Robyn Hitchcock?

ooo exciting xpost!

oh, and i think i've got that 7-inch version of sickie boy ... does yr webmail work?

bro nod to tylerw!

More Phantom 45s up at his website: http://www.robynhitchcock.com/phantom45s/
Also, Robyn has jumped on the hipster cassette bandwagon!
As a special treat for the fans, we are excited to announce that the Robyn Hitchcock Webshop has an extremely limited number of Propellor Time, the all-new release from Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3, on hand made cassettes. Only 100 cassettes were made and each copy is hand assembled and is individually autographed and numbered by Robyn. But don't delay, we only have 40 cassettes to offer and this item will be gone from the Robyn Hitchcock Webshop forever. Here's a peek at what you can expect if you are lucky enough to get this ultra-rare collectable.

Robyn's facebook page linked this this morning...

http://bit.ly/robynhitchcockrarities

propeller time has successfully been my gateway back into hitchcock, who I loved when I was in high school but who I decided I couldn't stand when I got too cool for him around 1993. It looks like I managed to miss maybe two poor records (moss elixir and luxor) but everything else I've heard post-egyptians is so good, I really regret not being on top of these earlier. I particularly like Sophia/Bram, and those biographical songs (I saw nick drake and ny doll) are really great writing, not the sorts of things I would have expected him to turn out. The venus 3 records are just excellent pop records, certainly better than anything REM have managed in many years. anyway, I hope he tours this in the US so I can see him again; I haven't since around the time eye was released. He was actually my first 'club' show in 1988 or so.

maybe two poor records (moss elixir and luxor)

Yes on Luxor, not exactly on Moss Elixir. The songs are great but the studio versions are missing something. Find a bootleg from 94/95 and you'll get much better versions. In particular, he did a career retrospective tour right before the album came out and after the Rhino reissues - one of these days (soon!) I'll digitize my cassettes and give them to Tyler for his blog.

yes please!
in other news, i have yet to receive Propellor Time! I ordered it direct from his Web site ... I've gotten in touch with them, and they say that demand has outstripped supply at the moment, and it should be sent out soon. I'm sure it's racing up the charts ...

Hmm...95 era tapes you say. (Says the man with a digitized recording of a tape he made of RH at McCabe's in summer of 1995...)

heyyyy, ned. we may have talked about this before, but we were probably at the same McCabes shows. saw him there at least four times 94-95 ... hook me up w/ that tape! pleeze? :)

This was the first set on September 23, 1995, if that helps!

akm, moss elixir is one of his best records i'd say

ha, yeah, i think i was at both early shows that weekend in 95 ... i believe my friend has a tape of one of those nights, too!

Drop me a line with your e-mail address and you'll receive something soon...

hey, how'd that happen ... that mccabe's show is now up on my blog: http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/ also! Just saw this Kimberley Rew solo album is being reissued ... I've never heard it, much as I love the dude. Worth getting?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B003DC87VG/ref=nosim/largeheartedb-20

I've heard a different Kimberley solo album - post-Jewels that was okay. Never heard this but, like you, I'm intrigued.

seems like it *should* be good, given that both the DBs and the Soft Boys are on here ... i'll have to find some samples.

I've always wanted to hear Bible of Bop...I remember people telling me it was great, but I've never seen it.

i will rep mossy liquor as the savior of that era's questionable arrangement decisions. did i say that like 5 yrs ago?

^ Bible of Bop is great! surprised that wasn't available on cd until now. now i have to go put it on.

"Bible Of Bop" is on CD? I had the other solo Kimberley albums ("Tunnel Into Summer", "Great Central Revisited") but recently sold them - they just never moved me

Have I mentioned that some days I just shuffle "Invisible Hitchcock", "You & Oblivion" and the detritus I skimmed from the "I Wanna Go Backwards" box? There's just something innocent and charming about the cast-offs from that period.

I know what you mean-- sometimes I'm specifically in the mood for that bedroom psych 4-tracker sub-oeuvre. Think I will make a playlist of just that shit.

You & Oblivion is probably in my top 5 RH records ...

I have a playlist of Invisible Hits, Invisible Hitchcock, You & Oblivion and Shadowcat that probably gets more play then any particular Hitchcock album. He admittedly has no clue what his best songs when he puts an album together, so these odds & sods collections are arguably better than any planned release. Invisible Hitchcock was my go to introduction to Robyn for newbies and I'm crushed I can't recommend it as a starting point anymore.

eye deserves a mention alongside the likes of invisible hitchcock, you & oblivion and mossy liquor. think i most love the solo/acoustic/home recorded hitchcock.

i used to really love eye but I find it really lacking these days. I think it has maybe three great songs and a bunch of stuff I want to skip over when I put it on. It really pales next to "trains".

i still love Eye -- but I think it's done a disservice by always being compared to Trains. Despite superficial similarities (green cover, mostly acoustic) the songwriting seems really different to me. Definitely more filler on Eye, but still some great stuff ("Linctus House", "Glass Hotel", "Raining Twilight Coast") ...

Back in the 90s there were some mailing list-produced live odds and ends cassettes put together (Uncarved Pumpkins, Unhatched Crablings) that took the best unreleased live bits and covers and cobbled them together. Has anyone gone to the effort of picking through the plethora of bootlegs from the last 15 years and done something similar?

i did a little mix of covers grabbed from archive.org ... not comprehensive or anything, but some cool stuff.

If someone wanted to make a playlist of this I'd be happy...

http://www.jh3.com/robyn/base/songs.asp?qq=10

I love the Asking Tree.

haha, that is quite a list ... might be fun to put together some "Robyn Sings" comps ... Floyd/Barrett, VU/Reed, Beatles ...

He's done at least three whole shows covering specific albums, I think all as benefits; I have the White Album, Sgt. Pepper & Piper at the Gates of Dawn. The Sgt Pepper one has some extra goodies at the end - "Waterloo Sunset", "Are You Experienced?", "Hey Bulldog" and "All You Need Is Love".

i think i listened to the sgt. pepper show -- was it kind of ... bad? maybe just super loose.

Kind of very not good; it isn't a work you can try to approach all slack and ramshackle. The White Album is by far the best of the bunch.

white album show is on archive.org? i should check it out.

Is it? I think I got it from that Cones site - he shared a ton of Hitchcock a short while ago, including the best show I was ever at - The Ram's Head in June '98.

yeah, i'm still catching up with that cones site. doesn't appear to be on archive.org ... listening to that all Floyd show now though -- sounds amazing.

The Floyd is good. Only the Pepper show is really suspect.

where can I find the Piper one?

The Piper one is on archive.org--

http://www.archive.org/details/robynhitchcock2007-05-26

Gerald McB-B are you on Fegmaniax?

Jon - not for years. The signal-to-noise ratio is way to much for me. I do, however, peruse the digests a couple of times a month to make sure I don't miss anything important.

Guess it pays to be connected...got a package in the mail today including a completely unexpected and unsolicited promo CD of Bible of Bop! The LP plus 3 unreleased bonus tracks. Hearing it for the first time...so far it's impossibly amazingly good. Minimal liner notes, a few paragraphs from Rew followed by some reviews and credits.

What label?!

CGB records, I think it's essentially self-released.

I had a tape of "Bible Of Bop" years ago, the samples on Amazon really brought it all back. Ordered! Thanks, Dan!

after a month and a half, my copy of Propellor Time finally showed up last weekend. Note to self: do not order direct from Yep Rock ever again.
but anyway! this album is sounding GREAT. Upon first listens, "Star of Venus," "Ordinary Millionaire," "John In the Air," the title track and "Primitive" are the standouts for me. Whole record has a wonderful sound though -- organic/rootsy w/o being boring. With the last two records, I've been glad that there are still some surprises up Robyn's sleeve. Some of this stuff sounds like nothing he's done before. Of course, something like "Born On The Wind" I think he has done before, as "Serpents At The Gates of Wisdom," but oh well.

Yeah I love how it's definitely an 'acoustic' 'rootsy' album and yet the sound picture has no lack of weird little production details, like the claps on 'John In The Air'. It's almost like the fully fledged version of what all those little jon brion marginalia were trying to accomplish on Jewels FOr Sophia tracks like 'I Feel Beautiful'.

yeah, definitely a lot of layers -- "John In The Air" has the neat effect of sounding like it's running backwards without actually having any backwards sounds on it. And the vocal on "Ordinary Millionaire" is really nice. Not sure how I feel about the decidedly un-subtle "Evolove", but it's got a nice melody for sure. And the line about giving Jesus a high five is lol-worthy.

He was almost deprecatory about 'evolove' in a recent interview. Like 'I know this is basically just a polemic, think of it as a bonus track' kind of.