Richard Thompson - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: In Concert, The Venue, New Cross, London, Britain, 11-10-1983

Back in May 2025, I posted what I called "BBC Sessions, Volume 1" by Richard Thompson. But in my write-up, I noted that I'd seen mention of a BBC concert he did in 1983, and I wrote, "Note that if someone finds that one, I'll have to make that 'Volume 1' and rename everything after. So hopefully that can happen sooner rather than later, before I post more albums." Well, good news and bad news. The good is, that long-lost 1983 BBC concert has been found, and here it is! The bad news is, I've posted six later volumes already. So today I just renumbered them all, changing the cover art and mp3 tags for all of them as well. So, if you have downloaded some of them already, I suggest you get the latest versions.

The reason this has been found is due to musical associate Progsprog, who sent it to me. So a big thanks to him. I've looked high and low, and this hasn't been available on the Internet for a long time. Let's hope this puts it back into wide circulation, because it's a great concert.

Thompson broke up with his wife and musical duo partner Linda Thompson in 1982. He put out a solo album, "Hands of Kindness," in 1983. Many of the songs here are from that, though he also does songs written earlier in his musical career, as well as some covers ("Amaryllis - Nonesuch a la Mode de France," "Pennsylvania 6-5000," "Danny Boy," and "Great Balls of Fire").

Most of this was broadcast by the BBC, and later given to me by Progsprog. But not all of it. It turns out there also is a surprisingly good sounding audience bootleg of this exact concert. I compared the two, and found three songs on the audience boot that weren't broadcast by the BBC: "Wall of Death," "Down Where the Drunkards Roll," and "Great Balls of Fire." So I did some audio editing to try to bring them up to the same sound quality as the rest. I used the MVSEP program to boost the lead vocals relative to the instruments, and also to erase the crowd noise in the middle of those songs. Furthermore, I used the X-Minus program to get rid of some excessive echo on them. The final result is pretty impressive. Most of the time, it's hard to tell which ones of these are from the audience boot, except for the different sound of audience applause at the ends, and a brief flawed area in the middle of "Wall of Death" that I couldn't fix. 

Furthermore, the first 15 or so seconds of the first song, "The Wrong Heartbeat," were missed. So I patched in the missing portion from the audience boot. That's why that one song has "[Edit]" in its title. 

This album is an hour and 31 minutes long. 

01 The Wrong Heartbeat [Edit] (Richard Thompson)
02 A Poisoned Heart and a Twisted Memory (Richard Thompson)
03 Tear Stained Letter (Richard Thompson)
04 How I Wanted To (Richard Thompson)
05 talk (Richard Thompson)
06 Amaryllis - Nonesuch a la Mode de France [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson)
07 Don't Renege on Our Love (Richard Thompson)
08 Shoot Out the Lights (Richard Thompson)
09 talk (Richard Thompson)
10 Hand of Kindness (Richard Thompson)
11 Wall of Death (Richard Thompson)
12 talk (Richard Thompson)
13 Pennsylvania 6-5000 [Instrumental] (Richard Thompson)
14 talk (Richard Thompson)
15 A Man in Need (Richard Thompson)
16 Two Left Feet (Richard Thompson)
17 talk (Richard Thompson)
18 Back Street Slide (Richard Thompson)
19 talk (Richard Thompson)
20 Both Ends Burning (Richard Thompson)
21 Danny Boy (Richard Thompson)
22 talk (Richard Thompson)
23 Down Where the Drunkards Roll (Richard Thompson)
24 Great Balls of Fire (Richard Thompson)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/mRJ1etqY 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/JIBOvIznlmfUvy1/file 

The cover photo is from a concert at Tuts, in Chicago, Illinois, on October 17, 1983.