'Sweet Home Quarantine' online show on StageIt.com

Review by Adrienne Meddock from Zub Records
So we are winding down April with a collection of songs “almost entirely requested by y’all.” I like that Robyn has adopted the great southern collective pronoun “y'all.” Having spent my formative years in the Midwest our collective noun was you guys, which I felt was sexist and non-inclusive. Y’all has great utility in that it can be used to address more than one person in the second person. Y'all is very practical. Next to biscuits (the fast bread, not cookie), “y’all” is one of the best inventions of the American South. Oh and chess pie.

Things get off to a cracking start with 'The Man with the Light Bulb Head’ played to a very serious accompaniment. Enter Perry Lobster as the Man with the Light Bulb Head -- he's come to turn us on. Robyn then adds, ”all sorts of things happen, sometimes, when they have to.’'

Today there are triple birthday wishes for Groovers. The first up was Quigly’s request, ‘The Rain’ from Groovy Decay. But in true Robyn style, the next request is not for a birthday Groover, “I Got a Message For You’ from Invisible Hitchcock. He tells us it's a song who's tuning he could not work out so it is a redux version. Back to the happy birthday requests, Eliza gets ‘The Green Boy’ from A Star for Bram. He says the songs are like a branch with a heavy bird on it and off he goes on weightless birds….

Emma joins us to discuss the popular demand for the return of the top hat in the StageIt comments, RH shows us the "capacious curvy body" of his lovely blond guitar. And they sing ‘Only the Stones Remain’ from the Soft Boys’ Underwater Moonlight.

Emma imagined Hitchcock and Perry celebrating the pink moon at Stonehenge: She'd seen a photo on the internet and had envisioned it. A few more birthdays were noted, Taurean birthdays. Emma and Robyn sing us a particularly lovely version of ‘Cynthia Mask,’ harmonies and picked guitar on the verses and it's just great.

A discussion of “third from Rod” turns a mention of Rod Stewart into a Sweet Home Quarantine drinking game. Robyn and Emma have been singing all day so their voices are bit fragile Gildabeest requested ‘Trilobite.’ RH said he skip the intro which he admitted could be a bit tedious

There was talk of 90 per cent of trolleybuses ending in a great conflagration and of "the Parthenogenetic Lord--the great Scottish Fold in the sky." And then a pitch for the transport museum in London which is a particular Swiftcock favorite.

We finally get to the third birthday request, for Cassidy, who gets name-checked in ‘Time Coast’ from the Robyn Hitchcock album.

Back to banter. They compare their performances to a Christmas cake with really good bits but with a stray raisin. Here's why it's mostly RH by request: there's been a request for something different. Robyn tells us “this really doesn't sound like this but let's see what happens.” It's Jimmy Webb’s ‘Wichita Lineman’ and Robyn hits a lovely high “line” on a vocally challenging song he acquits in lovely fashion.

I saw Jimmy Webb in concert a few years back, he’s from the mold of great composers/poor vocalist, surrounded for the tour by gunslingers. Webb is an important to hot-air balloonists as the songwriter of ‘Up, Up and Away.’ which popularized the sport that provided a living for my family for over a dozen years. ‘Wichita Lineman’ is a song that's much better than it needs to be for an AM radio hit. And now I'm melancholy about Glen Campbell, and the lyrics of the song, and the loss of longing, and radio trips with my family to fly balloons at county fairs all over the Midwest, and it's too much f****** perspective. Now that's a performance and a solid song that can elicit all that.

Next up is a request for Syd Barrett song. Robyn skips the intro and gives us the low range bookend to the ‘Wichita Lineman’ high notes with a rumbly ‘Baby Lemonade’ from 1970’s Barrett album.

Emma returns with Tubby. Robyn asks “do you think we will be able to stand when we do shows again?” having spent over a year performing seated shows twice a week for us via StageIt. They are pre-recording shows for use while Emma's gone on her Aussie tour and in quarantine.

After a rousing version of ‘The Yip Song’ from Storefront Hitchcock, they go out on ‘Get Back,’ a Beatle song request fulfilled. RH says he might do ‘Let It Be’ Emma jokes, that's a show “Robyn Hitchcock does the songs of The Beatles badly.”

That April's Sweet Home Quarantine.

--Adrienne Meddock, I could use a small vacation, but it doesn’t look like rain