Robyn Hitchcock - Covers Revolver by the Beatles, Three Kings, Clerkenwell, London, Britain, 8-29-2011

From 2003 to 2011, Robyn Hitchcock performed a series of charity concerts that benefited the victims of the Iraq War. There was about one such concert a year, and they almost always involved Hitchcock covering an entire album, and were always held at the small Three Kings pub in London. Back in April 2023, I posted the first one he did, which consisted of covers of "naff" 1970s hits. It's time I post another one, so here you are.

This actually is the last of these concerts. I picked it mainly because I remember the sound quality was especially good for the series. I believe all the recordings are audience bootlegs, and some just sound okay. This one, though, was nearly soundboard quality. The one snag was that the lead vocals were often low in the mix, and the drums were too high in the mix. But that's the kind of thing I can fix with the audio editing program UVR5, so that's what I did for every single song here. I believe it sounds markedly better than before. Now, I think this could easily be mistaken for a true soundboard boot.

Hitchcock is a huge Beatles fan, and he's covered the Beatles albums "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," "The White Album," and "Abbey Road" in this concert series. This time, he did the 1966 Beatles album "Revolver." He played the songs in the exact same order as the album, starting from the first song. But that doesn't make for a very long concert, so when he finished with "Revolver," he played an additional bunch of covers. He did the Beatles songs "Rain," "Old Brown Shoe," and "I Want You (She's So Heavy)." 

But oddly, he did even more David Bowie songs: "Soul Love," "Golden Years, "TVC15," and "All the Young Dudes." (That last one was a big hit for Mott the Hoople, but it actually was written by Bowie, and he's done his own version of it.) Hitchcock is also a huge Bowie fan, and he'd done a Bowie themed concert in this series the year before, covering the "Hunky Dory" album. I figure he had many or most of the same musicians backing him in that show and this one, so it would have been easy for them to do the Bowie songs. (He did all four of those Bowie songs in the 2010 concert.)

Speaking of musicians backing him, I think a particularly interesting aspect of these concerts is that he really went out of his way to perform cover versions that were faithful to the originals. If one of the originals had an oboe in it, he'd get someone to play an oboe for that bit, and so on. He even knew the little bits of chatter or other "Easter eggs" the Beatles sometimes had in their songs, and he would reproduce those as well. But at the same time, Hitchcock is known for his stream-of-consciousness style banter between songs, and this concert had plenty of that as well.

Just one song here, "Rain," has "[Edit]" in the title. That's because it was the only song I had that wasn't complete, since it got abruptly cut off before the end. Luckily, the song had a false ending when it briefly came to a stop earlier in the song. So I was able to do some editing to repeat that ending at the end. Then I patched in some applause after that, taken from another song earlier in the concert. 

By the way, I believe this was the last concert in this series mainly because the Three Kings pub was closing down. Hitchcock lamented that a bit in some banter during this concert. Of course, he could have chosen another venue, but it seems he had a special arrangement with the pub to perform these benefit concerts there without any costs whatsoever. Plus, the military involvement of the U.S. and Britain in the Iraq War was winding down around this time, so that may have been a factor as well.

This album is an hour and 29 minutes long.

I'm curious how much people like this sort of thing. I could post other concerts in this series of covered albums, but I hesitate because the sound quality may be rougher for some or all of those. I might be able to improve the sound quality in some cases, but I don't know how much. So I'd only take those on if there's sufficient interest.

01 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 Taxman (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Eleanor Rigby (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 I'm Only Sleeping (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Love You To (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 Here, There and Everywhere (Robyn Hitchcock)
11 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
12 Yellow Submarine (Robyn Hitchcock)
13 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
14 She Said, She Said (Robyn Hitchcock)
15 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
16 Good Day Sunshine (Robyn Hitchcock)
17 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
18 And Your Bird Can Sing (Robyn Hitchcock)
19 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
20 For No One (Robyn Hitchcock)
21 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
22 Doctor Robert (Robyn Hitchcock)
23 I Want to Tell You (Robyn Hitchcock)
24 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
25 Got to Get You into My Life (Robyn Hitchcock)
26 Tomorrow Never Knows (Robyn Hitchcock)
27 Soul Love (Robyn Hitchcock)
28 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
29 Golden Years (Robyn Hitchcock)
30 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
31 TVC15 (Robyn Hitchcock)
32 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
33 Rain (Robyn Hitchcock)
34 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
35 Old Brown Shoe (Robyn Hitchcock)
36 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
37 I Want You [She's So Heavy] (Robyn Hitchcock)
38 talk (Robyn Hitchcock)
39 All the Young Dudes (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15824556/RobynH_2011_RvolvrThreeKingsClerkenwell__8-29-2011_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is a screenshot taken from a YouTube video of a song, "Eleanor Rigby," from this exact concert.