually, I think all of these bonus tracks are new to me!), and "Upside Down Church Blues", which is only a little out of place -- it belongs on "The Basement Tapes" performed by Dylan and The Band. I question the decision to end the tape with alternate cuts of "Bass" and "Lady Waters and the Hooded One", though -- those two songs are real highlights of the record, and the alternate versions are just annoying.
I've been been listening to Fegmania! a lot over the past week (in its reissue in the Luminous Groove box set), and finding some things I really like about this record, which I had previously considered one of Robyn's weakest efforts. Today I've been getting very interested in the song "The Bells of Rhymney," which I'm embarrassed not to have already known is a classic of the 60's folk revival, written by Pete Seeger and performed variously by The Byrds, Judy Collins, The Alarm, and others.
I think Pete Seeger's is my favorite performance that I've heard so far:
(I think, but not quite sure, that this recording is from the Newport Folk Festival of 1959.)
And The Byrds are lovely and silly, standing gaily on the beach singing about mining disasters. I believe it is their version that Robyn is covering, as he sounds very similar to this:
The song is based on a poem from the book Gwalia Deserta, by miner-turned-teacher and poet Idris Davies, which Seeger found in a book of Welsh poetry compiled by Dylan Thomas. The poem (as near as I can understand) deals with the failure of a mine-workers' strike in 1926. Two other of Davies' poems can be seen in manuscript form at Welsh cultural history site Gathering the Jewels: "Rhymney", and "Rhymney Hill". David Librik gives more detail about the origins of the poem at this link (midway down), including this tantalizing couplet from Gwalia Deserta:
O what is man that coal should be so unmindful of him?
And what is coal that it should have so much blood on it?
Oh what will you give me?
Say the sad bells of Rhymney.
Is there hope for the future?
Cry the brown bells of Merthyr.
Who made the mine owner?
Say the black bells of Rhondda.
And who robbed the miner?
Cry the grim bells of Blaina.
They will plunder will-nilly,
Cry the bells of Caerphilly.
They have fangs, they have teeth,
Shout the loud bells of Neath.
Even God is uneasy,
Say the moist bells of Swansea.
And what will you give me?
Say the sad bells of Rhymney.
Throw the vandals in court,
Say the bells of Newport.
All will be well if, if, if, if
Cry the green bells of Cardiff.
Why so worried, sisters why?
Sing the silver bells of Wye.
And what will you give me?
Say the sad bells of Rhymney.
Note: I found (at The Mudcat Café) some updated lyrics to this, composed by Mr. Steve Suffet, with help from Pete Seeger.
Bells of Kabul
"We've had twenty years of Hell!"
Cry the sad bells of Kabul.
"Oppression and war!"
Scream the bells of Kanduhar.
"Did we win? Did we lose?"
Ask the broken bells of Kanduz.
"Will God grant us peace?"
Pray the bells of Mazar-i-Shareef.
↻...done
Two things I like very much from the re-issue of Fegmania!: the final track "Lady Obvious," which appears never to have been released before (and which I spent a few minutes wishing could be called "Lady Octopus"); and the live version of "Heaven." I transcribed the lyrics to the former, and the intro to latter. If anybody knows the provenance of this recording of "Heaven," please let me know. (According to Miles Goosens, it is likely from the 1992 Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians tour.)
I haunted you once
You haunt me still
On a hill, I sighed, I cried...
You wanted me once
I want you still
I'm so ill, I wail, I flail...
Come down, Lady Obvious, come down
Come down, Lady Obvious, come down
I touched you once
You touch me now
And how, I feel, you there...
You loved me once
You love me now
And how, I care....
Come down, Lady Obvious, come down
Come down, Lady Obvious, come down
You loved me once
I turned away
But love and pity never mix
I'll see you when you're 36
Come down, Lady Obvious, come down
Come down, Lady Obvious, come down
Patter before "Heaven"
This here: this is a floating, a floating cathedral prayer song, used to be sung by the old prospectors when they were waiting for the cathedral to arrive. Back in the 20's, when the Bechtel corporation used to take cheap labor out into the desert to complete its massive projects, big dams and so forth. The men weren't paid very much, and they couldn't get any liquor, so they used to sit outside in groups, in circles, and they'd wait for the cathedral to come by. Big floating, transparent glass cathedral, lit by columns of light from underneath. When it came by, they'd all stiffen and howl. You've got heaven...
↻...done
One of the best things about the Luminous Groove box set is this track, on disk 1 of "Bad Case of History." It is a previously unreleased demo recording (recorded in Yarmouth in 1992), which means The Asking Tree has never heard of it.
This song just seems like a very pure, beautiful melody to me. I'm not sure what else to say about it -- I find the descending run on the fourth and eight lines of the verse rivetting. I lean back and forth between thinking the lyrics are lovely poetry, and thinking they are tritely emotional. The best thing about the lyrics is definitely the ways that the eighth line of each verse leads into the refrain. Possibly what I want to say about this song is, it combines perfectly the style of Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians with the style of Robyn Hitchcock's solo work from later in the '90s -- this is what you might get if you crossed "Raymond Chandler Evening" with "Heliotrope."
The fabulous whisper;
Can anyone hear but me?
The ivy surrounds you
Infinitesimally.
Does anyone love you?
Baby just me.
You're caught in the darkness,
The only place you can be alone
Alone
Alone.
A series of strangers,
Shall we say "absent friends,"
Parading before you;
Into your life she bends.
So hollow and lonely,
It's making you see,
You'll only get better
When you've learned how to be alone
Alone
Alone.
(instrumental)
What does it matter?
You're seeking the eyes long shade.
I brought you some onions;
Cry now, don't be afraid.
They're walking towards you,
The angels from everywhere;
The ghost of your body
Is bringing you back to her alone
Alone
Alone
Alone
Alone
Alone.
↻...done
posted evening of September third, 2008: 1 response
So the reason I wanted to see Rachel Getting Married, was the music, specifically Robyn Hitchcock. And I think the music was probably the best thing about the movie, in the end. But look: the music was sufficiently great that I can say that without denigrating the rest of the picture; it was a really fine movie.
A review I read (maybe in the Times?) criticized the reception scene as killing the rhythm of the movie and its plot, making the viewer lose track of what's going on. This seems like an absolutely baffling response to the movie (assuming I'm remembering it right); the reception was a totally integral part of what was going on (which was after all a wedding), it intensified and crystallized the characters, particularly of Kim and her mother.
Hm, just thinking this post needs a little more -- I finished it in a hurry before dinner -- The reason I chose the title I did is that I flashed on that song at one point in the movie when Kim was watching a car pulling in to her father's driveway. Kim's relationship with cars is definitely a focal point of the plot and of her character. The one thing I really didn't buy in the movie was her accident the night before the wedding -- that (a) was totally predictable and (b) didn't do the work it was supposed to. Auto-accident-as-cathartic-release just doesn't cut it in my book. Her not getting in an accident would have been more compelling; and the fight with her mother fills the need for violent release there.
