In The Darkness The Shadows Move
May. 27th, 2007 10:12 amThanks to
brooklynite, I've seen the lineup for this Summer's Celebrate Brooklyn free concerts in Prospect Park.
A few things there of interest to me slightly, that it might be nice to make it to, but one in particular that I MUST be there for: Mr. Richard Thompson.
I've been interested in RT since I saw a video of his for the song "Wrong Heartbeat" in 1984:
Amusing and fun, and just that -- but it made me just keep an eye out for anything by him. I wound up hearing the great Richard & Linda Thompson album Shoot Out the Lights soon after, and being blown away.
My late friend Will McCarter and I went to a concert at the Berklee Center in Boston in late 1985 and saw Thompson on a double bill with Randy Newman ("an acoustic evening") - and I was now hooked on RT. For Christmas that year, I got my first CD player and a $100 gift certificate to use on CDs at a local record shop. Back then, that would get you 4 CDs, and the first four I got were Laurie Anderson's Big Science and Mister Heartbreak, Talking Heads' Remain in Light, and Richard Thompson's Across a Crowded Room. Still have all of them.
The RT is still a pretty damn good album, if suffering more and more to my ears from a tinny 80s production and early CD mastering (I did a big re-EQing on it for my iTunes/iPod rip and it sounds a lot fuller). RT spent the rest of the 80s putting out albums of good or great songs (again, unfortunately, not always well produced - he also was downplaying his guitar playing on the recordings somewhat, saving his extending soloing for live performances). I got to see him again, this time with a full band, around 1989 or so at The Bottom Line. An incredible show, spoiled only slightly by my sitting a little too close to a Music Industry Weasel who made frequent trips to the bathroom, returning to the table sniffing and rubbing his nose, then violently rocking in his chair and pounding his table during the songs with no sense of rhythm at all (the first time I was ever aware that some cliches about drug use have a factual basis).
But, still, an amazing show, and pretty much right out of the gate when, as the second song of the night, he did an epic 10-minute long version of "Shoot Out the Lights" with an endless, beautiful guitar solo. This isn't quite that version, but it's from around the same time with pretty much the same band:
He finally put out a truly great album in 1991 with Rumor and Sigh - and I don't know how many copies of this one I've given people over the years to turn them on to Thompson. I gave a tape of it to writer Bob Spitz when he was a customer at a video store where I worked (he would give me tapes of Dylan bootlegs, and I gave him Richard Thompson stuff), and he became a one-man crusade for the album, calling up his friends at Capitol Records and trying to get them to promote the album better. Didn't work, though apparently RT did have some minor chart success with "I Feel So Good":
(Bob later wrote a book about the New York Knicks that I am amused to see he called Shoot Out the Lights)
RT has kept doing wonderful work since, and it was hard to choose only four videos to put up here -- there are plenty more of interest at YouTube (including a great version of "96 Tears" done with David Byrne), though unfortunately no versions of "Calvary Cross" and very little from his 1000 Years of Popular Music project/tour (where he performed songs ranging from Gregorian chants to "Oops! I Did It Again").
But, probably, the song of his that will wind up being the most beloved and remembered is the acoustic folk song "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" from Rumor and Sigh. A favorite of mine, which, um, I featured on many MANY cassette mix tapes to female friends of mine in the 90s, and very popular with them it was, too. Berit, on the other hand, hates the song and finds it unbearably sappy, and I am a bit chagrined to discover it is the most-requested song of all time at NPR, that bastion of polite "sensitive" entertainment. I still love it. Here's one of the many MANY versions you can find at YouTube, either done by RT or being covered by someone else in their basement or at a local club:
Enjoy.
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A few things there of interest to me slightly, that it might be nice to make it to, but one in particular that I MUST be there for: Mr. Richard Thompson.
I've been interested in RT since I saw a video of his for the song "Wrong Heartbeat" in 1984:
Amusing and fun, and just that -- but it made me just keep an eye out for anything by him. I wound up hearing the great Richard & Linda Thompson album Shoot Out the Lights soon after, and being blown away.
My late friend Will McCarter and I went to a concert at the Berklee Center in Boston in late 1985 and saw Thompson on a double bill with Randy Newman ("an acoustic evening") - and I was now hooked on RT. For Christmas that year, I got my first CD player and a $100 gift certificate to use on CDs at a local record shop. Back then, that would get you 4 CDs, and the first four I got were Laurie Anderson's Big Science and Mister Heartbreak, Talking Heads' Remain in Light, and Richard Thompson's Across a Crowded Room. Still have all of them.
The RT is still a pretty damn good album, if suffering more and more to my ears from a tinny 80s production and early CD mastering (I did a big re-EQing on it for my iTunes/iPod rip and it sounds a lot fuller). RT spent the rest of the 80s putting out albums of good or great songs (again, unfortunately, not always well produced - he also was downplaying his guitar playing on the recordings somewhat, saving his extending soloing for live performances). I got to see him again, this time with a full band, around 1989 or so at The Bottom Line. An incredible show, spoiled only slightly by my sitting a little too close to a Music Industry Weasel who made frequent trips to the bathroom, returning to the table sniffing and rubbing his nose, then violently rocking in his chair and pounding his table during the songs with no sense of rhythm at all (the first time I was ever aware that some cliches about drug use have a factual basis).
But, still, an amazing show, and pretty much right out of the gate when, as the second song of the night, he did an epic 10-minute long version of "Shoot Out the Lights" with an endless, beautiful guitar solo. This isn't quite that version, but it's from around the same time with pretty much the same band:
He finally put out a truly great album in 1991 with Rumor and Sigh - and I don't know how many copies of this one I've given people over the years to turn them on to Thompson. I gave a tape of it to writer Bob Spitz when he was a customer at a video store where I worked (he would give me tapes of Dylan bootlegs, and I gave him Richard Thompson stuff), and he became a one-man crusade for the album, calling up his friends at Capitol Records and trying to get them to promote the album better. Didn't work, though apparently RT did have some minor chart success with "I Feel So Good":
(Bob later wrote a book about the New York Knicks that I am amused to see he called Shoot Out the Lights)
RT has kept doing wonderful work since, and it was hard to choose only four videos to put up here -- there are plenty more of interest at YouTube (including a great version of "96 Tears" done with David Byrne), though unfortunately no versions of "Calvary Cross" and very little from his 1000 Years of Popular Music project/tour (where he performed songs ranging from Gregorian chants to "Oops! I Did It Again").
But, probably, the song of his that will wind up being the most beloved and remembered is the acoustic folk song "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" from Rumor and Sigh. A favorite of mine, which, um, I featured on many MANY cassette mix tapes to female friends of mine in the 90s, and very popular with them it was, too. Berit, on the other hand, hates the song and finds it unbearably sappy, and I am a bit chagrined to discover it is the most-requested song of all time at NPR, that bastion of polite "sensitive" entertainment. I still love it. Here's one of the many MANY versions you can find at YouTube, either done by RT or being covered by someone else in their basement or at a local club:
Enjoy.