RICHARD THOMPSON - Richard Thompson, Linda Thompson & Related MP3@320

RICHARD THOMPSON - Richard Thompson, Linda Thompson & Related MP3@320

I went through my Richard Thompson CDs and gathered together the ones that didn’t seem to be on the KAT tracker. If you like this collection, and feel that others may like it, then feel free to seed as much as possible and help keep this torrent alive. Thanks, Mike.



1972 starring as Henry the Human Fly!

Henry the Human Fly was the first solo album by British singer/songwriter/guitarist Richard Thompson. It was originally released in Britain in April 1972 on the Island label and in the US on the Reprise label. The album was Thompson's attempt to create an English rock 'n roll hybrid. It was poorly received at the time, but is currently considered one of his best albums.



1974 I Want To See the Bright Lights Tonight

I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight is the second album released by Richard Thompson and the first including and credited with his then wife, Linda Thompson as Richard and Linda Thompson. It was released by Island Records in the UK in 1974. Although never commercially successful and critically ignored on its release, it is now considered to be a masterpiece and one of the finest works of both Richard and Linda singularly or together.



1975 Hokey Pokey

Hokey Pokey is the second album by the British duo of singer Linda and singer/songwriter/guitarist Richard Thompson. It was recorded in the autumn of 1974 and released in 1975. In terms of musical style Thompson's songwriting on this album reflects a number of British styles despite not being in the English folk-rock style of "Bright Lights": Music Hall, English hymns, traditional brass bands, pub sing-alongs and even the double entendres of George Formby are all discernible. In many cases Thompson juxtaposes an upbeat tune with a bleak lyric.



1975 Pour Down Like Silver

Pour down like Silver is the third album by the British duo of singer/songwriter/guitarist Richard and singer Linda Thompson. It was recorded in the summer of 1975 and released in November 1975. The Thompsons had adopted the Sufi faith in 1974 and had moved into a commune in London. The songs on this album reflect their new faith and the relief that Richard Thompson had found in that faith.



1981 Strict Tempo!

Strict Tempo! Is an instrumental album by Richard Thompson released in 1981. After the modest sales for their 1979 album Sunny vista, Richard and Linda Thompson found themselves without a record deal. An album produced and financed by Gerry Rafferty failed to secure them a deal with a major label. To generate some income, Richard Thompson formed his own record label Elixir Records and recorded this album mostly at the small BTW studio in London, and also at the Woodworm Studios at Cropredy.The album consists of some of the artist's favourite tunes, all rendered as instrumentals and all arranged for guitar, mandolin, and other instruments played by Thompson. The only other musician is drummer Dave Mattacks.



1982 Alone With His Guitar (Live 1982)

Acoustic set Recorded live at Folk City, New York City, September 29/30 1982. Bootleg radio broadcast. A bit of cassette hiss or radio static on this one although Richard and his guitar come through just fine.



1985 Across A Crowded Room

Richard Thompson's 1985 album Across A Crowded Room (his first album for a major label since Sunnyvista in 1979) stylistically picked up where his previous set, Hand Of Kindness, had left off, and while it didn't break much in the way of new ground, it also found Thompson doing plenty of what he does best -- writing great songs and playing a lot of electric guitar. There aren't many musicians who could make an album as strong as Across A Crowded Room and have it sound like business as usual, but given the consistent strength of Richard Thompson's body of work, this set sounds fairly typical ... and typically splendid.



1987 Live, Love, Larf & Loaf (by French, Frith, Kaiser & Thompson)

Experimental American musicians, guitarist Henry Kaiser and drummer John French ("Drumbo" from Captain Beefheart's Magic Band), began collaborating in 1987. They invited English musicians Fred Frith (experimental guitarist from Henry Cow) and Richard Thompson (folk-rock guitarist from Fairport Convention) to join them to make an album. They recorded Live, Love, Larf & Loaf in San Francisco in March 1987, an eclectic collection of songs drawn from a variety of music genres, including folk, R&B and avant-garde rock. Most of the album comprised compositions from each of the members of the group, plus a few covers, including The Beach Boys' "Surfin' U.S.A.". While the group experimented with folk and rock music, it is generally felt that Thompson's presence did "tone down" the "avant-garde" leanings of the other three musicians. Mark Deming states in Allmusic that "... the slightly bent wit and angular guitar figures of Richard Thompson's signature brand of folk-rock certainly added a spoonful of sugar that helped the avant-leaning art rock of Henry Kaiser, Fred Frith, and John French go down more easily."



1990 Invisible Means (by French, Frith, Kaiser & Thompson)

Invisible Means is the second oddball masterpiece from four of the world’s finest experimental master musicians, was originally released in 1990. Together French, Frith, Kaiser and Thompson conjure up a heady mix, covering a bewildering variety of genres, from folk and R&B to avant-garde and comic opera. Underpinning the whole album is the extraordinary level of their musicianship



1991 Rumor And Sigh

Rumor and Sigh is the sixth solo album by British singer/songwriter Richard Thompson, released in 1991. the lead single "I Feel So Good" peaked at number 15 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart, his second and highest charting single on that chart. The track "1952 Vincent Black Lightning", despite not being issued as a single, became a fan favourite and is one of Thompson's most highly acclaimed solo compositions. The album was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album in 1992, but lost to R.E.M.'s Out of Time.



1993 Watching The Dark (3CD box set)

Watching the Dark is an album by Richard Thompson released in 1993.The three-CD retrospective set was compiled with Thompson's co-operation and consent. Thompson has often been reluctant to look backwards at his career and dig through the archives, but he took the pragmatic view that if somebody wants to assemble a set of this nature they'll do it anyway and so he might as well collaborate with them if possible. He had right of veto over the selections, and recorded one track ("Poor Wee Jockey Clark") specially for the project. About a third of the selections are live, and five had never been released on any official Thompson release. Some of the material was donated by collectors of Thompson recordings.The set extends chronologically from 1969, when Thompson was a member of Fairport Convention, through to 1992. However it is not sequenced in chronological order.

Notable inclusions are:

• A live version of "Can't Win" with an extended guitar solo

• "From Galway To Graceland", a Thompson song that had never made it onto a commercial Thompson release

• A live version of "A Heart Needs A Home" from 1975

• Solo, live versions of "Jennie" and "Devonside"

• An unreleased recording, thought to have been lost, of "A Sailor's Life" by Fairport Convention

• Three tracks from the unreleased, Gerry Rafferty-produced version of the Shoot Out the Lights album.



1994 Beat The Retreat (Richard Thompson Tribute)

Just when you were hoping you'd seen the last of tribute albums, along comes Beat the Retreat, a collection that fully justifies what is by now an extremely tired idea. X's cover of “Shoot Out the Lights” and R.E.M.'s take on “Wall of Death” kick off the disc, but a surprise awaits those expecting the usual degeneration into filler—Beat actually gets better as it goes along. Backed by X's rhythm section, Bob Mould delivers a “Turning of the Tide” that is among the tracks that make Beat a cohesive album with a shape and pace of its own. Whereas the matching of song to performer on most tributes is maddeningly capricious, the pairings on Beat are so right that many of the songs don't sound like covers at all. X's contribution, Los Lobos' “Down Where the Drunkards Roll,” Graham Parker's “The Madness of Love,” Dinosaur Jr's “I Misunderstood,” and David Byrne's “Just the Motion” suit the performers stylistically as well as thematically. And as if the weighings-in of all these alternarock elder statesmen weren't enough, Beat even features a Sandy Denny sound-alike contest between June Tabor and Maddy Prior, who get two songs apiece.



1994 Doom & Gloom (Compilation) 2CD

Compilation for subscribers to the Richard Thompson US fan club Flypaper. Sound quality can vary.



1995 Live At Crawley 1993

Live at Crawley was the first official live Thompson release since 1984s Small Town Romance. The contrast between the two recordings is marked. On the earlier album Thompson sounds introverted and ill at ease, but on the later album he is a more confident front man and engages the audience. Richard and Danny Thompson have continued to collaborate in concert and increasingly on record



1996 King Of Bohemia (Live 1991)

Nice sounding bootleg. Tracks 1-8 recorded at KPFK Studios, Los Angeles, CA, 1991, Tracks 9-17 recorded at the Ventura Theater, Ventura, CA, September 9, 1991. Dates may be off as some songs are actually from 1994's Mirror Blue.



1996 Two Letter Words Live 1994 2CD

The 1994 tour marked the debut of a new look, smaller live band for Thompson with multi-instrumentalist Pete Zorn and the rhythm section of Dave Mattacks and Danny Thompson (no relation) providing the backing. The 1994 band was the blueprint for future touring Thompson bands. Two letter words is highly regarded by Thompson fans. It includes eight tracks from the then newly released Mirror Blue, and thus serves as an interesting contrast with the original album's controversial production.



1996 You? Me? Us?

You? Me? Us? is the eighth studio album by British singer-songwriter Richard Thompson released in April 1996 via Capitol Records. The album is split into two discs. Disc one, Voltage Enhanced, is recorded with a band and is largely electric. Disc two, Nude is largely acoustic with just violin or Danny Thompson's double bass for accompaniment. Two songs, "Razor Dance" and "Hide It Away", are included on both discs. The songs on you? me? us? are notable for metrical complexity and richness of lyric, and for Thompson's guitar work. His acoustic guitar playing is highlighted on the Nude disc. His electric playing is to the fore on "Put It There Pal" and "Bank Vault In Heaven" on the Voltage Enhanced disc.



1997 Industry

Industry is an album by Richard Thompson and Danny Thompson released in 1997. The two unrelated Thompsons had known each other since the late sixties, and had toured together throughout the nineties. This long-planned collaborative work was finally recorded in 1997. The compositions on the album - both Richard Thompson's songs and Danny Thompson's instrumental pieces - portray various impressions of the impact of industry on England, ranging from the birth of the industrial revolution to the closing of the Grimethorpe Colliery and the effects of unemployment.



1998 Celtschmerz (Live 1998)

Starting in the early 1980s Thompson began to perform live solo and with an acoustic guitar. By the late 90s he was performing more frequently in this format than with a band. Celtschmerz captures him in this "unplugged" setting. Comparing Celtschmerz to 1984's Small Town Romance shows how Thompson has evolved his solo acoustic guitar technique over the years.Thompson's son Teddy was the support act on this tour and joined his father each night to perform some duets. Several of these are included on Celtschmerz - most notably "A Heart Needs A Home", which is associated with Teddy's mother Linda Thompson, and "Persuasion" which was co-written with Tim Finn.



1998 The Bones Of All Men

Rare thing, recordings that take traditional sounds and recombine them in new ways, resulting in music that inspires on its own terms. Richard Thompson has been doing exactly that for years. Now, with Philip Pickett--classical conductor and past member of the overlooked '70s British folk group Albion Band--he and his comrades from Fairport Convention have created a rich, varied album of Renaissance instrumentals. Indeed, this record amounts to a Fairport reunion, with Simon Nicol, Dave Pegg, and Dave Mattacks contributing, who are joined by award-winning classical musicians Sharona Jordan and Pavlo Beznosiuk. The collaboration defies classification, with its driving drums, fierce electric-guitar runs, lonely recorders and virginals, and tingly pianos. Though there's not a voice or lyric to be heard, the music tells a compelling, vivid story.



1999 Mock Tudor

Mock Tudor is the ninth studio album by Richard Thompson. Released in 1999, it was his final album released by Capitol Records. Widely regarded by critics and Thompson fans as one of his best works, Mock Tudor was yet another richly acclaimed album that was largely ignored by the public.



2001 Action Packed (best of the Capitol years)

The album is a retrospective look at Thompson's time with Capitol Records and brings together songs from each of the albums that he recorded for that label. Also included are a previously unreleased version of "Persuasion" with son Teddy featured on vocals, and two tracks, "Mr. Rebound" and "Fully Qualified To Be Your Man", that were available on the vinyl issue of Mock Tudor but were excluded from the CD release.



2002 Semi-Detached Mock tudor (Live 1999)

Thompson toured heavily to support and promote what he considered to be a strong album and eight of Semi-Detached Mock Tudor’s 13 tracks are from the then-current Mock Tudor - including Mock Tudor’s opening five song sequence with which Thompson and his band opened every concert of the 1999 tour.



2003 The Old Kit Bag

The album is markedly different from its predecessors, with unobtrusive production by John Chelew and a smaller set of backing musicians ("the idea was to keep it small. I did do a few overdubs – second guitar, dulcimer, single-finger keyboard parts, all the easy stuff – but other than that, everything was pretty much a live performance"). Thompson's electric guitar playing is more prominent than it had been for some time on a studio album. Despite the stripped down arrangements and sound, the album is stylistically diverse with Thompson even making a rare excursion into the blues on "I've Got No Right To Have It All". As is often the case with Thompson, the lyrics reflect darker side of life: "Gethsemane" deals with the disillusionment and pressure that follows an idyllic childhood, and "Outside Of The Inside" (which Thompson introduced on tour as "a song about how the Taliban see the West"), with its striking opening lines "God never listened to Charlie Parker, Charlie Parker lived in vain", is a chilling portrayal of the fundamentalist mindset. Ironically the move to a much smaller record label bought a bigger marketing push and healthier sales. Thompson had engineered a situation where live shows were his major revenue stream, but now The Old Kit Bag did better on release than any other Thompson album since Rumor And Sigh, entering the Billboard Top 200 and entering Billboard's "Indie" chart at number 5.