Opening act: Poi Dog Pondering

Setlist provided by Lee W

Review from The Daily Tar Heel dated June 15, 1989 (transcribed below)

Little difference in live, recorded Hitchcock
Carrie McLaren
Last year, fans of Robyn Hitchcock were a tad disenchanted with the professed college radio demi-god when he had to cancel his scheduled show at Raleigh’s Rialto Theatre because of a sore throat. Paying back an old debt to his Triangle fans, Hitchcock reappeared at the Rialto Sunday night amd put on a typically, well, interesting show that, while rarely coherent, was pure Robyn Hitchcock.

Opening the show was Poi Dog Pondering, a seven-piece outfit originally from Hawaii that reloacated to Austin after a Kerouac-inspired tour of the mainland. Poi Dog incorporates Camper Van Beethoven eclecticism without the accompanying campiness for a danceable celtic-folk hybrid. Using instruments I hadn’t seen since my third grade music class (recorder, kazoo, wood block were identifiable, but God only knows what some of the other things were called), the band displayed an enormous attention to detail, merging violin, mandolin, up to four guitars and harmonies into a tightly bound aural capsule. Without allowing the chair-bound audience to get them down, Poi Dog managed a particularly fine job on “Everybody’s Trying to Figure It Out” and “Fact of Life.” Missing, however, from an overwise gripe-free set was their destined-to-be-classic “Pulling touch.”

After a rather brief set-up period, Hitchcock, later followed by bassist Andy Metcalfe and drummer Morris Windson (sic), emerged from a homemade phone booth set upstage.

While musically the band stocks to the standard Brit-pop instrumentation, Hitchcock’s lyrics are as bizarre as they come, at times even earning comparisons to the Bob Dylan/John Lennon school of poetry with lines like “God finds you naked and he leaves you dying/What happens in between is up to you.”

After starting the show off with “I Often Dreams (sic) of Trains,” off the mostly acoustic solo LP of the same name, Hitchcock centered on newer material, particularly his lates A&M release, “Queen Elvis.” Five songs later a black-cloaked, hunchbacked Igor-like figure appeared from the phone booth with a cup of coffee. Hitchcock, in turn, managed his first words to the audience, an obviously rehearsed monologue based loosely on his (presumably fictitious, but you can never be quite sure with this guy) deceased wife, thus setting the mood for “My Wife and My Dead Wife.”

A slew of later-era, guitar-laced Hitchcock wound down with two acoustic numbers. “Autumn,” basically mellow, unmemorable fare was followed by the singer’s characteristic nonsensical rambling. THIS was Hitchcock. I can’t tell you for sure what he said (I’m sure he couldn’t either) but it had something to do with TWA and the Queen of England. The object of his gibbering, “Veins of the Queen,” represents the lyrical cream of “Queen Elvis.” Through absurdities such as “oh the veins of the Queen/They’re so regal and serene,” the singer comments about the lady’s life in a straitjacket.

Hitchcock talks exactly like he sings. His voice sounds the same and he enunciates just as clearly, but it’s impossible to unravel the underlying meaning of his intricate yarns. Consider his first encore, for instance, where he sings “It’s a Raymond Chandler Evening/At the end of someone’s day/and I’m standing in my pocket/And I’m slowly turning grey.”

Call me a dullard, but I just can’t spot a morsel of coherence. Then again, Hitchcock weaves his web of nonsense within a framework to uncover the ironies of life. Perhaps it couldn’t be done any other way. He has insight to offer, but it’s not always tangible.

Hitchcock’s tales don’t win over fans with his live shows. He’s not a terribly dynamic performer. Hitchcock live sounds pretty much like Hitchcock on record. Yet through his sordid musings, he has created a persona almost larger than life.