Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Robyn Hitchcock at Colectivo's Back Room in Milwaukee on June 18, 2017




This was a very pleasant surprise. After seeing several shows at what used to be the main roasting site for Alterra Coffee (remember them?) where the audience chatter had been louder than the performers, I was expecting the very worst at this show.

Maybe it was the arrangements of the seating, maybe it was the older average age of the concertgoers  -- in any event what transpired was a lovely concert in a lovely space with a polite, attentive crowd.





Robyn Hitchcock needs no introduction from anyone and won't get one here. He's a legend who has survived the late 1970s and early 1980s and continues to produce compelling albums up to the present day. Unlike many of his peers, he does not dwell on presenting "The Best of My Back Catalog" concerts but rather performs mostly new material with some amazing cover songs thrown in for good measure.

My recording was accomplished with a pair of my trusted and tiny Church Audio CA14 cardioid microphones (individually hand made by Chris Church in Canada) fed into a Church Audio model 9200 preamplifier. My position, about 6 feet in front of one of the speaker stacks, made for a recording heavy on the music and light on the room acoustics.



Robyn Hitchcock: Guitar, vocals, and anecdotes

Tracklist:
01 I Pray When I'm Drunk
02 Banter - "Totally Not the Shank Hall"
03 Saturday Groovers
04 Banter - "Fractured Democracy"
05 Fifty-two Stations
06 Banter - "Dreamy State"
07 September Cones
08 I Want to Tell You About What I Want
09 Lost Madonna of the Wasps
10 Beautiful Girl
11 Banter - "Goldfish in the Water Bottle"
12 Strawberry Dress
13 Banter - "We've Reached the Harmonica Part"
14 Serpent at the Gates of Wisdom
15 Virginia Woolf
16 Airspace
17 I'm Only You
18 Mad Shelley's Letterbox
--------------
19 Encore - Olé Tarantula
20 Encore - The Ghost in You
21 Encore - She Belongs to Me
22 Encore - The Queen of Eyes


Software including Audacity and xAct were also very helpful in bringing out a full-bodied sound.

FLAC, mp3, ogg and other interesting file formats can be found at the Live Music Archive hosted by the Internet Archive at www.archive.org. Individual songs can be streamed (at lower bit rate mp3 resolution) as well.

Check it all out here:




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