Everybody!

So, we did go to the Robyn Hitchcock show at T.T.’s last night. It was fun. The show at Johnny D’s a few years ago was a very different evening; he was playing the very mellow stuff from Luxor, it was October, and he spun this kind of transcendentally weird quiet spell over the crowd.

Last night’s show was an all-request show, and an overall more raucus affair. Well, it started out that way. Robyn instructed the audience to write requests in large letters on pieces of paper and put them on stage. With the exception of Antwoman, I’m not convinced that it wasn’t actually just an all-”whatever Robyn thinks of playing next” show. Which was fun, too. He played nothing from Luxor (which was too bad), several of his 80’s hits (also too bad— I’m personally more of a fan of the 90’s acoustic stuff), four whole songs from Jewels for Sophia (which was a nice surprise), four Beatles songs (”I’m So Tired”, “Glass Onion”, “Dear Prudence”, and “A Day in the Life”— perhaps the strong white album showing was because of the recent benefit for Médecins Sans Frontières in Sudan), and there was also some Dylan and Lou Reed representation.

The first encore was a medley of some Barry White-type song which I unfortunately don’t know, “Sound & Vision” (and I have to say, his invocation of Bowie was uncanny), and, yes, “Kung Fu Fighting”. Except I don’t recall anything about electrocardiograms in the original, and I do believe there was a great deal of embellishment and character development for Tommy Chong. There were not too many of the patented long surreal diatribes, though there was a long spiel about Donald Rumsfeld teaming up with Aquaman to expose the threat of a Canadian military buildup on the Minnesota border.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 30th, 2005 at 11:48 pm and is filed under music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.