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Tim Conroy
Sep-13-2004, 3:45pm
I'm going to see RT this weekend, and I was curious if anyone else has seen him on this latest tour. #It's a solo acoustic appearance, no band. #Was there any mandolin, or is it all guitar? #It seems there was a fair amount of mandolin, banjo, etc. on many of the old Fairport Convention songs, but not so much in his more recent solo music. #

Anyone seen him perform lately?

TIA

Martin Jonas
Sep-13-2004, 4:02pm
I go to see him whenever I can, and I'm on the Richard Thompson mailing list, so I get to hear about what he does in his live shows. Solo acoustic will be all-guitar. His newer studio recordings do actually feature quite a bit of mandolin when you listen closely, but it's been a long time since he's played it on stage. I have a video of a Thompson-Swarbrick-Pegg mandolin trio from 1981, and it's great! On his band tours, you usually get to see Pete Zorn's thrash-metal slide mandolin solo in Shoot Out The Lights.

But if you've never seen him perform solo before, you're in for a treat -- he's one of the best live performers on the planet, mandolin or not. On this current tour, he's been reviving Crazy Man Michael from the old Fairport days.

Martin

Tim Conroy
Sep-13-2004, 4:39pm
Martin,

Thanks for your reply. Haven't seen him live before, but I've admired his playing and songwriting for some years now. I'm looking forward to it.

Tim

Bobbie Dier
Sep-13-2004, 5:03pm
Tim,
You are lucky. I wish He was going to play near my town. http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/blues.gif http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/blues.gif
ima

Martin Jonas
Sep-13-2004, 5:19pm
Ima -- for the next best thing, look out for the new live DVD to be released next month! Details here. (http://www.richardthompson-music.com/catch_of_the_day.asp?id=293)

Martin

Bobbie Dier
Sep-13-2004, 7:34pm
martinjonas,
Great site! I had no idea he had such a huge discography.He has been a busy fellow. He has put out an Album almost every year since the 60s. WOW! That is a LOT of work. I'm going to look into that DVD too. Might make the hubby a good Christmas gift http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/laugh.gif

The closest spot on his tour to us this year is The Birchmere in Alexandria Va. That is about an eight hour drive. I don't think we can make it this time.

Fairport is playing about an hours drive from us next month. We have the tickets already. Can't wait. Maybe Sir Richard will surprise us and be there(wishful thinking) We are camping so that might be risky hopeing he will come. You know how he brings on rain.

ima

Scott Tichenor
Sep-13-2004, 7:41pm
Richard is an amazing mandolin player! I can't say I've listened to a great amount of his music but he has one older recording that has some incredible mandolin work entitled Strict Tempo. One Ellington tune on this recording is spectacular. I saw him play solo a few years ago with only an acoustic guitar plugged in and it was one of the most amazing things I've ever witnessed.

Below: Strict Tempo. Plenty of copies on sale at amazon.com.

Tim Conroy
Sep-13-2004, 9:34pm
Well, y'all got me salivatin' now- #I'll let you know how my thoughts after the show.

Strict Tempo! is officially on order.

Looks like there's a show in Lawrence on the tour schedule too, Scott.

Martin Jonas
Sep-14-2004, 3:53am
Richard is an amazing mandolin player! I can't say I've listened to a great amount of his music but he has one older recording that has some incredible mandolin work entitled Strict Tempo. One Ellington tune on this recording is spectacular. I saw him play solo a few years ago with only an acoustic guitar plugged in and it was one of the most amazing things I've ever witnessed.
Strict Tempo is a great album, but it's extremely untypical of his output. For one thing it's his only all-instrumental album. Recorded on a shoestring in a home studio, with Richard playing every single instrument himself, apart from some percussion by Dave Mattacks.

The album was recorded in 1981, and the early 1980s were the high water mark for his mandolin involvement. The same year, he played lots of mandolin (and guitar) on Dave Swarbrick's best two solo albums (Smiddyburn and Flittin', both now on one cheap CD) and in 1983, he released a two-cassette tutor The Electric Mandolin 1 and 2: Mandolin Theory, Technique, & Improvisation (http://www.richardthompson-music.com/album.asp?id=58) together with our very own Niles Hokkanen. I've never seen or heard it, sad to say, and it's long out of print now, but I've heard lots of good things about it. Maybe Niles can give us some more insight?

Martin

Bobbie Dier
Sep-14-2004, 4:25am
Amazon, Strict Tempo, Out of stock. I'll keep trying.

Martin Jonas
Sep-14-2004, 4:49am
The album is out of print (has been for a while), so I assume Scott was referring to the used copies sold by the Amazon "Marketplace" dealers. Lots of copies on offer there, but at rather impressive prices. Low price is $33.99 as of now, which is a lot to pay for any single album. Your better bet might be to look through used CD shops or Ebay -- the CD was in print on Hannibal Records for many years, so there may well be quite a few copies lurking about in a dusty bin.

Martin

Staramouche
Sep-20-2004, 12:40pm
Looks like Richard has been playing mainly covers lately, even Britny Spears!

http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1506843

What a great, versatile, modest performer!

Neil in New Cross
Sep-20-2004, 3:57pm
Natalie Merchant (ex-10,000 Maniacs) has recently done a fine cover version of the old Fairport Convention track 'Crazy Man Michael' mentioned elsewhere on this thread. It's on the 'Carpenter's Daughter' LP.

Tim Conroy
Sep-20-2004, 5:13pm
Well, he didn't play any Britney in San Luis Obispo on Friday (someone hollered it as a request for his second encore but he went with Beeswing instead), but it was a terrific show nonetheless. #I generally try to avoid using superlatives, but it was in my mind the best one-man acoustic show I've seen. #Had great seats, 2nd row center. #RT looked a bit tired, but he must have played 15 songs in his main set, plus two 2-song encores.

I was going to try to write down the set list and note the tunings, but decided just to sit back and enjoy instead after two songs. #

These are the songs I can remember, but it's not a complete list

One Door Opens
Bathseba Smiles
Crazy Man Michael
Outside of the Inside
Crawl Back
I Feel So Good
I Misunderstood
52 VBL
Don't Sit on My Jimmy Shands
Dimming of the Day
Beeswing


That was one show I hated to see end. #Go see him if he plays near your town. #I'd like next to see him with the band, but I don't know how often he would be playing small venues in central California with them. #

Tim

Tim Conroy
Sep-20-2004, 5:16pm
Remembered a couple more-

Hamlet
I Got the Hots for the Smarts- I think this was either a new one or a really old one he hasn't played for a while, he was reading the lyrics off of footnotes. #Funny song about how he wants a really smart girlfriend (one who 'applies her lotion with a Brownian motion')

Martin Jonas
Sep-21-2004, 6:06am
Looks like Richard has been playing mainly covers lately, even Britny Spears!
I think there is some confusion here. #Over the past few years, Richard has been doing a smallish number of special theme gigs (backed by Judith Owen and Michael Jerome), advertised as such, under the title "1000 Years of Popular Music". #In these special gigs, he plays exclusively non-original songs, drawn from anywhere in the last millenium. #The idea arose out of those end-of-the-millenium best-of polls that many magazines ran at the time. #Richard decided to take the "millenium" bit seriously, starting in the 11th century and working his way through some renaissance, music hall and Gilbert & Sullivan numbers forward to the 20th century, ending with very convincing covers of Prince (Kiss), Abba (Money, Money, Money) and Britney Spears (Oops, I Did It Again). #If that's something you're interested in, he's released an internet-only live CD of these gigs, available here (http://www.richardthompson-music.com/album.asp?id=74).

But, as I said, these are occasional gigs, explicitly advertised as such. #On his "normal" gigs, which are still the large majority, he plays almost exclusively his own material with only very occasional covers. #Over the last few years, he has however usually included a few humourous novelty numbers to break up the doom & gloom with which he's usually associated. #These are largely self-written, but won't appear on any album (some are available for download from his web site).

This is now becoming pretty off-topic, so I better shut up. #If you want to read more reviews of Thompson shows, look here (http://www.rtlist.net/).

Martin

Martin Jonas
Oct-27-2011, 4:47pm
Richard is an amazing mandolin player! I can't say I've listened to a great amount of his music but he has one older recording that has some incredible mandolin work entitled Strict Tempo. One Ellington tune on this recording is spectacular. I saw him play solo a few years ago with only an acoustic guitar plugged in and it was one of the most amazing things I've ever witnessed.

Below: Strict Tempo. Plenty of copies on sale at amazon.com.

I'm reviving this really old thread, as it's a good place to note that after ten years or more of being out of print and selling second-hand at astronomic prices, Richard Thompson's fabulous all-instrumental album "Strict Tempo" (endorsed above by Scott) is about to be re-released on 29 November.

Announcement on RT's web site:

Link (http://www.richardthompson-music.com/catch_of_the_day.asp?id=1438)

Martin

Bren
Oct-31-2011, 5:11am
That's great news - I had a tape of it for many years, and then someone burned me a copy, which I've lost.

Scott Tichenor
Oct-31-2011, 6:20am
I'm thrilled to hear this news. I'll be getting in line for this one as the last time I owned it I'm pretty sure it was on, gulp, vinyl. Available for pre-order (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0057PAB98?ie=UTF8&tag=mandcafe-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=B0057PAB98) at amazon.com. Hoping there'll ultimately be MP3 and/or iTunes availability as well.