Richard Thompson - 1000 Years of Popular Music - First Version (2001-2002)

Here's something that I'm especially proud of. Around 2000, Playboy Magazine asked Richard Thompson and a bunch of other famous musicians to list what they considered to be the best songs of the millennium. Thompson alone took them literally and gave them a list that genuinely covered 1000 years, whereas everyone else made lists just of the last century. Probably because his list was so weird, Playboy never published it. But it gave Thompson the idea for a show called "1000 Years of Popular Music," which he did off and on from about 2001 until 2009. 

Thompson released a CD of one of these shows in 2003. Then he released a DVD in 2006 of a show from a later tour with a fairly different set list. What I have here is related, but different. Since Thompson toured with this concept for most of a decade, the show evolved over time, and the set list changed. I've found enough different songs to create three full-length concerts of about an hour and a half each, with those three concerts having totally different set lists. Not a single song is repeated between any of the three shows.

In order to get enough material for all three shows, I've drawn upon the CD, the DVD, and various bootlegs. For this first concert, the vast majority of the songs come from the CD. However, I enjoy Thompson's banter before the songs, and I wanted to see if I could find some comments he made for every single song. Because many of the songs are obscure, with some dating back hundreds of years, his comments can be very illuminating. He only had comments for about half of the songs on the CD, but by using the DVD and bootleg sources, I was able to find comments for almost all of the rest. 

Another change I've made is that I've organized all the songs by when they were first created. Thompson more or less did this for the CD version, but he bounced around some, especially for the encores. For instance, his cover of "Sam Hall," a song from the 1700s, came after his cover of the Britney Spears hit "Oops... I Did It Again" from the year 2000. I think the concert makes better sense and has improved flow with the songs in proper chronological order.

The vast majority of the songs here sound great. But there's a snag in that some of the banter between songs come from bootlegs with considerably lower quality. I figure this would be more of a problem if it were actual songs, but since it's just him talking, it doesn't matter much. Still, you'll probably notice the change in quality for some of the banter. If that bothers you too much, you can just remove those tracks. 

Between adding in more of the banter and moving some songs around, I developed some flow issues. For instance, the audience applause might come to a sudden end, with the next track starting with silence. So I carefully checked the transitions from song to song and made little fixes. For instance, if his next comments started with some lingering applause, I'd make sure the previous song ended with a moderate amount of clapping going on. Hopefully the result is that it'll sound like one concert, even though in fact it has a handful of different sources.

This mostly just features Thompson and his acoustic guitar. However, Judith Owen sings backing vocals occasionally, and takes the lead vocals on a few songs, such as "Cry Me a River." There's also some percussion here and there. 

The total length of this concert is an hour and 36 minutes. By comparison, the CD version is an hour and 16 minutes long. If you're familiar with that CD, you'll be familiar with most of this. Things get more interesting with the second concert, which has about half of its source material from bootlegs, and then the third concert, which is entirely sourced from bootlegs.

Oh, by the way, I don't normally do this, but given the unique "history lesson" aspect of this concert, I've added to the song titles the year (or rough estimate) of when each song was created, as well as the author, when that's known.

01 Sumer Is Icumen In [1200s] (Richard Thompson)
02 talk (Richard Thompson)
03 King Henry V's Conquest of France [1400s] (Richard Thompson)
04 talk (Richard Thompson)
05 When I Am Laid in Earth [Dido's Lament] [Henry Purcell, 1689] (Richard Thompson)
06 talk (Richard Thompson)
07 So Ben Mi Ca Bon Tempo [Orazio Vecchi, 1590] (Richard Thompson)
08 talk (Richard Thompson)
09 Sam Hall [1700s] (Richard Thompson)
10 talk (Richard Thompson)
11 Shenandoah [early 1800s] (Richard Thompson)
12 talk (Richard Thompson)
13 Blackleg Miner [1840s] (Richard Thompson)
14 talk (Richard Thompson)
15 Banks of the Nile (Richard Thompson)
16 talk (Richard Thompson)
17 Why Have My Loved Ones Gone [Stephen Foster, 1861] (Richard Thompson)
18 talk (Richard Thompson)
19 There Is Beauty in the Bellow of the Blast [Gilbert and Sullivan, 1885] (Richard Thompson)
20 talk (Richard Thompson)
21 I Live in Trafalgar Square [C. W. Murphy, 1902] (Richard Thompson)
22 talk (Richard Thompson)
23 Waiting at the Church [Vesta Victoria, 1907] (Richard Thompson)
24 talk (Richard Thompson)
25 Rockin' Chair [Hoagy Carmichael, 1929] (Richard Thompson)
26 talk (Richard Thompson)
27 Orange Coloured Sky [Jonny Edwards, 1930] (Richard Thompson)
28 talk (Richard Thompson)
29 Drinking Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee [Sonny Parker, 1949] (Richard Thompson)
30 talk (Richard Thompson)
31 Cry Me a River [Julie London, 1955] (Richard Thompson)
32 talk (Richard Thompson)
33 The Fool [Sanford Clark, 1956] (Richard Thompson)
34 It Won't Be Long [The Beatles, 1963] (Richard Thompson)
35 talk (Richard Thompson)
36 A Legal Matter [The Who, 1965] (Richard Thompson)
37 talk (Richard Thompson)
38 Money, Money, Money [ABBA, 1976] (Richard Thompson)
39 Tempted [Squeeze, 1981] (Richard Thompson)
40 talk (Richard Thompson)
41 Kiss [Prince, 1986] (Richard Thompson)
42 talk (Richard Thompson)
43 Oops... I Did It Again [Britney Spears, 2000] (Richard Thompson)
44 Marry, Ageyn Hic Hev Donne Yt [Oops... I Did It Again] (Richard Thompson)

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I believe the cover photo comes from a "1000 years" concert in Sadler's Wells, London, in 2003. The picture was taller than it was wide, so I filled in some of the space to the sides with Celtic designs.