Richard Thompson - 1000 Years of Popular Music - Second Version (2001-2007)

A couple of weeks ago, I posted my version of Richard Thompson's "1000 Years of Popular Music" concerts. If you liked that one, you should like this one too. It's the exact same thing, the same concept, except that every single song is different!

Here's a quick review. Starting around 2001, Thompson began playing his occasional "1000 Years of Popular Music" concerts, which consisted entirely of covers of songs from the last 1000 years. And "1000 years" wasn't an exaggeration, either: many of the songs go back hundreds of years. In 2004, he put out an album of the concert, and the first version I posted largely contains the same set of songs, though I made some changes, such as including more of his banter about the songs, and changing the song order to make more chronological sense. 

In 2006, he released a DVD of the show, with many different songs than the ones on the album. I took those different songs as the start of this version - there are nine of those. But then I added a bunch more, because there were many changes to his set lists as he kept playing "1000 Years" themed concerts from time to time in the 2000s. I found another 12 songs to add. All of these are officially unreleased in any form, and come from concert bootlegs. Luckily, most of them sound pretty good, but sometimes there's a drop in sound quality from the songs sourced from the DVD.

As with the first version I posted, I made a concerted effort to find comments he made about each song. I got lucky and found him saying at least a few words for every song, with two exceptions ("You'll Never Walk Alone" and "Ring of Fire").

Also like the first version I posted, I sorted the songs by the years they were first created, instead of by the order Thompson performed them in concert. Doing the latter pretty much would have been impossible, since the songs come from a bunch of concerts with very different set lists. With the first version, Thompson gave a great lesson on the history of Western music over the last 1000 years, and here he does it again, without repeating himself at all. Not only that, but I'm planning a third version where that feat is repeated.

This album is an hour and 25 minutes long, which was roughly the length of one of his typical concerts with this theme. As with the first version, I've included the years the songs were created in the song titles, to help make that clear. I did some research on that to help me with the ordering of the songs.

UPDATE: On January 24, 2026, I updated the mp3 download file. When I first posted this, in 2021, the sound quality of much of the banter was often lower quality than the songs, since those often came from different sources that happened to be rougher. But when I updated it, I ran all those low quality talking tracks through the Adobe vocal enhancer program. I think they sound much better now.

01 Worlds Blis Ne Last [1200s] (Richard Thompson)
02 talk (Richard Thompson)
03 Bonnie St. Johnstone [unknown] (Richard Thompson)
04 talk (Richard Thompson)
05 O Sleep Fond Fancy [Thomas Morley, 1597] (Richard Thompson)
06 talk (Richard Thompson)
07 Remember O Thou Man [Thomas Ravenscroft, 1609] (Richard Thompson)
08 talk (Richard Thompson)
09 Full Fathom Five [Robert Johnson, 1611] (Richard Thompson)
10 talk (Richard Thompson)
11 A-Begging I Will Go [1817 or earlier] (Richard Thompson)
12 talk (Richard Thompson)
13 Hobo Bill's Last Ride [Jimmie Rodgers, 1929] (Richard Thompson)
14 talk (Richard Thompson)
15 Night and Day [Cole Porter, 1932] (Richard Thompson)
16 talk (Richard Thompson)
17 I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter [Fats Waller, 1935] (Richard Thompson)
18 talk (Richard Thompson)
19 Java Jive [Ink Spots, 1941] (Richard Thompson)
20 talk (Richard Thompson)
21 London Pride [Noel Coward, 1941] (Richard Thompson)
22 You'll Never Walk Alone [Rodgers and Hammerstein, 1945] (Richard Thompson)
23 talk (Richard Thompson)
24 Don't Stop the Music [George Jones, 1957] (Richard Thompson)
25 Ring of Fire [Johnny Cash, 1963] (Richard Thompson)
26 talk (Richard Thompson)
27 A-11 [Buck Owens, 1964] (Richard Thompson)
28 talk (Richard Thompson)
29 I Ain't Marching Anymore [Phil Ochs, 1965] (Richard Thompson)
30 talk (Richard Thompson)
31 See My Friends [Kinks, 1965] (Richard Thompson)
32 talk (Richard Thompson)
33 Walk Away Renee [Left Banke, 1966] (Richard Thompson)
34 talk (Richard Thompson)
35 Friday on My Mind [Easybeats, 1967] (Richard Thompson)
36 talk (Richard Thompson)
37 There's Always Someone Cooler than You [Ben Folds Five, 2003] (Richard Thompson)
38 talk (Richard Thompson)
39 1985 [Bowling for Soup, 2005] (Richard Thompson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/w4kPffc2

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/thcksVZeTQQb8UU/file

The album cover uses a photo of Thompson in concert in 2007. I don't know any more details. I used the same artwork on each side as I did with the first version.