Request Line
August 16, 1996
Request Line Chat
Welcome to Request Line's chat with Robyn Hitchcock. We're all here and ready to roll!
[Editor's note: This chat has wrapped up. We're sorry you missed a chance to ask a question or make a comment. Please stay tuned for future live events at Request Line. --Friday, August 16, 1996, 16:00:00 CST]
Cookie writes: Hi Robyn! My questions are: Will you be touring with any musical accompaniment on your fall tour with Billy Bragg?
Well I'm gonna be playing the guitar, that's for sure. I'm not gonna sit there for an hour and a half singing unaccompanied! I may have somebody playing the violin with me: Deni, who played on the album. But I won't be taking a band.
Cookie writes: Are you a vegetarian?
Yeah, I don't eat meat. Or chicken. Which, for some reason, y'all think of as not a form of meat. But no. I do eat sea creatures. I shouldn't really, actually. I should stop that. But I still enjoy the occasional prawn.
Cookie writes: "Autumn Is Your Last Chance" is the only song that can get me to cry!
Really? You should try listening to the Plastic Ono Band record.
John Jones writes: I have heard you play the song "Swirling" at many soundchecks -- both with and without The Egyptians -- but it's been since the Eye tour in 1990 that I've heard you play it live. Is there a reason for this?
Wow. That's a very good question. I don't know. Maybe it's just not a good song to perform. You know, in the early Soft Boys days we had some of these pieces of music that were quite intriguing (like "Return of the Sacred Crab", or "Skool Dinner Blues"), but we couldn't really do them live because it was a nightmare. You couldn't sing and play them at the same time.
E-------- M------ writes: As a student of paleontology from Cincinatti, I really enjoyed Moss Elixer and Mossy Liquor. I consider "Bones In The Ground" my theme song. What brand of cigarettes do you smoke? And is the black cat yours?
The black cat belongs to my girlfriend Michele and myself (as much as one creature can own another). She's called "Figgy", and she's four years old. And when I'm in The States, I smoke Camel Lights. When I'm in Britain I smoke Golden Virginian. What you haven't asked is whether I'd like to be buried or cremated.
E-------- M----- writes: Can you settle a bet? Is that you singing "Sweet Ghost Of Light"?
Yes.
Bobby K. writes: Is A&M going to reissue Queen Elvis?
I don't know. It's up to them. Don't know what they're going to do.
Spelunker writes: So which is it? Cremation or burial?
Is it more gruesome to think of yourself rotting away down there? You can look at your body and think that, "Okay, my lips will shrivel and be drawn back in a horrible bloodless grin, and my teeth will poke out, and my nose will..." Just hold your nose and feel how that gristle's going to disappear. And your guts rot, but your hair will be rotting away. It's funny how much more disturbing a decomposing human is than a decomposing fruit. When animals rot down, there's something, kind of, nasty about it. Fruit just goes. And then put your hand down on your fingers and imagine: "Do I want all this burning up in a funeral parlor?" You know, "Jets of gas spurting through my skin, and my fingers all, sort of, crackling like cooked meat. I go up like one final dinner that no one will ever eat. 'Shucks, they overcooked Paul.'"
YouKnowWho writes: Have you toured with Billy Bragg before? Are you guys chums?
I opened for Billy Bragg with The Egyptians in England in 1991. We did a, sort of, two week tour of Britain. Otherwise I've played with him at various things. But this is actually a co-headliner. He may go on last, but it's a joint thing.
Penny writes: Have you ever tried to substitute "chips" or "crisps" for "fries" in an American Restaurant?
You mean the word "chips", or the thing? "Chips" are fries. "Crisps" are potato chips. Do you mean have I put potato chips in a meal instead of fries? Have I said the wrong thing? No, because I tend to avoid ordering them anyhow.
BigBeef writes: What's the best book you've read in the past 10 years?
Hmm. Wow. Ah, best book I've read. Hmm. Oh god...I can't remember. I enjoyed them very much at the time. But I can't remember much about them afterwards. There was an interesting one called The Ogre, by Michel Tournier. It's about the extra one that comes to adore Jesus but gets there too late. That's a very striking book.
Pink Pram writes: I read a good book once, maybe twice. But a good CD I'll listen to thousands of times. Why is that?
Books rely on the fact that at the beginning you don't know how things are going to turn out at the end. Whereas with a CD (or a piece of music, actually), being familiar with it helps. But a story is meant to unfold. And therefore, once it's unfolded the question is, do you want to read this again?
Marc W. writes: Is there any chance of a Soft Boys reunion tour or record?
I think it's unlikely. It's just difficult to get everybody in the same place. Although I think we may get together by chance somewhere, if we felt like it. We've had several quasi-reunions. We did a, sort of, tour in Britain. But we couldn't get ahold of Kimberley. I don't think we could actually do a proper tour. I don't think we could organize it. Also, the problem is, if we actually got all together and played...well, the songs I write now are very different than the ones I wrote 20 years ago. I don't think it would sound like The Soft Boys. I'm not sure what, say, Television sounds like now (or The Beatles, or The Velvets). On the whole, those things are better in concept than in reality. I think the best Soft Boys reunion would be if we didn't get together.
Trout Lilly writes: Do you get tired of being called "eccentric" and "weird" by the press? Do you feel they're just not getting it the way the rest of us do?
The trouble is, you have to be defined some way. They can say you are eccentric, or they can say you are a carrot, or a thermometer. Everything has to be defined in some way. Otherwise they'd just say, "He's a songwriter." "Well great, that's really interesting. On to the next songwriter." They could say I was brilliant if they wanted to. People are often stuck or hung up on certain aspects of what I do -- often to the exclusion of others. And I suppose that is a bit irritating. You know, I'm a songwriter. The same as Lionel Ritchie, or Sting, or Captain Beefheart. We're all songwriters. We just emphasize different things in our songs. I deliberately wanted to avoid cliches in songwriters. So by writing songs about prawns and salamanders and crabs and insects, I was doing something that other people hadn't done before. The trouble with that was that it became a cliche itself. So I got fed up with that kind of thing, and steered away from it. But in so doing, a lot of people couldn't identify me anymore.
Gene H.writes: What color is the chord "D"? Do you think Don Van Vliet's paintings are as expressive as his music?
That's Captain Beefheart. I prefer Beefheart's music to his paintings. But I know that he's devoted more time in the last 15 years to painting than anything else. I'm not crazy about the way he paints. It's a bit fast for me, really. And probably a bit expressionist. I prefer stuff that's a bit more academic, formal. The color of "D"? Well..."A" is red, "E" is yellow, "C" is green, "G" is a, kind of, sausage-skin gray. D-minor is a, sort of, dark metallic blue, and D-major is...I'm not sure D-major has got any kind of color at all. It's got a, kind of, feeling. A poignant feeling. But I don't think it has a color for me.
Hans writes: Why did you decide to do the CD and the vinyl diffently on your new record(s)?
Well, the A+R man (Geoffrey Weiss) and myself decided to do it as vinyl. But it was clear that there were enough songs to do that. So it wasn't a deal like, "Hey, there's a vinyl with slightly different tracks," which is a real rip-off. The vinyl was basically the B-sides, the songs that didn't quite make it. I thought that the songs weren't as strong as the ones on the CD (or the recording wasn't as good, or the arrangement wasn't as developed). For instance, I think I recorded "DeChirico Street" four times. And I think there are two versions of it out. The idea behind the vinyl is that you have to be quite a hard-core fan to want to buy it. You either really love it or you don't get it at all. I myself don't have a record deck, and I haven't for quite a few years. So I won't be able to listen to it, myself.
Hans writes: What about the whole digital-versus-analog controversy? Do you believe CD sound-quality lacks "warmth" (and all that)?
As for analog versus digital, I really don't know. But I do miss LP covers. You could see the sleeve notes in those days. And also, when you made a record and came back home, you really felt like you'd done something. Now you get the tiny little jewel box and the tiny little shruken down photographs, and it just doesn't have the same feeling of achievement. But I don't know how that's going to be kept going, because although vinyl is, sort of, kept going, sort of, like old steam trains are (for amusement, in Britain), I can't see vinyl ever reclaiming its place. I can imagine that it may go on for another 20 years. But also I can see that they may just decide to stop making record players anymore. For the last five years I've fantasized about putting out a vinly-only album, though. And it seems like that's what I've done.
Amy writes: Many of your songs deal with the subject of death. Do you believe in an afterlife?
I believe in an afterlife, but I'm not sure how much of us is left to be in it (if you see what I mean). I mean, I think there might be such a thing as reincarnation. But, kind of, a fragmentary kind of thing, where little bits of our souls are shot into life. Like shrapnel. Like those documented cases of people having bits of shrapnel embedded in their skulls, and getting radio reception in their heads. Like that, perhaps.
Hans writes: Well, that's about all the time we have, Robyn. Thanks a lot for joining us. It was a real pleasure. Thanks, everyone for stopping in.
Thanks a lot. Bye now.
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