I am without a theme for another week. It is so much easier to pick a song when folks have been discussing Mark Trail oddities or the Friday Question has engendered some strange tangent commentary. Right now, it’s all work, the cold and snow, or the Women’s NCAA Basketball Championship tonight (GO UCON!)… none of which are necessarily musically inspiring.
So I just selected a song I liked, from an artist I’ve admired for years. One of the founding members of Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson was in the vanguard of folk rock in the late ‘60s. He left to pursue a solo career, which had the dubious credit of containing the worst selling record in Warner Bros history. It was with his wife, Linda, that he had the greatest breakthrough with one of the most powerful albums I’ve ever heard, Shoot Out The Lights. This album documents the painful end to the Thompson’s legal and musical marriage and is well worth a listen.
Richard went back into the relative obscurity of critical acclaim for the rest of the 80's and then surfaced in 1991 with the amazing Rumor and Sigh. A touch of pop flavor to this album brought him more notice, but it is the folk ballad “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” I wanted to share today. It really showcases his song writing, guitar playing and understated vocals to a perfect degree… and you can’t beat a classic story of romantic tragedy.
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