From owner-fegmaniax@ns2.rutgers.edu Wed Mar 29 02:36:23 1995
To: fegmaniax@ns2.rutgers.edu
Subject: Phila City Paper Interview w/ Robyn
From: robert.zarzecki@radiowave.com (ROBERT ZARZECKI)
Date: Tue, 28 Mar 95 21:23:00 -0500

Hello Everyone. Below is an article found in the March 24-31 issue of
Philadelphia's "City Paper"
Entitled "Ice Pack:The sound of Style" written by
a.d. amorosi.
Enjoy
Rob Z

WHAT BECOMES A LEGEND MOST IS ROBYN HITCHCOCK

"Is this for a style or flair section? Are you gonna talk about what
kind of shoes I wear?"
I think I'm scaring the ever fearless Robyn Hitchcock into believing
that our conversation will be about pant leg width and coiffure gels.
"That'd be most probably very silly, " says Hitchcock on the subject
from his London home while preparing supper; for what becomes the
Hitchcock legend most isn't his bizarre assortment of polka dotted or
cheesy patterned baggy tops, but the fact that he is a complicated
modern master of the twisted phrase.
Over the course of almost 20 years and a baker's dozen of recorded
things, Hitchcock has made mincemeat of any normal thought process, made
heroes out of animals and made a legion of fans reel in delight.
His insect's view of the world has maintained its whimsy in a business
that's normally dictated by a sourpuss' mentality.
"It's tough to keep your humor. The easygoing aspect of making music is
always there at the very beginning whether you're talking about starting
out in 1956 or 1995. Unfortunately, it's always combined with a frenzied
egotism and a blind unreal idea of how important you're gonna be.
There's a sort of vertigo looking down on your youth, you never know how
real it seems or how real you're being taking about the past."
Like imagining what you could've done to not lose your hair or gain
weight?
"Yeah" he smirks, "I shouldn't have rubbed all this hair remover onto my
scalp regularly or I could've stood under a waterfall less often."
Hitchcock is only looking back because Rhino records is doing it with
him. The last two months have seen the Hitchcock back catalog get a kick
in the ass from Rhino what with nine discs released, dating back from
his post Soft Boys days of 1981 to his pre-90 A&M period.
"I'm the one who has to unearth it all so it's not like it was done
independently of me," says Hitchcock.
>From the delicate sparsity of "I often dream of trains......edited"
 brief review of records cut...
"influences assimilate quite slowly. I think I had a tendency to write
songs in a pastiche fashion, in certain styles say a la Lou Reed or John
Lennon. I'm quite a good mimic. Being so good at doing pastiches is
probably not a good thing. I didn't have a definite sound from the
beginning wherein with say R.E.M., they always had an identifiable
sound; Stipe always sounded like Stipe. At what point I became 'me'
rather than a set of influences I don't know. Probably around mid '80's
with Element of Light and Fegmania.

RH:
"Fegmania! had good songs on it even if some were derivative. Element
was my first grown up album. I think I went backwards on Globe Of
Frogs--back to my pastiche psychedlia. I think since then it's been a;;
all me even if it did have bits of other people floating in it"
Hitchcock's hair also begins to come into his own--it seems, well,
fuller, more stylized.
"Yes. I experimented with a series of disastrous hairstyles throughout
the '70's and '80's. It's only in the last year that I've come to terms
with my hair as it's beginning to go grey."
As accorded to all Rhino reissues, it's chock full of unreleased
goodies, remixed junk and perhaps a lock or too of Hitchcock's very own
doo.
"It was quite interesting to go back because there's so many formats or
now obsolete formats. When some of this stuff was recorded we were still
using stuff like four track quarter inch tape. No digital stuff around
on the kind of level we were working on."
And which level was that?
"That very cheap level. Now these things haved been mixed onto DAT which
didn't even exist in 1980. God, it's becoming like translating
hieroglyphics in the Grand Pyramid of Cheops onto a typewriter--a
strange mixture of media.
Hitchock's love of the cheap isn't a kitch thing, but an effective
factor in making works that sparkle expensively. Take, for instance, the
record "I often dream.." or 91's "Respect."
RH: "The concept was to record around the kitchen table but there was
very little innocence involved because we had a 24 track mobile unit
outside the house and the place teeming with wires and computers. I
thought it'd be more like Bob Dylan's basement tapes with The Band. We
rehearsed and ate at the kitchen table but that's all that really
happened."
For Hitchcock's recent tour and a new single out on Seattl'es K Records,
he's gone back to the simplicity he's been known for since the days of
the Egyptians.
"Recording cheaply isn't just cost efficient, but time efficient. I'm
not part of the Kate Bush/Bryan Ferry school of lingering in the studio.
I like to do things in one and a half takes. I think that a song has an
essential feel and you either get that or you don't."
This also figures into Hitchcock's lone bullet theory of solo creation.

"Working with other people often finds them trying to get the fine
tuning right but they very often lose the soul of the song. It's like
spending so much time mending the net they scarcely catch any fish in
it."
"Generally I've found that my achievments have been in inverse
proportion to my budget. We did the K tracks in a day in a basement. We
did the first two tracks upstairs but had to stop because the other
people in his house wanted to make soup in the kitchen."
Since Rhino has captured a large chuck of his life so zestily and with
great ease, I figure that it must be strange for Hitchcock to imagine
himself as an artist who's been doing it since the early '70's, a time
not most notable for personal flair.

"Twent years," he ponders, "back then, I lokked like some rabling
English twee folky thing. I had a beard and long hair like everybody
else and sat cross legged. I was a slightly dodgy folk type."

Hitchcock then asks me if I've got a mustache.

"No," I say. "Why, do you have one?"

"No, not a spare but I know where you can get one, " he says, ending our
chat.

As long as its cheap.

Italics:::
Robyn Hitchcock, a man who tells me his fave words are "dial, kiosk,
shimmer, perspex, ovulate and maritime" will make a rare intimate
appearance at the Tin Angel.....march 25 & 26 (times and locations
listed)