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.)

Thursday, January 23, 2020

Richard Thompson – The Birchmere, 1/22/2020


Table 319 – the leftmost of the tables that are parallel to the stage and just in front of the divider. Only drawback was that it was extremely difficult to stand for ovations.
 
I’ve said plenty about Richard Thompson on other occasions, so I won’t go into great detail here. There were 22 songs over about 105 minutes. While there was no opening act, Zara Phillips joined him to sing harmony on the final five songs of the main set (“Wall Of Death”, followed by four tunes from his more recent albums) and the last two encores. Hit-wise, the show was very much front-loaded; 6 of his first 7 selections appear on my list of 20 RT favorites.
 
Personal highlights: I Misunderstood (which opened the show), the relatively seldom-performed Walking The Long Miles Home (with a great story about what he’d have to do as a boy in order to stay until the end of shows by The Who), Crocodile Tears, Who Knows Where The Time Goes, plus two great (and apparently new) songs: If I Could Live My Life Again, and When The Saints Rise Out Of Their Graves (the final encore)
 

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