ARTS
The Michigan Daily Thursday, March 27, 1986 Page 7

Hitchcock sets

to bring on the bizarre

Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians will be making a return appearance
at the Blind Pig tonight.
Old story gets
modern twist

By Julie Jurrjens'
I N THIS great age of self-serious
Ipopmediocrity, of warbling
Madonnas and whining Morriseys, it1
sure is refreshing to have somebody
like Robyn Hitchcock around. With
his flawless catalogue of songs, and
endearingly bent sense of humor
(generously sampled on his latest of-1
fering, the live EP (Gotta Let This
Hen Out), the UK's Hitchcock comes
across on record as an imagination so?
apparently fertile and set apart, it's
kind of disquieting to have to view in'
comparison with other pop acts.
On record, Hitchcock uses eccen-
tricity as a medium for some
genuinely witty observations and
commentary in his songs. Contrary to
popular suspicion, though,
"everyday" Robyn's quite different'
from the Robyn you've seen (this past
Fall) or will see (tonight) onstage at
the Blind Pig, earnestly delivering'
hilariously bizarre deadpanned
monologues which supposedly ex-
plicate the songs. Rather, the Robyn I
spoke to was a near-bewilderingly
nice guy, perfectly normal - not all'
the image of the Man with the Light-
bulb Head - except with some pretty
wide-ranging creative plans for both
himself and his band, the Egyptians.
Records
Alex Chilton-Alex
Chilton's Lost Decade
(New Rose)
Lost Decade compiles some of cult
hero Alex Chilton's most obscure solo
releases and production projects,
spanning the years 1969-1977. In the
sense that the record makes some of
these impossible-to-find recordings
readily available, its existence is
justified. But its format is downright
bizarre - including two sides of
Chilton's solo recordings and two
sides of other artists' recordings
with Chilton producing - and the
quality of material and musicianship
fluctuates as well.
Lost Decade's side one includes the
minimalist surfabilly classic
"Bangkok," and that 45's flipside, a
raunch-drenched cover of the Seeds'
"Can't Seem to Make You Mine" -
both of which no Chilton (or Cramps
or Panther Burns) fan should be
without. Yet on the same side, the
record dips down to include the in-
spired but musically shoddy
"Walking Dead," as well as an alter-
nate version of "Take Me Home And
Make Me Like It," which appeared on
See RECORDS, Page 8

Hitchcock's current musical evolution
seems to be proceeding in the direc-
tion of his 1984 solo acoustic LP, I Of-
ten Dream of Trains, rather than that
of last year's rocking Egyptian ex-
travaganza, Fegmania! (by the way,
one '85s best LP's).
"I do want to experiment with
trying to combine both (the band and
myself solo)...and I hope to try and
produce a kind of modern folk album,
incorporating the band and...acoustic
instruments, and traditional-style
melodies, for some recent material
I've written. Provisionally, the album
will be called The Hooded One but I
don't know when it's coming out
because we haven't got it recorded
yet...."
"I have a lot of material waiting to
be recorded (but) don't know when
we'd record it. And plus I've got a lot
of old stuff waiting to come out. The
back catalogue (none of which has
been released domestically) is
coming out in the States on Living
Cream records, which is our own
label. We've got an LP of out-takes of
mine, called Invisible Hitchcock, wh-
ich has got a lot of old songs that no-
one's ever heard on it. There's so
much back-catalogue and so much
bureaucracy that I don't know when
we'll actually make a new record"
But with all this vinyl out, and with
IWEEKEND
IMAGAZINE
Fridays in The Daily
763-0379

his fame verging dangerously outside
of the realm of cultishness, Hitchcock
maintains he'll not overdo it... Does
he ever consider temporary
retirement, as he did before I Often
Dream of Trains?
"Yes! Yes, frequently. I probably
will. The only thing is, once you do
that, you never know when you're
going to reemerge! I don't want to get
to a point where...I routinely disap-
pear...I don't want to do the same kind
of thing over and over. I don't want to
tour nine months out of the year, so it
gets to the point that it's like Lou
Reed, who's played all his songs so
many times he's drained all the life
out of them...that's no good."
To combat creative lethargy, Hit-
chcock gives his other talents full
rein, producing most of his own album


art, short films, and now, literature.
Like one of his touchstones, John Len-
non, Robyn is writing a book -
although with a Hitchcock-ian bent.
"(It's) about tree ghouls which kid-
nap a professor...and wrap him up in
a carpet and take him off in a milk
float. Sort of a novel, which a friend
and I are writing. But it would have a
lot of illustrations to go with it...parts
of it are complete already."
Tonight's performance should
be spectacular. Rumor has it
ithey're even altering the Pig ("Last
time it was rather soft in there,"
Robyn remarked cryptically) for the
occasion.
Miss it not! Local talents It's
Raining will be the opening act.
Tickets are $10 in advance at
Schoolkids', and $12 at the door.

By Peter Batacan
T HE ENSEMBLE Theatre
Company will bring
Aristophanes' comedy Lysistrata to
the stage in a modern interpretation.
Director Philip Kerr says that the
company will be using John Lewin 's
"free adaptation" of the play in what
he describes as "sort of a roller
coaster ride."
Written in 412 B.C., less than a year
after the Athenians were routed in the ill-
fated Sicilian Expedition of the
Peloponnesian War, Lysistrata is a
ribald comedy which raises serious
questions about Empire, heroism, and
sexuality. The nominal heroine of the
play, Lysistrata organizes all of the;
women of the Greek city-states into a,
boycott of sex, witholding favor until
the men agree to cease waging war.
The play's ostensibly bawdy solution,
chastens the male heroic system,,
bringing the Athenian war machine to
an unceremonious halt.

The Ensemble will modernize the
comedy by staging it in a contem-
porary urban neighborhood. Director
Philip Kerr explains that in doing so,
the company has been careful "not to
bend" the original. He argues that the
is a woman who represents a modern
sensibility: Lysistrata is the kind of
person who has the ability to get other
people to share her ideas with her and
to do something about it. She is an ac-
cessible character to us in our own
time-or really, anytime."
Lysistrata will be performed tonight,
tomorrow, and Saturday at 8:00 p.m.,
and Sunday at 2:00 p.m. at the Lydia
Mendelssohn Theatre. Tickets are $8,
$5, and $3 for students with ID, and
can be purchased at the Michigan
League Ticket Office from 10 a.m. to 5
p.m., Monday through Friday, and
one hour before the curtain time of
each performance. For more infor-
mation call 764-0450.

,non , s lc1a s a d u
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