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
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 0:30Bathsheba Smiles 4:54Uninhabited Man 10:20Persuasion 15:40Two Faced Love 19:58Al Bowlly's In Heaven 24:27
I Want To See The Bright Lights At Night 30:43Sights and Sounds of London Town 34:27Tear-Stained Letter 39:41
TURN THIS ONE UP!
