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I had an advantage with Hitchcock — assigned seating and climate control. It was a makeup date for a snowed-out January show, and Hitchock spent half of his stage-essaying recalling that abortive gig and previous visits to the DC area over the course of his career, focusing on an outdoor gig circa 1989 when he opened for Morrissey, who he drippingly referred to as Johnny Marr's old singer.
His stage banter is half the fun, long meandering reflections, going off in psychedelic tangents, that somehow find their way home, with only the dimmest relation to the song to follow. But his guitar playing is a treat also — full of playful, flying arpeggios that he was able to sustain with his thumb and index finger while playing solos on the high strings with his other fingers. I read a recent interview with him earlier in the day and he was asked which songs he'd like to never play again, and he naturally listed two of the songs he's most known for — "Balloon Man" and "My Wife and My Dead Wife." I had never seen him play either of those, but he opened with them back to back last night, and added his other minor radio hit, "Madonna of the Wasps," fourth or fifth. This allowed him to reflect on his quixotic career and songwriting voice early in the set, and so set a mood. He writes a lot of songs about bugs, and our seemingly random place in the biological order. Existence is absurd to him, as is death, but also so is the idea that we've survived this long. But he finds a redemption for it all in epiphanies of tenderness and vulnerability.
The Doors do almost nothing for me, but his cover of "Crystal Ship," displacing Jim Morrison's psychedelic-Elvis baritone swagger with his quavering John Lennon nasally tenor, was sublime. And so it went, often delving into hilarious negotiations with the sound guy over reverb and pan settings that would get him just the sort of sound to deliver the audience to JUST the place he wanted them, referencing old films and poems and the sweater on the bus conductor and the smell of the horse whip. All so contrived and detached in attitude, but pure and real on delivery.
It was all in stark contrast to his supporting act/girlfriend/niece, who stuck to the Nashville lobotomy strum through her own set, and clearly could be served by having a band to perform with. She's got a voice, both as a singer and a writer, but still in development, and clearly a little over-entertained by her own penchant for the tragic. Moreover, her presence in and out of Hitchcock's set sort of undermined whatever ethos he brought, a reminder of the absence of the wife for whom so many of his tenderest songs were crafted, and the vulnerability in his voice undermined by brassy harmony lines from his bleach blond companion.
I wanted to cry out, "She's using you, man!" but I imagine when it crashes and burns, he'll survive and come out of it with an album of eight songs about crashing and six more about burning.
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