Richard Thompson - BBC Sessions In Concert, Celtic Connections Festival, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, UK 1998

 Richard Thompson - BBC Sessions, Volume 10: In Concert, Celtic Connections Festival, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, UK, 1-17-1998

Paul says: Here's another of many BBC albums by singer-songwriter Richard Thompson. This one is a full solo acoustic concert.

At the time of this concert, his most recent album was 1997's "Industry," done in collaboration with bassist Danny Thompson (who, by the way, shows up only for the last few songs in this concert). But only one song here was performed from that album, "Last Shift." His next album would be "Mock Tudor" in 1999, and he already performed one song from that, "Crawl Back (Under My Stone)." Otherwise, the songs are from other parts of his long musical career, plus an interesting cover, "She May Call You Up Tonight," originally done by the Left Banke.

I'm sure this was a BBC recording. I know this because this actually was two sets, with "Razor Dance" being the first song of the second set. And between the two sets, there was a voiceover by a BBC DJ explaining how the first set was over but the BBC would be coming back for the second set. I cut all that out, as I usually cut out BBC DJ talk that wasn't part of the actual concert.

However, I find something puzzling: given that this is a BBC recording, the sound quality was surprisingly crappy for the BBC! The main problem was the echo-y vocals. They sounded like they were recorded in a tunnel. And the second set had even more echo than the first set. Luckily, thanks to recent improvements in audio editing technology, this was fixable. It's just that it was a pain in the ass. I used MVSEP on all the songs, splitting them into vocals and instruments. Then I took just the vocal track and ran it through MVSEP again, using their "Reverb Removal" filter.

That pretty much got rid of all of the problems with the vocals. Now, this sounds excellent, like you'd expect a BBC recording to sound.  

This unreleased album is an hour and 24 minutes long. 

01 I Feel So Good 
02 The Ghost of You Walks 
03 talk 
04 Hamlet 
05 talk 
06 Last Shift
07 1952 Vincent Black Lightning 
08 Pharaoh
09 Keep Your Distance 
10 A Heart Needs a Home
11 talk
12 She May Call You Up Tonight
13 Razor Dance 
14 Turning of the Tide 
15 Bathsheba Smiles 
16 talk 
17 How Will I Ever Be Simple Again 
18 Walking on a Wire
19 talk
20 Crawl Back [Under My Stone] 
21 talk 
22 Persuasion 
23 talk 
24 Genesis Hall 
25 Wall of Death 
26 Beeswing 
27 I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight

I emphasise what Paul says here this is not the best sounding BBC recording ever and we have come to expect better but as a document of the period Richard covers some songs here more rarely covered live so it is of undoubted interest . . . . .curiously enough the Celtic Connections Festival is an annual event and Richard has played many (ALL?) of those since from 1999 onwards and many fine recordings from the 2000s

Here is a set from the following year in its entirety but I would enjoy both!

ScottishTeeVee

who says: "Richard Thompson Band, live Glasgow Scotland October 1999, recorded by me from Digital broadcast. Using JVC S-VHS VCR, at SP onto JVC SV-Master grade tape, tape Archive 1554 .  

 Note that Teddy Thompson is part of this band (with Danny Thompson no relation on bass)

Setlist  

Cooksferry Queen 0:30

Bathsheba Smiles 4:54

Uninhabited Man 10:20

Persuasion 15:40

Two Faced Love 19:58

Al Bowlly's In Heaven 24:27

I Want To See The Bright Lights At Night 30:43

Sights and Sounds of London Town 34:27

Tear-Stained Letter 39:41

TURN THIS ONE UP!