Music Library: Richard Thompson 1999-present (The Later Period)

And then there's the Richard Thompson of today, a statesman of sorts, an emissary of respectable music, and hardly the cult artist of yore. He can still tear it up on guitar, but his songs tend to be less surprising and more crowd-pleasing than ever. It is a natural course for a guy in his 60s, but I still have hopes, even if they are destined to be dashed, that Thompson will, like Neil Young, tell his fans to fuck off while he makes a noisy, crazy, surprising album.

1999: Mock Tudor and Semi-Detached Mock Tudor (live). Mock Tudor is Thompson's last great album, a concept album of sorts about suburban London. He got rid of Froom in the producer chair (although Froom stuck around on keyboards) in favor of the more straightforward sound of Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf, who produced Elliott Smith's XO and Either/Or. It is a great album, and the supporting tour, documented here on yet another private-label live release, featured one of Thompson's best live bands, with Danny Thompson (who is, I should mention at some point, no relation) on bass, his son Teddy on guitar and backing vocals, jack-of-all-trades Pete Zorn on guitar, sax, mandolin, and anything else he could get his hands on, and the astonishing Michael Jerome on drums.



2000: "Sights And Sounds Of London Town" from KGSR Broadcasts Vol. 8 and "Woodstock" and "Black Crow" from An All-Star Tribute To Joni Mitchell. Joni Mitchell's not someone I'd normally associate with Thompson, but the man can kick the shit out of her music.



2001: "Persuasion (Live)," "Mr. Rebound," and "Fully Qualified To Be Your Man" from Action Packed: The Best Of The Capitol Years. Three nonalbum tracks that popped up on this best-of.

2002: "Les Flammes D'Enfer" from Evangeline Made: A Tribute To Cajun Music and "Persuasion (Live)" from Live at the World Cafe: Volume 14 - The Next Decade.

2003: The Old Kit Bag, Tracks EP, 1000 Years Of Popular Music, Ducknapped (live), and several loose-end live tracks. I do not love The Old Kit Bag, although some of the songs are great and the performances are pretty good. As a whole, though, it intensifies the conservative, backward-looking nostalgia of Mock Tudor into some very folk-friendly, crowd-pleasing places, which just does not please me. And yet "Outside Of The Inside" is, in particular, an amazing track, an attempt to get into the head of jihadists. The Tracks EP has a couple of live songs from Ducknapped and a couple of 1000 Years tracks that did not make the CD. 1000 Years of Popular Music is fairly well-known by now (and, to be clear, there are two versions of it, so this is the first) as Thompson's attempt to rework songs both inside and outside of the rock era. It is a fun and fascinating experiment that culminates in a ripping cover of Britney Spears' then-popular "Oops I Did It Again." Ducknapped is yet another live, private-label release, and probably the least of all covered to this point.



2004: The Chrono Show (live) and two live tracks. Building on the Celtschmerz idea, Thompson released The Chrono Show, which features acoustic versions of many of his classics and favorite songs over time. It is pretty good, but definitely a fan-only album.



2005: Front Parlour Ballads, Grizzly Man Soundtrack, and Live From Austin TX. I couldn't be at the Live From Austin ACL taping in 2001 because I had a hearing at my work that ran late, and here, 12 years later, it still seems like bullshit. Anyway, it was recorded in the Mock Tudor era, but Thompson plays songs from as far back as Shoot Out The Lights. Excellent stuff. Many of the instrumentals that comprise the Grizzly Man Soundtrack seem based on "Andalus/Radio Marrakesh" and "The Knife-Edge" from Strict Tempo!, and they are wonderful. Weirdly, with a touch little more distortion, they wouldn't be that out of place on an Earth album. There's a truly excellent documentary about the making of the soundtrack attached to the Grizzly Man DVD that has Herzog directing Thompson and his collaborators (including Jim O'Rourke) as if they are actors in his movies. It is a fascinating mash-up of how cinema and music are created. Front Parlour Ballads has a lot of creative potential in that it is a completely home-recorded Thompson album, with Richard himself playing everything but the percussion. My problem is that the songs don't sing for me at all. There's not even the one I can point to as the brilliant standout. They all seem not fully realized. It's a shame.



2006: RT: The Life And Music Of Richard Thompson, including RT On FR bonus disc (compilation), 1000 Years Of Popular Music (2006), "The Coo Coo Bird" (with Eliza Carthy) from The Harry Smith Project, "Mingulay Boat Song" from Rogue's Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, & Chanteys, and "Red Wine Promises" from Shining Bright: The Songs of Lal & Mike Waterson. The Thompson box is a boon for Thompson fans, full of live performances and demos stretching back to 1969. There's one whole disc dedicated to epic guitar workouts, the disc I play most often. I also have the RT On FR mail-away bonus disc, which features even more covers and rarities. This was also the year of the second release of the 1000 Years Of Popular Music, this time a DVD with audio release and a handful of different songs. The earlier one is better.



2007: Sweet Warrior, Live Warrior (live), and "Harlan's Bounce" from Dreams With Sharp Teeth. Sweet Warrior is much, much better than Front Parlour Ballads, anchored by the anti-war anthem "Dad's Gonna Kill Me." Live Warrior is another private-label live release documenting the supporting tour. It's generally excellent, although the man needs to drop "A Bone Through Her Nose" immediately and forever.



2010: Yep, a three-year jump. My book dropped in 2008. I was a little devastated by the cold shutout from the Thompson camp while I was working on it. The only person in the man's inner circle who would speak with me was Pete Zorn, who is a mensch of the first order. I went to talk with Thompson at a show, sent him a few letters, contacted agents for him and for Linda (who was going to speak to me, but then she suffered a death in her family), and I got a whole lot of nothing. One blanket refusal and then I was fucked. Anyway, I got through the book, but I was so put off by the unfortunateness of meeting and being summarily rejected by my idol that I could not muster much enthusiasm for his work. I'm trying to put this behind me now so that I can move forward, and I can listen to the guy again. But it took time.

Right, 2010, then: Dream Attic and Dream Attic Acoustic Demos. Dream Attic is another respectable, if also predictable, Thompson album. This time, the recordings were live following a brief period of practice. The demos were available as a bonus when this first came out. On the tour that followed, Thompson played the whole of Dream Attic in the first set, then stomped out a bunch of killer songs in the second. I vastly preferred the second set. But still, man, those double-stops in this solo.



2011: Live At The BBC (collection). Three CDs and a DVD compiling a bunch of BBC in-studio performances between 1973 (with Linda, natch) all the way to 2009. Freakin' excellent.



2013: Electric. Thompson's most recent album is a pip. Again, nothing too surprising, but the man does what he does better than anyone else. He recorded this one with Buddy Miller in Nashville mostly as a stripped-back trio, and I sort of love it that those two guys are friends. Anyone reading this far: I've never heard Cabaret of Souls (a 2012 private-label release). Should I get it?

Music Library: Richard Thompson 1982-1998 (The Middle Period)

Continuing with Richard Thompson following his break-up with Linda. This is Thompson's middle period, when he was experimenting with his sound and figuring out the rest of his career.

1982: Live at Hunt's (September 22, 1982), Alone With His Guitar (September 29 and 30, 1982), and Nocturnal Emissions (1980-82) (all bootlegs). After sending Linda back to England at the end of the SOTL tour (which wrapped up in June or July), Thompson undertook a solo tour a few months later. The first two of these bootlegs showcase a man trying to put together a solo career. His voice strains to hit some of the notes. His acoustic playing lacks the incredible grace and fluidity that his solo shows will eventually become known for. However, these bootlegs are interesting. Thompson is working towards his solo persona, with the affable between-song patter punctuating the crackerjack emotional fireworks of his songs. Nocturnal Emissions, despite the frankly gross title, collects a number of interesting radio broadcasts, some with Linda, and some demos Thompson made for the Sugar Hill bluegrass label (and thank god he did not sign with them because they would have put his output into a literal wooden box).

1983: Hand of Kindness. Bringing in a horn-heavy big-band approach and a pub-rock vitality, Thompson's first proper solo album in over a decade features some killer songs, such as the Cajun-stomp "Tear-Stained Letter" and the fun audience-pleaser "Two Left Feet." And wow, this video is amazing. That's Thompson's secret weapon Pete Zorn as first sax. Plus a cigar-box guitar!



1984: Small Town Romance. Featuring live performances from the solo acoustic tour at the end of 1982, Small Town Romance has all of the uncertainty I mentioned above. It was out-of-print for many years. Not the worst thing in the world, but certainly not the best, either.



1985: Across A Crowded Room, Across A Crowded Room Live (bootleg), Faithless (live), and "When The Spell Is Broken (Live At Park West Club, Chicago, March 28, 1985)" (the "You Don't Say" B-side). Crowded Room is Thompson's last album with Joe Boyd. The songs are excellent and the production more expansive than on the last two. The boot and the live album are both from the support tour, and both are blisteringly great. The bootleg is the audio from a live video that can be easily found on YouTube, while Faithless was an official release by Richard's label.  The B-side is a vinyl rip from either the same show as Faithless or nearby, as both were recorded in Chicago. Let me say a special word for "She Twists The Knife Again," which is almost post-punk in passion and approach.



1986: Daring Adventures and Live At the Bayou, November 2, 1986 (bootleg). Mitchell Froom took over as producer for Daring Adventures, and the result is, sadly, just flabbier. The songs have less crackle (the semi-racist "A Bone Through Her Nose" needs to be put down forever), although there are still some excellent works. The bootleg cooks pretty well, but the sound quality is a bit muffled.



1988: Amnesia, "Turning Of The Tide (Live)" (from Ben and Jerry's Newport Folk Festival '88), More Guitar (live), The Reckless Kind 7". With Amnesia, Thompson and producer Mitchell Froom fell into sync. The songs are excellent and Froom's production serves them far better than on Daring Adventures. Amnesia is one of my two favorites of Thompson's middle era. The version of "Turning Of The Tide" from Ben and Jerry's folk thingy is acoustic and pretty great, but, y'know, it's a fantastic song. More Guitar is another fan-club/private-label Thompson release consisting of tracks taken from a couple of shows in Washington DC in 1988. Thompson's buddy Henry Kaiser picked the tracks out and they focus on his guitar work, which was leaping into the "untouchable virtuoso" range around this time. The two Reckless Kind 7" B-sides are from the same shows as More Guitar. This version of "Can't Win" is from those DC shows, too. It originally surfaced on the Watching The Dark compilation and contains, as the video suggests, one of the most astounding guitar solos ever recorded.



1989: Loose ends, no album. "Here Without You" and "Hickory Wind" from Time Between: A Tribute To The Byrds. This is Thompson performing a Gene Clark song and a Gram Parsons song, which could be nothing but awesome.

1990: Loose ends, no album. "Two Left Feet" and "The Choice Wife" from Ben and Jerry's Newport Festival Vol. 2, "The May Day Psalter" (with Danny Thompson) from Circle Dance, and "Time To Ring Some Changes," "Mrs. Rita" (with June Tabor), and "Oh, I Swear" from the Hard Cash soundtrack. All I have from this year are loose ends.

1991: Rumor and Sigh. My first Richard Thompson album and favorite from this era. Like Henry The Human Fly, Rumor and Sigh jumps genres with aplomb, excelling at all. There's a pub-rocker ("Read About Love"), Stax soul ("Why Must I Plead"), a polka ("Don't Sit On My Jimmy Shands"), and, well, you get the picture. This is also the album that introduced the sublime "1952 Vincent Black Lightning," which Thompson has probably played at least 200 times in each of the 22 years since he wrote it, and I daresay that it is a song that Thompson would be happy to never have to play again. He rushes the damn thing so fast now that it is starting to lose all meaning, although the audience still eats it up. Still, it's his biggest "hit," and he's a pro. Here's a version from before he started to hate the song.



Loose ends from 1991: "She Moves Through The Fair" from Ben and Jerry's Newport Folk Festival, "Shoot Out The Lights" from The Best Of Mountain Stage Live, "Dimming Of The Day" (with Mary Black and Dolores Keane) from Bringing It All Back Home BBC Soundtrack, three radio tracks, five live tracks on the I Misunderstood promo disc, "Heartbreak Hotel" (with John Cale, Shawn Colvin, David Sanborn, and Jo-El Sonnier) from Night Music With David Sanborn, two live tracks from the Read About Love single. I'm a bit obsessive, ok?

1992: Even the album is a loose end. Sweet Talker: Original Music From the Movie, Live In Flushing October 4, 1992 (bootleg), "The Job Of Journey Work" from Ferrington Guitars, "I Feel So Good" from In Their Own Words. Sweet Talker is nothing great, although it has the music for the song "Persuasion," which will eventually become a fan favorite. The bootleg has decent sound quality and is a cooking acoustic show similar to the first one I saw in this same year. The two loose ends are both fine.



1993: Watching The Dark (compilation), King Of Bohemia (bootleg), Live At Crawley (bootleg), "Two Left Feet" from Live In Basingstroke, "Skull and Crossbones" from Medium Rare (XRT Radio) and Persuasion 7" (with Tim Finn). Watching The Dark was such a phenomenal compilation album for a cult artist like Thompson, combining album tracks with astonishing live versions and utter rarities impossible to find in the pre-Internet days. King Of Bohemia collects two live-in-the-studio radio shows, and Live At Crawley showcases Thompson's collaboration with the excellent Danny Thompson from Pentangle. I bought this as a bootleg in 1993, but Thompson later released it as an official live album on his private label. Of the loose tracks, the "Persuasion" single has the song with Finn's lyrics in the form that Thompson's fans know today.



1994: Mirror Blue, Doom and Gloom (fan compilation), Two Letter Words (live), "I Can't Wake Up To Save My Life" from ONXRT, two live tracks from the BBC. I was so excited when Mirror Blue came out and so disappointed with the actual album. It has some great songs ("Mingus Eyes" is my favorite) and some that never should have seen the light of day ("Fast Food," anyone?). Doom and Gloom was a fanclub release that collected rarities and live tracks between 1968 and 1994, and Two Letter Words was a Thompson private-label release that captures his live band in action in 1994. The live performances were far better than the versions on Mirror Blue.



1995: "Beeswing" from Live At The World Cafe, Vol. 1. One loose end for this year and that's all. I'm not as crazy about this song as some of Thompson's fans. To me, it is pretty, but it mythologizes a hippie relationship in a "weren't we all crazy?" way that I utterly fail to connect with. I mean, yes, she ends up a junkie, but the song is chock-full of unfortunate nostalgia. Makes a lot of Thompson's Boomer fans happy, though, so there's that.

1996: You? Me? Us?, A Rare Thing (bootleg), "Who Were You Thinking Of/96 Tears" (with David Byrne), four more live tracks. You? Me? Us? was Thompson's last album with Mitchell Froom producing, and I'm of mixed mind about it. See, I don't like this album much at all, but it's not really Froom's fault. Many of the songs are only half-cooked, which is on Richard. I hear from Thompson's fans don't like the Froom period, which I think is because they don't like the experimentation. They don't want Thompson to do anything other than play clean because I think that they are fundamentally conservative about the man and their music. They want him to be a certain person, and he has been happy to comply for pretty much the whole of his later period. But I think the experimentation of his middle era was good for Thompson, and I wish he would do it again. When he popped up on the Grizzly Man soundtrack working with Jim O'Rourke, I was hoping that they would collaborate on something. O'Rourke has an excellent ear for folk music and some excellent intuition for interesting production. But no. Anyway, You? Me? Us? is split into an acoustic side and an electric side, which is an interesting experiment, even if it doesn't fully work here. The best songs are the rockers "Put It There, Pal" and "Bank Vault In Heaven," both of which are screaming out for epic guitar solos. The folkier songs ("Burns Supper" in particular) are not quite finished, but most are built around solid foundations. A Rare Thing is an acoustic recording from the Cat's Cradle in Chapel Hill, and I was there.



1997: Industry (with Danny Thompson), "Beat The Retreat" from Folk Live From Mountain Stage, and "From Galway To Graceland" from Live At The Iron Horse. Industry was an interesting collaboration with Danny Thompson which veered between Richard's Woody Guthrie-esque working class anthems and Danny's jazz stylings with his band Whatever.



1998: The Bones Of All Men (with Philip Pickett) and Celtschmerz (live). The Bones Of All Men is an early music collaboration and I hate it like I hate all early music. Celtschmerz is another live private-label release taken from a tour where Thompson played a lot of fan favorites with his son Teddy for accompaniment.

Music Library: Richard Thompson 1972-1982 (mainly Richard and Linda Thompson albums)

I first saw Richard Thompson in a small bar in Baton Rouge in 1992. My friends Mike and Tommy had caught him in New Orleans a couple of nights before and had been so blown away that they convinced me and two other friends to drive down for the show, which amounted to a de facto quitting of my job. It was a lousy delivery job. The show changed my life.

I've tried to describe what it was like, but there's nothing more accurate than what it actually was: seeing the finest guitarist of the classic rock generation - who, by definition, is one of the greatest guitarists who has ever lived in the world because that generation bred ample numbers of actual guitar heroes - rock the shit out of a mid-size bar in a sleepy Southern college town on a Tuesday night.

I've since seen Thompson in concert a couple of dozen times. I've collected everything I could get my hands on. I wrote a goddamn book about Shoot Out The Lights, which one of his most transcendent albums. There's something about his music that is literally extraordinary, so full of wonder and surprise that it seems both superhuman and wholly human.

All of which is saying nothing new. Because it is exactly that sort of transcendence that all Richard Thompson fans feel. Thompson himself has pointed out that when he's really on, he's having an out-of-body experience of sorts. But Thompson is also such a consummate pro at this point that this listener, who has seen the man play live nearly 20 times and owns many bootlegs, can't tell the difference between a good night and a bad night.

Case in point: I saw Thompson play two consecutive nights in 2010, first in Nashville in a sit-down theater where I was right up front, then in Asheville in a crowded stand-up place where I ended up near the back being constantly bumped by an overenthusiastic greybeard. I thought the first night was insanely great and the second mediocre, but when I chatted with the soundman after the show, he felt the exact opposite. He'd been on board for the whole tour, so presumably he had a better insight into when Thompson was letting loose and when he was just hitting his marks. But I felt that I had some insight, too, which maybe just had a lot to do with my own comfort zone.

Anyway, here's my review of the music from the first part of Thompson's career.

1972: Henry The Human Fly (solo). Thompson's first solo outing is quite a departure from the seriousness and focus of Fairport Convention. Henry The Human Fly, notoriously the worst-selling album in Warner Brothers history (a claim that is surely apocryphal), has twelve songs, all in different flavors of folk-rock, most pointing a direct line to Elvis Costello's own genre-defying debut. Particularly great is "The Angels Took My Racehorse Away."



-- Richard and Linda Thompson era --

1972: Kew Bridge Folk Club October 1972 (bootleg).  Linda Peters was one of the backing singers on Henry, which came out in April 1972, but by time of this October 1972 gig, she was sharing a billing and Thompson's last name. This boot has a number of fun nonalbum songs like "Shady Lies," "Dragging The River For You," and "Once Brave Napoleon," but the sound quality is utterly terrible.

1973: Once Brave Henry: Live At The Memphis Club 1973 (bootleg). Similar to the previous boot, this gig features a number of nonalbum songs, more songs from the about-to-be-released Bright Lights album, and an excellent cover of Hank Williams' last song "Angel Of Death."

1974: I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight. Bright Lights is a sublime album, a pinnacle of British folk rock. Every song bristles with energy, intelligence, and passion. It is also quite dark, with most of the songs contemplating a life haunted by death, drunkenness, and despair, which is pretty heavy for a guy who was 24 when it was recorded. There are ten songs on the album and not a clunker in the bunch. I couldn't say which are the best, although I admit that I love "We Sing Hallelujah" and "The Little Beggar Girl," which are, incidentally, the least dark songs on the album, a little less than the rest. Here's the final track, "The Great Valerio," a song of such astonishing otherworldly beauty that I'm willing to believe it sprang whole from the head of a forgotten Celtic deity. Note the coda, the Satie composition "La Balançoire."



1975: "Hokey Pokey (Live)" (from Over The Rainbow: Live at The Rainbow, March 16, 1975, a compilation album), Hokey Pokey (April), Pour Down Like Silver (November), and In Concert November 1975. 1975 was a big year for the Thompsons. Having released their debut as a duo the prior year, they opted to release two stellar albums and then, in December, disappear to live on a compound with their Mullah for the next two years. This was a hectic time. The couple converted to Islam (and Sufism, in particular) in early 1974, just before the release of Bright Lights, and found themselves spiritually drawn to retreat from the world. The first track here was from a compilation where the Thompsons, playing acoustic, shared a stage with such dissimilar artists as Procul Harem and Hatfield and the North. The Hokey Pokey album dropped the next month. While not as brilliant overall as Bright Lights, it featured several truly great songs, including the Thompsons' much-loved "A Heart Needs A Home." It should be noted that, for my money, the best version of this song is not on the album, but on the out-of-print best-of Watching The Dark. The version on In Concert is a close second. The studio versions out there, though, are much too sappy. Thanks to YouTube, here's the best version.



In November, the Thompsons released their third duo album, Pour Down Like Silver, an austere and icily beautiful album mostly about their newfound religious beliefs, which was made more stark by the lack of rhythm guitar. They had intended to have their friend Simon Nicol record the rhythm guitar parts, but he was unavailable and Richard simply never got around to overdubbing the parts himself. What is left is a collection of songs both majestic and remote. Even the ones that veer into power-pop territory ("For Shame Of Doing Wrong" and "Jet Plane In A Rocking Chair") have a solemnity to them that undercuts the happiness of the melody. The album ends on "Dimming Of The Day," a song so gorgeous that Linda tells a story about meeting the Everly Brothers, who held her hand and sang it to her.  Instead of that, though, I'm going to link to the first studio guitar workout track that Thompson recorded since his Fairport days.



In Concert November 1975 is an official live album that came out a few years ago. As with the bootlegs from the previous years, there are a few covers and a nonalbum track, but the sound quality is excellent, as is the performance. Here's their cover of Hank Williams' "Why Don't You Love Me" attached to a fairly literal-minded video.



1976: (guitar, vocal) (compilation). With the Thompsons holed up in their Maida Vale Sufi commune, their label, Island, threw together this compilation of live tracks, outtakes, and Fairport studio outtakes. The Fairport tracks are actually pretty wonderful, as is the live cover of "The Dark End Of The Street," but the other tracks are better served elsewhere.



1977: The Madness Of Love (bootleg). By 1977, the Thompsons were growing weary of the life in their retreat. Apparently, the women did all the work while the men sat around discussing their faith. As Linda put it, the mens' room was full of English guys sitting around in flowing white robes while the ladies' room looked like a scene from a Kurosawa movie. Richard had been forbidden to play guitar by his Mullah, which is much like taking paintbrushes from Picasso. This bootleg is from the infamous Sufi tour, where the Thompsons decided to compromise by taking to the stage with a semi-competent all-Sufi band. The band is not terrible. But they're not good, either, and that makes all the difference. You'll note, too, that there is an awful lot of electric piano on this track. Weirdly, a part of the Thompsons re-emergence into the music scene involved attempts to incorporate more contemporary sounds from the late 70s, which dates the next two albums in a way unusual for the duo.



1978: First Light. Some of these songs are pretty good, especially "Don't Let A Thief Steal Into Your Heart" (which later was a hit for the Pointer Sisters, if you get my point), but the production is so blah-disco-bullshit that I find this album a chore to listen to. Thompson needed to sell some albums after his self-imposed exile, but this was absolutely the wrong path. He sounds unengaged and the pseudo-Arabic flourishes cheapen his deeply-held beliefs. That said, First Light at least sounds like an  experiment of sorts, unlike...



1979: Sunnyvista. This is the nadir of Thompson's career. There are some revisionists out there who will try to tell you that this is a good album. They are lying, possibly to themselves. There are, as always, some good songs, but the production is terrible. The songs that are naked attempts to ingratiate with a mass audience are terrible.  "Civilisation," which is arguably Richard Thompson's response to punk music, is a godawful mess of poorly-articulated misanthropy. The best you can get here is "You're Gonna Need Somebody," which is thematically similar to Dylan's "Gotta Serve Somebody" from the same year.



Incidentally, my book tells this same story, but it's much better than this post. Figured I should say something about that.

1980: Before Joe Pulled The Trigger, Rafferty's Folly, and Strange Affair (bootlegs, all). The first two of these are more or less the same album with varying sound quality between them. The Thompsons were basically at a point where they needed a hit or to accept that they were washed up, so they contracted with Gerry Rafferty to produce their next sessions. Rafferty liked big, fake-sounding productions, and both of these bootlegs, the forerunners to Shoot Out The Lights, sound like Rafferty productions. They are as fixed in time as the sound of the late 70s as Rafferty's own 1978 album City To City. The Strange Affair bootleg collects several tracks from the 1977 Madness of Love concert along with some radio tracks recorded in 1980. Sound quality is suspect and the material is lackluster.



1981: Strict Tempo! (Richard solo). Linda's pregnancy in 1981 was difficult and their marriage was strained. They were working on the sessions that would become Shoot Out The Lights, but those were slow-going. To pass the time Richard recorded Strict Tempo!, an all-instrumental album where Richard recorded all the non-drum tracks himself. It's pretty entertaining. Here's a British folk version of Duke Ellington's "Rockin' in Rhythm."



1982: Instead of doing this whole year, let's just hit the Richard and Linda Thompson duo parts and save the solo dates for the next post. Shoot Out The Lights was a tough session for the Thompsons, and then Richard embarked on a solo tour of the US between the recording of the album in 1981 and the release in early 1982. During that tour, he met and fell in love with another woman. There's a pretty good book in the 33 1/3 series that details this part of the story. Let's just jump to the music.

Shoot Out The Lights. Like Bright Lights, SOTL is a perfect album. Eight songs with minimal overdubs, as raw as any album ever recorded. The greatest is "Walking On A Wire," a devastating look at things falling apart. I don't know that I can say more about this album (I mean, you know there's a book with some 100-odd pages about what's great about this album, right?). It is perfect. Anyone who likes rock music should know it intimately. Which goes without saying, actually, because one can only know this album intimately.



May 19, 1982: Live at the Paradise, Boston and May 20, 1982: Live at Hunt's, Burlington (bootlegs, both). When he got back from his tour, he told Linda it was over and then they embarked on a club tour of the US together. This was less an opportunity for hijinks than an emotional hell-ride across thousands of miles of heartache. Funny thing about working on songs of death and despair: the hate, hurt, and confusion really worked in their favor. These bootlegs sound amazing.

Next time: Richard dusts himself off and picks up his solo career.

Music Library: Retribution Gospel Choir, Rev. Gary Davis, Rex Garvin, Rhys Chatham, Richard "Groove" Holmes, Richard Buckner, Richard Davies, Richard Hell

Retribution Gospel Choir - Retribution Gospel Choir (2008). The male members of Low make big rock with a different drummer. I hope it makes Alan Sparhawk happy. Good, but it sounds like a side project.

Rev. Gary Davis - Harlem Street Singer (1960). This has the original version of "Samson and Delilah" on it, I believe. Although it is often listed as a traditional folk song, I believe the Rev. Gary Davis wrote it and recorded it in 1960. All the covers - Peter, Paul, and Mary, the Grateful Dead, Springsteen, etc. - got it from him.



Rex Garvin - "Emulsified." Brilliant 1963 rockabilly track that was covered by Yo La Tengo on their Fakebook album.



Rhys Chatham - Two Gongs (1971), A Crimson Grail (For 400 Electric Guitars) (2007), Guitar Trio Is My Life! (2008). Minimalist downtown composer who was instrumental in the aesthetics of Band of Susans and Sonic Youth. Two Gongs has, well, two gongs playing off of each other for a little over an hour. Much like the noise experiments of My Bloody Valentine, the mind rejects the drone and imposes order and eventually one can hear a melody emerge from the chaos. Crimson Grail and especially Guitar Trio work in much the same way. Guitar Trio basically involves X number of guitarists (I assume this was three originally) who play an E chord for a certain amount of time. The guitarists are allowed to try different textures and sounds within the confines of the E chord. This Guitar Trio recording in particular is fascinating, the document of a tour that Chatham undertook in which he enlisted different guitarists in each town. Fascinatingly, each recording is different. Different tones, different notes played, different tempo, different length. If art is about affecting your perspective, Guitar Trio is profound art.



Richard "Groove" Holmes - Soul Message (1965). The king of soul jazz.



Richard Buckner - Bloomed (1994), Unreleased (1995), Richard Buckner (1996), Devotion + Doubt (1997), Since (1998), Live At Shuba's Tavern (1998), The Hill (2000), Impasse-ette EP (2002), Impasse (2002), Dents and Shells (2004), Sir Dark Invader vs. The Fanglord (with Jon Langford, 2005), Meadow (2006), Our Blood (2011). Buckner's an interesting cat, part country troubadour and part soul-searing avant-garde wordsmith. To my mind, Devotion + Doubt and Since are two of the finest albums of the 90s. Both throw conventional song structure out the window and boil the lyrics down to an overwhelming intimacy. Both layer on textures more likely to be seen in post-rock than alt-country, which in Since is partially because the Chicago avant-music brigade (O'Rourke, McEntire, Grubbs) worked on it. "Fater" is where this blog gets its literal name. Buckner has never gotten his due, and that's the greatest shame of all.

Here's a video for "On Traveling," a harrowing song driven by accordion or harmonium playing a simple I-IV-V with all sorts of texture noises bubbling beneath the surface, propelling the song.



This is Buckner building a loop and then singing "Fater," which is usually a capella, on top of the end.



I wanted one of the rocking songs off of Since, because they are unlike any other songs ever written, but they are simply unavailable on YouTube. In the absence of one of those, "Ariel Ramirez" is one of the more pensive tracks from Since, and it's absolutely gorgeous.



Finally, here's one of the tracks from The Hill, which is Buckner's concept album with lyrics drawn from the Spoon River Anthology.



Richard Davies - There's Never Been A Crowd Like This (1996), Telegraph (1997), and Barbarians (2000). Like Buckner, Davies is an oddball genre-breaking genius who has never gotten anything close to what is due him. His band The Moles was psychedelic enough to push the Flaming Lips into new territories, his collaboration with Eric Matthews Cardinal managed to out-Bowie David Bowie, and his solo albums are amalgams of both of these impulses, along with lots of folk-rock-Americana to provide a basis for the songs. His last solo album (so far) was the brilliant Barbarians, completely unrepresented on YouTube, an album-length meditation on the weird, feral normality of his adopted home country of the US.

Here's Davies in 2012 playing one of his Cardinal tunes. Listen to how many times the song changes up its structure into minor keys and still circles back to the base major key.



Here's Davies in the 90s, the Moles basically reduced to him alone, backed by the Flaming Lips on one of his psych-pop masterpieces.



Here's a chamber-pop song from his first album. It's actually the simplest-sounding track I've posted so far, but it's full of flourishes and slight variations from the basic chord structure.



Here's Davies' masterful "Cantina," which could be any number of genre of songs. I love how it phases through the intro just enough to keep things off-kilter.



Richard Hell - Blank Generation (with the Voidoids, 1977), Destiny Street (with the Voidoids, 1982), Time (compilation, 1975-84). Here's the most successful oddball of these three. Hell was, of course, the original bassist for Television, the guy who invented punk fashion, the author of "Blank Generation," the most poetic of all the CBGBs crowd, the guy who put Bob Quine front and center in his band when he already had a brilliant guitarist in Ivan Julian. In short, a genius.



This is one of the songs added to the end of the reissue of Blank Generation that has not one but two perfect guitar solos in it.



This song is perfect.

Music Library: Red Krayola, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, Red Pony Clock, Leon Redbone, Redd Volkaert, Regina Spektor, Reivers, Remy Zero, Renderers, Replacements

Red Krayola - The Parable Of Arable Land (as Red Crayola, 1967), God Bless The Red Krayola And All Who Sail With It (1968), and The Red Krayola (1994). P-sychedelia from Houston! Mayo Thompson and pals (including Donald Barthelme's brother on drums on the first album) bring the nutso sounds, the wacky songcraft, and the sheer off-kilter brilliance of being a psych band from Houston. Sometimes they're Texas-style Syd Barretts and sometimes they're the band that gave Jandek the confidence to be Jandek. By the time of the 1994 album, Thompson has the Chicago avant-noise posse on-board, including Jim O'Rourke, John McEntire, and David Grubbs. Cool.



Red Lorry Yellow Lorry - Talk About The Weather (1985), Paint Your Wagon (1986), and Nothing Wrong (1988). I didn't expect much from this band (I mean, obscure British goth rock?), but they won me over by being somewhere between Wire and Chrome and quite creative.



Red Pony Clock - God Made Dirt (2007). Big Lambchop-like outfit that occasionally drop some Norteno into their irony-drenched chamber-pop.



Leon Redbone - On The Track (1975). Dude's been huffing some life into hoary swing and country tracks for a long, long time.

Redd Volkaert - Telewacker (1998). Best guitar player in Austin. Hands down. The true heir to Jimmy Bryant. Wandering into the Continental Club on a Saturday afternoon back in the early 00s to hear his set was like finding Richard Thompson busking down at the bus station.



Regina Spektor - Songs (2002). I had the impression she was a Tori Amos ripoff before I heard this album. And she is not at all. She's kind of the anti-Tori Amos. But you can see where the surface similarities would have thrown me.



The Reivers - Translate Slowly (1985). John Croslin's great lost hyperliterate Austin cowpunk band.



Remy Zero - Remy Zero (1996), Villa Elaine (1998), The Golden Hum (2001). My childhood pal Jeff's  soaring and spacey band. They seemed too big for Birmingham back when they were based out of there, but I think LA chewed them up a little.



The Renderers - A Dream Of The Sea (1998). Fan-freakin'-tastic kiwi-rock band. Like so many NZ bands, they sound like every musician was raised on a steady diet of SST, Neil Young, and the Feelies.



The Replacements - Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash (1981), The Replacements Stink (1982), Hootenanny (1983), Let It Be (1984), The Shit Hits The Fans (1985), Tim (1985), Live At Maxwell's (bootleg, 1986), Pleased To Meet Me (1987), Don't Tell A Soul (1989), All Shook Down (1990), All For Nothing/Nothing For All (compilation, rel. 1997), Songs For Slim (2013). I have loved this band longer than most. Let me back up. I rarely listen to these albums because I know them so well, like how sometimes you go for years without really looking at your oldest friends. When I pick up a guitar, I play a 'Mats song. They are deeply written in my outlook, the songs I write, and the songs I like. Here's their great fuck-you to MTV.

Music Library: Ray Davies, Raymond Scott, Real Kids, Real Tuesday Weld, Jay Reatard, Rebecca West, Red Dirt, Red Garland, Red House Painters

Ray Davies - Working Man's Cafe (2007). It's not the worst thing I've ever heard, but you know it's nowhere close to Ray Davies in his prime if I even consider offering up such a disclaimer.

Raymond Scott - Manhattan Research, Inc. (rel. 2000). This is a compilation of Scott playing with sound effects and background noise. It ain't no "Powerhouse."

The Real Kids - The Real Kids (1977). Punk/proto-punk band fronted by Ex-Modern Lover John Felice. Solid songs with an awesome garage vibe, sort of like the Dictators.



The Real Tuesday Weld - Free eMusic Compilation (2008). Fairly precious chamber-pop with a swing vibe. It seems tailor-made for certain quirky indie films.



Jay Reatard - Blood Visions (2006), Singles 06-07 (rel. 2008), Watch Me Fall (2009). I covered much of Mr. Reatard's output some years back. The dude had some serious pop-garage chops. It's a damn shame he died so young.



Rebecca West - "Sick." This is a pretty good 90s punk band, not the feminist author or the folk trio currently active as The Rebecca West.

Red Dirt - "Summer Madness Laced With Newbald Gold." Psych-blues British band recorded in 1970.



Red Garland - Red Garland's Piano (1957), Groovy (1957), Manteca (1958), The Moodsville Vol 1 (with Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, 1960). Groovy is right. Garland was a bop pianist who usually recorded with Paul Chambers on bass and Art Taylor on drums during the 50s. Occasionally he had a young upstart named John Coltrane sit in on sax at the time, but those albums have been retroactively added to Coltrane's name. Even without the nascent giant, though, Garland was a smooth and accomplished player and these are all enjoyable.

The Red House Painters - Down Colorful Hill (1992), Red House Painters (I) (1993), Red House Painters (II) (1993), Ocean Beach (1995), Songs For A Blue Guitar (1996), Retrospective (rel. 1999), Old Ramon (2001). I have a hard time knowing what to do with Mark Kozelek albums. Some are under his own name, some under Sun Kil Moon, and some under the name of his original band, Red House Painters. Personally, I like Kozelek best in his languid, fuzzy, trippy-as-hell indie-psychedelia mode, and I think the first three albums by RHP are just about perfect. Don't know why they self-titled two different albums that came out in the same year, but I'm assuming it was a weird tribute to Peter Gabriel.

Music Library: Ray Charles

When I broke this entry up like this, I thought I might have a lot to say about the output of Mr. Charles, but I did not know what. I still do not know what. Buy the Atlantic albums; they're perfect. I have multiple copies of several of these because I had them on vinyl, again on CD, and then I bought the Complete Atlantic Recordings box set. None of this was wasted money.

1957: Ray Charles and The Great Ray Charles. These are perfect, as I already pointed out. This track in the video was the second song on his debut.



1958:  Ray Charles At Newport, Yes Indeed!, and Soul Brothers (with Milt Jackson). Even when the dude plays jazz with a jazzbo like Milt Jackson, he holds his own.



1959: What'd I Say and The Genius Of Ray Charles. The Atlantic excellence hitting a fever pitch. I have FOUR versions of What'd I Say.



1960: Ray Charles In Person and The Genius Hits The Road. In Person is the last Atlantic album released while Charles was still signed to the label, but they had a lot of stuff in the vaults. The Genius Hits The Road is a concept album about traveling across the US. His leap to ABC let loose a lot of syrup, although even Ray Charles syrup is pretty awesome.



1961: Genius + Soul = Jazz, The Genius Sings The Blues, Soul Meeting (with Milt Jackson), The Genius After Hours, and Ray Charles And Betty Carter. Sings The Blues and After Hours are Atlantic releases of older material. They are perfect. Genius + Soul, Soul Meeting, and the Betty Carter album are jazzbo albums. They are good-to-great. I don't have Dedicated To You, which is yet another Ray Charles release from 1961.



1962: Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music and Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music, Volume Two. Aw yeah. Ray Charles turns Hank Williams and Don Gibson (and lots of other country) songs into the richest, lushest, most urbane Americana. A brilliant metaphor for the struggles of the Civil Rights Movement and a brilliant statement of purpose stating that African-Americans are Americans, pure and simple. Not just perfect, but GODDAMN perfect.



1963 and on: Ingredients In A Recipe For Soul (1963), Live In Concert (1965), Crying Time (1966), Ray's Moods (1966), Invites You To Listen (1967), I'm All Yours Baby! (1969), Volcanic Action Of My Soul (1971), A Message From The People (1972), Porgy and Bess (with Cleo Laine, 1976). Sometimes good, sometimes great. None of these are perfect albums, but some of the songs are perfect. He flounders more and more in the late 60s and 70s, but he never quite lost it.





Compilations: The Definitive Ray Charles and Pure Genius: The Complete Atlantic Recordings, 1952-1959. The Definitive compilation is good, one of the first Ray Charles albums I bought, while I may have mentioned that anything Ray Charles recorded for Atlantic is perfect.

Music Library: Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Rain Parade, Raincoats, Ramones, Randy Newman, Rangda, Rank and File, Rashied Ali, Ratatat, Raveonettes

Rahsaan Roland Kirk - Rip, Rig and Panic (1965) and Now Please Don't You Cry, Beautiful Edith (1967). Kirk was a crazy-great soloist, one whose combination of mysticism, speed, precision, and superhuman feats of musicianship have led to his fans being from across the music spectrum. Here, just check out this utterly amazing video.



Rain Parade - Emergency Third Rail Power Trip/Explosions in the Glass Palace (1983-84). The debut and follow-up EP from one of the Paisley Underground (meaning very slightly psychedelic power-pop) LA bands of the early 80s. Good stuff.



The Raincoats - The Raincoats (1980), Odyshape (1981), and Moving (1984). Impossibly great all female post-punk band. The best is the debut, which is also the roughest and most surprising, but the other two are not far behind. Here's their first single, which was later added to their debut album as the first track, fueled by a screaming overdriven electric violin.



The Ramones - The Ramones (1976), Leave Home (1977), Rocket To Russia (1977), Road To Ruin (1978), End Of The Century (1980), Pleasant Dreams (1981), Subterranean Jungle (1983), Too Tough To Die (1985), Animal Boy (1986), Halfway To Sanity (1987), Brain Drain (1989), Mondo Bizarro (1992), Acid Eaters (1994), ¡Adios Amigos! (1995), various non-album tracks. Haters like to say that the Ramones only had one song, but that's bullshit. It's true that the later albums get bogged down in formula, but every album has a few great songs. And it's also true that the Ramones, like all good pop bands with loud guitars, buried a lot of complexity under the surface. Listen for the 5/4 turnaround in "Rockaway Beach" between the chorus and the bridge at 0:40 and 1:20:



Or "Havana Beach," which hints at the bridge in the intro using chords that harmonize with the bridge chords, but are different:



I'm not saying it's prog, just that it's a lot more nuanced than people think. Also the song structure to "Pinhead" is unlike any other song ever.



Randy Newman - Sail Away (1972) and Good Old Boys (1974). I used to be down on Randy, but I'm coming around. I was not much of a fan, but enough people talked about his brilliance in a way that made me want to keep giving him shots. And so I did, but nothing happened for the longest time. Then, while listening to Sail Away for this project, I found myself unexpectedly moved by "God's Song." And I mean moved. It's about as powerful a song about religion and humanism as anyone has ever made. It is bleak and funny and utterly profound. So I'm coming around.



Rangda - False Flag (2010). Richard Bishop of the Sun City Girls, Ben Chasny of Six Organs of Admittance and Comets On Fire, and Chris Corsano of all avant-garde projects, all making a big loud noise together. What's not to love?

Rank and File - Sundown (1982). Early cowpunk from the Kinman brothers of The Dils and Alejandro Escovedo on guitar. I really like how raucous the ACL crowd is in the video below.



Rashied Ali - New Directions In Modern Music (1973) and Rashied Ali Quintet (1973). A couple of fantastic albums led by the drummer who collaborated with Coltrane during his experimental final phase. The latter has James "Blood" Ulmer on guitar.

Ratatat - Classics (2006). All-instrumental album from a smartass electronica duo.

The Raveonettes - Lust Lust Lust (2007). Danish duo does Jesus & Mary Chain.