Armed with his acoustic guitar and a harmonica, British singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock is famous for his eccentric genius and darkly whimsical jokes. Hitchcock's tangential banter between tunes — poetic Beatles-meets-otherworldly tunes — is a major selling point of seeing him live. [Words by Julie, photos by Tracy.]
Those familiar know that Hitchcock performed as part of The Soft Boys in the late '70s and later as Robyn Hitchcock and The Egyptians (his band). In the past 30 years of his solo career, he has released 19 albums and performed all over the world.
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Before the Jan. 23 show at the Palladium's Side Door, Hitchcock last played our fair land in 1992 — a warm, good-humored, intimate engagement rife with Robyn's oddball, meandering jokes — his intricate analogies and metaphors are reminiscent of John Lennon interviews or quasi-nonsensical Monty Python skits. When Hitchcock speaks on a topic, he's matter of fact and outlandishly metaphorical, traveling around and past his original point only to bring it all back home again in an astonishingly logical manner. The performer played songs from throughout his career and mused on being a human museum piece and the potential time-space discord that would have resulted from YouTube being mentioned in conversation 22 years ago during his show Tampa Theatre.
"Some of you look familiar," he joked when he mentioned the Tampa concert.
Though he also performed "Queen Elvis" from that 1990 album, he didn't perform the better known tunes from his best-selling album, which bears the same title, such as "Madonna of the Wasps" and "(She Had) One Long Pair of Eyes"; nor did he perform any other "hits" like "I Wanna Destroy You" from his Soft Boys days or "Balloon Man" from the brilliant Globe of Frogs. But some gems like "I'm Only You" and "My Wife and My Dead Wife" from Fegmania showcased his comical bittersweetness and wistful longings for the one who got away. One high point was his subdued rendition of Soft Boys' "Only the Stones Remain."
Hitchcock is one of those artists who didn't outgrow that wistful romanticism for the unattainable. "This is a set by the sea and into the past, so it's safe," Hitchcock said after performing "Aquarium" and "Sweet Ghost of Light."
His playing was measured and spot on with some vocal and guitar delays adding minimal embellishments. Approaching 61, he's not one of those artists whose voice has changed with age. It has not gone down a couple of octaves; he sounds pretty much the same as he did all those years ago under the gilded proscenium of Tampa's historic cinema. Toward the end of his show, he treated the audience to an a capella rendition of "A Day in the Life" by the Beatles, for which he wandered through the Side Room's seats like a troubadour.
About the Palladium, Hitchcock told the St. Augustine Compass about the venue before hitting the stage. "It was the Church of Christ, Scientist until 1998. I didn’t know Christ was a scientist."
He spent his afternoon in St. Pete visiting the Dali Museum's new Warhol exhibit.
This article appears in Jan 30 – Feb 5, 2014.