And, as anyone who’s undertaken a basic course in Rock Criticism and Associated Historiography would be aware that Thompson is almost invariably filed under Unmitigated Doom and Gloom along with other exponents of the Eeyore School of Song-writing such as Leonard Cohen.
The content of much of RT’s best material certainly tends in that direction, a factor that doesn’t necessarily suggest a joyful concert experience, so, along with the patter, Thompson has carefully constructed a lighter side to the performance material. Songs in that mode (Madonna’s Wedding or Hots For The Smarts for example) tend to be filed away in the artist’s mind with Never To Be Recorded stamped on their foreheads.
In band format, however, the novelty numbers can be filed away and some of the limelight shared, though there again there are factors involved that reflect economic necessity rather than artistic considerations.
In the early part of his solo career, involvement with a major label helped subsidise the costs of touring with a band, and there were various incarnations of the Richard Thompson Band through the eighties and nineties, varying in number from a basic trio or quartet to the big band.
When his major-label contract lapsed in the mid-nineties, however things changed. Since the costs associated with rehearsals and recording were coming out of his own pocket rather than flowing downwards from a corporate sponsor, Thompson has operated on a much tighter budget.
As a result the band line-up has remained fairly stable over the past decade - RT on guitar, Danny Thompson (no relation) on bass, Mike Jerome or Earl Harvin on drums and Pete Zorn on everything else. Working with a stable line-up removes the need for extensive pre-tour rehearsals. At the same time, on the other hand, a perusal of RTB set lists suggests that, once they’ve worked out a functional set list there isn’t room for a great deal of variation from night to night.
If the solo routine and a regular touring band don’t provide enough variety, Thompson has added a third string to his bow, based on a concept he’s cheerfully lifted from an alleged request from Playboy magazine.
Much like the RTB set-up A Thousand Years of Popular Music works within a format that allows Thompson to tweak the finer details of the show while retaining the basic outline. Using two female offsiders, a Thousand Years show will start off somewhere in medieval Europe before skipping forward through the centuries to wind up on the verge of the twenty-first century with RT’s take on Britney Spears or someone favoured by the iPod generation.