Richard Thompson - BBC In Concert, The Venue London UK 1983

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

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

all songs Richard Thompson