FAVORITE CONCERTS OF 2010
(part 1)RICHARD THOMPSON
Wilmington, DE
British troubadour Richard Thompson brought his electric band to Wilmington's Grand Opera House on October 21st as part of his DREAM ATTIC tour. The album of the same name was recorded live by this band on a West Coast jaunt last winter. Seen locally most recently at the Grand on a double bill with Loudon Wainwright III on October 12, 2009, Thompson hasn't played in the area with his full band in a many years and while any Thompson appearance is cause for celebration, hearing him in full sonic regalia is a treat indeed.
DREAM ATTIC's original compositions were recorded live on the first leg of this tour last winter on the West Coast. For this Wilmington show, he brought along the stellar band from that recording, Pete Zorn (guitars, flute, sax, mandolin), Michael Jerome (drums), Taras Prodaniuk (bass), and Joel Zifkin (violin, mandolin) and RT himself on electric and acoustic guitars. While to some his voice may be an acquired taste, Thompson's guitar playing has long been the most direct path into his stunningly rich and diverse songcraft which is at the heart of what makes him one of the most important and prolific artists of the past four decades.
For years, Richard Thompson has been a darling of the music press. His name appears over and over again alongside such headlines as, "Is He Too Good?", "Why You Need To Hear Richard Thompson", "This Man Should Be A Star", "The World's Greatest Unknown Guitar Player". The fact that he continues to put out records that wind up on yearly BEST OF lists and tours to a rabid fanbase, somehow indescribably finds him just under the general public's radar. His records both solo, with his ex-wife singer Linda Thompson, and as a member of 60s Brit Folk/Rock innovators Fairport Convention, wind up in the GREATEST ALBUMS EVER lists of major music magazines across the globe.
I had heard some of the early Fairport records when they came out (circa '67-'70) and my interest then was primarily in the fact that they covered some fairly obscure Bob Dylan tunes as sounded a bit like a Brit Folk version of Jefferson Airplane to my relatively uneducated ears. In the early 80s, I heard a couple of records that piqued my interest. Richard and Linda Thompson's Shoot Out the Lights floored me with it's variety, the immediacy of the emotion throughout the strong tunes and the unique sound of their voices as well as the incendiary guitar playing on the title track. On the strength of that record, I wound up buying RT's Hand of Kindness, which to this day is one of my desert island discs.
But it wasn't until my first Thompson concert at the old Chestnut Cabaret in Philadelphia that I was hooked. I'd recently moved to the East Coast and was unable to convince any of my new friends to see this artist that they'd never heard of, so I drove cautiously by myself to this new and foreign town. I was the first guy in the building and saw a show that changed my concept of what virtuosic guitar playing was all about. I bought a Heineken, took one sip, set it on the stage and stood with my mouth wide open for the next hour and a half.
Since then I try to never miss a tour and have seen him in many wonderful situations...small bars, huge outdoor festivals, seated theaters, intimate lakeside settings, an unforgettable solo show in 2006 at the Arden Gild Hall and I have never been remotely disappointed. His songwriting, guitar playing and performing style are always vastly entertaining. Witty, wry, sarcastic, poignant and emotionally riveting, he takes you places other artists don't dare.
At the Grand, with no opening act, Thompson divided the evening into two sets of approximately 75 minutes each. Set One featured the DREAM ATTIC record in it's entirety. For many this was a first chance to hear the new music and while a lengthy introduction for folks yearning for their fave RT songs, the new songs stood well on their own.
Thompson's stock in trade, in the great folk tradition, are character driven songs balanced equally between tales of eccentric folks scratching their way around the underbelly of humanity--conniving hustlers, murderers, scufflers, circus folk, and the dreaded drunken scoundrel-- and stories of love gone edgy. Dreamers, cheaters, lonely souls on the downside of love's hopefulness. Those who have lost at love for reasons unexplainable or more precisely inadmittable.
"The Money Shuffle" is a mid-tempo rock rant against Wall Street but lifted above a pissy rock star moaning by Thompson's always dazzling wit. The first of a profusion of scorching Thompson guitar solos graces the opener. "Among The Gorse, Among the Grey" is a very sparse and slow, almost tempo-less tune followed by "Haul Me Up" cast with an almost Cajun two-step vibe, another favorite setting. "Burning Man" is a burnished and almost expressionist piece compared to his usual precise lyrical and tonal detail based around what Thompson calls "pre-Christian melodies".
"Here Comes Geordie" featuring pennywhistle, violin tapes into the folkiest elements of the evening with probably the least interesting lyric. In the next number he sings, "She's a kind of tease and you can't refuse / her bedroom eyes and Demons In Her Dancing Shoes". This tune ahs some wonderful moments of fiddle filigree and a teasing and dancing guitar solo with a wild polka vibe.
A frightening vignette of a murder scene unfolds with dark, impressionistic shadows in "Crimescene." Things are lightened up a bit in the brisk "Big Sun Falling in the River" probably the most commercially oriented, i.e. catchy number of the set.
"Stumble On" is perhaps one of RT's most stunningly beautiful ballads yet and is followed by the edgiest and at once most jaunty tune of the set is "Sidney Wells". The story of a taxi driving serial killer done up in the popular English dance rhythm which features a fairly frenetic and wild soprano sax solo from Zorn and a zippery, fearsome slash of guitar psychosis.
A very still and respectful moment is drawn with the sad eulogy for a friend's passing in "A Brother Slips Away".
Richard Thompson - Exclusive Q & A from MOGMusicNetwork.com on Vimeo.
They follow with the hardest rockin' delinquent lovers lament of the evening, "Bad Again" in which the pointedly flummoxed lover sings, "I'm bad again...I must've done somethin' but I don't know when / I'm bad again...maybe you'll love me in the morning." Thompson's sense of humor is something that runs through so much of his material and this is a wonderful example. The video below (and the one above for "A Brother Slips Away" are from RT's official website) and are not from the Wilmington show but give you a glimpse at versions of these two songs from earlier in the tour in San Francisco.
Thompson's solo on this one was dirty, full of salacious bends and slightly dissonant edge. One reason so many guitarists cherish Thompson is that what he does is so very unique that few seem overtly influenced by him. The only one who comes to mind immediately is Mark Knopfler. Closing the set with an undercarriage of Zifkin's melancholy violin, "If Love Whispers Your Name" is another is the long line of slowly unfolding and emotionally haunting cautionary tales of lost love, that escalates into a scathing, incendiary swamp of guitar release. I always thought LESSONS UNLEARNED would seem to be a great title for a compilation of RT's sad, love-gone-wrong songs.
The second set was what most of the crowd had come for, a wonderful cross-section of numbers from Thompson's 43+ year career. Appropriately, he opened with the first tune of Fairport Convention's debut album, a cover of songwriter Emmit Rhodes, "Time Will Show The Wiser." I can't recall the last time I'd heard him do this wonderful song.
"Can't Win" thrilled with one the evening's most accomplished, daring and jaw-dropping guitar solos. Vintage RT. We've come to expect the bigger numbers in his setlists and fans were not disappointed with rousing versions of the set ending duos, "Wall of Death" the poppy paean to a carnival ride, and the frenetic Louisianan hoedown of "Tear-Stained Letter".
Before the set ended we were also graced with two very different acoustic oriented numbers (meaning RT switched to the acoustic guitar). First up was a decidedly Eastern-flavored rhythm of "One Door Opens" featuring Thompson's droning guitar lines over Micheal Jerome's djembe/drums figure. This was followed by the popular swinging 30s vibe of "Al Bowlley's In Heaven" about the passing of a renowned Brit entertainer. This was followed with "The Way That It Shows" a song from one of RT's more sonically experimental records, Mirror Blue.
RT fans all have their favorite numbers and the exclusion of tunes like "1952 Vincent Black Lightning", "Shoot Out The Lights" and "When The Spell Is Broken" always leaves me wanting more. But when an artists presents so much quality new material and in a cohesive and stunningly played program, where the music is presented in it's entirety in the order released with the same stellar band, this makes a concert memory that is hard to top. Other artists have performed full new albums in concert (the major conceptualists like Pink Floyd and Pete Townshend come to mind immediately) but only rarely have artists recorded entire albums of new material in front of an audience and toured it in this manner.
One of the few performers who can truly create cinematic atmospherics with just an acoustic guitar and a voice, Thompson has long been on of folk/rock's hidden treasures. While it is difficult to see a RT Band show and call it folk music, it isn't just rock n roll either. The diversity and breadth of emotional, technical prowess and built-in dynamics are so well integrated into these incredibly well-constructed tunes and lyrics that one walks away thinking that you were hearing being stories told as much as hearing music played. It's a fabulous trick and what good songwriting is all about. The vision of Richard Thompson is a treasure indeed.
SET LIST:
SET ONE: The Money Shuffle / Among The Gorse, Among the Grey / Haul Me Up / Burning Man / Here Comes Geordie / Demons In Her Dancing Shoes / Crimescene / Big Sun Falling in the River / Stumble On / Sidney Wells / A Brother Slips Away / Bad Again / If Love Whispers Your Name
SET TWO:
Time Will Show the Wiser (Emmitt Rhodes) / Can't Win / One Door Opens* / Al Bowlly's In Heaven* / The Way That It Shows / Wall Of Death / Tear-Stained Letter
ENCORE: Take Care The Road You Choose / A Man In Need
DREAM ATTIC was released on SHOUT FACTORY! in August 2010
photos courtesy of NovemberGirlFoto
thx Alessandra. glad you could make it.
DOWNLOAD LIVE SHOW OF THE DAY - MOGWAI
Granada Theater, Dallas TX 9/13/08
I had never actually heard a note of Mogwai before today. Their new live CD was voted on of the Top Ten Live Cds of 2010 by PopMatters.com and the snippet there was intriguing so I headed to archive and found a high rated show and started streaming it while writing the Thompson review above. I dig it. Atmospheric, drony post-rock. I always really like instrumental guitar rock be it the Ventures, Dick Dale, some of the Crimson/Fripp/Eno projects and side ventures, Spacemen 3...noisy atmospheric stuff...much more up my alley than the danceable drum n bass rave stuff though, nowadays I do like working up a lather as much as the next guy. Mogwai reminds me some of Eno's Apollo sdtk but with a bit more VOLUME generally. The recording quality of this show is pretty decent with only minor distractions from the crowd. I will be seeking out more Mogwai. To think they've been around 15 years and I've just never run into them is one of those frequent realizations about just how much interesting music there is out in the big world.
Here's a song from the set...check out and download the full show
Find this show at ARCHIVE.ORG
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