Robyn Hitchcock Black Snake Diamond Role 1. The Man Who Invented Himself (2:53) (Original Mix from Zinc Pear) 2. Brenda's Iron Sledge (2:52) (Amniotic Mix) 3. Do Policemen Sing? (3:32) 4. The Lizard (4:58) 5. Meat (2:58) 6. Acid Bird (4:36) 7. I Watch The Cars (2:19) 8. Out Of The Picture (3:37) 9. City Of Shame (3:14) 10. Love (4:27) (_Black Snake Diamond Role_ was originally issued as Armageddon [UK] #ARM 4, 5/81. The working titles for this album included _The Perfumed Corpse_ and _Zinc Pear_. Test pressings were made of _Zinc Pear_ which included the songs "Give Me A Spanner, Ralph" and "Happy the Golden Prince," but the release was withdrawn and replaced by a new version featuring "Brenda's Iron Sledge.") Bonus Selections: 11. Dancing On God's Thumb (3:40) (Originally issued as the B-side of the 7" single "The Man Who Invented Himself," Armageddon [UK] #AS 008, 4/81; Later included as a bonus track on the CD release of _Black Snake Diamond Role_) 12. Happy the Golden Prince (6:39) (Unissued until its inclusion on the 12" EP _Eaten By Her Own Dinner_, Midnight Music [UK] #DONG 2, 10/86) 13. I Watch The Cars #2 (4:22) (Previously Unissued version) 14. It Was The Night (3:34) (Previously Unissued Version) 15. Grooving On An Inner Plane (4:08) (Single Version) (Originally issued as the B-side of the 7" flexi-disc "It's A Mystic Trip," Armageddon [UK] #SPURT 1, that came with the 7" single of "The Man Who Invented Himself," 4/81; Later included as a bonus track on the CD release of _Groovy Decoy_) Personnel: ROBYN HITCHCOCK: piano, bass, lead guitar KIMBERLEY REW: guitar (3,4,7,9) KNOX: guitar (5,8) MATTHEW SELIGMAN: bass (2-5, 7-15); overbass (10) MORRIS WINDSOR: drums & backing vocals (1,5,6,8,10,11,13,14) VINCE ELY: drums (2-4,7,15) GARY BARNACLE: saxes (11) TOM DOLBY: ocean (10) ROBB APPLETON: backing vocals (10) HOWIE GILBERT: backing vocals (10) JAMES A. SMITH: voices (15) Produced by PAT COLLIER with a little help from MATTHEW SELIGMAN Tracks 2 & 15 Produced by MATTHEW SELIGMAN & ROBYN HITCHCOCK Recorded at THE BARGE, ALASKA & MUSIC WORKS (London, 1980-81) Engineers: PAT COLLIER, ANDY LLEWELLYN, JO JULIAN Photography: R.S.K STUDIOS & ROSALIND KUNATH "They're just eggs that I laid many years ago; whether they ever hatched or not is questionable." - Robyn Hitchcock Early in 1980, the Soft Boys ceased to function - quite gently, as such things go. The Cambridge quartet - Robyn Hitchcock, Kimberley Rew, Andy Metcalfe, later Matthew Seligman, and Morris Windsor - had gotten it right the third time out (recordings for their first album were so awful only small pieces have been released), with _Underwater Moonlight_. Just exactly right, their peculiar, lilting, very British variation on psychedelia a la Syd Barrett playing elegant sophistication against American antecedents like, say, the Thirteenth Floor Elevators. And then they called it a day. Oh, odd bits of tape were pressed to vinyl after, they still worked with each other (reuniting in Britain for a few shows in 1993), and Metcalfe and Windsor would later join Robyn as Egyptians. But the Soft Boys, having spawned a small, devoted cult of followers, were no more. Which left Robyn where he had begun, back in 1974 when he'd moved from London to Cambridge: as a solo artist. In all fairness, _Black Snake Diamond Role_ comes close to being the fourth Soft Boys album. Pat Collier engineered most of the sessions at Alaska Studios, where he had recorded much of _Underwater Moonlight_. Matthew Seligman began producing (or coconspiring with) Robyn and played bass on some tracks. Morris and Kimberley were drawn into the record as well. But, for the first time, this was to be Robyn Hitchcock's album. "I really enjoyed making _Black Snake_," he remembers "because it was the first time I'd ever got to make a record by myself. It was the first time I'd got to pick who I was going to have on the individual songs, rather than having _the band_. And so I figured I' use the strength of the individual Soft Boys rather than the strengths - and the weaknesses - of the collective Soft Boys." Sessions began simply, just Robyn and Morris on drums. "Morris is very nimble, and he picks things up very fast," Robyn says, "but, also, if there's nobody there except me and him, he tends to feel a bit more responsible for the track. So 'The Man Who Invented Himself' and 'Acid Bird' were just Morris and me. I think the first thing we did was 'Acid Bird' on a four-track machine that Pat Collier had. Morris hadn't heard any of the songs, so I'd just go in and play bass or guitar. I remember playing something on 'Acid Bird' and realizing later that I'd had the wah-wah pedal pressed down into the extreme treble position for the whole take, but it sounded really good, so I double-tracked it. And then I was able to put eight harmonies on it because Pat Collier was brilliant at bumping tracks down, so although it was only an old four-track machine, there's actually 12 or 16 tracks on it." Robyn pauses. "A lot of these records were recorded in Alaska, so I should probably explain it. Right opposite Waterloo Station is this rehearsal studio called Alaska, which belonged to Pat Collier, but he sold it in 1987. And there's this smell in there which is a combination of - have you ever been in a very old church? it's a kind of European damp, a medieval Gothic damp, a compounded sort of fungus-glue-tobacco-and -possibly-alcohol smell. Mold, masses of it. Anyway, you can open up your guitar case in L.A., and assuming you've come from Alaska, it'll smell of Alaska." An alternate, longer ("rambling," Robyn says cheerfully) version of "I Watch The Cars" from that initial session appears here for the first time, though not without a few technical difficulties: "I had to find a machine that could actually translate it to mix the tape, because a lot of this was recorded on equipment which is now defunct," Robyn explains. "I Watch The Cars" was recorded the day John Lennon was shot (it was the morning of December 9, 1980, in England; the evening of the 8th in the United States). "We all sat around, Matthew and Vince (Ely) from the Psychedelic Furs and Kimberley and me, Kimberley didn't say anything. Matthew said, 'That's the price to pay for invading people's minds,' and Vince just said, 'Why couldn't they have shot Richard Butler?' Lennon singing with the Furs would have been quite interesting, though." Most of the songs on _Black Snake Diamond Role_ betray a happier, more casual time. "Do Policemen Sing?" fused two memories into one song. Cutting some early Soft Boys material, Robyn wandered into the studio next door, where finishing touches were being applied to a recording by the Welsh Police Male Voice Choir. Later, "some friends of mine got busted, and they were given some cold beans - not as a form of interrogation, they were given some lunch and the beans were cold - so I wrote, 'Don't complain if your beans aren't warm.'" "The Man Who Invented Himself," a kind of rumination about legends like Syd Barrett, was written a few days after Robyn watched Monty Python's _Life Of Brian_ and, Robyn admits, is vaguely modeled after that film's finale number "Always Look On The Bright Side of Life." Additional sessions took place on a barge, where Richard Branson had installed a 16-track studio. "Morris and I did 'The Man Who Invented Himself' in the middle of the night, on the barge," Robyn recalls. "Howie, our roadie, came along, and there was about an 18-inch gap between the barge and the quay just out by the bow, otherwise the boat was absolutely flush by the river bank. Howie managed to fall in - which was quite an achievement - so he took his trousers off and dried them over the piano. I played 'The Man Who Invented Himself.' Then Matthew played on 'Love.' A lot of it was done in the middle of the night on the barge, or in Alaska." Robyn also experimented with a few musicians who didn't come with a Soft Boys pedigree, including Vince Ely and Thomas Dolby. Robyn: "Matthew dragged Thomas Dolby down at one point and said, 'This guy's going to by famous, you've got to use him.' So Dolby was stuck in front of a fairly conventional keyboard, which he played fairly conventionally; he hadn't got his worldview in front of him yet. "We did some other songs with Vince playing drums, and Kimberley. Vince was a bit more heavy-handed than Morris, a bit more forceful. Kimberley was better off playing with Vince, I thought, because Kimberley's a very heavy guitarist. And Matthew played bass on that. The last thing was 'Brenda's Iron Sledge,' which was done in a place called Music Works, just up the road from the Hope & Anchor." When it came time to make an album of all these songs and sessions, there were nearly 20 pieces to choose from. "I spent ages stockpiling tracks and agonizing with Matthew and with Rosalind, my girlfriend at the time, about what tracks to use," Robyn says. _Black Snake_ proper ended up with ten songs; "Dancing On God's Thumb" came out as the B-side of "The Man Who Invented Himself." The rest of the songs came to life later on or died altogether, Robyn explains. "Things like 'Give Me A Spanner, Ralph,' which ended up on _Invisible Hitchcock_, and 'My Favourite Buildings' [also on _Invisible Hitchcock_, but rerecorded for _I Often Dream Of Trains_] were just some things with acoustic guitar and vocals. Everything on Black Snake ended up having drums on it, but that wasn't the original intention. I wanted to vary it a bit, but for some reason we didn't use those songs. I guess I kept writing new ones." There are four other bonus tracks (in addition to "Dancing On God's Thumb") included here, among them "Happy the Golden Prince," from the _Eaten By Her Own Dinner_ 12-inch, and "It Was The Night" with Matthew and Morris, a song later rerecorded with the _Groovy Decay/Decoy_ band, both from November 1980. "Anyway," Robyn finishes, "suffice to say, it was a really good record. I mean it was really good fun to play. We sped it up slightly in the cut; I've had to do that again, because I've lost the production masters, so I had to go right back to the original masters to stick this thing together." - Grant Alden OTHER ROBYN HITCHCOCK TITLES AVAILABLE FROM RHINO: Black Snake Diamond Role (R2 71820) - I Often Dream Of Trains (R2 71822) SCHEDULED FOR RELEASE FEBRUARY 1995: Fegmania! (R2 71837) - Gotta Let This Hen Out! (R2 71838) - Element Of Light (R2 71839) SCHEDULED FOR RELEASE MARCH 1995: Invisible Hitchcock (R2 71840) - Eye (R2 71841) - You & Oblivion (Rarities) (R2 71842) ______________________________________________________________________ GET ON THE RHINO MAILING LIST Receive our special MAIL ORDER catalog featuring over a thousand critically acclaimed Rhino compact discs and cassettes. Send one dollar (check or money order, payable to Rhino Records Inc.) along with your name and address to: Rhino Catalog, 10635 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90025-4900 Staying Alive The challenge of the AIDS crisis is staying alive. AIDS is a human condition. This equal-opportunity disease can hit any home, affecting lovers, friends, and family. AIDS does not discriminate between men, women, or children. AIDS strikes regardless of race, age, or sexual orientation. 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