Richard Thompson - Shoot Out the Lights - Acoustic Version (1982)

Here's an all acoustic version of "Shoot Out the Lights." This classic album was recorded by both Richard and Linda Thompson. It usually gets on the best albums of all time lists, and deservedly so. But I'm not posting the official version with Linda here. In fact, there's no band at all, just Richard and his guitar.

Richard Thompson is a great guitarist all around. Rolling Stone magazine deemed him in their top twenty of the greatest guitarists of all time. He can wail on the electric guitar like Clapton or Hendrix, but he has a special talent for the acoustic guitar. He's learned a technique very few people know that allows him to solo while keeping a picking pattern or strumming pattern going. Sometimes, people going to his solo concerts will look around and wonder where the second guitarist is! (Hint: it's all him.)

So I plan on posting a lot of his acoustic versions of things. Luckily, it turns out he's played every song from "Shoot Out the Lights" in solo acoustic format, enabling me to put this together. All but one song here dates from 1982, the year the album came out. One of the songs, "Did She Jump or Was She Pushed," has been performed in concert only rarely, since Linda was the singer of it on the album. But I was able to find a pristine version from 2004.

And, as it so happens, I was able to find excellent versions of all the other songs too. These come from high quality soundboard bootlegs. I've removed all the audience noise, so it sounds exactly as if Richard Thompson is playing the album in your living room.

It's only 33 minutes long, five minutes shorter than studio album, since he doesn't actually do much soloing here. But it's all solid. Is it as good as the official album? No, but it's nice to listen to that album in a different way sometimes.

01 Don't Renege on Our Love (Richard Thompson)
02 Walking on a Wire (Richard Thompson)
03 Man in Need (Richard Thompson)
04 Just the Motion (Richard Thompson)
05 Shoot Out the Lights (Richard Thompson)
06 Back Street Slide (Richard Thompson)
07 Did She Jump or Was She Pushed (Richard Thompson)
08 Wall of Death (Richard Thompson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16376669/RICHRDTHMPSN1982ShotOuttheLghtsAcustc_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I found an outtake of the Shoot Out the Lights cover photo session that has Richard standing instead of sitting in a corner. Unfortunately, it was originally in black and white and I normally hate to use black and white photos for covers, but it was so fitting that I couldn't resist using it this time.

However, many months later, I got a good program for colorizing (Pixbim), so I was able to colorize it and closely match the official cover. (The way that Linda's portrait is heavily yellow is the same as the original.) I also added in the exact text from the original album cover, but minus Linda's name and with the word "Acoustic" added.