Thanks chaps

Finally, Robyn Hitchcock returns to the podcast. Thank you.

I've alsways been aware of RH but nevery knowingly heard his music. I always knew he was a Syd Barratt afficionado but there's clearly much more to him than that.

Can anyone recommend a good starting point for his music?

Good starting point is Underwater Moonlight - Soft Boys - classic psych and still sounds great . There's also Nextdoorland - another top drawer Soft Boys from 2002 .

Solo stuff - can't go wrong with I Often Dream of Trains - mainly acoustic and piano led stuff . More recent stuff with Venus 3 like Ole Tarantula and Propellor Time are also well worth your time .

Wherever you start enjoy the trip !

I cannot STAND Robyn Hitchcock. He is just a man feasting on the carcass of rock. What's he doing now, pretending to be Captain Beefheart? After a lifetime trying to pretend to be Syd Barrett? I've heard him talk about Syd Barrett. I've seen him play Dominoes on that Syd Barrett documentary. He doesn't know anything about Syd Barrett, and he has the audacity to claim to be channelling Syd's sprit. A few acid trips and coming from Cambridge does not the new Syd Barrett make.

Brenda's Iron Sledge, please don't call me Reg, it's not my name. That's all anybody knows about Robyn Hitchcock, and that's all anybody needs to know. I saw it on Whistle Test, presented, I may be wrong, by Mark Ellen.

I bought Underwater Moonlight. I know my psych. I know my Syd. I know all that stuff. It was raved about in many magazine articles throughout the years, quite possibly, in retrospect, all written by Mark Ellen. It. Was. Rubbish. Just rubbish. Really, nothing to see here rubbish. Robyn Hitchcock is just the cool good looking kid who wanted to be in a band, and do the "I'm a bit weird me" eyes. And fair play to him, he did it. But let's not pretend that he's worth spending money on.

The only time I saw him on TV was, I'm pretty sure, courtesy of Mark Ellen. The only time I've read about him is in a Mark Ellen magazine. I saw Mark Ellen at ULU once, dressed exactly like Robyn Hitchcock had been dressed a month before, in a photo accompanying an interview, possibly written by...oh, you get the picture. Y'know...

I Feel Like An Anglepoise Lamp. That's another one of his. Oooh! Kooky! 40 years he's been around. It's really a crying shame.

'Spooked' he made with Gillian Welch & david Rawlings

I just saw Robyn last week in Madrid and he left the theater before the last song, taking us all to the lobby, where there was a piano on which he played the last song of the evening, Flavour of Night. Was it quirky? Indeed. Can I think of ANY other artist that would do that. No. That must be worth something.

And he's a great musician.

And his stories and songs use word associations that create new, unexpected, often surreal images. They used to call that poetry.

What's not to like?

Then again, there's always Coldplay and U2.

...isn't "anthropomorphic" any inanimate object that's given human characteristics? In which case Robyn could have answered the question about anthropomorphic cartoon characters with something like "Spongebob Squarepants" rather than some animal cartoon character. Had he so wished.

that was a really entertaining hour. Even the Krazy Kat bit was good. Just one question, for Mr. Hepworth - that thing you wrote once about meeting musicians at parties and them always bringing up that bad review you once gave them...was that Robyn Hitchcock?

And I probably won't seek out any in the future. But it was a great podcast.

for folk like me---how otherwise would I have looked up Antennae Jimmy Semens, and learned that (allegedly):

He left the Magic Band in 1970 after being attacked by temporary drummer Jeff Bruschell during a group "talk" and having ribs broken. But this was probably just the final straw, having experienced the reclusive 8 months of rehearsals for Trout Mask Replica during which Beefheart experimented on the group members with sleep deprivation, food deprivation, and physical violence in an attempt to break their mental state down. He renewed his professional relationship with Merrell Fankhauser (of The Exiles) in a band called MU. Despite two critically acclaimed albums there was no commercial success, and he retired from the music business in 1975 to study the Christian Ministry

(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Cotton)

It sure is.

For example, from this podcast I had to look up "solipsistic".

And on last year's Bowie podcast both Paul Du Noyer AND Peter Doggett used the word "autodidact" in relation to the Dame. It's a lovely word, but not one that came up very often in conversation on our council estate. Even though, ironically, it may have described many of the residents.

Musicians: In the unlikely event you should ever get interesting or famous enough to be invited onto The Word Podcast, politely decline, lest you be subjected to a systematic and quite extraordinary character assassination from one or two listeners.

I was introduced to Robyns stuff through a mate dragging me to one of the "album" shows at the Three Kings pub as mentioned on the podcast. these are top nights out in a low on oxygen venue packed to the gills with Guardianista where a "pick up band" often including Terry Edwards, Bedders from madness, Green Gartside and on one occasion, Graham Coxon play an Beatles \ Dylan\ Bowie album - brilliantly.

After said gig (and a couple of beers if we're honest) Robyn and Coxon returned to busk a few songs. This however wasn't 'Streets Of London' time. 'Who loves The Sun' , 'Lovely Rita' ' Quicksand' 'Savoy Truffle' 'Arnold Layne' 'River Man' 'Two of us' - the rest is lost in a haze. Robyn also put together Coxon's band for his last tour which included Martin Carthy. Now if you were to judge a man by the people who want to play with him then Hitchcock is streets ahead.

I think any claims of "channelling Syd" are completely tongue in cheek and it would take an considerable amount of prejudgment to think otherwise. If that offends your worship at the Church of Barrett (TMFTL) then the problem lies with you It isn't a competition about who knows more \ claims to love an artist or genre.

The thing is with Robyn is that his lyrics often contain a lot of humorous ideas. Anyone who attempts to do that are often dismissed as somehow not real musicians or taken seriously. They Might be Giants suffer from this despite wrapping some dark ideas in smashing pop tunes.

As I said, not a massive fan, have a couple of albums and seen him a few times but the unwarranted and bitter shoe-ing he has received from the Massivista is slightly perplexing. Fair enough if you don't like him but to suggest there is an Ellen-led conspiracy to keep him in polka-dot shirts is risible.

And no one wears shirts as garish as those with such style (present company excluded)

I'd suggest others leave any preconceptions at the door and trot along to the Word gig next month but be quick cos those who have been to his gigs before know a good thing when they see one

I'm no Syd purist - I like his stuff, but not obsessionally. As something of a recovering pseud/poseur, I just think I recognise the type.

I watched the BBC4 documentary about him twice - genuinely open-minded. As someone who used to write things in a mildly similar vein, I just found it all a bit arch, knowing and 2nd rate (mine being doubly so).

I live in the same part of London as him and frequently see him in the coffee shops hereabouts. There are a ton of famous people here, musicians included. But none screams 'look at me' quite like RH.

Finally - and I genuinely follow the mantra 'trust the art, not the artist', he was a bit of a knob to me and my 18 month old daughter in a local restaurant a few years back. She'd made the unforgivable mistake of toddling into his path. And he was - to say the least - a bit of a stuck-up twat about it.

Something I can't imagine Kevin Coyne, Syd Barrett, Nick Drake, Captain Beefheart or any of the people both he and I revere being.

your opinion of him has nothing to do with music? As you were.

My opinion as to his music has got everything to do with his music. I couldn't care less if he was an arse if I liked or respected his music. I thought I'd clarified that by the 'trust the art, not the artist' bit, but clearly not to your satisfaction.

Robyn's wonderful line - "The Beatles are the lingua franca" - made the Podcast worthwhile for me all by itself.

The fact that the rest of it was excellent too was just a bonus.