The Soft Boys - The Astoria, London, Britain, 1-13-1994

I recently commented here that I hadn't posted enough (a.k.a. any) live albums from the Soft Boys, so here's concert from them. The Soft Boys, Robyn Hitchcock's first band, broke in 1981. But they've reunited occasionally since then. This was part of a very brief reunion in 1994 to help promote the release of a best of compilation called "1976-81."

This was officially released, so the sound quality is great. But I'm posting it because it's long out of print. In fact, it was only ever released on cassette in a limited way. I don't even think anyone makes new cassettes anymore.

Although Hitchcock went on to have success with a solo career between 1981 and the year of this concert, 1994, this was strictly a reunion concert, with all the original members. Only Soft Boys songs were played. It's really nice to have this, because there are so few Soft Boys recordings from their main time together with this level of sound quality.

This album is 54 minutes long. I suspect this is edited down, especially since there's almost no banter between songs.

01 Wey Wey Hep Uh Hole (Soft Boys)
02 The Face of Death (Soft Boys)
03 Queen of Eyes (Soft Boys)
04 The Pigworker (Soft Boys)
05 Underwater Moonlight (Soft Boys)
06 Old Pervert (Soft Boys)
07 Hear My Brane (Soft Boys)
08 Where Are the Prawns (Soft Boys)
09 Insanely Jealous (Soft Boys)
10 Kingdom of Love (Soft Boys)
11 talk (Soft Boys)
12 Give It to the Soft Boys (Soft Boys)
13 Only the Stones Remain (Soft Boys)
14 Zipper in My Spine (Soft Boys)
15 talk (Soft Boys)
16 I Wanna Destroy You (Soft Boys)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15274766/TSoftBys_1994_AstriaLondnBritain__1-13-1994_atse.zip.html

The original cover was a weird doodle by Hitchcock. But I found this nice image of a ticket from the exact concert here, so I decided to use that instead.

The Soft Boys - Dingwalls, London, Britain, 12-7-1980

I recently said that I haven't posted enough music from Robyn Hitchcock's first band, the Soft Boys. I posted a 1978 concert album then, and now here's one from 1980. There aren't many Soft Boys live recordings that sound excellent. This one hadn't, but I made some edits to make it a great listen.

This concert comes from near the tail end of the existence of the Soft Boys, not counting occasional later reunions. Crucially, it happened about six months after the release of the classic album "Underwater Moonlight," so it naturally has a bunch of songs from that. But it even has some songs that presumably would have been on the band's next album, had they stayed together long enough to make another album ("City of Shame," "I Watch the Cars," and "The Lizard," plus, arguably, "Black Snake Diamond Rock").

More and more, I'm realizing that a lot of recordings, especially bootlegs, have the problem of the lead vocals being too low in the mix. I can use the "one weird trick" of boosting the vocals to make everything sound a lot better . That's what I did here, using the audio editing program UVR5. This entire concert happened to have been filmed. The film has never been released, but you can find it on YouTube. Probably, that's why this recording sounds much better than virtually all other Soft Boys live bootlegs, which usually come from audience tapings.

Oh, and one other key factor is that, before I posted this, I passed it on to my music friend MZ. He did his usual thing, fixing the EQ and such, to make it sound that much better. Thanks again, MZ. 

One other problem this recording had was that there was a strange buzz at times. Oddly, it mostly happened between songs. I'm guessing maybe it was an electric guitar that was making a noise whenever it wasn't being played. I was able to use noise reduction to greatly reduce that, and MZ's fixes helped too. Note that, as usual, I only used noise reduction for the stuff between the songs, not the actual music. There's still some buzzing here and there, but it's not nearly as bad as before.

There was one other significant problem with this recording: the very tail end of the Pink Floyd cover song "Astronomy Domine" was missing, as well as maybe a minute and a half of the start of the next song, "Underwater Moonlight." So I used versions from another concert bootleg (Hope and Anchor, London, Britain, 3-28-1980), to patch in those missing parts.

This bootleg probably didn't get around much until now due to both the buzz problem and the low vocals problem. Now that those have been fixed, it can take its place as one of the best Soft Boys live recordings, either officially released or not.

The band was really rocking here, with barely any pause between songs. Note that they played the song "Only the Stones Remain" twice.

The concert is 53 minutes long.

01 City of Shame (Soft Boys)
02 Only the Stones Remain (Soft Boys)
03 Strange (Soft Boys)
04 I Wanna Destroy You (Soft Boys)
05 Queen of Eyes (Soft Boys)
05 talk (Soft Boys)
06 I Watch the Cars (Soft Boys)
07 Kingdom of Love (Soft Boys)
08 Leppo and the Jooves (Soft Boys)
09 The Lizard (Soft Boys)
10 Black Snake Diamond Rock (Soft Boys)
11 Insanely Jealous (Soft Boys)
12 Astronomy Domine [Edit] (Soft Boys)
13 Underwater Moonlight [Edit] (Soft Boys)
14 Only the Stones Remain (Soft Boys)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15222438/TSoftBys_1980c_DingwllsLondnBritain__12-7-1980_atse.zip.html

The cover photo is from the video of this exact concert. It's rather low-res and blurry, unfortunately. That's Robyn Hitchcock singing into the microphone and Kimberley Rew to the side.

The Soft Boys - The Portland Arms, Cambridge, Britain, 11-1-1978

I recently noticed that while I've posted a ton of Robyn Hitchcock solo music - over 70 albums as of May 2023, and more coming - I've posted relatively little from his first band, the Soft Boys. So I'm going to post a few more albums to try to rectify that.

This is a very odd concert, even for Hitchcock. Consider that 1977 was the year of punk rock, and while the Soft Boys weren't a punk band, they were a rocking band influenced by that late 1970s punk rock energy. So, to totally buck the trends of the time, not only was this concert acoustic in format, a good portion of the songs were done acappella style! And furthermore, even though the Soft Boys had plenty of good originals already, most of the songs were covers from the 1950s or earlier, often quite obscure ones. (The only originals are tracks 1, 3, 5, 8, 22, and 24.) In 1978, there wasn't exactly a clamor for songs like "The Deck of Cards" by T. Texas Tyler in 1948 or "That's When Your Heartaches Begin" by Shep Fields Rippling Rhythm in 1937. But that's one thing I like about Hitchcock, that he's so weird.

Most of this concert was officially released at one point, but in a limited way, for a limited time. It came out as "Live at the Portland Arms" in the 1980s on cassette and vinyl, but never on CD or any other format. And that record is long out of print. It also didn't include all the songs, but some extras came out on bootleg with the same high sound quality. Apparently, just one song is missing, the original "Wey Wey Hep Uh Hole," which was the second to last song. However, "Caroline Says" may also have been played.

I'm still puzzled how or why this concert came to be. This is the only Soft Boys concert I know of in the acoustic/ acappella format. According to the Hitchcock database askingtree.com, many of the songs here were only played one time ever by the Soft Boys or Hitchcock solo, such as "My Evaline," "Horns Large Horns," "Wish I Had My Baby," "White Shoe Blues," "In the Mood," and so on. Yet they must have practiced quite a bit to get the acappella harmonies right. Maybe it was all done with the intention of making that limited release live record. But for whatever reason, it's really nice that we have this.

Even though most of this was officially released, I still needed to do a lot of editing to make it sound better. The songs were fine, but the volume of the banter between songs was quite low. Furthermore, it was often obscured by crowd noise. I used the UVR5 audio editing program to add volume and clarity. And by the way, there's a lot of talking. It's interesting to see that even back at the beginning of his music career, Hitchcock had the exact same kind of stream of consciousness surreal banter that he'd been known for in later decades.

By the way, a couple of the songs are songs by other band members than Hitchcock, but I don't have the details on that. Also, there is a claim that the concert actually took place on January 13, 1979. But I haven't been able to confirm that, so I'm sticking with the dates from the official version for now.

This album is 56 minutes long.

01 Give It to the Soft Boys (Soft Boys)
02 talk (Soft Boys)
03 Sandra's Having Her Brain Out (Soft Boys)
04 talk (Soft Boys)
05 Give Me a Spanner, Ralph (Soft Boys)
06 My Evaline (Soft Boys)
07 talk (Soft Boys)
08 Human Music (Soft Boys)
09 talk (Soft Boys)
10 I Like Bananas [Because They Have No Bones] (Soft Boys)
11 talk (Soft Boys)
12 Horns Large Horns (Soft Boys)
13 talk (Soft Boys)
14 Book of Love (Soft Boys)
15 Wish I Had My Baby (Soft Boys)
16 talk (Soft Boys)
17 White Shoe Blues (Soft Boys)
18 In the Mood (Soft Boys)
19 talk (Soft Boys)
20 That's When Your Heartaches Begin (Soft Boys)
21 talk (Soft Boys)
22 Have a Heart, Betty [I'm Not Fireproof] (Soft Boys)
23 talk (Soft Boys)
24 The Duke of Squeeze (Soft Boys)
25 talk (Soft Boys)
26 All Shook Up (Soft Boys)
27 Postman's Knock (Soft Boys)
28 Deck of Cards (Soft Boys)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15215229/TSoftBys_1978_ThPortlndArmsCmbridgeBritain__11-1-1978_atse.zip.html

Good photos of the Soft Boys in concert are few and far between. I couldn't find any that didn't show them playing electric instruments, which doesn't fit this concert. So instead I went with a photo of the venue. The small size of the place helps show what an intimate performance it must have been.

Robyn Hitchcock - Eerie Green Storm Lantern - Non-Album Tracks (2002)

Here's the next in my seemingly endless series of Robyn Hitchcock's stray tracks albums. The man is prolific!

This album covers just 2002. That was the year that Hitchcock was part of a reunion of his original band, the Soft Boys. The Soft Boys put out a studio album of all new material, "Nextdoorland," and went on tour.

For most musicians, the reunion would have taken up all of their creative energy for the year. But Hitchcock was coming up with other songs, which he never put on any studio album. Three of the songs here, "Mr. Kennedy," "Sudden Town," and "My Mind Is Connected..." actually originate from the "Nextdoorland" reunion album. However, these are solo acoustic versions that are very different than the Soft Boys versions on that album.

The rest of the songs here are the usual grab bag of stray tracks Hitchcock puts out most every year. "Let Me Roll It" is unusual in that it's a cover of a Paul McCartney solo song for a tribute album, done with a full band. I believe all the others are originals. A majority of the songs are from bootleg, but the sound quality on all of those are excellent. Most of those come from in-person radio or TV appearances.

I'm ending this with three bonus tracks of sorts. In addition to a Soft Boys album in 2002, a Soft Boys EP was also released, called "Side Three." It has seven songs on it. Frankly, these have to be the leftovers from the album session, and some of them aren't that good. But I've chosen the three I really like and added them to the end.

01 Mr. Kennedy (Robyn Hitchcock with Grant Lee Phillips)
02 Ring Them Bones (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 Take This in Remembrance (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Eerie Green Storm Lantern (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 Four Lonely Lamps (Robyn Hitchcock & Grant Lee Phillips)
06 Let Me Roll It (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 Sudden Town (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Unprotected Love (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 My Mind Is Connected... (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 I Got You Babe (Robyn Hitchcock & Deni Bonet)
11 Narcissus (Soft Boys)
12 Comin' Through (Soft Boys)
13 The Disconnection of the Ruling Class (Soft Boys)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15122304/RobynH_2000-2002_EerieGreenSormLantern_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I decided to take a very literal approach. With an album titled "Eerie Green Storm Lantern," I want to see an actual eerie green storm lantern! ;) So the photo is the best I could come up with from a Google search.

Robyn Hitchcock - Acoustic Soft Boys Songs (1987-2016)

I still have a bazillion Robyn Hitchcock albums to post. But here's something a little different from the types of albums I've been posting so far. I've already posted one album of Hitchcock covering other artists, and I have a lot more of that coming. Here he is covering himself - meaning doing acoustic versions of songs from his days leading the Soft Boys.

The Soft Boys were definitely a rock and roll band. Hitchcock's solo career often bounces between rocking and acoustic albums, but he's been much more acoustic-based, especially with tons of solo acoustic concerts. Generally speaking, he hasn't drawn much on his Soft Boys material in those concerts. But from time to time he has pulled out an acoustic version of a Soft Boys song. This album has a very wide range, from 1987 to 2016. By scouring nearly his entire solo concert career, I've managed to find about an hour's worth of sounds in high sound quality that fit this theme.

If you like Hitchcock at all, you should check this out. In my opinion, the Soft Boys' "Underwater Moonight" is a definite five star album, and he does most of the songs from it, but giving them an acoustic twist. The other songs are reborn in their new arrangements too. As usual, I removed all the crowd noise I could, so it sounds like Hitchcock is playing your favorite Soft Boys songs on an acoustic guitar in your living room.

UPDATE: On December 16, 2021, I updated the mp3 download file. Previously, I'd only included "Rock N' Roll Toilet" as a bonus track because it had lively drums on it, which pushed the envelope of the theme here. But I used the audio editing program Spleeter to drastically reduce the loudness of the drums, making it fit in better. So I've included it in the regular song list. By the way, how can you not love a guy who writes a song with the title "Rock N' Roll Toilet?" ;)

01 Sandra's Having Her Brain Out (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 Strange (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 Old Pervert (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Tonight (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 Wey Wey Hep Uh Hole (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 Queen of Eyes [Solo Electric Version] (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 Kingdom of Love [Solo Electric Version] (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Insanely Jealous (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 I Got the Hots (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 Give It to the Soft Boys (Robyn Hitchcock)
11 Rock 'N' Roll Toilet [Edit] (Robyn Hitchcock)
12 Only the Stones Remain (Robyn Hitchcock)
13 I Wanna Destroy You (Robyn Hitchcock)
14 Give Me a Spanner, Ralph (Robyn Hitchcock)
15 Human Music (Robyn Hitchcock)
16 I Like Bananas [Because They Have No Bones] (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16697091/ROBYNHTCHCK1987-2016_AcusticSoftBysSngs_atse.zip.html

I made the cover using the Soft Boys crab logo plus some text.

The Soft Boys - Only the Stones Remain - Non-Album Tracks (1980)

Robyn Hitchcock has made a lot of great albums over the years, but I believe his 1980 album with the Soft Boys "Underwater Moonlight" is his very best. So it shouldn't come as a big surprise that an album of stray tracks from that same year is excellent too. In fact, I would argue that this album of stray tracks from 1980 is better than any other Soft Boys album but "Underwater Moonlight."

I've already posted albums of Soft Boys stray tracks from 1977 and 1978. I didn't post one from 1979 because the band released two albums that year, so they apparently didn't have a lot of songs left over. (I put two 1979 songs on the 1978 collection.) However, in 1980, the band had a creative explosion. A deluxe version of "Underwater Moonlight" has been released with a second disc of bonus tracks. Actually, there were a bunch of them I didn't like that much and didn't deem worthy of inclusion, such as "Bloat," "Wang Dang Pig," "Cherries," "Amputated," and more. But that's okay, because there were many others that were excellent.

In addition, there were other worthy outtakes. For instance, the song "He's a Reptile" was originally included as a bonus track to the 1979 Soft Boys album "Invisible Hits," but it was actually from early "Underwater Moonlight" sessions, so more recent releases have seen it moved from a bonus track on one album to the other. I also included all the studio songs on the 1981 album "Two Albums for the Price of One." I'll deal with the live songs from that album later. Those studio songs have also been included as bonus tracks on many versions of "Underwater Moonlight."

All in all, there's 46 minutes of really good music on this album. If you're at all a fan of the Soft Boys and/or Robyn Hitchcock, you need to listen to this.

Additionally, there were two songs that I considered borderline for inclusion: "Like a Real Smoothie" and a cover of the Roxy Music song "Over You." I think they're okay, but not up to the high standards of the other songs here, so I wouldn't want them on my version of the album. But other people might feel differently so I've added them as bonus tracks.

01 Only the Stones Remain (Soft Boys)
02 The Bells of Rhymney (Soft Boys)
03 There's Nobody like You (Soft Boys)
04 Innocent Boy (Soft Boys)
05 He's a Reptile (Soft Boys)
06 Vegetable Man (Soft Boys)
07 Strange (Soft Boys)
08 Song No. 4 (Soft Boys)
09 Dreams (Soft Boys)
10 Black Snake Diamond Rock (Soft Boys)
11 Alien (Soft Boys)
12 Goodbye Maurice or Steve [The 'D' Song] (Soft Boys)
13 Leave Me Alone (Soft Boys)

Like a Real Smoothie (Soft Boys)
Over You (Soft Boys)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16701086/TSOFTBYS1980b_OnlythStnesRmain_atse.zip.html

I named this album "Only the Stones Remain" because it's one of my favorite Soft Boys songs. When I thought about what the cover art should look like, I imagined a desolate field with large stones in it... and a giant crab rampaging through it! Logically, the crab doesn't fit, but I figured I should follow my creative muse, as Robyn Hitchcock always does. Besides, crabs and other crustaceans are a common theme in his work. So I found a photo of some stones and Photoshopped in a crab.

The Soft Boys - I Want to Be an Anglepoise Lamp - Non-Album Tracks (1978)

A couple of days ago, I posted the first of four albums of stray tracks by the Soft Boys, Robyn Hitchcock's band in the late 1970s until 1981. This is the second.

The first one mostly covered 1977, while this covers just 1978, with a couple of songs from 1979. There will be no 1979 stray tracks album, since the group released two albums that year.

The songs on this album are dominated by something known as the "Radar session." Those were recordings done for the Soft Boys' first album. (It's called that because their record company at the time was Radar.) Ultimately, the company decided against releasing an album, and only put out the "I Want to Be an Anglepoise Lamp" single instead. Some of the songs got released eventually, here and there, and some did not. There are other songs done for that session that I felt simply weren't up to snuff, so I didn't include them, not even as bonus tracks.

In addition, I included a few other songs. The Soft Boys did two important concerts that yesterday that were recorded with excellent sound quality, one at the Lady Mitchell Hall in Cambridge, Britain, and the other at the Portland Arms, also in Cambridge. If you like the Soft Boys, you should definitely track down both shows. The Portland Arms one is unusual in that the band not only plays acoustically, but mostly does songs acappella! Plus, most of the songs are covers of obscure tunes from decades earlier.

Anyway, I included a couple of originals from the Lady Mitchell Hall show that don't appear anywhere else, and one from the Portland Arms show. I also included two songs that are outtakes from a 1979 recording session, since there otherwise isn't any stray tracks from 1979.

01 [I Want to Be an] Anglepoise Lamp (Soft Boys)
02 Fatman's Son (Soft Boys)
03 Where Are the Prawns (Soft Boys)
04 Salamander (Soft Boys)
05 Give Me a Spanner, Ralph (Soft Boys)
06 Which of Us Is Me (Soft Boys)
07 Psychedelic Love (Soft Boys)
08 Mystery Train (Soft Boys)
09 Skool Dinner Blues (Soft Boys)
10 I Like Bananas [Because They Have No Bones] (Soft Boys)
11 A Most Peculiar Voice (Soft Boys)
12 The Duke of Squeeze (Soft Boys)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15853131/TSoftBys_1978_IWntBeAnglepoiseLmp_atse.zip.html

The cover is just the cover of the "Anglepoise Lamp" single. But I didn't like the mostly gray background color, so I changed it to blue.

The Soft Boys - Give It to the Soft Boys - Non-Album Tracks (1976-1977)

Robyn Hitchcock is a very prolific songwriter, and he's probably recorded or played in concert almost as many songs as the ones that got on his official albums. I've already posted a couple of recent things from him, but now I want to go back to the start of his career and begin systematically collecting all of his quality stray tracks.

That means going back to the Soft Boys, the band he led from 1976 to 1981. The way I look at it, the Soft Boys had three official albums (not counting their 2002 reunion album): "A Can of Bees," "Invisible Hits," and "Underwater Moonlight." It's confusing, because "Invisible Hits" sounds like some sort of greatest hits collection, when it's just another studio album. "Underwater Moonlight" is the best album of Hitchcock's long career, in my opinion, as well as one of the greatest albums of all time. If you haven't heard it yet, give it a listen!

Anyway, the Soft Boys were an obscure band at the time, out of step with the New Wave music trends at the time, because they were obviously heavily influenced by 1960s music, which was seen as uncool. Thus, they had trouble with record companies, with cancelled singles and failed album sessions, and such, due to them not sounding commercial enough. As a result, a lot of their songs didn't get released at the time, though most of his has come out on archival releases in piecemeal fashion in the years since. There are so many stray tracks that I've made no less than four albums for them.

Here's the first one. It covers their early days, with the first song from 1976 and the rest from 1977. In their first full year of 1977, all they officially released was a three song EP (though three songs were added to it when it was later rereleased with a new name).

Their first official album wouldn't come out until "A Can of Bees" in early 1979. But this is effectively their first album, since it's 38 minutes of good material. There were a couple of songs from bootlegs that I left out, because I felt they weren't up to snuff.

01 The Unpleasant Stain (Soft Boys)
02 Wey Wey Hep Uh Hole [First Version] (Soft Boys)
03 Its Not Just the Size of a Walnut (Soft Boys)
04 Ugly Nora (Soft Boys)
05 Look into Your Mirror (Soft Boys)
06 Rock and Roll Radio Queen (Soft Boys)
07 Wading through a Ventilator (Soft Boys)
08 The Face of Death (Soft Boys)
09 Hear My Brane (Soft Boys)
10 The Yodelling Hoover (Soft Boys)
11 Give It to the Soft Boys (Soft Boys)
12 Vyrna Knowl Is a Headbanger (Soft Boys)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16404260/TSOFTBYS1977GveItthSftBoys_atse.zip.html

I chose the album title "Give It to the Soft Boys," because that was the title of their one official release from 1977. But I didn't like the cover for that. I used a painting by Hitchcock that later got used for the cover art for the Soft Boys retrospective "1976 - 1981." I like Hitchcock's artwork a lot, as it has the exact same surrealistic style as most of his music, so I'm going to use his art for his stray track album covers as much as I can.