Richard & Linda Thompson - The Bottom Line, New York City, 5-18-1982, Early Show

I've been looking for an excellent Richard and Linda Thompson concert recording from 1982 for a long time, but I wasn't aware of worthy one. Until a few days ago, that is. Their 1982 tour is the most interesting one for me, because it was the last time they performed concerts together, which meant they could draw on songs from all their albums. Most importantly, it happened right after the release of "Shoot Out the Lights," which I consider one of the top 100 albums of all time, so of course the songs from that album were prominently featured.

The 1982 tour was full of personal drama, to say the least. In 1981, Linda was Richard's wife and was very pregnant with his child when they recorded the "Shoot Out the Lights" album. The release of the album was delayed a few months until she'd recovered from giving birth and was physically ready to tour. In the meanwhile, Richard performed a short tour in the US to help draw interest for a planned bigger tour with Linda. He fell in love with the woman who helped set up the tour, Nancy Covey, and broke his marriage vows. He would marry Nancy a couple of years later. But in the meantime, a May 1982 Richard and Linda Thompson tour of the US went ahead, despite the fact their marriage was dramatically falling apart. The tour has since been dubbed "The Tour from Hell," due to the extreme personal tensions off stage. But on stage, they generally carried on in a musically successful manner.

Some of the shows were professionally recorded with a plan to release a live album of it. But some technical problems with a few of the recorded shows meant the album never happened, even though some other shows were recorded just fine. Over the years, some live recordings have come out here and there. Most notably, a 2010 re-release of "Shoot Out the Lights" had a second disc of live performances from the tour. But the songs were selected from a number of different shows. No single concert from the tour has been released in full, or anything close to full.

On May 18, 1982, the Thompsons played an early and late show at the Bottom Line in New York City. Soundboard recordings of these shows have come out as bootlegs. It's highly likely these are among the professionally recorded shows meant for the planned live album. As a result, the sound quality is excellent.

However, there were a few issues with the recording. One problem with great soundboards is that they often record what's happening on stage very well but then record almost nothing of the audience. So when each song ends, it seems as if the band is playing to a tiny and/or uninterested crowd. That was the case here. So I carefully boosted the volume of the crowd reaction after every song.

Furthermore, for whatever reason, the volume of the between song banter and a few acoustic songs was way, way below the volume of the electric songs. Note the two ways in "way, way below," because there was an extremely unusual difference there, even compared to most soundboard recordings of this nature. But I was able to fix that by drastically increasing the volume of the quiet parts. That did result in some hiss sometimes. For the talking between songs, I employed some noise reduction to make that less obvious. But I didn't do that with the songs themselves.

There are a couple of other soundboard bootlegs from the 1982 "Tour from Hell." But in my opinion, the Bottom Line shows are the definitive ones, at least in terms of what has become public. A big reason for that is because both the early and late shows were recorded well, and between the two shows, just about every song the band knew how to play on the tour got played. I'm posting the early show here, but I'll post the late show soon as well.

By the way, I have "Edit" in the name of "Just the Motion" because there was about half a minute missing from the middle of the song. The song was also played in the late show, so I used the missing portion from that to patch it up. Luckily, the missing section wasn't in the middle of a solo, so it sounds fine now.

01 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
02 Back Street Slide (Richard & Linda Thompson)
03 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
04 Walking on a Wire (Richard & Linda Thompson)
05 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
06 Newfangled Floggin Reel - Kerry Reel [Instrumental] (Richard & Linda Thompson)
07 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
08 Honky Tonk Blues (Richard & Linda Thompson)
09 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
10 I'll Keep It with Mine (Richard & Linda Thompson)
11 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
12 You're Going to Need Somebody (Richard & Linda Thompson)
13 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
14 Dimming of the Day (Richard & Linda Thompson)
15 Withered and Died (Richard & Linda Thompson)
16 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
17 Man in Need (Richard & Linda Thompson)
18 Just the Motion [Edit] (Richard & Linda Thompson)
19 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
20 Don't Renege on Our Love (Richard & Linda Thompson)
21 Did She Jump or Was She Pushed (Richard & Linda Thompson)
22 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
23 Shoot Out The Lights (Richard & Linda Thompson)
24 For the Shame of Doing Wrong (Richard & Linda Thompson)
25 talk (Richard & Linda Thompson)
26 Down Where the Drunkards Roll (Richard & Linda Thompson)
27 Danny Boy (Richard & Linda Thompson)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16376691/RICHRDLNDATHMPSN1982cTheBottmLineNewYrkCity__5-18-1982__Early_Show_atse.zip.html

If you've closely followed this blog, you may have noticed that I have a strong dislike of using black and white photos for the album cover art. While that's true in general, I make exceptions sometimes, such as this one. It's surprisingly hard to find any good photos of Richard and Linda Thompson at all. But it so happens I've found two photos of them from the very Bottom Line shows on May 18, 1982. The only downside is they're in black and white. Some months after first posting this album, I colorized this photo.

Also, in the original photo, Richard and Linda were standing about four or five feet apart. I used Photoshop to move them closer together, to make a better picture.