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Robyn Hitchcock
Concert appearance: Sat., 1 July 1995
Three Kings
Clerkenwell, England UK
Set list:
Queen of Eyes
The Veins of the Queen
Glass Hotel
Executioner
Egyptian Cream
Raymond Chandler Evening
The Wreck of the Arthur Lee
Chinese Bones
My Favourite Buildings
Listening to the Higsons
Where are the Prawns?
Um, well, what can I tell you, sports fans? He was wearing (are you ready for
this?) a TEE SHIRT and JEANS. How -- casual!
I arrive about 8.15 or so, and as I approach the pub I think I hear Robyn
singing, think maybe I am hallucinating. But Jonathan Feg says, "Robyn is
playing in the graveyard across the street." So we went over and checked it out,
and Robyn & Fletch the Sax Player and Morris Windsor are all there, tuning and
playing and humming ... Robyn asks us do we have any requests, "What about you?
Do you have any?" and Jonathan steals my thunder, asks for "I Used to Say I
Loved You", so that I stand there like (you got it!) a lemon.
Then the gig kicks off about 9ish, after Robyn has come into the pub, started to
tell Jonathan and me this RIveting story about some other guy named Jonathan who
may or may not (it might have been his friend) have painted portraits of the
Soft Boys, and may or may not (someone might just have mentioned him) have met
Robyn subsequently ... that was as far as we got, so I fear I can't elaborate.
Wonderful stuff. Fletch on sax leaped and cavorted and gambolled (sp?) and
jete-ed around on the sidewalk during the 2 opening nos (in which he didn't
play). A very very large and noisy Borough of Islington garbage truck rather
lyrically interrupted the first set; the enclosed sanitation engineer (that's
what we overly-PC yanquis call our dustmen) stared and clattered and clanged and
dropped a load more compost than was strictly necessary all over the street.
Then a little green van pulled up and a little (not green) man in a matching
green suit leapt out to lock the park; he too stared. And who wouldn't? And
Robyn discoursed upon twilight, and death, and how long it takes the light to
vanish round about this time of year, and dying ... sense a theme?
And rather touchingly -- tho' he didn't in fact play *any* of our requests,
including "Railway Shoes," "Ye Sleeping Knights" and "I Usta Say" -- he said
before playing "The Veins of the Queen" that this was a memorial for something
that is soon to go out of existence.
The wonderful publican John loaned us his giant toenail clippers, Morris had a
tiny devilish goatee and sideburns, and Fletch on Sax wore a seraphic smile
during the entire last number, "Where Are the Prawns." We could all die coming,
I believe might have been said. Sorry 'bout the tense change, above. He might
play again at the end of the summer! Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!
lizzie aka sweetums
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