Robyn Hitchcock

Yesterday out of no where Chloe asked me if I wanted to go to a concert of a guy I had never heard of, Robyn Hitchcock. The concert was at City Winery a relatively pretentious and slick venue in the near west side. When we got there we discovered the concert was coupled with a wine pairing that was suppose to "enhance" and "deepen" the musical experience. Needless to say Chloe and I didn't purchase the wine pairing and we were uninterested in any explanations of the wine or their intended effect.

When Hitchcock took the stage it turned out local WXRT DJ and buffoon Norm Winer was going to sit on stage and interject Hitchcock's set with explanations of the wine and how they were suppose to "meld" with the songs.

Hitchcock is an old-school folk-rock musician who is quirky, kind of awkward, and surprising surrealist with his lyrics as well as between-song pater. His set was amazing and definitely had a peculiar but enjoyable energy, Chloe and I were the youngest people there who weren't accompanying their parents. My favorite songs from his set were "Harry's Song" and "Be Still" from his latest album.



Norm Winer being on stage was ludicrous. He is clearly incredibly self involved, he constantly interrupted Hitchcock to steer conversation towards himself and who he's met and went into long unnecessarily protracted explanations of the different wines.

I had no interest in wines even when I was drinking and now it seems almost idiocy to pretend that particular reds and whites would improve a concert experience above and beyond regular drinking. Maybe it would if you had a significantly refined pallet but I don't think most of the people there were wine experts.

Some of my favorite moments of the evening were when Hitchcock would speak off the cuff.

"So at this point you should be in a dream like state. You're in a garden with Norm. Norm is dressed in a wondrous white tuxedo. You see in front of you this flower with blue pedals, you get closer and you look inside and its cream colored, you should be wondering why is the outside blue and the inside cream, but you're not you like this cream color and you touch it and it feels like cream. You look around to tell Norm about the cream colored center of this blue flower. And he looks like he's right behind you but in fact he's far away talking to some hooded figure..."

Speaking about Paul McCartney never drinking any beverage onstage "He probably visited a shaman. In a cave off a cove somewhere. And he said to the shaman, 'give me a super power' and he did, he did."