From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@ecto.org To: fegmaniax-digest@ecto.org Reply-To: fegmaniax@ecto.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@ecto.org Subject: Feg Digest V5 #161 Fegmaniax Digest Volume 5 Number 161 Friday July 11 1997 To post, send mail to fegmaniax@ecto.org To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@ecto.org with the words "unsubscribe fegmaniax-digest" in the message body. Send comments, etc. to the listowner at owner-fegmaniax@ecto.org FegMANIAX! Web Page: http://remus.rutgers.edu/~woj/fegmaniax/index.html Archives are available at ftp://www.ecto.org/pub/lists/fegmaniax/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Today's Topics: ------- ------- Guesting Viva Las Vegas? Instantly Cooked Re: Robyn wants to know Epiphanies & other consolidated tales Firsts Re: Epiphanies & other consolidated tales Viva Las Vegas; FEGSTOCK Re: Robyn buzzes Re: Robyn buzzes Re: Reminder: RH wants to know ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 16:17:47 -0700 (PDT) From: griffith Subject: Guesting Besides Homer & Thomas Dolby, what other songs has Robyn sang/played on? I need some sort of mission for my next visit to the used CD bin. Thanks griffith ______________________________________________________________ Griffith Davies hbrtv219@email.csun.edu ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 16:58:22 -0700 (PDT) From: Carole Reichstein Subject: Viva Las Vegas? We all know about the famed "Viva Seatac" gigs by now, but has Robyn ever had the chance to proclaim "Viva Las Vegas?" Why do I want to know? Just curious. I just came back from a 3 day junket to Las Vegas. It's 110 degrees outside, and I felt like a cake in an oven. Someone on this list (I forget who) lives in Reno--any Vegas Fegs? Anyway, I'd be interested to know if Robyn has ever played in Las Vegas, and when. I just can't picture him in the desert, he's such an amphibious personality. ..in any case, it's good to be in the land of clouds & rain again. Yay! --Carole ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 21:09:10 -0500 From: JH3 Subject: Instantly Cooked Hi, fegpersons! 1. The first Robyn album I purchased: That would be "Black Snake Diamond Role." I'd heard "Underwater Moonlight" but hadn't bought it, but when I saw "Brenda's Iron Sledge" on the track listing I knew I had to have this album. I tore off the shrink wrap, reached in to pull out the LP, and was INSTANTLY HOOKED! Unfortunately, someone at the pressing plant had decided to play a little practical joke by lining the dust jacket with fishhooks! I had to go to the hospital for a dozen stitches, and I couldn't play the guitar for a month, but I have to admit in retrospect that it *was* kinda funny. 2. The first Robyn show I ever saw: He was playing with the Egyptians at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC. on March 28, 1986. I only remember the date because the show was later immortalized on the well-known bootleg, "The Hooded One," which frankly doesn't do the show justice. As soon as they walked onstage I was INSTANTLY HOOKED! It seems someone in the audience was "having a little fun" by randomly walking up to other audience members and injecting them with high-grade heroin. I ended up with a $200-a-day habit for six years, and I lost my home, my family, and my career, but it was such a great show, it was all worth it! 3. How I found out about Robyn's music: As mentioned above, I heard "Underwater Moonlight" as soon as it was released, when a copy showed up at the college radio station I was working for. No one else seemed very interested (it was the less-attractive "dummy couple on the beach" cover), but I put it on the turntable and was INSTANTLY HOOKED! Apparently you need a license to broadcast on the public airwaves in the United States, and the management discovered that I didn't have one, so they pulled me off the air and went back to playing the same ol' Ramones/Pistols/Clash stuff they usually played. UM, sadly, ended up in the "Off-Playlist" bin. 4. Where I live: Believe me, you've never heard of the place. --John H. Hedges III, Inc. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Jul 1997 15:33:15 +1300 From: james.dignan@stonebow.otago.ac.nz (James Dignan) Subject: Re: Robyn wants to know Eb wrote: >Why is it that whenever someone tells the story of discovering an artist >(certainly not just in the case of Robyn Hitchcock), he/she was "instantly >hooked?" It's always a thunderbolt, an epiphany, a man on a flaming pie.... >Doesn't anyone just hear mutterings about a band, then maybe buy one of >their albums, maybe it's just OK, maybe buy one or two others before he >hits upon one he really adores, etc., etc.? Acquires a taste for the act, >and all that? I know *I* do.... oh, definitely. That happened for me with Hunters & Collectors, for instance. Couldn't stand them when I first heard them. Similarly Nirvana. And it took me a long time to get into the "Patti Smith? Never heard of her!" sounds of PJ Harvey. And the first albums I bought by the Triffids and Go-Betweens left me pretty cold. There are other artists that I've bought albums on the off-chance, cheap, and had them sitting around at home unplayed for ages. Then one day it'll dawn on me that - hey, y'know, they're not too bad after all... But with Robyn, it was an epiphany. All thanks to Derek playing me "Queen of Eyes". It's a real rarity that I can remember the first song I've ever heard by an artist, but that song was enough to make me borrow "Underwater Moonlight" from him, and I played it over and over... >Hmmm . . . well, for some of us, it is something that borders on a >religious experience. Oddly enough, all my favorite bands are ones that I >was instantly hooked: Robyn, Hawkwind, King Crimson... uh-oh... TGQ is another Frippophile! Frippophile? Frippohile! (I repeat myself when under stress...). And you couldn't have described my first experience of Robyn better if you'd tried. Uncannily similar. Did we all share the same experience? And what does it mean? James (who thinks it means he shouldn't eat blue-vein cheese before going to sleep) James Dignan___________________________________ You talk to me Deptmt of Psychology, Otago University As if from a distance ya zhivu v' 50 Norfolk Street And I reply. . . . . . . . . . Dunedin, New Zealand with impressions chosen from another time steam megaphone (03) 455-7807 (Brian Eno - "By this River") ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 20:48:18 -0700 (PDT) From: misplaced joan of arc Subject: Epiphanies & other consolidated tales EB stated earlier: >I *definitely* should've mentioned REM in my initial post. I didn't like >REM until the Life's Rich Pageant era. Before that, I thought their songs >were too samey, too humorless and too derivative of my beloved Byrds. That's funny! This album is exactly when I STOPPED liking them - when their lyrics were no longer illegible and interesting, but obvious and derivative (in my opinion). I liked it before, when Michael Stipe made no sense on purpose, as if he were trying to be just another instrument, vocally. Now, he just makes no sense. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Jul 1997 00:37:13 -0400 From: biggles CC: spiegel.all@sympatico.ca Subject: Firsts Whatever happened to the moment when one first Knew about Robyn Hitchcock? There must have been one, a moment, when you first realized, "This song is about a fish!" It must have been shattering, stamped into one's memory, and yet, I can't remember it, it never occurred to me at all. We must be born with an intuition of Fegmania.... Okei, apologies to Tom Stoppard, but it is difficult to be sure when I first became aware of Robyn. I remember a kid in college (ca.1989) who sang "the Abandoned Brain" as if he had just made it up. I remember drawing late at night that same year with several other students and singing along to the Soft Boys "Book of Love" (Waaackk!). I remember a road trip tape with "Wax Doll" on it, and trying to explain "come on your stump" to my girlfriend when I really had no idea. Actually, I guess I have to credit my friend Tom, who was then my employer with getting me hooked on Robyn, as he had with XTC and Tom Waits (among others). He would play these things at the frame shop where we worked, and all the while I was cutting mats and framing monet prints and saying "those colors will look just great with your drapes" -songs about aquariums and dead wives and hovering angels were creeping into my ears and getting comfortable. It wasn't until 1990 when I had left that job and moved 50 miles away to New Haven, that I began to miss that music and went out to buy my first Hitchcock cd, Eye, a few days before the show promoting that album at Toad's Place which would be my first RH concert. After that it was just a case of searching out the old albums on cd while keeping up with the new releases and learning all the words to "Duke of Squeeze" so that Tom and I could sing it at parties as if we just made it up. Now aren't you glad you asked? cheers, Biggles ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 23:45:28 -0500 (CDT) From: John Littlejohn Subject: Re: Epiphanies & other consolidated tales On Thu, 10 Jul 1997, Eb wrote: > >I urge all of you to listen to new music carefully, and above all, WEAR > >HEADPHONES! > > Huh? Why? Safe Sound, silly John, feeling alliterative (if only a literative were here!) -* "Si vous m'obstaclerez, je vous liquiderai" - Churchill -* ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 21:57:02 -0700 (PDT) From: Refugees on 45 Subject: Viva Las Vegas; FEGSTOCK On Thu, 10 Jul 1997, Carole Reichstein wrote: > Someone on this list (I forget who) lives in Reno--any Vegas Fegs? uh oh, singled out! this may be me, but the way i think of it is different; and in no way do i think of it as home, nor do i intend to stay past the granting of degree #2. i live in san francisco, but my driveway is 220 miles long. it is the only federally-funded, public-access driveway that i know. as for anyone else, i don't know of any. (they don't call it a desert because of that climate thing.) there is\was someone from the salt lake area on the list. next, we travel west to greet the esteemed sacramento fegs...perhaps we need a map of the feg locations across the planet... > Anyway, I'd be interested to know if Robyn has ever played in Las Vegas, > and when. I just can't picture him in the desert, he's such an amphibious > personality. robyn and nevada, for anyone who has spent any time (forced or otherwise), are not strong combinations. but, one trip through during the A&M years would not be that far off. perhaps we should have a gigography of past shows?? on other matters... now is the time to begin the sacrifice of small animals, birds, inexpensive livestock, and errant house pets in order that as many people can make the festive journey to seattle for the world renouned FEGSTOCK...! it looks in all possibilities that i will go via surface travel. any others; road trips planned and coordinated?? over, .chris ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 22:04:10 -0700 (PDT) From: Refugees on 45 twofangs/randi spiegel Subject: Re: Robyn buzzes a final note for the evening... is there any notion of giving web space to the 'mythical' experiences as well as the non-mythical robyn-firsts? it might be interesting to read some of them. since we have done all manner of other person preference/experiences on the list we could actually do a on-topic firsts thing. suggestions?? ,revo sirhc. (also, are there any rumors floating around as to schedules and other performers at bubbleshoot?? seattle locals??) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Jul 1997 00:38:16 -0500 (CDT) From: John Littlejohn Subject: Re: Robyn buzzes On Thu, 10 Jul 1997, Pandora wrote: > is there any notion of giving web space to the 'mythical' experiences > as well as the non-mythical robyn-firsts? Run for you lives before the Quail gets to his computer. Save the children. JL, wishing love and peace on (almost) everyone -* "Si vous m'obstaclerez, je vous liquiderai" - Churchill -* ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Jul 1997 01:28:53 -0500 From: Miles Subject: Re: Reminder: RH wants to know At 04:38 PM 7/8/97 -0400, twofangs/randi spiegel wrote: >Hi to all in this Globe of Fegs, > >Just a reminder...you have until July 14th to tell Steve and Robyn, (and >me!) about your first RH experience, your first album purchase, your >first RH concert, and where you live. Hey, thanks for not singling me out either, even though I don't Quail-ify as either a lurker or a newbie... 8-) Most of this has been on the list before at various times, but here goes: FIRST RH EXPERIENCE, EVEN THOUGH I DIDN'T KNOW IT: "White City" on Thomas Dolby's THE FLAT EARTH (1984). I took no notice of who was doing the spoken-word part. In fact, I didn't even think about this chance Hitchcock encounter until it came up on the list not long after I joined it, an entire decade after the release of THE FLAT EARTH. So technically, this was my first RH time, but does it count if you didn't even realize it? FIRST REAL RH EXPERIENCE: It was the summer of 1985. I was 18, and you, the reader, were almost certainly already born. A shimmery little pop confection by Katrina and the Waves called "Walking on Sunshine" was making its way up the charts and flooding the airwaves as my uncle Warren and I drove from southern West Virginia to Cincinnati, Ohio, for my annual Cincinnati Reds baseball fest, this year a doubleheader with the then-lowly Atlanta Braves. Once in Cincinnati, I persuade my uncle to stop at a few record stores before we headed to Riverfront Stadium. Gleaming from one of the stores' magazine racks was a new monthly rock magazine, SPIN, which looked pretty nifty -- Talking Heads cover on solid yellow background (I later found out this was SPIN's second issue), lots of space given over to underground bands (when did the word become "alternative" anyway?), and well-written articles and reviews. I noticed that there was a full-length review inside of Katrina and the Waves' album. I was curious about whether the Waves' album was a full pixie stick of pop goodness or merely just a one-hit Pop Rock, I wanted to read the cover story on Talking Heads with more attention than I could devote to it during this quick glance at the newsstand, and I had been looking for something to fill the void left by TROUSER PRESS' recent demise, so I bought the issue. That night, back in the hotel room, I sat down with the magazine and read it cover to cover. The magazine was indeed quite good, a quality that SPIN would sustain for about eighteen months before spinning off into "aren't-we-clever" NME-wannabe-land. Anyway, when I came upon the Katrina and the Waves review, I noticed it was a dual review, not just of the Waves' album but of something called FEGMANIA! by some person named Robyn Hitchcock. I learned that the principal songwriter of Katrina and the Waves was a man named Kimberly who used to be in a band called the Soft Boys with a man called Robyn (what's with all these androgynous names anywho?). Aha! That's why they're in the same review! What's more, while the review (as I recall) liked the Katrina and the Waves album o.k., but called this Robyn guy, who was even more unknown to me than the Kimberly guy, a genius! The Robyn portion of the review mentioned both his melodicism and his penchant for surrealistic wordplay, which piqued my curiosity, as it sounded like something that was right up my alley. The next day was a Sunday, and we'd be driving back home to WV in the morning, so it was too late to look for FEGMANIA! in Cincinnati, so I made a mental note to look for some of this guy's stuff the next time I was in a record store. FIRST ROBYN ALBUM PURCHASE: FEGMANIA, natch! Released through Slash, which had major-label distribution, and was therefore available at the Record Bar in the Mercer Mall (between Bluefield and Princeton, WV) when next I visited said store after returning from Cincinnati. Was there a bolt of lightning? Nope. Like several other respondees, I usually take some time to warm up to the artists who end up in my pantheon, and Robyn was no exception. I like to think that it has something to do with how these artists craft their records with such care that their works reveal their treasures only with repeat listens. If something grabs me immediately, I become suspicious of it. It usually means that it's something relatively shallow -- all of its charms can be immediately grasped, and after a few listens, there's no reason to listen any more. That doesn't mean that I won't be *intrigued* by something on first listen, but it's usually along the lines of "what was that? Let's hear that again!" instead of instant addiction. I listen to all my albums at least three times before venturing any judgments -- usually if it's not clicking by the third spin, it won't (though there are a few exceptions). My all-time favorites, roughly in order, are R.E.M., Robyn, Bruce Springsteen, Wire, the Kinks, Game Theory/Loud Family, Richard Thompson, the Velvet Underground, Prince, Roxy Music/Bryan Ferry, and the Clash, and not one of them blew me away the first time I heard them. But by third listen, yes, I was indeed hooked. FEGMANIA! didn't seem like the work of the advertised mad genius so much as the work of a brilliant person who simply tuned in to different facets of the universe than most other folks. Hey, isn't that one of the reasons we keep artists around? The songwriting, rather than being Syd Barrett barely-there, was coherent, and the lyrics weren't bizarre word jumbles but scenes from another dimension, or, more accurately, scenes from our dimension rendered from a strikingly different perspective. The songs were groove-laden yet melodic, lovely yet frightening (often within the space of a passage), and altogether utterly fascinating. Within a year, I had every major Robyn-related release except for WADING THROUGH A VENTILATOR and LIVE AT THE PORTLAND ARMS. It cost me a small fortune to get all this stuff, mostly from mail-order indie shops since FEGMANIA! was the only domestic release at the time, but it was worth it. FIRST ROBYN CONCERT: Again, a false start. In March 1988, my fiancee, my college roommate (my cousin Rusty), and I bought tickets at a indie store in Blacksburg, VA, to see Robyn and the Egyptians later that month in Charlottesville, VA. Charlottesville was/is a 3 1/2-hour drive from our home campus in Athens, WV, and the show was on a weeknight, so this would be a drive-all-afternoon, drive-back-that-night commitment, but we were all big enough fans to make that commitment without a second thought. Melissa (my fiancee) and I saw Andy Metcalfe as a member of Squeeze (fun show!) at Radford University just two weeks before the date of the Charlottesville Robyn show, so we had at least already seen an Egyptian! Anyway, come the appointed day, we headed up I-81 and then east on I-64. I picked up what has been so far the only speeding ticket of my life on the way there. After the 3 1/2-hour drive, we arrived at the Charlottesville venue, but it was dark and no one else was there. A small sign was posted on the door saying that Robyn had become ill and the show was cancelled! Crestfallen, I turned the car around, and we immediately began the 3 1/2-hour drive back home. Two days later, my car hydroplaned and flipped over in a light rain while on my way back to my mom's for Easter break. The car was totalled. It also looked like Melissa and I might not be able to get married as we had planned, as we had gotten into grad programs at different universities hundreds of miles apart, and we were constantly arguing about whether going our separate ways for a year (her) or getting married and then reapplying the next year (me). It was the worst month of my life. At least I got a refund on the Robyn tickets... Personally, things ended up working out. Both of us were accepted at Vanderbilt (there had been a snafu with her GRE scores), so we did get married that August. And things worked out on the Robyn front too -- in April 1990 Melissa and I moved to the Green Hills section of Nashville, within walking distance of the Bluebird Cafe, and the next month, Robyn played a solo/acoustic gig at the Bluebird. Actually, it ended up being two shows, an early and a late gig, and we didn't hear about the addition of a second show until after the second show was sold out. At least we got tickets to the first show! The show was everything I hoped it would be, and that's saying something. If you've ever heard the tape of the SUNY Binghampton gig from October 1990, this was a very similar show. Robyn played lots of material from throughout his career -- "Way Way Hep a Hoe" to "The Aquarium." There was a piano portion of the show where Robyn favored us with an Elton John impression between "The Man Who Invented Himself" and a resplendent "Flavour of Night." There was a running story about a demonic dog back at his hotel room. The stories were hilarious, the songs were stellar, and his playing was simply incredible. We invited a grad school friend who had never heard Robyn before to tag along with us, and he may have had an even better time at the show than us, as he practically doubled over with laughter at the stories and (when appropriate) the songs. We walked back home through a thunderstorm -- Robyn himself urged us to leave quickly after the end of the first show lest the folks queued up outside for the second show become crispified by the lightning -- with a feeling inside so warm that we barely noticed the chill spring rain seeping through our clothes. Still my favorite Hitchcock performance. We still hadn't seen a full Egyptians gig. We began to joke with each other that we were doomed to see the Egyptians not as a unit but each member individually, so we scanned the papers, sure that a Morris Windsor Experience gig was in the offing! But in May of 1992, the Egyptians played a gig at 328 Performance Hall here in Music City during their justly-praised acoustic tour of that year. This show was nearly the equal of the solo gig from two years earlier -- a balls-out barrelhouse "Clean Steve," wonderful new songs (the opening "Driving Aloud," "When I Was Dead," "Alright, Yeah," and "The Yip Song," studio versions rendered in somewhat lesser magnificence during the RESPECT sessions), and, best of all, brilliant shining rearrangements of "Egyptian Cream" and "Heaven" (the Rhino bonus trax live versions on the FEGMANIA! CD are from this tour). The latter was proceeded by Robyn's prairie-dog cathedral story, which this time provoked a debate between Robyn and Andy on the nature of evolution, Andy taking the traditional gradualist view and Robyn arguing that evolution can happen in a great leap all at once. I also never realized how many sounds were made by Morris instead of by Robyn or Andy, though that may have had to do with the stripped-down, Roger-Jacksonless nature of the tour than anything else. The crowd was into the show, rare at anyone's Nashville gig, and very mellow, folks LYING DOWN in front of the stage, looking up at Robyn and the lights. As for us, we were desperately poor at the time, not unlike "Clean Steve"'s narrator was in 1974 -- Melissa had graduated earlier in May, I was out of financial aid, neither of us had a job yet, and we literally didn't know where the next rent check was coming from. Nevertheless, I *had* to see this show, if for no other reason to try to make up for the disastrous attempt to see the Egyptians four years earlier. I hit the credit cards for a cash advance for tickets, plus $14 for the "There Are No Jokes in the Bible, Keith" T-shirt, even though I didn't know how we were going to pay the next month's rent. Maybe this was a case of misplaced priorities, but by the next month, we both had secured work for ourselves and the crisis had passed, so perhaps Robyn-Power pulled us through! The only other Robyn gig in the interim has been this February's Bluebird show, Robyn having gone on the Richard Thompson play-Nashville-every-five-years schedule, apparently. WHERE I LIVE: See above, except we're now not in tony Green Hills but in Woodbine, a.k.a. El Camino Country, bay-bee! But still within the confines of Metropolitan Davidson County, Home of the Grand Ole Opry... looking forward to RT in 1999 and Robyn in 2002, Miles ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The End of this Fegmaniax Digest. *sob* .