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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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RICHARD THOMPSON, 1000 Years of Popular
Music
The Barbican, London, January 15th
2009 |
| Isn’t
history a wonderful thing, Serge? And isn’t
it wonderful that it takes great men of vision like
your premier Monsieur Sarkozy to recognise history’s
true purpose. Which is in this case (should you
not know) to act as a mirror thrown up against the
epoch-making actions of great and visionary men
like your M. Sarko for instance, for the inspiration
and illumination of generations to come. So I was
inspired to learn that Mr S. plans to appropriate
all of your French car factories (just like our
world-saving President Brown has with our British
banks) and turn them into museums of French history,
each presenting a fantastic tableau of one of the
great moments in the history of the Republic, ending
of course with Mr S. himself, and his lovely guitar-
playing wife. Why I even understand that our Mr
Brown has suggested pitting the now redundant men
of Toyota’s Wearside manufactory against those
from Peugeot’s Poissy in a weekly re-enactment
of the Battle of Agincourt. What a truly stunning
way to exploit the past in these difficult times.
Just a shame that no-one from UK plc (in liquidation)
will be able to afford to attend. |
| I’m
not sure that Richard
Thompson necessarily shares this view
of the past. Having said that I would have to observe
– and I speak with some authority here –
that his One Thousand Years of Popular Music, performed
to a Barbican packed with bearded Guardian-reading
retired teachers and social workers (and their husbands),
was not quite the best history lesson I’ve
ever been a party to. But then I don’t think
it was supposed to be, with his characteristic mumblings
and asides (“this one’s from the industrial
age, really a bit hard to date but definitely from
the 1800s or thereabouts…”) a perfect
parody of a not-so-learned lecturer addressing a
cold village hall village history society. |
 |
| Is
there a lesson in an evening that begins with Thompson
winding a hurdy-gurdy and ends with an uplifting
medley of vintage sixties Beatles (‘Eight
days a week’ never sounded quite so good)?
Well, perhaps the rather heavy-handed insertion
of a madrigal into the middle section of Nelly Furtado’s
‘Man eater’ suggested an enduring continuity
in the format of popular song through the ages,
which I’m sure no-one would question. But
one could question the title, which perhaps should
have included the word ‘European’ given
how old world-centric the content of the evening
was, with scant regard even to the American tradition,
let alone the undoubted influences on popular song
of Africa, a chance and fortuitous by-product of
Europe’s (and America’s) commercial
construct of the slave-trade. But like I said, I
don’t think Thompson suggested it be taken
quite so seriously, so I’m content to deduce
from the evening that what we really witnessed was
1000 years of Richard Thompson playing his wonderful
and quite unique guitar style. |
| Indeed
we were warned from the start that the content was
unashamedly selective – “it doesn’t
include the Sound of Music and no Petula Clark”.
But our chronological journey, with Thompson more
than ably assisted by Judith
Owen on piano and vocals (hair tied back demurely
for the first half, then unleashed for the second
which centred on the twentieth century), and Debra
Dobkin on percussion and vocals, (who if she
didn’t have bells on her fingers, certainly
had them on her toes) was almost exhaustive in the
styles of popular song it explored. There was what
might be described as traditional folk song –
‘The three Ravens’ and ‘The False
Knight’ (“another song that’s
very hard to date, but it’s sort of about
crack dealers at the school-house door), Italian
renaissance dance tunes, Elizabethan madrigals,
carols, sea shanties (a first class rendition of
my favourite primary school song, and really a river
shanty, ‘Shenandoah’), some music hall
(“my old granny used to sing me this after
three or four gins …”) and even Gilbert
and Sullivan. The second half began with the Inkspots’
‘Java jive’, Cole Porter’s ‘Night
and day’ (some spectacular guitar here according
to my new 2009 notebook), and “Stick McGhee
via Jerry Lee Lewis via my sister’s record
player”, ‘Drinkin' wine, spo-dee-o-dee’
(and here I at last have something to thank Wikipedia
for, which tells me that “the spo-dee-o-dee
was a scat substitute for the original motherfucker”.
That’s real cocktail party small-talk stuff
isn’t it?). Thompson played ‘See my
friends’, his (and mine, coincidentally) favourite
song from the Ravens, who used to play at his North
London youth club before changing their name to
the Kinks, and a really jumping version of the Easybeats’
‘Friday on my mind’. That was before
the inevitable Abba (which got all the bearded ones
behind us singing and shouting for Britney, from
which we were spared), Nelly F, and an encore that
spanned a song attributed to Richard 1st, sung in
medieval French, and finally the Beatles. |
| And
I suppose, in conclusion, that the only real lesson
we learned, if we needed it, was what a prodigious
musician, and entertainer, Richard Thompson is.
As Jozzer – who had kindly procured us first
row circle seats – observed, it would be hard
to think of anyone else who could pull off such
a ridiculous show with such supreme panache. You
can buy a version of the show on DVD, but a much
stronger recommendation would be to catch it live
if you can. Groundhogs notwithstanding, what a fantastic
start to a musical year. - Nick Morgan (concert
photographs by Kate) |
| Thank
you Nick, but why do you Englishmen always know
everything about things that happen in France, that
we Frenchmen have never even heard of? As for your
suggestion regarding our unemployed car makers,
if not enough of your compatriots could make it
to Azincourt for the battle reloaded, we could always
do it in Hastings I guess, but then it's the French
who won't afford to attend. Wait, why not do it
on Jersey? Maybe there will be less taxes on helmets
and swords... (oh, and arrows). But let's listen
to the good Mr Thompson now, I can't understand
why he didn't play Joni Mitchell's Black Crow, he
does it so well and it's certainly a very popular
piece - so to speak. - S |
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