Category Archives: Robyn Hitchcock

Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3

Mrs C and I went to see Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 at the Cat's Cradle last Friday. This is the 5th time we've seen Robyn, but the first time we've seen him with a band. And this band was: Scott McCaughey (of the Minus 5, and formerly Young Fresh Fellows) and Bill Rieflin (also of the Minus 5 but who also played in a bunch of "industrial" bands from the early 90's, including Ministry and KFMDM, and is the unofficial replacement for Bill Berry of REM - what a resume!); and then Peter Buck, who also plays in the Minus 5 but is best known as being the guitar player for R.E.M.. So, not only did I get to see one of my all-time favorite songwriters, Robyn, but I got to see one of my all-time favorite guitar players, Peter Buck. His playing on the first five or so R.E.M. records is just awesome. He's not a flashy player, just a very tasty and melodic one. And, because we got there early (first in line!), we were front and center, leaning on the stage - no watching from the back of the room this time.

Canon SD630

It's hard to overstate how thrilled I was to see Peter Buck playing those songs. He's played on Robyn's records before the Venus 3 (much to the surprise of the astonished guy who asked Buck to autograph 'the only thing he had with him', the cassette insert from Robyn's Globe Of Frogs - "I'll sign anything, but I did play on this one. See, here's the credit," Buck said, pointing to his name in the list of guest musicians), so hearing him play some of that stuff was cool. And we also got to see him play parts that David Rawlings (another of my favorite guitar players) played on Spooked, which was also cool. I was hoping they'd do an R.E.M. song, but no luck there. Buck's pretty low-key on-stage - not a lot of jumping around; he just chimes away with that semi-hollow Epiphone 12-string (or sometimes the Rick' 6-string, below).

Canon SD630

The guy who played bass and did backup vocals is the singer from the Minus 5, Scott McCaughey. He played guitar and sang lead on one of the encores, a rockin little Minus 5 song called "Aww Shit Man". He was fun to watch.

Canon SD630

Canon SD630

Like I said, we were very close.

While the whole thing was great, perhaps the high point of the show, for me, was one of the encores: 8 Miles High. Both Robyn and Peter Buck play a lot of high jangly Byrds-style stuff anyway, so a Byrds song seems like a natural choice. And when they did that classic beautiful lead, in harmony... yum.

Canon SD630

I was interested to see that Robyn was using the same amp as mine (Fender 1x12 "Hot Rod Deluxe") and a blue Telecaster Plus (my Tele+ is black). Great minds...

At the end of the show, my sweet wife grabbed the set list off the stage, and we got them all (less the drummer, who wouldn't come out) to sign it.

There was an opening band, but, well... let's not talk about them.

Uncorrected Personality Traits

Reading this (Is My Child Becoming Homosexual?), I'm reminded of this classic Robyn Hitchcock song:

    Uncorrected personality traits
    that seem whimsical in a child
    may prove to be ugly in
    a fully grown adult.

    Lack of involvement with the father,
    or over-involvement with the mother,
    can result in lack of ability
    to relate to sexual fears,

    and in homosexual leanings,
    narcissism, transexuality
    (girls from the waist up
    men from the waist down),
    attempts to be your own love object.

    Reconcile your parents to you
    by becoming both at once!

    Even Marilyn Monroe was a man,
    but this tends to get overlooked by our
    mother-fixated, overweight, sexist media.

    So:
    Uncorrected personality traits
    that seem whimsical in a child
    may prove to be ugly
    in a fully grown adult.

    If you give in to them
    Every time they cry
    They will become little tyrants
    But they won't remember why
    Then when they are thwarted
    By people in later life
    They will become psychotic
    And they won't make an ideal husband or wife

    The spoiled baby grows into
    the escapist teenager who's
    the adult alcoholic who's
    the middle-aged suicide.

    Oy. So:

    Uncorrected personality traits
    that seem whimsical in a child
    may prove to be ugly
    in a fully grown adult.

    -- Uncorrected Personality Traits

Of course, Robyn is clever, ironic and funny, not scary, unlike the nuts who want to send your kids to fag camp.

Robyn

Sony P7

Robyn Hitchcock, last night, at The Pour House, Raleigh, NC (max occupancy ~145).

Great show, as usual. According to his website, the night before in Nashville, he recreated his current album live with Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, so last night, he did mostly mostly older songs - only two from the new record, I think. That was OK with me, since that left more room for songs I'd never heard him do live before ("Madonna of the Wasps", "Vibrating", "Ole Tarantula", etc). I got a lot of pictures like the one above, and got a little MPEG movie of him doing "Vibrating". The sound on that came out so good that I'm going to put it on my iPod - good job, little Sony P7!

At the end, he put down his electric guitar and grabbed his acoustic. Then he ripped off the pickup and cords that were taped to it, stepped off the stage and walked into the crowd to do a truly unplugged (not even a microphone) medley of George McCrae's 1974 disco hit "Rock Your Baby" ("Woman, Take me In Your Arms / Rock Me Baby"), Dr Hook's "When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman" and David Bowie's "Sound And Vision".

Then he signed some autographs. When we got to him, my wife asked if she could get a picture. He said "nothing personal" but he didn't like to be photographed. Ooops. :)