Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3, Doug Fir Lounge, Portland, OR, 01 Dec 2007 setlist: (solo acoustic) Ghost Ship / (enter Sean Nelson on harmonies) Alright Yeah / Swirling / No I Don’t Remember Guilford / (enter The Venus 3) Goodnight Oslo / What You Is Is What You Are / Flesh No. 1 (Beatle Denis) / Ole Tarantula / Brenda’s Iron Sledge / City Of Shame / Take It Away / Saturday Groovers / Sixteen Years / The Authority Box / Madonna Of The Wasps / Adventure Rocket Ship // Heroin (Velvet Underground) / The End (The Doors)

I realized after my setlist diatribe last month that I am pretty picky about song choice and that I hold my favorite artists to a standard that is probably not wise or maybe even viable for them to attain. So you can imagine my astonishment as I was walking back to my car from the Robyn Hitchcock gig and I realize that I’ve just seen a pretty perfect show.

Here’s what made it so great:
1) There was no effort made to fit in all the usual hits. Robyn plus band usually equals “Queen Of Eyes”, and “Listening To The Higsons”, and maybe “Give It To The Soft Boys”. Not this time. And the solo Robyn was not playing it safe either, choosing “Ghost Ship” as the opening number (which he dedicated to Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis).

2) Some not-too-often played songs were featured here, one of which is my very favorite: “Swirling” appears on the 1989 album Queen Elvis, but you haven’t lived until you’ve heard it as a solo acoustic version. This particular version was marred by Robyn stopping in mid-song to tell some person to stop whatever it was they were doing, as it was very difficult to concentrate on the acoustic guitar solo he was playing. But who cares, getting to hear it at all (for the first time since a 1994 soundcheck I snuck into) was what mattered to me. The other “oldie-surprise” was a 1-2 punch of “Brenda’s Iron Sledge” and “City Of Shame”, both off Black Snake Diamond Role.

3) Many many new songs were featured tonight. Maybe they were just new to me, but I’m guessing that quite alot of these will be appearing on the next Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 record, which Robyn mentioned should be out sometime next fall. I’d heard quite alot of new songs already as featured on this year’s “Sex, Food, Death….& Insects” documentary, but there was literally no overlap between tonight’s offerings and those. It’ll be interesting to see what makes the cut, and what happens to all the other songs that didn’t make the record. My favorites from tonight’s show were “Goodnight Oslo” and “Take It Away.”

4) The encore…..WAS SUBLIME. One would’ve expected them to come out and play a few Soft Boys tunes. Instead, we got a cover of “Heroin” which Robyn then took into “The End” by The Doors. It was fun to see the look on Venus 3 faces as they just followed Robyn along on this journey to see where it would end. Once we all realized that it was “The End”, I sighed that pleasant sigh you get when you’ve just had a very good meal. I was content. All was right with the world.

5) I had another “all’s right with the world” moment when I turned around halfway through the gig and noticed how incredibly packed the venue was. For a moment all my cynicism about the media, the elections, about people in general — it all just melted away as I realized that there are a bunch of us who recognize this man’s gifts and this band’s brilliance and we can come out here for a few hours and just enjoy that and celebrate it and acknowledge that we feel it on a group level before heading back out to all that shit that gets us down and separates us.

P.S. Opener Sean Nelson was really enjoyable. I only wish the tour-only EP I purchased afterwards included some (hell, any) of the songs that he played during his set. See item #1 above regarding unreasonable expectations.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 2nd, 2007 at 7:09 pm and is filed under gig, live music, robyn hitchcock, rock, setlist, troubador, venus 3. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.