When it was time for Robyn all the assembled fegs and fans dutifully trotted forward to place the requests at the edge of the stage, as suggested by Robyn at the in-store. He said it saves him the trouble of coming up with a set list, but he'd have one anyway. A new way of working for him, he explained. He appeared in a shiny new black and white diamond shirt and got right to it. After each song he'd tune a little, check the requests and play something good. I got Linctus House, Michael got I Don't Remember Guildford, a stunning rendition, I'd say. When it was time he dispensed with the ritual of going away and then coming right back for the encore, which he played a lot of on a white Telecaster, fitted with some sort of humbucking pickup at the neck, but not, as far as I could tell, at the bridge. Hmmm, I don't know what version that is, unless it's a custom mod. At one point he was traipsing amongst the tables, singing his Funky Town/When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman/Sound And Vision medley. It was an absolutely fantastic show, with Robyn in fine form, singing more than joking, doing a sort of career retrospective request thing. It was almost like he forgot to promote his new album, so he did stick in a couple of tunes from that for good measure. Also for good measaure he played One L twice in a row, as he insisted the tuning wasn't right the first time. We expected that the second time round would end at the first chorus, but nope, he did the whole thing. It sounded great the first time! After the show I went to the stage to see what kind of gear might be up there, and there was his own handwritten setlist, very little of which he followed, which is exactly what made the gig so great, though once we saw it we wished we could have heard some of those, too. But we'd have been there all night if he played every request! I, for one, greatly enjoy Robyn's strummy side (though the rockin' side is another kind of aural pleasure, too!). And some of the newer stuff that I wasn't too sure about from the CDs was a lot more alive for me. V V good.

Christopher H.


Oh yeah. It was hilarious: He started playing Brenda's Iron Sledge and morphed into Funky Town, then back into Brenda's Iron Sledge. Mind you, when Michael and I saw him back in 1992 w/ the said: "We're never playing Brenda's Iron Sledge again. I hate that fuckin song!" I'm glad he didn't stick to his word.

Coming to mind: At the instore we asked Robyn about a re-issue of A Can A Bees and he said he's probably not going to re-release anything on cd anymore. He suggested that maybe someday it might get released via internet download, or maybe vinyl. And he mentioned he didn't even have copies of the unreleased Vegetable Girl or Psychedelic Love, but I don't believe him.

-Nuppy