The night started off well with the fine support act Viarosa, a well-rehearsed band with members from various countries that sounded to me like a cross between Nick Cave and 16 Horsepower/Woven Hand. I bought their debut CD after the gig, which sounds very nice (I've only heard it once sofar). Lead singer Richard Neuberg exclaimed, "It's been something else supporting Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3" and said he didn't understand why people did not flock to see them in *every* town (possibly a reference to the half-full Zodiac?). The crowd-pleasing praise didn't end there as a nomination followed: "I think he should be Prime Minister: he's funnier, smarter..he's great, basically.. a genius. A genius. Why not call him that?"
Then, the main act: Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3 blasted into action on Adventure Rocket Ship at approx. 9pm (iirc), setting the tone for the concert, which I think was sold-out. Robyn (floral shirt, changing to polka dot for the first encore) was chattier than usual and both Scott and Robyn were in a good mood, sharing many a laugh. Robyn's banter started right after the already classic Adventure Rocket Ship with a tale about a bench sprouting a tree eventually causing indigestion. Here are some of my impressions below, based on some scribbly notes made during the concert..
City Of Shame had a nice energetic solo, slightly heavy on the bass tones whereas Sally Was A Legend sounded nice and jangly, and rather Beatlesque in the outro. Robyn's conclusion "So alpha went with omega.. Sally was only a bit ill" drew more laughs from the crowd.
Next, more banter / comedy duet between Robyn and Scott: Scott gently persuaded Robyn into returning to the main topic, but the word 'focus' (Robyn: "*Another* very 90's word") was enough for a Scott & Robyn comedy routine, about the (Dutch) 70's band 'Focus'. Robyn: "Was that a progressive band?" to which Scott replied that their song 'Hocus Pocus' (I think he got that wrong and actually said 'Hocus Focus') involved 'yodelling', and was a big hit. Yodelling? Hit? Robyn expressed his doubts about this unlikely combination. :) 'Well it's the only song that fits the mark', Scott quipped.
At one point, Robyn called Scott 'the heart of the band' and referred to 'the strange relationship' he has with Peter Buck (Leo) as he counted a song in for the second time.
Robyn: "Let's summon up "Terry and Colin from England". Enter Terry and Colin, stage left.
Taking the audience farther down memory lane, Robyn tackled the pigeonhole labels applied to him in the press, such as 'elderly statesman of indie' (plus some more I can't think of right now). Then he declares "but you were there all the time!"
As the intro to the next song is played, Robyn asked if anyone remembered "the days of Selector". "You do? / Sounds like 'voodoo'. / It's getting furry here. I'm liking it already!" By that time the crowd is cheering again... and the band plays Ole! Tarantula which showcases some nice deep vocals from Robyn.
Before 'The Museum of Sex' Robyn says "This one goes out to those who were in the Tufty Club" and refers to the under-fives' traffic awareness squirrel and so we're back to rodents again. (For non-UK members: see http://www.rospa.com/history/1960s.htm for instance) This version of 'The Museum Of Sex' has a really tight rhythm section and Bill's power chords (before the second riff) give the song an extra raw edge.
After 'If I Were A Priest' Robyn calls to memory 'Di's assassination' and moves from "The clock has stopped again for England" via "the grassy knole" to "the shots came from the Eiffel Tower".
The guitar sound on 'The Underneath' as on many of the other songs was really garagey. Why did it have to take so many years for Robyn to get back together with an electric band, I wondered..
Introducing 'Television', Robyn commented, "Michele has taught me more about rodents than I could ever understand". During the song, Robyn introduced some unusual, newly improvised higher vocals in the line "You're the devil's fishbowl, honey". I think 'Television' with its many beautifully subtle inflections in the outro may turn out to be one of the turning points in how Robyn's vocal style seems to be
developing lately. Just my two eurocents, anyway.
Vibrating was fantastic, with a perfect Byrdsian guitar sound. After the song, Robyn mentioned the deaths of Arthur Lee and Syd Barrett in the past year. And then something slightly odd happens. In response to someone interrupting his chat about the late Arthur Kane, Robyn continued 'He (*very* long pause) ................ died' as if to stress the silence. The statement itself (or the silence?) made some people laugh.
The ensuing song, Arms of Love -easily one of my all-time Hitchcock favourites- was breathtaking with its drum sound pumping more and more drama into the song, as it were, and there was an effective use of red light at the point where the 'healing' guitar solo comes in.
I loved the bass parts in The Authority Box. (I'll get to the hints mentioned in the setlist in another message.)
Drive Aloud really lived up to its title: ultra-dense noise! and I was in a position not far from the stage.
I thought Madonna of the Wasps had a nicely dosed guitar intro, not so over the top as the latest recorded version which gets stuck in noodling, imho.
I was very pleased to hear the dreamy I Often Dream Of Trains. I also liked the arrangement on Kingdom of Love, though I can't my put my finger on what was so different from the original (probably the rhythm).
More banter. Robyn: "We elected some Popes." Scott: "Popes in motion. They are all called Gerald" upon which Robyn inserts 'Gerald', 'Pope', 'photographs' into the lyrics of 'Give It To The Soft Boys'.
The plot thickens and Robyn takes us even further back: "What have the Romans ever done for us?" and replies "Well.... vinyl! Handtowels! Porous tissue (a problem for George Harrison, he adds). Then things get seriously silly when Scott and Robyn exchange a list of ancient Romans: "Chuckus Berrius, Biggus Boppus" etc. "All played on period instruments!" As a consequence, Drive Aloud ends with a reference to Fatto Domino. Robyn thinks this may be in the dative case and mean something like (I forget the exact wording) "to the fat flabulence of the Lord" and points out the extreme contrast between healthy Buddha vs our skinny Christ. Then another stream of consciousness follows: AD - CD - DVD. "VDV would be something different Robyn explains: Venereal Disease Very. Robyn mentions getting a DVD, "the only thing that is not bio-degradable" :) and we've come full circle (as we're back to the vinyl format).
Granted, there weren't any REM covers this time as in Oxford, but it didn't upset me in the slightest. This ultra-tight band has clearly matured throughout the tour and man, did they play a mean Authority Box (the track I was hoping they would). They gave it their all in the Soft Boys rock-out and to top it all the setlist included See Emily Play - 'the best song ever', as Robyn briefly introduced the song. All in all, a terrific night and one I will definitely remember for a long time..
Good to know they will be back in June..
--Grimble
Online review by The GuardianI'm an elder statesman of indie, you know," observes a deadpan Robyn Hitchcock, "a superannuated cult dude." It would be churlish to quibble: a 25-year career in which he has released 15 albums has established Hitchcock as a fixture in music's margins, the wacky benign uncle of English psychedelia. Hitchcock may be a fringe figure but his 1970s band the Soft Boys (formed at Cambridge University) were a large influence on REM, whose guitarist Peter Buck and drummer Bill Rieflin form two-thirds of his Venus 3 tonight. In his lurid floral shirt, Hitchcock retains the air of an eternal student: only his curtains of grey hair betray his 53 years.
His forte has always been a prim, clean-cut version of acid rock, powered by gentle whimsy. In equal thrall to the Byrds and the Goons, he routinely subverts his band's plangent jangle with his diligently zany lyrics as on Olé! Tarantula, the title track of his new album. The Museum of Sex, likewise, is little more than a volley of absurdist, dislocated phrases, but the band sound tight.
The leather-jacketed Buck is a fluid maestro, visually anonymous save for a trademark shimmy of the hip on the dextrous garage rock of Adventure Rocket Ship. Hitchcock functions at a tangent, taking five minutes to explain why (A Man's Gotta Know His Limitations) Briggs is based on the denouement of Dirty Harry II. The Authority Box seems set on psychological self-examination, but then rallies to reach a typically surrealist conclusion: "Fuck me, I'm a trolley bus!"
A terminal Syd Barrett buff, he encores with "the best song ever", See Emily Play, plus his own 1979 romp Give It to the Soft Boys. Robyn Hitchcock will stay this fastidiously far out for another 25 years yet.
Online review by The IndependentHe seems a lovely bloke, Robyn Hitchcock, and he's got some tremendous songs - warm and witty and very English, with echoes of early Bowie, Steve Harley and Marc Bolan. We know where he's coming from, and we like it. It's just a shame that someone didn't tell him to go easy on the inter-song rambling when he took the stage at the Islington Academy, the halfway point of a 12-date British tour that precedes a visit to the States in the second half of March.
At times Hitchcock sounded like a panellist on Just a Minute, and rather less funny. Torrents of whimsy poured forth on subjects as diverse as the Tufty Club and Diana, Princess of Wales's "assassination", and the audience shifted uncomfortably, waiting for the moment when Hitchcock and his band launched into their next number.
But what didn't work as stand-up somehow translated very successfully into music. Take "Ole Tarantula", the title track of his latest album, an anthemic and irresistibly catchy piece about extremely large spiders that really took off with the addition of trombone and sax to the two guitars and drums that make up the Venus 3.
One of those guitars belonged to the unobtrusive but brilliant Peter Buck, better known for his work with REM. It was a joy to hear him play, never more so than when he picked up his 12-string to bring a Byrds-like dreaminess to the title track of Hitchcock's 1999 album Jewels in Sophia.
Hitchcock - the one-time Soft Boy - is nearly 54. He's been in bands for more than 30 years. Lean and louche, he still has a full head of floppy blond hair, which he makes much of with frequent, girlish tosses of the head, of a kind not seen since the mid-Sixties.
His voice is wonderful - appealingly nasal in a John Lennon kind of way, and capable of both great lightness and great depth. He's brimful of ideas, energy and humour, and when, mid-encore, he prefaces a song with an uncharacteristically brief announcement that this is "the best song ever", you're fascinated to know what might come next.
Ah, yes. "See Emily Play". A boisterous version it is, too, and if anyone is worthy of jumping on the Syd Barrett bandwagon, then it's Hitchcock.