Album Review: ’1000 Years of Popular Music’
The great guitar masters — Segovia, Clapton, Montgomery, Garcia, Hendrix — have a style and sound so distinctive that you’re able to recognize them after only a few notes.
So it is with Richard Thompson, the British guitarist who burst into semi-prominence with Fairport Convention, the seminal folk-rock band, and has blazed an amazing career — both as a group leader and soloist — over the 25-plus years since Sandy Denny, Fairport’s lead singer, took one of music’s most tragic headers and died.
â€?1000 Years of Popular Music,â€? Thompson’s latest album, showcases his amazing playing and singing talents in a two CD medley of a millennium of music ranging from that big chartbuster from the Middle Ages, “Sumer is Icumen In,â€? through Cole Porter’s “Night and Dayâ€? to a droll send-up of Brittney Spears’ “Oops! . . . I Did It Again.â€? There is a third disk, as well, a DVD of Thompson and his trio performing several of the songs live.
Thompson explains in the liner notes – which also are a treat – that the idea for “1000 Years� came from Playboy Magazine:
“I was asked to submit a list, in late 1999, of the ten greatest songs of the Millennium. Hah! I thought, hypocrites – they don’t mean millennium, they mean twenty years – I’ll call their bluff and do a real thousand-year selection.â€?
Playboy failed to print Thompson’s list, but he has gotten his revenge.
Footnote: I have seen Thompson play several times. He has an astounding and unique finger picking style, but I still can’t figure how he is able to play two distinctly different riffs at the same time. Can anyone explain this to me?
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5 Responses to “Album Review: ’1000 Years of Popular Music’”
Thanks Shaun!
Here’s a link to Richard Thompson – 1000 Years of Popular Music (2 CD & 1 DVD Set) at Amazon for anyone wanting more info… I sure did. Thanks again.
PS – I’d add Joao Gilberto to your list of unmistakable guitar stylists (and I don’t think anybody would complain) but I refuse to argue about music. (g)
My husband and I love this CD, so I must take exception with your claim that covering “Oops …” was a “droll send-up”. Thompson included it because, all pop tart crap aside, this is a great little pop song and unexpectedly dark when stripped down to its acoustic bones. Britney’s voice may be weak, but she has had some damn solid writers and producers in her corner over the years.
Thompson says as much in this NPR interview. And as Spencer Critchley says:
“I’m struck once again by how stripping away production often reveals the greatness of the song within. … Thompson wasn’t being ironic. As he said in the interview, he’s not a Britney Spears fan, but he thinks “Oops, I Did It Againâ€? is a very good song. He praised its “mediaeval harmoniesâ€?, for one thing, which are up his alley, as an expert on the British folk tradition (he recorded it on his album. … I agree that it’s a good song, and I predict that the day will come when critics will be letting us know that it’s OK to think so. That’ll be once time has made Britney’s marketing onslaught seem less threatening—it’ll no doubt come to seem quaint, the way yesterday’s pop star-machinery always does. To elaborate on Thompson’s point about harmony, I admire the way the writers (Max Martin and Rami) express guilt in the verses and then sound triumphant about the same subject in the choruses. In the verses they explore dark, chromatic lines in the harmonic minor scale1, and then they burst into the relative major key in the chorus.”
Mary:
I certainly don’t disagree about the song, and the NPR excerpt is proof of that. Crtitchley’s observations also are spot on. But I do hear Thompson at his most droll when he sings it.
Steve K:
Gilberto? Absolutely! I was listening to him this weekend on KJAZ, the great Southern California jazz station, which is one of my webstream faves.