S/D: Richard Thompson

oh yeah

1.
Mingus Eyes 06:04
2.
Ghosts In The WInd 07:29
3.
Crawl Back (Under My Stone) 08:35
4.
Dad's Gonna To Kill Me 06:18
5.
Hots For The Smarts 05:58
6.
Bathsheba Smiles 04:21
7.
Al Bowlly's in Heaven 05:52
8.
Johnny's Far Away 05:20
9.
Waltzing's For Dreamers 04:10
10.
(I Want To See) The Bright Lights Tonight 03:27
11.
Misunderstood 04:46
12.
Shoot Out The Lights 06:48
13.
One Door Opens 04:33

Except "Hots For The Smarts" is too stupid, even if he's just testing us.

was going to see him again in a couple of weeks, but life has gotten in the way.

Life!

They say it’s the only thing worth living for.

Sunday supplemental reading re RT: first. over on the current What Are You Reading thread, Electric Eden came up, and Chinaski said,

liked *Electric Eden*, though I think I felt like Daniel does about *The Magic Box*: it's a fantastic work of archaeology but the archival instinct is so all-consuming, it ultimately outruns itself. Or, less politely, it goes on a bit. I've just discovered the long-ass review I wrote about it, which, well, goes on a bit: https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/reviews/book-reviews/the-history-of-british-music-rob-youngs-electric-eden-36400

― Stars of the Lidl (Chinaski), Thursday, May 18, 2023

Excellent--- and I can see from your Young take, more than ever, that I'm going to have to read the damn book at some point(as well as Toop's)---and you end with the questions that your descriptions led me toward--as far as the possibility of a visionary pushing past-through nostalgia and intimations x certainty of a fraught future (we know the environmental factors as well or better than we care to, but not how and when things will shake out, though the timeline keeps bumping forward in latest projections), since this is ILB, I'll mention a writer who sure tries, if with mixed results, having his own struggles with nostalgia, and that is Kim Stanley Robinson.

I hope that Young cites Richard Thompson as a folk-rock songwriter who has never dealt much in nostalgia, except his occasionally overt conservative-reactionary tendencies could be a form of that, although never really "It used to be better dammit," more just disgust or sere vibe/sound, then on to something else. Occasional roots-work-outs are mainly for fun now, the scenic route to that (with a little mental cosplay if ye like).

― dow, Thursday, May 18, 2023 3:10 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Thompson does build from the lyrical-lurid arterial trees of many ancient sources, pop artistry before pop (like Harry Smith turns into liner notes' tabloid headlines drawn from the musical contents of his Smithsonian Anthology). RT's "Beeswing" effectively (whatever his conscious intention) comments on the possible consequences of this kind of appetite, incl. on male collector-questlovers, as the waltzing wild child, now seen as increasingly self-destructive, keeps telling the earnest ex-bf narrator, "You wouldn't have me any other way." (perhaps Thompson does relate this to his own interests, having since used the song's title for that his memoir of youth, which he's said involves not-always-the-right-decisions).

On the negative, reactionary side, when he was offended by Sting's rain forest advocacy, this son of a London cop songfully sneered at the son of a Newcastle area milkman for being a "little Geordie" who didn't know his place (also by being much more $uccessful than Thompson, while rarely being as much an artist: white trash with money)---I wonder if Young's book deals with classism and related matters?

― dow, Thursday, May 18, 2023 4:05 PM (three days ago)

I think I skipped right by the question, sorry! My instinct is to say the book largely avoids any grand political statements but I don't want to be unfair to Young so would have to have a re-read.

He has got songs about Jimmy Shand and Al Bowlly so there's some nostalgia going on there.

I never even knew who Jimmy Shand was until I saw him do that song at Summerstage in Central Park.

Oh yeah, "Al Bowlly's In Heaven," shoulda thought of that.

I wasn't thinking of xpost grand political statements, but more like how class might have affected or suggest ways of seeing, hearing the presentations of scholars and artists. For inst, Pete Seeger, whatever his choice of sources and arrangements, they were unified by his respectfully refined vocal style, which I heard as genteel, and you could argue that it made folk music more acceptable as a genre or subgenre, providing a gateway for rougher voices, deeper artists, such as Woody Guthrie; genteel-singing Baez may have opened things up a bit for Van Ronk and Dylan.

But genteel folkie vox drove some older rockheads I know in the opposite direction.

Um, I am not certain that's a fair reading of "Beeswing," either the song or the book.

Every bit of criticism in the song is self-criticism. ("You foolish man"
/ "Like a fool I let her run" / "and I miss her more than ever words can say.")

The book is almost as wistful, and I would not classify it as self-exculpatory. He seems at least as critical of himself as most of us would be in his shoes.

Also his most famous song is a highwayman ballad, I am not certain you can extrapolate a politics from using what is among the oldest lyrical tropes in English songcraft.

I am sure that there is more cultural context about "Al Bowlly's in Heaven" than I can grasp but the lyrics seem clear that Thompson is speaking from a persona.

Here's what he said about "Geordie" in an interview I found:

I think generally speaking, when you're writing a song in the first person, you are trying to get into the head of somebody else. Sometimes (it's) a fictional character. Sometimes fictional characters are based on other people. You know, "Here Comes Geordie" is based on a real human being so it just becomes easy to satirize that person's shortcomings (ED NOTE: The Guardian claims that Sting is the subject of that song). But every time you're using the first person in a song, so you sing through their eyes, I think you really have to get as full a characterization as you can in two and a half minutes.

I saw Jeff Tweedy play Friday night, an all request benefit show. He joked that he was dismayed how none of the 60 songs he'd released in the four years since he last did this got requested, then doubly dismayed at the number of cover songs requested. "Well, I'm not going to play any of them," he half in jest sneered. Later in the night he noted that someone has requested "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," and that even if he was doing covers he would skip that one, because there were far too many words. He then told a story of when the band and Richard Thompson were opening for Dylan, and when the tour hit Duluth (which is on Lake Superior), they brought out Alan and Mimi from Low, in addition to Thompson, to play "Wreck." They apparently had rehearsed it, and it sounded good, but when the time came to actually play, the lyrics were taped to the stage only at the top, and kept blowing over and obscuring all the words. The musicians did the best they could, but apparently no one on stage was happy with how things turned out.

Yeah. It was bad. https://t.co/aEgPLZfNAh

— LOW (@lowtheband) July 13, 2021

I found a recording of them doing the best they can, though, with all those words that not everyone knew. At least Thompson's guitar sounds good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOfN6-tziMs

xxxp

Um, I am not certain that's a fair reading of "Beeswing," either the song or the book.

Every bit of criticism in the song is self-criticism. ("You foolish man"
/ "Like a fool I let her run" / "and I miss her more than ever words can say.")

The book is almost as wistful, and I would not classify it as self-exculpatory. He seems at least as critical of himself as most of us would be in his shoes.

Is being a cop's son a privileged position in terms of class for the boomer generation? Didn't Pasolini get angry at the student protests because he felt they were middle class kids opposing working class cops?

Thompson's dad was no ordinary PC Plod.

I dunno, I'm speculating about why he chooses "Geordie" as the ultimate punchline put-down playground taunt of this smirky song, rather than "tree-hugging pop star" etc.---seems to be some social discrimination, with regional chauvinism, jobism (cops smarter cooler than milkmen, unto the sons 'tis given?) easily figured in.

I mean, since he wants to take it in that direction, I'll take it a little further.

(ED NOTE: The Guardian claims that Sting is the subject of that song)

LOL "claimed", it could hardly be more obvious who it's about!

My ex-brother-in-law, my sister's ex-husband, had this thing where he would shout out for "Louie Louie" at every gig he went to - I used to go to lots of gigs with him. Then they got divorced and he became persona non grata and I haven't seen him in years. However he still knows people I know and, at the weekend, I was told a story by someone who'd met him at a Richard Thompson gig. As usual, he had shouted out for "Louie Louie" but then, because of his notoriously weak bladder, he'd had to go to the bathroom - and while he was in the bathroom Richard Thompson played "Louie Louie", the first time anyone had ever played "Louie Louie" at a gig he was at and he missed it. Thank you, Richard.

Amazing.

lol, I’d love to hear what RT could do with ‘Louie Louie’.

It looks like Thompson has played it at least one other time way back on Nov. 29, 2006 in Saratoga, CA, around the time the DVD version of 1000 Years of Popular Music was released. (The CD for it has already been out for several years.)

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/richard-thompson/2006/carriage-house-theatre-saratoga-ca-23f6b82b.html

Amazing selection of covers, it may have been one of his all-request shows where you write a selection on a piece of paper.