Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift - Home Concert, Nashville, TN, 5-29-2020 - The Element of Light Album

This album needs a fair amount of explanation. First off, Robyn Hitchcock has been extremely busy when it comes to home concerts during the coronavirus pandemic lockdown. Together with his romantic and musical partner Emma Swift, he's recorded a whole series of concerts of nearly an hour each. In fact, by my count, this is the twentieth such concert he's done since the middle of March 2020! That overstates things a bit because he's tended to do concerts in pairs with nearly identical set lists for both, one for the European audience and the other for the American audience, but still, he (and Emma) have been very busy indeed.

If you've been paying any attention to this blog, you know I'm a very big Hitchcock fan. I may well have posted more albums by him than anyone else. I would love to post many of these recent home concerts, but I haven't. The reason is that he's required people to pay to view the videos of these home concerts. Here's the link, to StageIt, if you want to join up, because they definitely are still happening on a frequent basis:

https://www.stageit.com/site/landing

Anyway, Hitchcock has stated that he doesn't care if people share the music after the initial airing of each concert. That said, I don't want to rush into posting them because if they got around widely on YouTube and such, it probably would lower his revenue, and it's not easy for musicians to make a living during the pandemic. I do want to post more of them, but I think it's prudent to wait a white first.

However, although I'm not posting those home concerts in general, this one concert is an exception. The reason is that when it aired, there was some kind of technical glitch that resulted in many small gaps of silence in the songs. I took up the task of fixing them. As a result, the folks at Fegmaniax agreed I could share this one at my blog as well, so here we are.

Now, as for those gaps, I believe I've gotten rid of all of them. Luckily, most of them resulted in no loss of music, so if I just cut out the gap of silence in a sound editing program, the problem was solved. But occasionally, the gaps represented an actual loss of music. In those cases, I would have been screwed. However, I was extremely fortunate in that Hitchcock played the exact same songs in the same way two days earlier. (Remember I mentioned above that he's essentially been doing each of his home concerts twice, one for Europe and one for America.) That earlier show was even more messed up with the gap problem. But it never happened that the gaps occurred in the exact same spots. So I was able to copy and paste in the missing music from those versions of songs. I might have missed a gap here or there, so if you notice any, please let me know and I'll fix it.

Phew! That was complicated to explain. But now let me get to the actual music. Many of Hitchcock's 2020 home concerts have had themes. For instance, he's done entire concerts of songs by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, and Syd Barrett, respectively. This particular concert is a performance of his entire 1986 album "Element of Light." But while that album was done with a band, this just features Hitchcock on vocals and acoustic guitar, and Emma Swift on harmony vocals. Furthermore, there's the usual entertaining banter between songs, made even more entertaining by Swift frequently chiming in as well. (For some reason, the gap problem almost never happened during the between song banter, except for the 23rd track, where I had to edit out a few comments because of it. I couldn't use the other concert as back-up, since the banter was always different.)

I'm puzzled as to why, but these home concerts through StageIt have a fixed length, which I think is 50 minutes. As soon as that time limit is reached, the recording ends, even if Hitchcock is in mid-song or mid-sentence. Due to this, he didn't play any extra songs, except for "The Ghost Ship," which was an "Element of Light" outtake. The other songs are all the exact songs from the album, played in the original order. There also isn't that much banter, relatively speaking, so all of the album could be played. They managed to squeeze it all in, although it was a close call.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy. And if you want more of this sort of thing right away, please sign up at the StageIt link. Otherwise, I plan on posting more of his home concerts here eventually, but who knows how long it'll be before I feel it's okay to do that.

01 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
02 The Ghost Ship (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
03 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
04 If You Were a Priest (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
05 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
06 Winchester (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
07 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
08 Somewhere Apart (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
09 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
10 Ted, Woody and Junior (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
11 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
12 The President (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
13 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
14 Raymond Chandler Evening (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
15 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
16 Bass (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
17 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
18 Airscape (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
19 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
20 Never Stop Bleeding (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
21 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
22 Lady Waters and the Hooded One (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)
23 talk (Robyn Hitchcock & Emma Swift)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15292563/RobynH_2020_HomeConcrtNshvilleTN__5-29-2020_atse.zip.html

Hitchcock has generally been posting photos for each of his home concerts a few days in advance, in order to help promote them. This is the promo photo for this particular concert. Note the "Element of Light" album on the sofa behind him.