Richard Thompson - The Bottom Line, New York City, 3-3-1992, Early Show

This is the first of four albums I've made that what I think is the best live acoustic concerts of Richard Thompson. I've made one album each of the early and late shows at the Bottom Line in New York City on March 3rd and 4th, 1992. This is top notch stuff all the way, with perfect sound quality.

One thing that makes these shows special is the fact that they were all-request shows. Apparently, they were the very first concerts he did in that format, though it was one he would return to from time to time. The set lists are excellent, with Thompson stretching himself and doing all sorts of rare covers and originals. Also, in my opinion, Thompson has been a great songwriter from the start of his career until the present day, but he was probably at his all-time peak at this time, having released arguably his best solo record, "Rumor and Sigh," the year before. Additionally, he was very chatty and amusing with his between song banter. Oh, and did I mention the flawless soundboard sound quality?

These shows have been well known and loved by Thompson fans for a long time. But if I can be immodest, I've made some changes to make them even better. How can that be, you might ask? It's mostly a matter of volume adjustment. One downside to a great soundboard bootleg such as this one is that oftentimes it records what's happening on stage flawlessly, but records very little of the audience. That was the case here. At the end of each song, the volume of the audience cheering was extremely low, making it sound as if Thompson was playing to an audience of ten people.

So the first change I made is that I drastically increased the volume of the crowd reaction after each song, until it was in line with what you'd expect. This was often tricky, because Thompson frequently noodled on his guitar or make some comments while the crowd was still cheering. The recording picked up what was happening on stage so much more than the crowd that these noises would totally drown out the crowd. Thus, I often had to lower the guitar noodling or comment during the clapping, and then patch in some more clapping from the end of another song. It sounds complicated, but the bottom line is you hear the cheering, the guitar noodling, and/or the comments all at expected volumes, instead of some aspects being too loud or two quiet.

I also did a lot of volume manipulation with his comments between songs. Since this was his first all request show, he had an unusual amount of banter, as he typically picked a song title out of a bucket of audience requests and had some back and forth with the audience about that. That's all fine, but sometimes his voice was too loud or too quiet. For instance, there were many times he spoke with his head away from the microphone, for instance presumably while he was leaning over to pick the next song title out of the bucket. So I had to drastically increase the volume in those instances. It was a lot of tinkering, but the bottom line was that you can hear him at an expected volume pretty much the entire time.

But I didn't stop there. I also didn't include some songs. Why, you may well ask? Two reasons. One, I didn't want to include any duplicates of the same song over the four shows on these two nights. There were very few repeats, due to the all-request format, but I dropped that down to no repeats, for maximum listenability. For instance, he played "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" three times in the four shows, and I only included one of those performances. There were less than then repeats like that across many hours of music, so I didn't actually remove much. Also  I nearly always was able to keep the banter before each song even for the songs I removed. The only such banter I also removed was if he specifically talked about that song. But the vast majority of the time, he was joking and talking about random things.

The second reason I didn't include some songs was when he tried to play a song he didn't know well, and landed flat on his face. This only happened a few times. For instance, in one of the later shows, he was requested to play Nick Drake's "Time Has Told Me," a song that he played lead guitar on for the original Drake recording. Sounds great, right? In theory, yes. But he started the song, realized he was flailing and didn't actually know the words, and quickly gave up. So I didn't include that. I kept some of his attempts, for instance about ten seconds of "God Save the Queen" by the Sex Pistols in a later show, when they actually sounded good for the short time they lasted. But some just didn't sound good at all, for instance if he was struggling to find the melody, or singing in the wrong key, or the like. There aren't actually that many cases of that, and they were usually short, but the concerts are better for not including them.

On top of that, I generally tightened things up between songs. For instance, if he spent a minute tuning his guitar, I almost certainly cut that out. I want to hear him sing or talk, not tune his guitar. So this is "all killer, no filler."

This first show is one hour and five minutes long. I believe it's the shortest of the four. The only songs I didn't include were "I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight" and "Can't Win," because I judged the versions he did of those songs in one of the three other shows were better.

01 talk (Richard Thompson)
02 Wall of Death (Richard Thompson)
03 talk (Richard Thompson & Shawn Colvin)
04 Oh I Swear (Richard Thompson & Shawn Colvin)
05 talk (Richard Thompson)
06 Borrowed Time (Richard Thompson)
07 talk (Richard Thompson)
08 I Misunderstood (Richard Thompson)
09 talk (Richard Thompson)
10 How Many Times Do You Have to Fall (Richard Thompson)
11 talk (Richard Thompson)
12 The Old Changing Way (Richard Thompson)
13 talk (Richard Thompson)
14 Missie How You Let Me Down (Richard Thompson)
15 talk (Richard Thompson)
16 Now That I Am Dead (Richard Thompson)
17 talk (Richard Thompson)
18 Down Where the Drunkards Roll (Richard Thompson)
19 talk (Richard Thompson)
20 Dimming of the Day (Richard Thompson)
21 talk (Richard Thompson)
22 Psycho Street (Richard Thompson)
23 talk (Richard Thompson)
24 Two Left Feet (Richard Thompson)
25 talk (Richard Thompson)
26 1952 Vincent Black Lightning (Richard Thompson)
27 talk (Richard Thompson)
28 Woman or a Man (Richard Thompson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15268486/RichrdT_1992_TheBottmLineNewYrkCity__3-3-1992__Early_Show_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, of course, I wanted to find good color photos of Thompson playing in an acoustic concert in 1992. I didn't find that, but I found a bunch from him in concert in 1991. Close enough for horseshoes! By the way, at the bottom, I included a logo for the Bottom Line club, but I squished it vertically so it wouldn't take up too much of the cover.