Hitchcock Review by Miles

If you bet that tonight's show would feature John Paul Jones playing mandolin on a cover of Talking Heads' "Life During Wartime," you're a winner. The timeline since 1979 has gotten very, very warped somewhere along the way.

The band:
Robyn Hitchcock - lead vocals, 6-string acoustic
Pete Buck - 12-string electric
David Rawlings - 6-string acoustic, backing vox
Gillian Welch - 6 string acoustic, backing vox, co-lead on *
Sean Nelson - backing vox
John Paul Jones - mandolin

The Robyn attire:
Purple floral shirt, purple trousers

The blinking:
not noticeable at all. I was four rows back, so I had a very good view.

The attendance:
It wasn't a sellout, but it was probably upwards of 80% full. Lots of enthusiasm.

The setlist:
Belltown Ramble
Adventure Rocket Ship
Ole Tarantula
Balloon Man
Flesh #1 (Beatle Dennis)
Tiny Montgomery [Dylan]
Lo and Behold [Dylan] / Life During Wartime [Talking Heads]
Elvis Presley Blues* [Welch/Rawlings]
Queen Elvis
Brenda's Iron Sledge
Flanagan's Song
Copper Kettle [Dylan]
Creeped Out
A Man's Got To Know His Limitations, Briggs
I Wanna Destroy You
======
Look At Miss Ohio* [Welch/Rawlings] (just Robyn, Gil, Dave, but the full band returns for...)
Candyman [Grateful Dead]
Television
Acid Bird (Robyn breaks a string and after the song switches to 12-string acoustic for...)
Queen Jane Approximately [Dylan]

The good:
Enough '80s in the setlist to put a smile on my face, especially when they played "Acid Bird." A good time had by all players. The contrast between the lively GilNDave on the left side of the stage and the immobile Jones/Buck duo on the right side. Robyn completely changing the words of the verses of "Life During Wartime." The Elvis-themed song interlude in mid-set (Elvis was also the preshow music). The lower register of Robyn's voice, whose magnificence really ought to move him to change the arrangements of his older material, much as the former frontman of Mr. Jones' famous former outfit has done with his back catalog. JPJ's picking throughout, but on "Balloon Man" and "Television" especially.

The bad:
Me having a coughing fit during "Flanagan's Song," the only SPOOKED song I really love. Too many SPOOKED songs, though not as many as I
feared. The same instrumentation on every song leading to a strummy saminess no matter how good a time the protagonists were having. Not
meeting this Bill MacLehose character - I must not have looked Henry VIII enough, though I considered wearing a tam, chowing down on a
turkey leg, and beheading a wife while in line.

The Bryan Ferry:
Robyn sang, sotto voice almost off-mic, the words to "More Than This" at the end of "Flesh #1 (Beatle Dennis)." Since we both like Bryan
Ferry, yeah, I always like this kind of thing.

The Buck:
Pete Buck could not have been more catatonic. For a goodly number of years, I saw REM as many times as I could, not to mention seeing Buck
up close on the Magnificent Seven tour, and Mr. Buck was on all these occasions a good deal more lively. It's like the out-of-work guys who
used to replace Politburo members with animatronic substitutes have now perfected the Pete Buck model. This may go a long way toward
explaining the last three REM albums.

The quotes I managed to write down:
* Before "Balloon Man": "The source of everything is country music - and this is no exception."
* Introducing "Flesh #1": "A painkiller song."
* Explaining "Brenda's Iron Sledge": "What life was like in Britain in 1980, until Spandau Ballet came along."
* Dedicating "Briggs": "To the late Karl Rove - here's hoping."
* Dedicating "I Wanna Destroy You" "to the present administration"

The thing I will explain before you ask me:
No, I didn't record it, but I saw people who did, so I suspect it'll show up on the Internets near you somewhere soon.

Do I think I wasted my money? No. I'm glad I went. And now I've seen all three surviving members of Led Zeppelin, which is pretty darn cool.

Would I rather be seeing the Venus 3 show in Birmingham tomorrow night? Darn skippy.

later,

Miles