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Latest NewsUpdated 23 January 2007 More West Coast Dates Added In AprilIt's like telepathy! I post about the Seattle show being on sale and *BOOM!* Two days later, RobyhHitchcock.com announces several additional shows in April out West:
Updated 21 January 2007 April in SeattleWhile checking on ticket availability for the shows in March, I noticed a listing for a gig at Seattle's Crocodile Cafe on Friday, April 6th. Tickets are already on sale for that show. I've no idea if this is a one-off gig or if there will be additional dates on the West coast or the midwest. If anyone sees anything, please let me know. Robyn Hitchcock, Science Fiction AuthorTwo of Robyn's poems, "They Came From The Future" and "I Caught Intelligence", have been included in a most unexpected but perfectly sensible place: Fast Forward 1, a collection of science fiction short stories edited by Lou Anders and published by Pyr. The street date for the anthology is February 5th, but you might be able to find it earlier than that. It's also available for pre-order from Amazon and, undoubtedly, other online booksellers. Jambase InterviewDennis Cook interviewed Robyn for Jambase. The piece is a good read with Robyn touching on lyrics, melody, creatures and politics. Check it out. (Dennis was also responsible for Robyn's and Wayne Coyne's Syd tribute in Harp.) Updated 20 January 2007 Sex, Food, Death ... and Insects?Courtesy of a press release from the Sundance Channel, the documentary now has a title, Robyn Hitchcock: Sex, Food, Death ... and Insects, and a debut airing: Tuesday, March 27th at 10:00pm ET/PT. The hour-long film, directed by John Edginton, follows Robyn and the Venus 3 from West London, where they recorded their forthcoming album to Hoboken and Seattle, where live footage of the band was filmed at Maxwell's and The Crocodile Cafe last November. Of course, there is no mention of the seemingly-accidental airing of the documentary on Sundance back in December.... Updated 14 January 2007 Mark Lamarr SessionLate Friday night, Mark Lamarr aired a session with the Venus 3 on his Radio 2 Saturday Show. They played six tunes and chatted quite a bit about everything from trams to the Sonics. There was some news about the next Venus 3 album imparted as well: it is recorded and is more acoustic in nature than its predecessor. Guests this time around include John Paul Jones, Nick Lowe, Chris Ballew and Robyn's neice Ruby Wright, recently seen in the "Adventure Rocket Ship" video, on musical saw. No word about a release date though. For the next week, you can stream the show from the BBC's Listen Again RealAudio archive. There are three segments, each starting around 20 minutes into each hour of the program. Alternatively, download each segment in its original RealAudio format -- I'm reluctant to transcode to mp3 since the sound quality is rather iffy to beging with. Fortunately, thanks to Pike, a recording of the session off the radio is available on dimeadozen. If you're not BitTorrent-inclined, keep on eye on the various discussion groups for trades, vines or weeds The January TourThe Venus 3 continue to churn across the British Isles and, so far, there hasn't been another spontaneous R.E.M. gig. There is one more show in England -- Sheffield tonight -- and then it's off to Dublin, Belfast and Glasgow. Catch them if you can! Recordings of two shows have made it to dimeadozen so far: the Oxford gig with R.E.M. and Friday's show at the Fleece & Firkin in Bristol. Perhaps more shall appear? And, perhaps, I will get these uploaded to the Live Music Archive sometime reasonably soon as well. Finally, several people have shared photos of the gigs in various places: Jams O Donnell blogged about the Islington Academy show, Gordo73 has a great photo set on Flickr from same show, and Tulloch has shared his photos from Oxford on Flickr as well. If anyone else has posted photos somewhere, pelase let me know and I'll be happy to link them from here.
Then Things About Robyn HitchcockFinally, in preparation for the Islington show, Time Out published ten things about Robyn. Be amused! Updated 8 January 2007 Sound OpinionsRobyn and the Venus 3 will be the in-studio guest on the next episode of Sound Opinions. This program is co-hosted by Chicago-based rock critics Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot. While it originates from Chicago Public Radio, it is aired on many other public radio statiions across the United States and is available as a podcast. Presumably, this was pre-recorded back in November when the band passed through Chicago. Thanks to Julie for the tip! Upcoming Mark Lamarr SessionDuring his Radio 2 Saturday Show this past weekend, Mark Lamarr announced that Robyn and the Venus 3 would be in session during his next program this coming weekend, January 12th. The program airs at Friday night at Midnight BST (technically Saturday morning, I know). If you miss it live, the show will be archived for a week by the BBC for our stremaing pleasure. Thanks to Jammy for the tip! BBC Oxford Chimes In...BBC Oxford has posted a few pictures from last night's Venus 3 gig along with an interview clip with Robyn and the fellow who took the pictures. Updated 7 January 2007 Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus ... 5?Sunday night at The Zodiac in Oxford, before a half-full house, Robyn and the Venus 3 were joined by Michael Stipe and Mike Mills during the encore! They played "Electrolyte", "Arms Of Love", "I'm Gonna DJ" (a new R.E.M. song first debuted during their 2004 Around The Sun tour) and rousing rendition of "Listening To The Higsons". Mike Mills returned to the stage for the second encore which consisted of "Give It To The Soft Boys" and "Eight Miles High". Oh, and Thom Yorke was in the audience. Just thought everyone should know. Thanks to Dave and Tulloch for the news! Updated 6 January 2007 More March Madness!Additional dates for the March tour in the United States have been added to the Auditorium:
Robyn on Amazon Wirethe current episode of the Amazon Wire podcast features a performance by and interview with Robyn. It's available for stream or download now. The interview was done by fegmaniax Benjamin Lukoff who indicates that an extended version of the podcast should be available on amazon.com very shortly. Fender InterviewFender News has posted an interview with Robyn that they conducted over the holidays. Gearheads take note: as you might expect, the emphasis is on guitars, Telecasters specifically. Updated 1 January 2007 HAPPY NEW YEAR!The Second Syd TributeFollowing the second night at the Three Kings pub where Robyn and his Heavy Friends performed the entirety of Pink Floyd's The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn to raise money for Medecins Sans Frontieres, the following note was posted on his website:
Thanks to Matthijs, recordings of both nights have appeared on dimeadozen and I hope to have them uploaded to the Live Music Archive soon as well. If you are one of the people who downloaded those lovely recordings, please consider making a donation to MSF to help out! March In The Southeast!Robyn and the Venus 3 will be returning to North America and swinging through the southeastern part of the United States in March. Starting with SXSW, they'll blaze a trail across the South and then up the East coast to Philadelphia which was somewhat neglected during last November. Complete tour dates that we know about now are listed below and in the sidebar.
Sundance DocumentaryIt appears that the the documentary about the making of the next Venus 3 album, which Robyn referred to several times during the November tour, has been aired at least once on the Sundance Channel. In addition to footage filmed during the recording sessions, it includes footage from the two shows at Maxwell's last November as well. There are no details about this on the Sundance website so if anyone has any more solid information, please 'fess up! Updated 17 December 2006 The First Syd TributeLast night at The Three Kings pub in Clerkenwell, Robyn was joined by Morris Windsor, Terry Edwards and Paul Noble for the first of two Syd Barrett shows. Like the White Album Against The War gigs, proceeds from these two gigs will benefit Medecins San Frontieres. The setlist from the first night, a performance of Pink Floyd's first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (excluding the Roger Waters-penned "Take Up The Stethoscope and Walk") plus a few additional solo-Barrett tunes: Astronomy Domine / Lucifer Sam / Matilda Mother / Flaming / Pow R Toc H / See Emily Play / Interstellar Overdrive / The Gnome / Chapter 24 / The Scarecrow / Bike / Arnold Layne / Vegetable Man / Terrapin / Dominoes / Gigolo Aunt / See Emily Play Thanks to Matthijs, a recording of this show is already torrenting on dimeadozen! I hope to have it uploaded to the Live Music Archive soon as well. Jams O Donnell has posted a couple pictures from the evening on his blog. Tonight's gig will feature Kimberley Rew. Updated 8 December 2006 The Venus 3 on WFMU and the World CafeAs promised, here are the recent sessions on WFMU and The World Cafe. The former is sourced from WFMU's 128k mp3 stream archive and the latter from WXPN's 96k mp3 live stream. Both were captured with Zinf and are the streamed bits, not a re-encode (for those who care about such things). Enjoy! Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3, WFMU, December 4, 2006
Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3, The World Cafe, December 7, 2006 Updated 6 December 2006 Studio 360The interview recorded back in November for the PRI program Studio 360 was aired on December 1st. It's available for your streaming pleasure from that episode's webpage. Updated 3 December 2006 A Mixed BagAt the risk of sounding like a broken record...very busy...no time. But, some things happening this week that you might like to know about: Robyn and the Venus 3 recorded a session at WFMU a couple weeks when they were in the New York metro area. It will be broadcast on Monday, December 4th during Irene Trudel's program (my favorite three hours of radio -- no joking!) between and 6pm Eastern time (GMT-5 currently). If you're in the area, tune in at 91.1 FM or at 90.1 FM in the Hudson valley. For the rest of us, there are a multitude of streaming options. If you miss it, the program will be archived on Irene's program page for two weeks in 128k mp3 and until the end of time in glorious RealAudio. Robyn and the gang will also be David Dye's guest on The World Cafe on Thursday, December 7th. The program originates from WXPN in Philadelphia, where it airs at 2pm, and it is carried by many other public radio stations around the United States. The interview and performance will also be available for streaming from npr.org after it is broadcast. And a couple things from the past... The Venus 3's appearance on Conan O'Brien can be found on youtube. See Conan mispronounce the title of the album! See Men With Guitars! See Conan NOT tower over his musical guest! Robyn was interviewed by Jim McGuinn on Y-Rock on XPN on November 22nd (though it was probably pre-recorded). Thanks to Roberta for the notice about this and the fact that I didn't leave for Thanksgiving until the next morning, I was able to grab the 96kbps mp3 stream of the program. The interview includes some interesting talk of Syd Barrett, an a live solo acoustic performance of "Neitzche's Way" by Robyn: I excised the studio album tracks "Adventure Rock Ship" and "Balloon Man" as they are, of course, commercially available in much better quality. Finally, a special invitation-only performance by Robyn and the Venus 3 was broadcast on Seattle's KEXP on Sunday, November 26th at 4:30pm. The program is avaialble in KEXP's streaming archive for another week in everything from RealAudio to uncompressed CD-quality Windows Media. Updated 20 November 2006 Robyn and the Venus 3 on Conan O'Brien!I've been ridiculously busy the last few weeks and that has made keeping fegmania.org up-to-date problematic at times. All of them, in fact. Fortunately, there are other sources of news on the interweb such as the official site Yep Roc, and Universal Trend Setter who are not manned by slackers such as myself. ;) I hope to do a proper and complete update tonight but I wanted to make sure to note that Robyn and the Venus 3 will be on Late Night with Conan O'Brien on Tuesday, November 21st. This NBC program typically airs at 12:37am (late tuesday night, technically Wednesday morning) but check your local listings to make sure. Finally, I caught the show on Saturday at Maxwell's and it was quite excellent! If you made it to any shows on the current tour, please e-mail me your thoughts, reviews, setlists, whatever and I'll get them up on the site. |
Upcoming GigsUpdated 21 January 2007 US Tour with the Venus 3
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