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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.
Andy Metcalfe has, in his Soundcloud role as flatpicker, been posting some rough mixes from the Queen Elvis sessions -- that is one of the Hitchcock records that I'm least familiar with and it is great listening to these versions.
Am Am(sus)
Finding aptly chilling epitaphs in Robyn Hitchcock lyrics,
Am Em
All I want to do is fall in love while there's still time
Am Am(sus)
Sitting crosswise on the centerpiece and shining off the mantlepiece
Am Am(sus) Am
A skull, a suitcase and a long red bottle of wine.
I was playing in a pubful, of afternoon drinkers
And I asked them as I strummed my guitar, who's got all the chunes
And he crawled along a centipede and rode on his velocipede
Cutting paper napkins into little crescent moons
Tom and Kevin citing happily the sages of their destiny
His living words were dying words he smiled and he said "Yeah"
Searching sadly for that bluegum you can take my eyes I've used 'em
Searching sadly for a quaint old fashioned way to say goodbye
Lots of fun at the Mountain Station practice session today! Our practice set list:
Bethlehem Half-step
Lonesome Nickel
Talking Heads weirdness
Meet Me in the Morning
Birds in Perspex
Been all around this world
Cole Durhew
I Can See Clearly Now/ Here Comes the Sun medley
Why Don't We Do It in the Road jam
Let's listen to "Birds in Perspex"! It is my favorite Robyn Hitchcock song; this is the first time we've ever played it and I think we did a pretty good job.
Heebie-Geebie hears stories of atrocity from her Kosovar student, an outstanding kid; and cannot bring herself to say à la Billy Pilgrim, "and so it goes."
At This is Colossal, Christopher reproduces some deconstructions of God's word by Meg Hitchcock, and links to some current shows of Ms. Hitchcock's work. (Thanks for the link, Henry!)