I've included two songs the last two days, so I may as well dedicate today's entry to Storefront Hitchcock. This song ("Let's Go Thundering") is one that's never been released in studio form.
As big a fan as I am, I've never been a collector of Robyn Hitchcock live recordings. I like Gotta Let This Hen Out! and some other "official" live things, but his live concerts suffer from too much talk and not enough rock. This is okay while you're in the venue in the moment enjoying the show, but doesn't play well for me after I've heard it.
The actual performances on Storefront, with Robyn on guitar and Deni Bonet on violin and Tim Keegan on guitar, are some of my favorite versions of these songs, but his monologues drag the movie (and album) down for me. I made a tape of the LP with all the talking edited out, and it worked so much better for me than the actual disc (which has the introductions split as separate tracks, so we can skip them -- thanks Robyn!)
I saw a daytime matinee of Storefront at the Red Vic in SF a few days after it opened, and there were seven people in the theater! Still more than the four people I saw at showing of the Nick Drake film A Skin Too Few, but it was still scarily empty. That's the only time I've ever seen the film -- I've never seen it on IFC or PBS or anywhere else on TV, and don't have the DVD. I'd like to buy one, especially if they have the song introductions split as separate tracks.
3 comments:
While Robyn's chat is certainly more amusing than most folks', I'd agree that I don't want to hear them that often - at least nowhere near as often as the music! So it's always good when that stuff is separated off as its own track (whether on official recordings or on boots).
Personally, I think the monologues are great - and that probably most Robyn fans would agree that this is what makes the live experience worth seeing.
But for those who just want music, the DVD is definitely done in separate tracks just like the CD is. You can get it cheap on Amazon - I did just a few weeks back.
Funny -- I've downloaded a lot of his concert tapes from DIME and from Archie.org precisely because I love the patter -- it really lets me frame the songs more specifically, if I can keep in mind some of the introductions he's done to a particular song. I've even gone so far as to transcribe some of the monologues on my blog, including some of the ones from this very movie.
Agree with the others that it's best when the talk is on separate tracks -- one of my favorite things is when I'm listening to my iPod in random tunes mode, and a Hitchcock monologue comes up in between (say) a Dylan song and a Parliament song.
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