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ANOTHER live album?? I haven't picked up "Semi-Detached" yet!

Bev, sounds like you saw pretty much the same show that I saw a month or so ago. I thought he even did the old stuff pretty well. Maybe it was the crowd - the Fillmore was sold out and pretty pumped up. I think he likes playing SF a lot anyway.

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Oh, he played the old stuff well.

I suspect its just that I've heard him play those songs rather too many times...and personally, I think 'Shoot Out the Lights' is well due for retirement!

I was just more engaged by the newer stuff. And I like it when he plays the less obvious old stuff. There's a great version of 'The Angels they took my Racehorse Away' on 'More Guitar.' I'd like to hear him do thing's like 'Night Comes In' off 'Pour Down Like Silver', a restrained and spacious tune that cries out for extemporisation.

Minor reservations. A great performer still playing like a demon and writing marvellous songs.

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Two Letter Word is not a stricly acoustic show but rather a typical show fom that tour that includes both solo, duo and band (electric) pieces. Happy to say I saw that tour at Lupo's in Providence, RI. RT's take on Season of the Witch shows up on a compilation disc of songs used in the tv show, Crossing Jordan that my local cd purveyor talked me into. Anyone heard RT's arrangement of Duke's Rockin in Rhythm, it does. Live RT is traded quite a bit and pretty easy to get a hold of. Still I am glad to see his response by putting out his own. I'd like to see more artists do it.

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Here's the details of the forthcoming disc of the current tour from http://people.zeelandnet.nl/flipfeij/news.htm:

NEWS: "Ducknapped!" = "Live" album of current tour starring Richard Thompson Band (with Christine Collister and Judith Owen extra on vocals), due mid July at start of new US-leg

The (thru' Internet and at gigs-only) album - is RT's 4th new cd-album release in 2003, which hasn't been done before - and contains 14 songs:

1. Gethsemane 7:23; 2. Pearly Jim 4:17; 3. Outside Of The Inside 6:58; 4. Missie How You Let Me Down 4:36; 5. A Love You Can't Survive 5:20; 6. One Door Opens 4:29; 7. I'll Tag Along 3:53; 8. Bank Vault In Heaven 5:41; 9. She Said It Was Destiny 4:12; 10. I Misunderstood 4:42; 11. Valerie 3:41; 12. Can't Win 9:17; 13. Jealous Words 3:59; 14. Word Unspoken, Sight Unseen 5:25; Total time: 73:54

Mixed by Tom Dube

The above site also says:

NEW: Adds RT:"In the future there'll be more and more things available in terms of back catalogue and hopefully some obscure stuff we might have on tape that no-one else has"

Looks good.

'Rockin' in Rhythm' off 'Strict Tempo' is marvellous. I recall that disc coming out around 1981 on a tiny label, the first recording we'd had from him for about three years following the end of his deal with Chrysalis.

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  • 4 months later...

I love 'Henry' - the songs all sound about 300 years old! I suspect it was too low-key for its times.

I was just getting into Fairport when it came out - I bought Sandy Denny's 'Northstar Grassman' but passed Henry by for some reason. It went OOP after a short while. Then I kept hearing versions of various tracks and pining for it. Finally got a copy c.1980.

I'm not sure the record cover helped. Thompson's choice of art work has always puzzled me. 'Sunnyvista', 'Amnesia' and 'Mirror Blue' have particularly awful covers.

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  • 4 months later...

Due out in the UK on Monday, 12th April. Remastered etc:

rtbright.jpg

1 When I Get To The Border

2 Calvary Cross

3 Withered And Died

4 I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight

5 Down Where The Drunkards Roll

6 We Sing Hallelujah

7 Has He Got A Friend For Me

8 Little Beggar Girl

9 End Of The Rainbow

10 Great Valerio

Bonus Tracks:

11 I Want To See The Bright Lights live/bonus track

12 Together Again live/bonus track

13 Calvary Cross live/bonus track

rthokey.jpg

1 Hokey Pokey (The Ice Cream Song)

2 I'll Regret It All In The Morning

3 Smiffy's Glass Eye

4 Egypt Room

5 Never Again

6 Georgie On A Spree

7 Old Man Inside A Young Man

8 Sun Never Shines On The Poor

9 Heart Needs A Home

10 Mole In A Hole

Bonus Tracks:

11 Wishing BBC session

12 I'm Turning Off A Memory BBC session

13 Heart Needs A Home BBC session

14 Hokey Pokey live

15 It'll Be Me live

rtsilver.jpg

Streets Of Paradise

2 For Shame Of Doing Wrong

3 Poor Boy Is Taken Away

4 Night Comes In

5 Jet Plane In A Rocking Chair

6 Beat The Retreat

7 Hard Luck Stories

8 Dimming Of The Day/Dargai

Bonus Tracks:

9 Streets Of Paradise live/bonus track

10 Night Comes In live/bonus track

11 Dark End Of The Street live/bonus track

12 Beat The Retreat live/bonus track

Some of those bonus tracks look like the live stuff off "Guitar/Vocal".

Three marvellous records from the 70s. 'Pour Down Like Silver" is one of my all time greats.

Henry the Human Fly, Fotheringay and Fairport's Angel Delight, Babbacome Lee and Rosie to follow later in the year.

Edited by Bev Stapleton
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Love RT, but haven't been following is work lately. I liked Fairport Convention well enough, but really enjoyed RT's 1970s-1980s work, solo and with Linda. I did see him live (completely solo acoustic) here in Chattanooga at a nice little outdoor show a couple of years ago. He blew everybody away.

I'm glad the classic I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight is getting a remastering - damn, it really needs it; my version (from the late 1980s, I think) sounds awful.

But my all time favorite album is Shoot Out the Lights.

Edited by gdogus
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I was lucky. I'd never really heard of Thompson but was taken by a friend to see Richard and Linda on the Shoot Out the Lights tour in the early 80's. I became a fan of them both. (Their marriage had already ended and they stopped performing together after that tour.)

Shoot out the Lights is still my favorite of their albums though I have several others by each of them as well as all the ones the did together.

Last year I was offered a ticket at the very last minute to see him solo at an 800 seat hall in Santa Barbara. Turned out the seat was in the first row. Came away thinking that he might be the greatest living guitar player but I didn't care much for his personality. Seemed pretty condescending to me.

A few months ago I went to a sort of benefit concert at the same place. Each performer only did a couple of numbers. Started with Jackson Brown ended with Dave Alvin with Thompsin and a few others in between. At the end Brown came out a did a couple of songs accompanied by Thompson! Then everyone else joined them for a guitar filled finale.

Edited by medjuck
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Came away thinking that he might be the greatest living guitar player  but I didn't care much for his personality.  Seemed pretty condescending  to me. 

I think this might have been a case of cultural misunderstanding. Thompson's stage persona is laced with irony. Maybe it comes across as condescending in the States in the same way that many US performers can seem over-brash to us Brits!

Whenever I've seen Thompson he's had the audience eating out of his hand. In the right setting - on his solo tours in particular - he can generate a really folk-cluby repartee with the audience. I've seen him ask for requests and manage virtually every one. And not just his own songs!

There was a TV documentary about him on over here last year. His family were totally astounded that he was even on stage - he was apparently an extremely shy person in his youth. I think I can detect that even now...he always seems nervous, on edge.

You also get the impression that he likes to keep his distance a bit. He's never thrown himself 100% into the Fairport revival thing at Cropredy. That's the past for the odd revisiting.

*******************

There's not much extra Fotheringay as far as I know. The 80s CD reissue had two excellent additions - Two Weeks Last Summer and Gypsy Davy - and there was an early version of Late November on the Sandy Denny Box from the sessions for their proposed second album. There's also a few dodgy live things...I'm not sure Fotheringay playing 'Memphis Tennessee' is essential listening!!!

But who knows. All sorts of intersting (if lo-fi) stuff has come out of the closet in recent years from the classic era Fairports. Both of these 4CD sets are a goldmine for anyone who loved this band in its hey-day:

fcboxtop.jpg

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Edited by Bev Stapleton
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That's interesting.

I can half remember hearing a farewell Fotheringay concert on BBC radio all those years ago, well before I got interested in Fairport or Fotheringay. I remember the announcer getting all sentimental about this band I knew virtually nothing about.

I didn't have a tape machine either (I must have been about 15).

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His two most recent CDs get my vote as the best he's done in a long time. Really stripped of excess production.

I've always found his albums to contain a fair proportion of throwaway stuff...but every one has a few gems on. The last two seem to have higher quality control.

The growing list of live recordings is fun too - you get to hear some of the songs that were swamped in the the studio (for me the studio nadir was Daring Adventures...yet it's packed with good songs!).

Promised for later this year on http://www.richardthompson-music.com/ :

---RT LIVE 'RETRO' CD (SUMMER 2004)

---RT BAND LIVE DVD (AUTUMN 2004)

---RT BAND 'ARCHIVE' CD

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Yes, it's one of those throwaway joke songs he does every now and then.

Along with "I Agree With Pat Metheny" B)

BTW, there's also an unreal, live version of "Hard on Me" that goes on for a mind-blowing 12 1/2 minutes!

Edited by BFrank
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  • 1 year later...

Just a heads up for Richard Thompson fans (Werner Herzog fans, too). There's a documentary on Sundance Channel this month called "In the Edges - The Grizzly Sessions". It's about the making of the score for Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man" movie. You see Richard and other musicians in the studio with Werner discussing and creating the music. It's well done.

Next showings:

Saturday 01.14.06 at 09:45 AM

Wednesday 01.18.06 at 10:00 AM

Wednesday 01.18.06 at 04:00 PM

Thursday 01.26.06 at 02:15 PM

Tuesday 01.31.06 at 03:00 PM

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  • 8 years later...

Thanks for the head's up on that one. I'll definitely need to check it out. One of my favorite non-jazz releases of the year so far has been this one. 'Nothing new under the sun in terms of songs (it's newly-recorded, solo acoustic versions of a lot of Thompson's best-known songs), but it's fun to hear these tunes in this format, and Thompson's guitar playing is stellar throughout.

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