[bigred]Storefront Hitchcock[/bigred]
[lilred]June 26, 2007[/lilred]



Product Description
Hitchcock's public profile received a substantial boost in 1998, when noted filmmaker and longtime fan Jonathan Demme paid tribute to the veteran artist with the feature-length performance film 'Storefront Hitchcock'.

1. Untitled
2. 1974
3. Untitled
4. Let's Go Thundering
5. Untitled
6. I'm Only You
7. Glass Hotel
8. Untitled
9. I Something You
10. Untitled
11. The Yip! Song
12. Untitled
13. Freeze
14. Untitled
15. Alright, Yeah
16. Where Do You Go When You Die?
17. The Wind Cries Mary
18. No, I Don't Remember Guilford
19. Untitled
20. Beautiful Queen
21. Bonus Track 1

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000QUU2TS/?tag=imwan-20

---

[bigred]Jewels For Sophia[/bigred]
[lilred]July 17, 2007[/lilred]



Amazon.com
In making his first "rock" record since 1993's Respect, Robyn Hitchcock recorded Jewels for Sophia using several different combinations of producers, locations, and collaborators, including members of the Young Fresh Fellows, Grant Lee Buffalo, R.E.M., and the Soft Boys. Not surprisingly, the record is an intentionally eclectic spectacle, spanning the breadth of Hitchcock's ever-expanding, strange universe. He has covered a lot of territory in the 23 years since founding the Soft Boys and much of it is recalled here, from the scalding rock & roll of the Kimberly Rew collaboration "NASA Clapping" to the blistering guitar gymnastics of "The Cheese Alarm" and the beautiful psychedelic folk of "No, I Don't Remember Guilford," all of which are colored by Hitchcock's long-running themes of the absurdity of the human condition and our (often futile and surreal) attempts to make sense of it all. In spite this tumult, however, Jewels is primarily a collection of love songs. In "I Feel Beautiful," recorded with Grant Lee Phillips, it is the wonder of love that fills life's emptiness: "People never celebrate the things they've got / Honey, without you I wouldn't have a lot." Similarly, "Dark Princess" asserts love's salvation in an otherwise hollow existence, while the protagonist of "Antwoman" offers himself up to bloody sacrifice chanting his mantra of love's validation: "Being just contaminates the void." As always, Hitchcock's world view is as weird as it is wondrous, spanning the gap between all that is beautiful and horrible about life. --Paul Ducey

1. Mexican God
2. The Cheese Alarm
3. Viva! Sea-Tac
4. I Feel Beautiful
5. You've Got A Sweet Mouth On You, Baby
6. Nasa Clapping
7. Sally Was A Legend
8. Antwoman
9. Elizabeth Jade
10. No, I Don't Remember Guildford
11. Dark Princess
12. Jewels For Sophia (+Hidden Track)

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000QUU2U2/?tag=imwan-20

These reissues are pretty much just straight reissues. One bonus track on each is maybe worse than doing nothing at all, since it is implying that people who already have it might want to buy it again -- but for one song, it is not worth it.

Jewels For Sophia is one of his best albums, and no one should hesitate getting it. However, if I was reissuing it myself, I'd have made it a 2-disc set with Jewels For Sophia + A Star For Bram (since the latter album was outtakes from Jewels). Maybe expanded with whatever else may have been left around.

Storefront Hitchcock is also a lost opportunity. There was a vinyl record release with a different configuration (some different songs, some different versions, some different spoken word interludes), that they could have released on CD this time instead, to shake things up, and to ensure that everyone who already had the first CD would want to get the second edition on CD as well. Then again, maybe people wouldn't bother -- Storefront was a bit of a misfire. Demme wanted to make a film, and he did, but Robyn was not yet out of his "slump". Bad timing.

No reason to re-buy these. Another pointless re release.

But DO Seach out a copy of the Vinyl of Storefront instead. Some exclusive tracks and even different raps between most of the songs.