The Oregonian
January 7, 1999
Robyn Hitchcock's Psycho-Delic, Witty World Of Music
by John Foyston
So there you are: mummified in duct tape (sorry, this being England, make that gaffer's tape), suspended eight feet above Leicester Square and causing a stampede because everybody, naturally, believes you are a themonuclear device about to explode.
As fans will guess, there could be few places in the world other than Robyn Hitchcock's imagination where such a scene might take place. Hitchcock is a cult favorite and not just for his witty Pop-infused Rock 'n' Roll -- slighty skewed songs that sound as if they were big hits just one parallel universe to the left. Fans love what's in between the songs, too -- his "verbals", the long, looping discourses that spring unfettered from his mind, delivered in a perfect, plummy Brit accent to leave us groundlings laughing and admiring.
Filmmaker Jonathan Demme is no mere groundling, but his new film, Storefront Hitchcock proves him an admirer. He knew that to correctly capture Hitchcock on film, a traditional Rock movie wouldn't cut it. Even his Stop Making Sense would've been too mainstream for Hitchcock's cultivated eccentricity, would've been tantamount to trying to catch the essential David Byrne with an updated Monkees movie.
The Portland premiere of Storefront Hitchcock is one of the first films of an excellent Reel Music series for 1999.
So Demme focused completely on Hitchcock, filming four solo shows played in an anonymous New York storefront, Hitchcock with just a couple of amps and guitars, his back to a wall of windows, and an audience we never see. Except for those windows, which are sometimes curtained, sometimes covered in a Mondrian-like gridwork of colored gels and sometimes uncovered, allowing bemused pedestrians to peer into the darkness and try to figure out what's happening.
It's a formula for preciousness, were Hitchcock not so fascinating and Demme not so unflinching and content with just a few camera angles, little movement and the occasional split-screen effect. As it is, Storefront Hitchcock is a must-see for fans and a fine introduction for the rest of us: Hitchcock and occasional collaborators violinist Deni Bonet and guitarist Tim Keegan play 15 songs, such as "Devil's Radio", "Let's Go Thundering", and "The Yip Song".
In between, Hitchcock's fancy brings us Minotaurs, the importance of being a carnivore, the "fact" that the Mercury astronauts were more than 7 feet tall and the triumph of the bland, illustrated by his story of the time he tried to convince a hotel clerk to turn off the Muzak, and was rebuffed because nobody could possibly object to background music.
And nobody could possibly mistake Hitchcock for background music in this compelling portrait of a true original.
Storefront Hitchcock
DIRECTOR: Jonathan Demme
RATED: Unrated. If you like things to make sense all the time, Robyn Hitchcock is not yer man.
RUNNING TIME: 81 minutes
FAMILY TIP: OK for teens -- more power to 'em if they become fans.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE