I Often Dream Of Trains

Music is my savior
I was maimed by rock and roll
I was maimed by rock and roll
I was tamed by rock and roll
I got my name from rock and roll

----Sunken Treasure, by Jeff Tweedy

I walked into Maxwell's in lovely downtown Hoboken on Sunday night with much anticipation. Robyn Hitchcock's show the night before had been great, with a backing band called The Venus 3 that consists of REM guitarist Peter Buck, Minus 5 leader and REM sideman Scott McCaughy, and ex-Ministry and current REM drummer Bill Reiflen. They absolutley rocked, and played some great old song from Robyns days in the Soft Boys and fronting The Egyptians, as well as stuff from the new album they recorded together. Ex-Soft Boy Morris Windsor even joined them onstage to shake some moraccas and tamborines and provide harmonies.

But Sunday night was shaping up to be special. Listed on his website as an all request solo show and on the ticket as "Robyn Hitchcock and friends," nobody was sure what exactly would be going on until Robyn kind of outlined it a little bit at the end of Saturday's show. He basically explained that he would start off alone, then Morris would join him for a little "Morris and Garfunkel" set, and after a break the rest of the band would come on. Oh, and the whole thing is being filmed for a Sundance Channel documentary. Let the high expectations begin.

I was sitting at the bar when the band showed up. I'm always struck by how uninterested Peter Buck looks all the time. When I lived in Seattle I saw him all the time at clubs, mostly the Crocodile since he owns it, when he was playing some side show with Robyn, Kevin Kinney of Drivin' N Cryin' or Scott McCaughy. He always looked like some non-descript guy just kind of standing around waiting for the band to start. If you didn't know he was a multi-millionaire rock star you wouldn't even notice him.

I saw him deal with both extremes of noticability Sunday night. When he first showed up he went to the end of the bar to order a drink. He must have stood there for a good ten minutes waiting for the bartender to notice him. Eventualy the bartender did and got him his drink. But damn, that's Peter Buck. You'd think you could get quiker service. Maybe he should've said he was friends with Michael Stipe. Just a few minutes later a couple walked up to him and talked to him and then eventualy pulled out their camera so they could each get their picture taken next to him. Each separately, so he had to do that forced smile for the camera while getting a picture taken with someone you don't know. I thought to myself that he probably prefers getting ignored by bartenders than bothered by overzealous REM fans. I know I would.

Soon it was showtime. My excitement level was pretty electric by this point. I had emailed in my request about a week earlier and was hoping like crazy that he would play it. I had requested a song called Ghost Ship. It is a haunting ballad, performed by Robyn with just an accoustic guitar and with a slight reverb on the microphone. It clocks in at over 6 minutes long. It's also a b-side track, so I didn't know how big the chance was that he would play it. I had included in the email that it was the song that turned me into a Robyn-head and that it would make my year to hear it played live. I'm a geek when it comes to my music.

Well I didn't have to wait long to find out. After two songs on electric guitar he switched to the accoustic and I allowed myself to hope. He said "this song is a sea shanty" and then started the opening chords to Ghost Ship. I thought my heart was going to jump out of my chest.

I stood there, mesmerized, in the middle of the crowd and just let it envelope me and carry me off. About halfway through the song my eyes actually started to well up. It was a moment I had hoped for for almost 18 years and countless Robyn shows. It was just as great a moment as I hoped it would be. And it made me weep like a baby.

I often try to explain to a lot of my friends why certain music means so much to me, and how I could do things like go see the same singer-songwriter or band on consecutive nights or several dozen times over the years. And I could go into long explanations of how Robyn's music is like someting that was written by a combination of C. S. Lewis and Jack Kerouac and performed by a hybrid of Bob Dylan, Syd Barrett and Roger McGuinn. This doesn't really make people understand.

Really, how do you explain to someone how something makes you feel? Especially when you can't really describe the feeling?

For me I guess it goes back to high school. Going to shows then and in college were my escape. Going to a show put on by Robyn, Billy Bragg, The Replacements, Jesus and Mary Chain, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Pogues or several other of the musicians I was into took me away from it all. I knew when I went to them that I wouldn't have to run into any of the dickheads from school, because those people were too stupid to know who those bands were, much less get them. Concerts were also places where I would never see my mother. They were my sancuary

Obviously my life these days doesn't require the same kind of escape for my survival. I've got no real complaints about where I'm at and the people I'm around. That's the great thing about being out of school, you're not forced to constantly be around people you hate. Or give you wedgies.

But the feeling is still the same. The songs fill my soul and my heart even more easily with less angst to have to push out.

This is why I'm glad I don't listen to the same inane crap that the moron masses do.

Do you think Britney Spears would ever play a random 18 year old b-side at one of her shows? Hell, do you think she even knows what a b-side is?

The ghost ship haunts the sea
Still come back and marry me

The rust is where her heart should be tonight
Her face is where her fingers were tonight

A glassy chequered engine room
The speechless silence of the tomb
The manuscripts inside the womb unfurl
A girl
Translucent as a jellyfish
That palpitates upon a dish
She stings you with her gently falling curl

And sinking in the waters green tonight
I wonder where my lover's been tonight

The ghost ship changes course
And on the deck there stands a horse
Who's munching on sardines and gorse and hay
The Captain trawls the net across the bay
The bubbles rising from the deep
Where deadmen sing themselves to sleep
From oak and coral they do seep to say
"OK
You read my future like a chart
See through my skin; into my heart
That flutters in my ribcage like a bird"

And the ghost ship sails on into someone's life

The air from bottles forms into
The skeletons of all the crew
In white they dance against the blue and wail
Their curling bodies flail around the sail
The figurehead before the mast
Stares back into the golden past
Across the wrinkled sea so vast, forlorn
She mourns

She flutters 'round me like a moth
That beats against mosquito cloth
And tries to eat her way into my dreams

And sinking in the waters green tonight
I wonder where my love has been tonight

The melons on the riverbank
Are bulging through decaying planks

Their beauty is so warm and dank and light
The captain wears a headless grin tonight

And silhouetted on the blue
The cook, the mate, the boss'n, too
They know not where or why or what they do at all
They fall
Like masonry in the abyss
That opens every time we kiss
I hear their laughter echo 'round the bay
And the ghost ship sails on into someone's life