As a fan of a wide variety of popular (and not-so-popular) music from the 1950s (and sometimes even earlier) up through the present, one of my bucket list projects for years has been to put together a list of my 100 favorite songs of all time. At some point I decided that, once I got around to figuring that out, I could put it out on a blog, for the infinitesimally small proportion of the Internet world that might be interested. So, here we are. While the Top 100 will be a major focus, I also plan to post on a variety of other musical (and occasionally non-musical) topics, in which you may or may not be interested. (If a particular posting doesn’t ring your bell, you’re only a few clicks away from a dancing cat video on YouTube.)

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Richard Thompson – Rams Head On Stage, Annapolis, 2/7/2016


Table 101, Seat 4 – table for 4, right in front of the stage, on the left
 
Conspiracy theory of the day – Donald Trump’s lawyers got after Richard Thompson at some point. Details below.
 
First things first, however. The afternoon (1:00 pm show in deference to the Super Bowl) didn’t get off to the greatest start when the doors to the performance area weren’t opened until 25 minutes after the scheduled time of noon, leaving all of us standing in the small, crowded, and chilly waiting area. Things did improve when Canadian alt-country singer-songwriter Doug (no relation to Brad) Paisley took the stage with his acoustic guitar. He did a well-received and surprisingly strong 25-minute opening set, with some excellent songs that would have fit nicely on an early Jayhawks album.
 
Thompson came out about 15 minutes later, joking with the crowd that he’d have to make a quick getaway to make it to the Super Bowl for his part in the halftime show. Only 5 of the 21 songs overlapped with Thursday night’s show: “When The Spell Is Broken” and “Beeswing” (both by request), “Wall Of Death”, “Matty Groves”, and “Valerie”, with his stunning guitar work on the latter again being a highlight. He opened with the relatively obscure “The Sun Never Shines On The Poor” and also threw in “Dry My Tears And Move On” (great song, new to me), but made sure to include plenty of more familiar material as well, such as the mandatory “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” (7 songs in), “Persuasion”, and “Johnny’s Far Away”, a “modern sea shanty” which sparked an enthusiastic audience sing-along. Also featured were 3 cuts from his latest album Still (mentioning that he was sure we all had it already but could buy a copy for a friend after the show). I was especially glad that he went back quite a few years to pull out “Dimming Of The Day” to start the second encore set, which I first heard when Bonnie Raitt did a great cover version on Longing In Their Hearts.
 
Near the end of the main set, he introduced a song (“Fergus Laing”) that he said was about a certain real-estate developer, joking that the guy would probably have him killed if his actual name were used. Thompson’s original motivation for the song was Trump’s behavior in Scotland, particularly the destruction of protected sand dunes to enable the building of Trump’s golf course in Aberdeen. RT did mention that he’d added a few verses in light of recent events. Great song,  with the protagonist being dragged off to jail amidst shouts of “You’re fired!” in the final “regular” verse.
 
The song sounded somewhat familiar, so when I got home I checked my collection and found it on the bonus disc included with the deluxe edition of Still; I had listened to that 5-song disc a few times but had never made the Trump connection. As I expected, the lyrics in the CD booklet ended with the “You’re fired” verse. Looking for a performance of the song on YouTube, however, I was quite surprised to find that both live performances lacked that verse. Even more peculiar, the disc itself lacks that verse, despite what the lyrics booklet says; there’s just a long instrumental at the end. Although I have absolutely no proof, I have a sneaking suspicion that lawyers were involved somewhere along the line.
 
Setlist (entered by yours truly – my first)
 

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