Category Archives: Live Shows

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Addressing the crowd for the first time in the evening, Robyn Hitchcock announced that he would be playing “all old songs, or songs that sound like they are old.” Playing to a mostly older crowd, with a band (the Venus 3) made up of veteran musicians, including Peter Buck (REM), Scott McCaughey (The Young Fresh Fellows, The Minus 5) and Bill Rieflin (formerly of Ministry), it would have been easy for the show to slip into nostalgia, like one of those Vegas-and-State-Fair acts composed of one surviving member of a Motown band, plus others. Perhaps partly because Hitchcock’s music can’t be pegged to any one time period—it’s equal parts ’60s British Invasion psychedelia, ’80s new wave and a guitar-driven surrealism that sounds timeless—nothing about the show seemed dated. Instead, the show was vibrant, energetic and satisfying, though it could have been longer and I wouldn’t have complained.
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On the way to see REM, I was apprehensive. Not because I wasn’t excited. I hadn’t seen REM live since the Monster tour in 1995. No, mostly it was election-year burnout. I was steeling myself for the inevitable political rant, at a point when I had pretty much sworn off all political discussions with anyone from either side. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have worried. Although the show was plenty political, there was only a single rant, short and sweet, buried late in the show’s encore. And REM’s saving grace has always been (for me, anyway) that their songs are mostly obscure and elliptic enough to ingratiate without beating fans over the head with an overt message.
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