Addicted To Noise
June 17, 1997
R.E.M.'s Peter Buck & Robyn Hitchcock Jam & Record In Seattle
Renaissance rockers appear in "Popsycle Shop Incident: Viva Sea Tac II"
by Gil Kaufman
Given their restless Renaissance men reputations, it's inevitable that Robyn Hitchcock, Peter Buck, and Scott McCaughey would hook up and record together at some point.
Former Soft Boy Hitchcock, forever sitting on a batch of new tunes; Buck, who, while moonlighting from R.E.M., has found time to tour and record with Mark Eitzel and his own side-band, Tuatara, and the Young Fresh Fellows' McCaughey, who's toured with R.E.M. and released several all-star albums with his other side-band, the Minus 5 got together in Seattle last Friday to put on a three-hour jam called "Popsycle Shop Incident: Viva Sea Tac II".
The show, which featured sets from the Young Fresh Fellows, Hitchcock, Peter Buck, and various combinations of the above, took place at Seattle's Crocodile Cafe, owned, not coincidentally, by Buck's wife, Stephanie Dorgan. The mess of musicians, which also included Tim Keegan of the English band Homer (a frequent Hitchcock live bandmember), ended up crowding the stage near the end of the show to toss off ragged covers of The Soft Boys' "Give It To the Soft Boys" and Bob Dylan's "Tell Me Momma", as well as a song Hitchcock wrote expressly for the second-annual event, "Viva Sea Tac", an homage to his gathering of good friends, whose name is itself an homage to the Seattle-Tacoma Airport.
The inaugural Sea-Tac show took place in 1994 and featured Hitchcock jamming with the Young Fresh Fellows on an evening's worth of Soft Boys covers.
Hitchcock wrapped up his U.S. tour in Seattle on June 9 and spent the rest of the week rehearsing for a recording session with Keegan, Buck, McCaughey, various Young Fresh Fellows, and the Fastbacks' Kurt Bloch. The collective laid down five songs that Hitchcock's Warner Brothers publicist, Rick Gershon, said could end up on "a couple of different albums".
Gershon speculated that a few were certain to crop up on Hitchcock's next studio effort for Warners (following the soundtrack to his upcoming Jonathan Demme (Silence Of The Lambs) -directed concert film, Storefront Hitchcock, due in February '98), which the label doesn't expect before the end of 1998.
"Some of it was also recorded under the name Popsycle Shoppe Incident," said Gershon, referring to the amalgamated group of musicians under the guise of yet another McCaughey side project. Gershon hinted that Popsycle, named after a tune on the most recent Minus 5 album, The Lonesome Death Of Buck McCoy, might make their debut within the next year on an EP from McCaughey's label, Malt Records.
Gershon told Addicted To Noise that Hitchcock has tentative plans to return to Seattle in August and coordinate another "Viva Sea-Tac" show, with the working title, "Viva Sea-Tac 2½", if the various bandmembers can be corralled in time. Hitchcock unveiled a number of new tunes at the Friday night show, including: "Jewels For Sophia", "Elizabeth Jade", and the intriguing-sounding "Gene Hackman".
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