Dreaming of Trains

Robyn Hitchcock's I Often Dream Of Trains was reissued this week, along with two other solo albums (Black Snake Diamond Role and Eye) that were previously out of print. IODOT catapulted to number one in emusic's charts on its first day of release, so it seems like a lot of people were waiting for that album to be reissued.

IODOT was one of the albums I didn't own on CD, so I was one of the ones who jumped to download it this week. I got into Robyn Hitchcock with the first Egyptians album, 1985's Fegmania!, but was slow to dig into his back catalog as he kept releasing new stuff. The first time I saw him live in 1986 (at Mabel's in Champaign IL, with the Egyptians), it seemed like everyone in the audience knew the old songs except me. There was a story in Creem around the same time calling I Often Dream Of Trains "this decade's finest LP", so that was always on my list of albums to get, but it was only available as a costly import.

In the mid-1990's Rhino released a bunch of Robyn Hitchcock albums (everything he did thru 1987 when he signed with A&M, plus Eye), but they did this wacky thing where they changed the order of the LPs (including IODOT) by adding bonus tracks to the middle of the original album. That isn't such a big deal now, when you can resequence albums however you want in iTunes, but it was a big deal to me back in 1995, so I ended up never picking up I Often Dream Of Trains on CD.

My loss, because it's a fabulous album, up there with Underwater Moonlight as the best records Robyn Hitchcock ever made. He made it in 1984, the height of haircuts and synths, and it's a reaction both to the era and his previous album Groovy Decay. In the RH/Venus 3 documentary "Songs About Death and Insects", Bill Rieflin and Peter Buck said I Often Dream Of Trains as their favorite album of Robyn's, with songs about exotic places like Basingstoke and Reading (which aren't particularly exotic once you go there) and meditations on Ye Olde England at the height of Thatcherism.

The album has been in and out of print multiple times, but Robyn has kept performing its songs, so it's probably one of his favorites as well. The title track was covered by Firewater and Grant Lee Phillips. Here is the original and covers of "I Often Dream Of Trains", plus a recent performance of the song by Robyn Hitchcock with his niece Ruby Wright accompanying him on musical saw, which was recorded this week on BBC Radio.

Robyn Hitchcock - I Often Dream of Trains
(from I Often Dream of Trains, 1984)
Firewater - I Often Dream of Trains
(from Songs We Should Have Written, 2004)
Grant Lee Phillips - I Often Dream of Trains
(from Nineteeneighties, 2004)
Robyn Hitchcock & Ruby Wright - I Often Dream of Trains
(live on BBC One, 10/16/2007)

The other songs on I Often Dream Of Trains have also been covered more than other Robyn Hitchcock songs. Somewhere in my live tapes I have Scott Miller covering "This Could Be The Day", but I couldn't find it in my box of unlabeled live minidiscs. I did find a version of Anton Barbeau covering another IODOT song ("Sometimes I Wish I Was A Pretty Girl") at a show he played with Scott somewhere in Sacramento (either Luna's or the True Love Coffeehouse) sometime in 2004. I should really label my minidiscs so I can tell where they come from when I dig them out three or four years later!

The Replacements performed "Sleeping Nights Of Jesus" on their Shit Hits The Fans live tape, which was released in 1985 but recorded at a show in October 1984, just a few months after IODOT came out. I don't know if it's more impressive that the 'mats are covering a song that was just a few months old or that they cover the song after someone in the audience requests it. It's pretty ragged, but worth listening to once or twice. Listening to it three times might be a bit much though.

Anton Barbeau - Sometimes I Wish I Was A Pretty Girl (live, 2004)
The Replacements - Sleeping Knights Of Jesus (live, 1984)