Acoustic Café: Recording Sesh for Episodes 26 and 27 Set List Notes Reviews


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Details

Date
April 14, 1995
Venue
Acoustic Café: Recording Sesh for Episodes 26 and 27 Ann Arbor, Michigan
Billed As
Robyn Hitchcock
Gig Type
Radio
Guests
Deni Bonet

Notes

Big thanks to our friends at Lobster Time, who documented and archived the two-CD volume for this radio show. (For just the Robyn stuff, go for the Good Times version.) Amusingly, Acoustic Cafe seems to have the first two songs listed as "Egyptian Queen", and "Things I Still Love" - possibly conflating the titles of the two songs that were not used from this session, Beautiful Queen and Arms of Love.

Recorded: 4/14/1995
Broadcast date: weekend of 7/22/95

'Arms of Love' and possibly other songs may have been played at this session but not broadcast for this episode. (See review below). Arms of Love was broadcast the weekend before, on Episode 26.

From the executive producer of Acoustic Cafe: "Another little fun fact: Robyn requested to do a mix of the songs himself... in 1995, there was no other option but to ship the 1/2in. 8-track reel-to-reel tape to him in London for him to mix to DAT tape and return. It must've cost $200 round trip!"

Set List

  1. Egyptian Cream
  2. interview
  3. Sinister But She Was Happy
  4. interview
  5. De Chirico Street
  6. Arms of Love (recorded but not played on the air for Episode 27) (See entry for Episode 26)
  7. Beautiful Queen (not broadcast on either episode)

Reviews

I had intended to post this from Robyn's appearance two weeks ago on the Acoustic Cafe program but between an (unexpected) out-of-town trip and a research paper, it has been a little busier than usual around ye olde household.

Anyway, the Robyn appearance did occur on Acoustic Cafe. I am sitting here in my office listening to my copy of it. In the first segment, Robyn starts off playing an incredible string version of "Egyptian Creme". Deni really gets into her violin playing during the song. Then, Robyn talks with the Acoustic Cafe host about the reissue of the albums. He says he doesn't like some of the original songs on the albums anymore but that if he didn't include them, the albums would then be bootlegged and he didn't want that to happen so he just decided to include everything. Then, to close up the first segment, Deni and Robyn play "Sinister" which since listening to several times now, I have really really come to enjoy.

To start the second segment, both Robyn and Deni talk about the recording of these new songs. Robyn says that some of them were recorded in a graveyard in the UK while some others were recorded in a small cafe in Washington DC. He says that he and Deni are getting very proficient in the songs because they have played a lot of "2 a night" clubs during this tour. Then, Robyn says that he and Deni will be in the studio in July and August in Britain with an album out early next year. Then to close things, Robyn played "DeChiricco Street", once again with Deni on violin. I know that Acoustic Cafe taped more songs than just what was played because the week before, they played a live version of "Arms of Love" from the same recording session. I don't know how many songs they were able to record altogether but I am certainly pleased with the four that I have heard played.

Stephen