MySpace Sings Nilsson

Oh yeah, this exists. I'll try and switch the songs up from time to time, and I'll try to make it so this isn't the only place they exist.

Did I mention I went to the Storm game before they were eliminated? It was AMAZING. My love for Lauren Jackson is undiminished. That is all.

News

HD tour blog to come when I write it. It was a complicated emotional excursion, to be sure, but also, miraculously, fun. Aaron wrote one, too, for double, if not, indeed, triple the pleasure.

Gervais Podcast season 3 begins August 22. This is very important, especially when you consider the fact that I am now on my sixth time through the original nine hours worth of seasons 1 and 2. I usually skip 2.1, though. I mean, I'm not a freak.

Hope is Emo is, provably, the funniest thing anyone has ever done.

Why so podcasty, you might ask? Well, because All Things to All People is now going to be a podcast. Debuting in October. It's gonna be funny. More news as it develops.

I am currently only #225,595 authors away from being #1!!!

Nelson Sings Nilsson is basically done. Samplers are circulating relevant earways. I'm just not going to expect anything. I guess maybe a MySpace page is in order.

I am developing a potentially unhealthy delayed post-mortem re-attachment to Spalding Gray. It has always been there (my weird connections to him, mainly surrounding Our Town, are like elements of my own SG monologue travesty, which I will spare you), but just lately, i'm listening to the CDs again and again--in the car, in bed as I try to sleep; I'm watching the movies; I'm reading the novel and the monologues that didn't get recorded; i'm cutting out pictures and putting them places, haunted by his ghost-like final Bumbershoot show. My mother thinks this is unhealthy. I'm not saying she's wrong, but I kind of can't help myself. Did you read his journal entries in Harper's? Jesus. Jesus. "How shall I do it," indeed.

Ole, indeed

I find this press release really exciting, mainly because my name is mentioned in the same clause as Morris Windsor, pretty much my favorite harmony singer who was never in the Beatles. (Though I was sad to learn the song I sang on didn't make it on the glorious new Decemberists record--nor did my part make it on the song: two time loser=me--this definitely makes up for the loss. I don't know which parts survived the final mix, but I know I sang on 6 of the 10 songs here. RH fans rejoice. This is the best one a long time, and I pretty much like them all...)

Robyn Hitchcock
Ole Tarantula to be released October 3 on Yep Roc

"What makes this record for me is the musicians I was able to gather," says Robyn Hitchcock of Ole Tarantula, a surreal vision and Technicolor celebration of life - from its inception and the whole catastrophe of it - till its groovy decay and inevitable last breath.

"To me, the whole record is sadness cloaked in fun. But under that fun, more sadness," says Hitchcock.

Such seeming contradictions are what make Hitchcock a credible narrator to his incredible kingdom of song, the one he's built on a foundation of dreamlike, whimsical, tragic comedy and set to gorgeous and slightly askew melodies for the last 30 years. In Hitchcock's universe, adventure rocket ships, exploding, twist-off heads and crawling things are the norm, as are supersonic harmonies and an ever-present chiming guitar sound. Through the years, those heavenly refrains, the harmonicas and the hilarity conspired and drew a blueprint for alternative pop as we know it. Is it any wonder he attracts stellar company when he settles in to make a record?

Recorded in Seattle in September 2005 and March 2006, Hitchcock is joined throughout Ole Tarantula by the Venus 3--Peter Buck, Scott McCaughey and Bill Rieflin--old friends who he notes are also "3/4ths of the Minus 5 and half of R.E.M."

"We sound like a smart garage band, to my ears, when we play live. The record is a little more tidy, but they still rock, and rock me along with them. This is the rockingest record I've made in years," he says.

The Venus 3 is joined by a cast of recurrent and new characters in the Hitchcock story: Soft Boys/Egyptians bandmate Morris Windsor and Sean Nelson (Harvey Danger) on gleaming background harmonies; Chris Ballew (Presidents of The United States of America) on harmony vocals and keyboards. Soft Boys guitarist Kimberley Rew assists on three tracks and the Faces' Ian McLagan adds his famous keyboard hands to "N.Y. Doll."

"'N.Y. Doll' is one of my favorites," says Hitchcock of the elegy inspired by the recent documentary on the New York Dolls' bassist. "I never met Arthur Kane but his story is another example of how precious a life becomes when it's over."

"Underground Sun," written for a friend of Hitchcock's who died last spring, jingle-jangles across the astral plane. "She was a very upbeat person so I wrote her what I hope is an exciting elegy, not a mournful one."

Fuelled by mysticism, the choogling "The Museum of Sex" is in Seaford, Sussex, "But only visible at low tide," he explains. "It's an elegy for my life as a human. Again not too mournful I hope."

"These songs were all written at home in London, though often reference the States. I've been commuting for over 20 years but I live here no matter how often I orbit through Los Angeles," says Hitchcock. Indeed, the West is an auspicious presence throughout Ole Tarantula.

"Belltown Ramble" is set in Seattle, its character and location drawn from "A 14th Century Uzbekistani warlord with an elegant name" and a bar in Belltown. San Francisco crops up in the Dirty Harry/Magnum Force-inspired, "Limitations, Briggs," as well as in the title song ? "About where babies come from" ? written after an extended stay in Tucson, Arizona.

Hitchcock has long made insects and sea creatures his favorite subjects and they have their say throughout Ole Tarantula, his self-described "twenty-somethingth" album.

"As a thinking person I'm completely in despair, but as a creature I'm quite happy," he told The Believer in 2005. That would explain quite a lot about the happy/sad world of Hitchcock's songs...

Beginning as a strummer in Cambridge, England's folk clubs, by the coming of the first punk rock era, Hitchcock had developed into a bandleader, heading up folk-pop iconoclasts the Soft Boys, one of alternative rock's least sung but most influential bands. Yet by the time R.E.M., the Replacements and pre-alt-rockers like them revealed its influence on their own bands, Hitchcock had moved on to what would become his distinguished solo career. Recording and releasing records like his stark debut, Black Snake Diamond Role, the warm, all-acoustic I Often Dream of Trains and the psychedelicized Groovy Decay ? sometimes with and sometimes without his band the Egyptians ? Hitchcock would unwittingly help shape the pop strain of contemporary alternative rock. In 1998, director and fan Jonathan Demme placed him in a shop window for the concert film Storefront Hitchcock, introducing his engaging live show to wider audiences. As Hitchcock continues to record and tour as a solo and band act, his direction has veered from the folky Moss Elixir and the rocky Jewels for Sophia to the folk-rock tribute to Bob Dylan, Robyn Sings! Each time out, he is consistently and singularly, Robyn Hitchcock. In 2002, the Soft Boys briefly reunited for the long anticipated Nextdoorland and Hitchcock followed with his 2004 Yep Roc release Spooked, a collaboration with alternative country artists Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. Hitchcock called the studio experience "An extraordinarily good dream." At the time of its release, The New York Times noted he was an "...acute observer of love, death and the entire evolutionary continuum..."

"Years ago I wrote a song called 'My Mind Wants to Die But My Body Wants to Live' and that was the only lyric in it," he told The Believer. "And really, that pretty much sums me up."

When SPAM is True

"It’s a difficult job accepting you were wrong. Agree with that? Don’t let emotions guide you. Make use of worthy facts some of which you will learn just by keeping reading this..."

fuckers.

At the Risk of Total Self-Absorption

So, there's a medium-small interview with me in this magazine, and, well... : this is the long version.

They're pretty different, I think.

Not that anything matters in the world.

P.S.
Neumo's?

Addendum/Erratum

Of course I care.

Secondly: The Hollies!

But also, Howard Jones. I know, right? I just listened to "No One is To Blame." It sounds so exactly like the '80s actually felt for me: Sentimental, vapid, synthetic, and nonsensical, yet somehow really catchy and sad.

Good to the motherfucking times.

Snippety Snip

There's a wee excerpt from my wee book about Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark album here. I don't know if it's good. I don't know if I care.

I do know that the "Awesome" EP sessions I "co-produced" the past two weekends (with the estimable Jon Auer at the wheel, and the able bodied assistance of Jayme the engineer), have yielded four spectacularly ear-wormy rough mixes along with some very tender memories (and nipples!). It's always nice to watch the pros in action. And the bros, obviously. Grabass? Yes. But motivated grabass. The recordings do exactly what I hoped they would, which was to push a band (probably my favorite band in Seattle at the moment, at least among bands I know personally and occasionally perform with, though I'm really trying to stop performing, though you wouldn't know it to look at my day planner) full of other-than-rock skills and influences towards the rock that obviously lurks in its soul. Not to say there isn't plenty of delicacy and subtle flavor in the songs--there is. But there is also a simpled-down bandness about them, too. It makes a lovely cocktail. Or maybe a mocktail. You should buy it, but first, we should finish it.

Further: This Sunday ought to be the final day of tracking for the Nelson Sings Nilsson record. I have rough mixes of 14 songs from this record, replete with all the fancy strings and horns you could ever want, arranged both brilliantly and bizarrely--as promised--by Mark Nichols. I had a small nervous breakdown (along the lines of a mini-stroke) yesterday when it became clear that I actually couldn't tell how I felt about the record now that it's a hair's breadth away from completion, or indeed about anything at all. This led to several hours of talking to myself out loud, a sprinkling of tears, and a brief paroxysm that included physical convulsion (true). My impulse was to throw the tapes in the river, the way they do in interviews with musicians who lie (see: The Replacements, Bright Eyes). But, of course, there are no tapes, so the digital revolution has saved me another few thousand dollars. Thanks, digital revolution!

Oh yeah, and HD on Friday at the Neumo's. No idea what to expect (other than a few VERY deep cuts). And then HD in California next week. And then HD lunchboxes!!!!!!