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On Friday night I went to TT the Bear's to see Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3. The pedigree of the band is pretty good and diverse; the Venus 3 includes three guys who between them have been in The Minus 5, Young Fresh Fellows, Tuatara, Ministry, and of course R.E.M. In fact, they're actually one half of what is R.E.M's touring band now. It's always great to see Peter Buck, who must be one of the Hardest Working Men in Rock and Roll, in a small club. This is the second time that I've had the pleasure of doing this in Boston, the other time being when I saw Tuatara, Wayward Shamans, and Minus 5 at the Paradise a few years back.
The show started off with just Robyn, and the other band members joined one by one over the next couple of songs. Peter was content to stand back out of the spotlight next to the drum kit, which made getting good pictures of him pretty difficult. He played an Epiphone semi-hollow 12-string for most of the set, while Scott McCaughey played the Rickenbacker bass on the opposite side of Robyn. Robyn was of course as entertaining and weird as ever. His stories and introductions were fun, as always. The band played a good mix of Robyn's older stuff and the new songs from Ole! Tarantula. I was very excited when I recognized Peter's opening riff to "Madonna of the Wasps," probably my favorite Hitchcock song (and that probably because of Peter's involvement on it.) Near the end of the set Peter picked up his trusty Rickenbacker and they turned things up a little. At that point they played one of my live favorites, "Brenda's Iron Sledge," which led into a great encore of covers. They ended up playing three covers in a row, all from Robyn's '60s idols. First, they did a ripping version of Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man," which rocked even if they still haven't quite figured out the bridge (I have a bootleg from a few months ago where you can hear someone - maybe Peter - exclaim at the end that it's "the only Dylan song with a fucking bridge"). Next, they went into the Beatles' "She Said, She Said," and then topped things off with Pink Floyd/Syd Barrett's "See Emily Play." We noticed at least two people in the audience wearing Syd t-shirts, so the crowd was certainly happy.
After the show, I skipped out without heading over to the merch stand, which I assume would have been manned by Robyn, Peter, Scott, and Bill (Reiflin, the drummer). I've met all except Bill before, so I don't feel too bad about it. I've been searching all over for a recording of the show, but even though the three or four shows before this one were bootlegged and distributed, this one hasn't shown up yet. I'll keep checking there for a little while.
My Flickr pictures of Robyn and Peter.
Finally, happy R.E.M. day. Tonight, 27 years ago, the band played their first gig at the old church in Athens, GA. Go ahead, pull out one of those old records and enjoy. I'll leave you with this performance of "So. Central Rain" on Letterman, their first TV performance. When they played this in 1983, it was still "too new to be named." Check out the shy, hiding Michael Stipe. You won't see that any more.
Jerad posted this in Live | Comments (0)
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