Customer Reviews

Robyn Hitchcock - Storefront Hitchcock [VHS]

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

just like HOCKEY...it seems to get Robyn Hitchcock you need to see him LIVE...and I can't imagine a better simulation than this wonderful little film. THE ONLY drawback is it is WAY too short! with DVD I have become expectant of bonus material and a few extra songs wouldn't hurt ..but hey that just tells you how good this is..YOU DO NOT WANT IT TO END. I wasn't a big fan before I saw this movie and now I understand why his fans (or cult) are so passionate..lyrics which are challenging (to say the least) great vocals (lennonesque) and a pretty stunning guitarist to boot...BUY this DVD...you will be charmed and enthralled.

I had seen this film breifly on Sundance but a friend of mine always turned it to something else saying "I hate this guy!"

Then I found what I was sure was it, even though I didn't know the title before I bought it. I took it home and watched it and was hooked; I continuously watched it and it never got old. I always find something I missed the time before. No one I show it to understands it the same way I do, but there's something special about it. It's like it's not just a concert video, but it's really a movie, but a different kind of movie all together. I reccomend this to ANYone, however, I've determined that this is the border of coolness. If you enjoy this film, you're cool, if you don't then you are uncool and you probably only listen to mainstream pop anyway.

Robyn Hitchcock is one of the best pop musicians, there's no doubt about it. This movie directed by the Oscar winner ("The silence of the lambs") Jonathan Demme, is simply the consecration of Hitchcock, playing before an audience that we never see but that fervor applauds it, in a window of New York. The people who passes behind sometimes appear incredulous, and those who are of the side of in enjoy the fantastic music and poetry of the great Robyn Hitchcock.

The songs are brilliant, detailed selected, and with a contained emotive high place, which wins in crudeness having only to Hitchcock and his guitar. For moments there is a violin (Deni Bonet), but most of the time is man and guitar joined in delicate and strident songs.

The spoken parts between songs deserves a special attention. There are product of the sarcasm and irony of the great english gentleman.

The DVD have spanish and french subtitles, which makes it much more interesting for whom the english is not our original language.

I've been a fan for years and years, but I have learned that my friends just don't see the brilliance in Robyn that I do - mainly because it takes a little effort on the part of the listener to look beyond the cheese, flesh, and tomato references to find the humor and genius. I saw Storefront Hitchcock this weekend, and the film is so well-made: the store-window concept, the camera work, and the songs that were chosen - all excellent. If you're this kind of fan, buy this video!

Simple and stark intimate concert movie showcases Robyn Hitchcock (the Soft Boys, ...and The Egyptians) playing mostly solo to a small audience in an abandoned Manhatten storefront against the backdrop of a large window looking out on a typical New York Street. The visual effect is sedative and seductive with the psychedelic pop storyteller singing the deep psyche of your average bi-polar joe, as he warms the audience with his mesmerizing pop numbers while intriguing New York passerbys with the theatrically mysterious storefront. And he's no slouch on guitar either.

I love Storefront Hitchcock. However the DVD was released in Standard format only (full screen) which is way lame.

And Hitchcock performed many other songs that were filmed that could've easily been included here. the Soundtrack CD contains a bunch of songs not in the film (and the Soundtrack Vinyl LP contains a few more).

It's nice that Demme would make this film but why is it SOOO brief?

I mean his Talking Heads film Stop Making Sense is nearly two hours in length.

Come on, 77 Minutes?!?

It's shame that it took so long to be released on DVD/VHS to begin with but why it

was given such a half baked-release is beyond me.

Hitchcock deserves much better.

Jonathan Demme directed this and frames it as the most intimate of live portraits. This is probably what MTV used to aim for but not got to, what Storytellers wants to be but can't be...a true picture of an individual and artist in his element. Using only his art to explain itself, Demme puts his cameras to Robyn Hitchcock in a way that would probably have been intimidating to many other performers, but Hitchcock accepts these intrusions and fearlessly treads forward in his usual uncompromisingly idiosyncratic way. The movie really hits home the issue for me that he's so far from bland that he could never be popular the way many are. People have to choose to like or look into Robyn Hitchcock, so many things become popular because of their blandness, safeness, trends. None of that is found in his music, or lyrics. At the same time, he's brash, intelligent, tuneful, and most importantly humorously unconventional which is the big appeal. Normally, there is no upside when people think unconventionality and tuneful in the same sentence, they immediately think, "that's not for me." A shame for them, because he's such a stout artist, he's just fun to listen to or watch whenever you pick him up no matter what album you choose. Have a few albums of his and none of these songs are on this, so it's refreshing to hear other material I also really like.

Maybe Demme was thinking this would be his homage to Alfred Hitchcock ("Rear Window"?). Perhaps it's free association or confusion. The window here is upstage of Robyn Hitchcock, who I'm not sure agreed with the concept but played along like a good sport. The songs and Robyn's presence are the point and eventually take over. His one-man band squeezes beguiling strangeness from both his guitar and voice.

The solo arrangement of "Devil's Radio" from "Moss Elixir" is a treat, though it also made me miss my favorite from that album, "Sinister But She Was Happy" (a chandelier festooned with leeches).

The duets, however, are the highlight of this performance, though any stage with Robyn Hitchcock on is worth watching, evidenced by an amateur video I just saw of him singing (touchingly) "If I Fell" with Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello.

Here, in "Storefront Hitchcock," his warmth and kindness come through mostly when he's focused on being the generous senior performer to little Deni and Tim.

I enjoyed this performance, and I will watch it again, and I may find more in Demme's part in the production than I do now, but for now I think Robyn Hitchcock is much wittier than Jonathan Demme, and Demme doesn't know.

This is a totally amazing film and I also leave it in the DVD player as I would a CD. And I remember Delancey street at the time in NYC and this thing just captures the look of New York at the time in a largely ungentrified area. But the sound's the thing and I have played this more than any other DVD.

Pointing a camera out a window on to a NY city street is nice as is the colored transparency seen later in a couple of songs. Just don't expect great guitar playing. Come on, he strums along to his folk songs for an hour and then picks up his electric for a few songs toward the end. Its like Bob Dylan meets Ian Hunter only without any of the hits. Definitely for devoted fans only.