I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight

I can’t remember the band that was playing the first time I went to the First Avenue, in Minneapolis, when I first moved here in 1985 – although I have some fairly clear memories of my first impressions of the bar itself.    It was probably one of any number of punk bar bands that were vying to be “The Next Replacements” – not much unlike the band I’d be starting myself in future months.

But I do remember clearly the first concert I went to: October 15, 1986 – Richard Thompson.   It was on tour with this band…:

…and it was on my list of my top three concerts, ever.

I also remember the last concert I saw at the First Avenue (and the last club gig I attended at all, until I saw Katrina “and the Waves” Leskanich last spring at the Amsterdam); yep, it was Richard Thompson, in September of 1997.  There were two other gigs – ’88 and ’90 – in between.

And so when I got a late tip that Thompson was coming to town this past Wednesday, I had to check it out.

It was a chilly night in downtown Minneapolis – which, in my memory, was always what it felt like on concert nights in Minneapolis when I was in my 20s:

7th Street, Wednesday night.

The, er, disconcerting part?  The first time I saw Thompson, the average age in the audience was 25-40.  On Wednesday, it was more like 50-60…:

…although there were a gratifying share of twentysomethings in the house.   Upside?  While concerts with bands catering to twentysomethings routinely find themselves getting patted down or run through metal detectors, security was pretty irrelevant at the Thompson gig.

The opening act – Richard Thompson, doing a solo acoustic set – was predictably amazing.  And when I say “amazing”, it’s not just an idle conversational space-filler; I’m not a bad guitar player, but every time I see Thompson, I say that very quietly, and go home afterward and ponder starting over on the instrument from scatch, just to try to get it right.

How amazing?   I’m one of tens of thousands of guitarists who’ve tangled their fingers into bloody spaghetti trying to conquer his most famous acoustic tune, “1952 Vincent Black Lightning”, which see:

That was a fairly simple rendition, by the way.   He closed his solo set with the song – and he’s taken up jamming on the bass part, throwing in a few dramatic, swooping descents, all the while picking the high part.

All the while singing the song.   I can barely think the three things at the same time, much less pull them off on the guitar.

No, I can’t describe it any better.

After the acoustic set, the Richard Thompson Electric Trio – drummer David Jerome and bassist Michael Faraday (or so it sounded from the stage – I didn’t catch his name, and can’t find a reference to him online) – took over.

This being the first time I’d seen Thompson live in almost 18 years, it was a little odd seeing him without some permutation of the band he’d been touring with since the seventies; the first four times I saw him, the band was some combination of Dave Mattacks on drums, Dave Pegg or Danny Thompson on bass, Pete Zorn/Clive Gregson/Christine Collister on guitars, keyboards, backup vocals and (with Zorn) sax.  That group of musicians was pretty much Thompson’s comfort zone for many years.

So the new band was a switch; Faraday (?) is a very solid, steady bass player – a human low-frequency metronome through the often-frenetic modulations in Thompson’s music.

Jerome, on the other hand, is a trip.  Formerly with Better than Ezra as well as a dizzying range of session work with everyone from KD Lang and the Five Blind Boys of Alabama to the Toadies and John Cale, he’s also been Thompson’s go to drummer since 2002’s Mock Tudor album.   Live, with an extremely stripped down kit, and plenty of room to stretch out in the power trio format, he’s every bit as eclectic and all over the map as Thompson himself – sort of an improvisational jazz drummer in an Brit folk-rock world.

Which often lends the band a feeling that everything could spin out of control, like driving too fast along a cliffside road.  And yet, it never does.

The show was notably light on older material – which makes sense; how does someone who’s never had a “great hit” do a greatest hits tour?

Still, an artist like Thompson, with a body of work going back almost fifty years, could easily fill two hours with stuff that’d keep a crowd of long-time fans (like yours truly) happy without doing anything after 1990.

But with a few exceptions – “Valerie” and “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” from the solo set, and “For Shame of Doing Wrong”, “Wall of Death”, “Did She Jump (Or Was She Pushed)” and a madcap rave-up of “Tear-Stained Letter” with the band, most of the show was stuff from this past decade, mostly the last few albums.

And I could scarcely be happier.  While it’d be fun to curl up with songs from I Want To See The Bright Lights or Shoot Out The Lights or Across A Crowded Room would be fun and comfortable, that’d make a Thompson tour just another Rolling Stones tour, without the piles and piles of money.  If you’re not in it for the megabucks (not that Thompson doesn’t earn a respectable living as a touring cult favorite with a decent-sized fanatical following), I can see where staying creative can get pretty vital.

I’ll take a run at one highlight; the song “Guitar Heroes”, which Thompson dedicated with a wink and a nod to “Steve Vai and Joe Satriani”.  The song has nothing to do with either of them; the song jumps from its own (minor-key rockabilly) theme into stylized passages from “Melodie au Crepuscule” by Django Reinhardt, “Caravan” by Duke Ellington (with Juan Tizol on guitar), “Brenda Lee” by Chuck Berry, “Susie Q” (the pre-Creedence version) “F.B.I.” by the Shadows.

But it’s hard to pick a highlight; like all Thompson shows, I spent most of the evening, slack-jawed, realizing that no matter how hard I try, I will never be able to play a guitar like that.

Which, I guess, is comforting in its own way.  After three and a half decades, five shows, a couple dozen albums, a marriage, three kids and three careers, at least that’s stayed a constant.

 

4 thoughts on “I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight

  1. Hah, just one of several guitar players like that for me: yup, not EVER gonna be able to play like that. (Steve Morse is one)

  2. Pingback: By Any Memes Necessary, 2015! | Shot in the Dark

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