Fossil Favorite
My prior music blog was named for a Robyn Hitchcock song from 1996's Moss Elixer. That album had a limited edition vinyl counterpoint - Mossy Liquor, with variant recordings and tracks that didn't make the final cut. And as interesting as a Swedish version of "Alright, Yeah" may be, it was the also-rans and near misses that made it worth finding.
Prior to my finally obtaining the album in '99 (thanks to eBay, when you could still get bargains), I had heard Hitchcock perform a few of these songs live. I remember "Each of Her Silver Wands" from a DC show, and one amazing night at the Ram's Head in Annapolis he performed "Trilobite." To preface the song, Robyn told a story about how, thousands of millennia from now, someone will chance upon our bones and give us a name, a classification, as we have done with Lucy, Tyrannosaurus Rex, and the lowly Trilobite (the song proposes "Sven" as a nice name for the singer's remains). He also reminded the audience that Elton John's given name is Reginald Dwight, which figures into the chorus:
It's nonsense, of course, a nonsense Hitchcock has traded in sense his days with the Soft Boys, when he asked, "Where are the prawns?" and answered, "Down by the sea." It is the refreshing juxtaposition - the examining of "deep thoughts", of human interaction and relations, kissed by the absurd or startling - that makes Hitchcock work so well for me. At his best he is a musical koan, a dancing slap of knowledge with a fresh fish.
Prior to my finally obtaining the album in '99 (thanks to eBay, when you could still get bargains), I had heard Hitchcock perform a few of these songs live. I remember "Each of Her Silver Wands" from a DC show, and one amazing night at the Ram's Head in Annapolis he performed "Trilobite." To preface the song, Robyn told a story about how, thousands of millennia from now, someone will chance upon our bones and give us a name, a classification, as we have done with Lucy, Tyrannosaurus Rex, and the lowly Trilobite (the song proposes "Sven" as a nice name for the singer's remains). He also reminded the audience that Elton John's given name is Reginald Dwight, which figures into the chorus:
Trilobite, right Dwight's in the light-bite
Trilobite, right in the light-bite, Dwight
It's nonsense, of course, a nonsense Hitchcock has traded in sense his days with the Soft Boys, when he asked, "Where are the prawns?" and answered, "Down by the sea." It is the refreshing juxtaposition - the examining of "deep thoughts", of human interaction and relations, kissed by the absurd or startling - that makes Hitchcock work so well for me. At his best he is a musical koan, a dancing slap of knowledge with a fresh fish.
<< Home