Give It To The Soft Boys

One, two, great to be here... sure is, three, four!


For this month's Hitchcockapalooza, I was debating whether to explore his albums in alphabetical order (like I did the R.E.M. albums last March) or in chronological order (like I did with the Groovies last month). I decided to go with the latter plan. Twenty plus albums in thirty days, which seems a bit intimidating on day one!

Robyn Hitchcock started out in the mid-70s as the leader of the Soft Boys. They released an EP called Give It To The Soft Boys in 1977 and a single, "(I Want To Be An) Anglepoise Lamp", the next year, and finally a full-length LP called A Can Of Bees in early 1979.

A Can Of Bees reprised songs from the 1977 debut ep and both sides of the 1978 single, along with a batch of new RH originals and a cover of John Lennon's "Cold Turkey". The Soft Boys were older and more historically grounded than most of their "punk era" peers. Robyn later said "we wanted to be punks, but we couldn't unlearn our craft and pretend that we knew only one chord, and weren't interested in three-part harmonies, bridges, middle eights, and all the rest of it".

I didn't get A Can Of Bees until around 1989, when I picked it up at Leopold Records in Berkeley (at a hefty import price) to fill the last hole in my Robyn Hitchcock discography. Ryko reissued it on CD in the early 90s, but I never upgraded, so I still only have A Can Of Bees on vinyl, except for the four songs on the 1976-1981 compilation. It seems like it's a hard album to find, with used copies going for $40-60 on amazon, but "rare" doesn't necessarily mean "essential".

There are a couple of great songs ("Human Music" and "Leppo And the Jooves") and a few fun ones like "Anglepoise Lamp" and "Sandra's Having Her Brain Out", but it's very much of it's time. The early Soft Boys sound like they're constantly on the edge of breaking into a ten-minute jam, and weighed down by inferior material like "The Pigworker" and the instrumental that opens side two ("Do The Chisel").

Listening to the album, it's clear that the Soft Boys were going places, but they still hadn't completely gelled as a band. After A Can Of Bees, they did tighten up their sound, and ended up making one of the best albums ever. More on that later.