{"id":880,"date":"2017-08-27T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-08-27T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=880"},"modified":"2026-06-27T14:02:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T14:02:00","slug":"robyn-hitchcock-and-the-venus-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=880","title":{"rendered":"Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>March 2007, 40 Watt, Athens, Ga.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I first came across Robyn Hitchcock in 1985 after hearing \u201cMy Wife &amp; My Dead Wife,\u201d still one of the weirdest songs I\u2019ve ever heard. I can\u2019t say I know what the song is about (above the obvious), but I was taken by how commonplace he makes the unordinary. He sings \u201c \u2018Robyn,\u2019 she said\/\u2018You know I don\u2019t take sugar!\u2019\/My wife and my dead wife\/Am I the only one that sees her?\u201d and you wonder \u201cWho thinks of this?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Robyn Hitchcock would make a career of this, taking esoteric ideas and writing interesting songs to surround his odd lyrics. In \u201cBalloon Man\u201d he writes one of the best similes ever \u2014 \u201cAnd it rained like a slow divorce\u201d \u2014 and as someone who grew up in families of divorce, I know what that rain feels like.<\/p>\n<p>He is also, as it turns out, a musical compatriot of one Peter Buck, who we\u2019ve established is one of my musical heroes. Robyn Hitchcock is R.E.M. family \u2014 like Warren Zevon and Scott McCaughey \u2014 and if he\u2019s good with the Athens boys, he\u2019s good with me.<\/p>\n<p>And on this tour, Buck and McCaughey served as two of the Venus 3 (with drummer Bill Rieflin, who took over some drumming duties from Bill Berry when he left R.E.M.) as the third. A show with these guys, at the 40 Watt, could provide all sorts of guest appearances. But having Robyn Hitchcock was more than enough.<\/p>\n<p>If I was ever famous (and I\u2019m running out of time), I\u2019d want to be Robyn Hitchcock famous. Well respected for my craft with ardent fans but still able to go to the grocery store. On this night at the 40 Watt, some 300 or so showed up, and while it doesn\u2019t seem like many, they were all full-in Robyn Hitchcock fans.<\/p>\n<p>He came out alone, guitar in hand, and opened with \u201cSurgery,\u201d a rare B side that first appeared in a 1985 video but wasn\u2019t released until 10 years later. Why? Because he\u2019s Robyn Hitchcock, and that\u2019s what he does.<\/p>\n<p>Soon enough Buck, McCaughey and Rieflin joined the fray, as the band played songs from the just released <em>Ol\u00e9! Tarantula<\/em>, as well as gems from the past including \u201cQueen Elvis,\u201d \u201cBalloon Man,\u201d \u201cMadonna Of The Wasps\u201d and \u201cI Often Dream Of Trains\u201d. Robyn told stories and bantered with the guys in the band, it wasn\u2019t a show as much as a gathering of 300 friends, enjoying the moment while playing songs now and then.<\/p>\n<p>He ended the night playing \u201cGive It To The Soft Boys,\u201d the first song on the first album with his first band The Soft Boys. An odd choice, sure, but who are we talking about?<\/p>\n<p>Which made it the perfect choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>March 2007, 40 Watt, Athens, Ga. I first came across Robyn Hitchcock in 1985 after hearing \u201cMy Wife &amp; My Dead Wife,\u201d still one of the weirdest songs I\u2019ve ever heard. I can\u2019t say I know what the song is about (above the obvious), but I was taken by how commonplace he makes the unordinary. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":881,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[45,128],"class_list":["post-880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-concerts","tag-40-watt","tag-robyn-hitchcock-and-the-venus-3"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=880"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":882,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880\/revisions\/882"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}