an evening with robyn hitchcock and grant lee phillips
sunday, october 22, 2000

sodagirl and i managed to see robyn last night at the middle east. not nearly as intimate as the ironhorse last halloween, but far more energized than i'd seen him previously.
i managed to jot down the set list and a lot of the typical robyn non-sequitor that's customary at the shows, which runs as follows, as closely as i can remember it.

immediately upon popping out, he threw out an enthusiastic greeting of

"nobody's frightened of the sun when it's dark!"

then, as grant was putting on a steel slide-guitar finger piece for the first song;

"and god created...(long pause) insertion."

then runs into this whole steel finger bit that i'm horribly paraphrasing, but was something like:

"and god said to adam: i have fitted you with this mighty steel finger so that you may go forth and find a like female also with similar steel finger"

upon that they broke out into "gene hackman", one of the bonus tracks on jewels for sophia.

there was a new line in there as well, going on the way-too-many-sylables-for-rhyme-scheme kick:

"i'll have a bottle of wine,
i'll have a pint of stout,
and if there ever was a fresh water fish
i've always had a soft spot for it'd have
to be the trout."

after the song, he pulls out some glowing plastic pumpkin... i couldn't hear half the dialog since everyone was cracking up so damn much, though it was clear he had dubbed it "Waxy the cute boy"

"...and now more songs about trout."

then it went into some grant song i'm uncertain of, since i know next to nothing about Phillips

at the end, grant was calling attention to some rumbling in robyn's stomach, asking if he had too much tubule.

with the big ominous voice again, he starts on about "the tubule is rumbling this building! what a man consumes surrounds him, which is why it's called a consumer society"

throws on the harmonica and goes straight into queen elvis.

the highlight of this was on the "gettin' blow jobs from the press" line he substitutes the next two lines with "pretty blow jobs from the press, uggghhhhhhhhh.... " the second of those lines being this huge guttural orgasmic moan, pausing on the whole song and causing much hooting and hollering and ridiculousness.

next a grant lee song. i believe it's called "seeking affirmations"

after that grant starts some B Fmin thing, and robyn starts gabbing on, so they do some improv song i can only think to call "mr. Philhips and i"

the words, in as much as i could jot down, were:
"mr. Phillips and i come from 2003 in 2003 it's gonna be slow until it puts someone in the ?"

then it goes into "Heavenly Heavenly" (grant lee song)

then as they're putting on capos for the next bit, he starts referring to it as a tourniquet, cutting off circulation to bottom two frets.

they go into a really good version of "i feel beautiful."

then there's some Bob dylan key of F gag that got a bit drawn out so i didn't bother jotting it down , then another grant lee song.

Straight into robyn hitting the piano, doing "flavor of night"

at the end he triumphantly exclaims: "thank you fellow carbon-based life forms!...unless you all snuck any silicon in.."

another grant lee song.

then right into "dark princess" and the ending bit has robyn getting all sappy and dorky about michele gushing something about how he was looking for the dark princess but she
found him.

it started to sound like some junior high goth kid, but whatever, he can somehow pull stuff like that off.

another grant lee song

and then "antwoman" a dang good version of antwoman.

i have to say i noticed a lot of people that were only mouthing grant gee songs starting to bob their heads over this one.

yet another grant lee song i don't know. big surprise.

the encore was a few grant songs, then robin comes back and does a great version of "i used to love you."

then "nietzche's way"

they closed off that encore with one of the more entertaining bits i've seen him do:

starting off with "sound and vision" (bowie) with robyn just dancing around doing all these silly numbers and gesticulations, doing some hillarious bowie vocal impersonations.

they wound up morphing this mid stream into "when you're in love w/ a beautiful woman" (dr hook) and changing the lyrics to: "when you're in love with a beautiful woman, you watch your ass" and "when you're in love with a beautiful woman, you're made of glass"

then that morphed into "kung fu fighting" with some other made up lyrics:

"it's an ancient chinese art,
like the british playing darts"

and then some other bit about sharp utensils and ripped spleens.

it rounded off with ashes to ashes and robyn doing all the weird space bleeps with bizarre hand gestures.

i don't think i'd seen him this animated and youthful looking in quite some time. they both seemed pretty upbeat.

for the final encore (2? 3?)
it was two beatles songs.
first "i am the walrus" which ended in hilarity as robyn describes the whole song-making process: "so then we had ringo go back and play the whole loop again..." etcetera.

they finished off with "dream dream dream"

robyn ends the night with a salute and "good night happy christians!"

Adam


This is from the Boston Phoenix.

Hitchcock & Phillips: Joined at the Hip

If Robyn Hitchcock and Grant Lee Phillips had done nothing on stage but make fun of David Bowie, that alone would have been enough to make their collaborative tour worthwhile. As it was, they made fun of Bowie only during their encore at the Middle East Sunday night, but it was priceless: they began a medley with his "Sound & Vision," then segued into a bunch of ridiculous '70s hits with the same chords -- "Kung Fu Fighting," "When You're in Love with a Beautiful Woman," "Rock Your Baby"-- and sang them
all as the wasted, intense Bowie of the Low era would have. It was the kind of joke that only performers with an abiding love for rock's back pages could bring off.

Although they were Warner Bros. labelmates for years, the pair haven't toured together before. Hitchcock said backstage that they were looking to recapture the informal atmosphere of the late-night pop hootenannies at the Los Angeles club Largo. In fact, their set was a good deal more polished. The two songwriters alternated tunes through the set, but they always added something -- whether a guitar part, a harmony, or just friendly support -- to each other's numbers. And the best moments came when their voices met in Everly Brothers-style harmony -- a connection made explicit when they did the Everlys oldie "All I Have To Do Is Dream."

The set wasn't quite the career retrospective one might have hoped for. Phillips did include the radio hits "Fuzzy" and "Mighty Joe Moon," and Hitchcock dug back to the early '80s for the haunting "Flavor of Night," but both drew largely from the Internet-only albums they've released since leaving Warners. How well they get on was evident throughout the show. Hitchcock even sang "Mr. Phillips and I, we're joined at the hip" in a song made up on the spot.

Whether by design or not, they wound up choosing songs that complemented each other: Hitchcock namechecked Gene Hackman in one song and Phillips did the same for Clint Eastwood in another. The pair squared off on wide-eyed love songs (Phillips's "Heavenly," Hitchcock's "I Feel Beautiful") and dark and mysterious songs (Phillips's "St. Expedite," Hitchcock's "Dark Princess"). "Honey don't think, you're liable to figure me out" is the kind of chorus that you'd expect either might come up with, though Phillips was
the one who did.

Always a master of verbal riffing, Hitchcock was in prime form. Early in the show he had a long dialogue with a wax Halloween pumpkin while Phillips looked on in amazement. And it's a short jump from talking to pumpkins to covering "I Am the Walrus," the last of the evening's borrowed tunes. The Beatles song was done absolutely faithfully -- to the point where Hitchcock recited the King Lear excerpt that plays over the Beatles' fadeout -- and unlike the Bowie bit, it wasn't really played for laughs. Instead it was evidence of an abstract pop tradition that both men are proudly carrying on.
-- Brett Milano

(And of course, Robyn always refers to Mr. Milano as "Mr. Boston" for good reason...)

Kelly