Happy birthday to faithful commentor Raven, and many more happy trips!
Musical news, possibly of interest to some readers, from the NYTimes:
One evening last fall, Teddy Thompson stepped onto the stage at the Purple Crayon, a cultural center in Hastings-on-Hudson, not far from New York City. The venue regularly attracts established pop-folk singers, the kind embraced by the public-radio-listening, Subaru-driving locals; Thompson loosely falls into that category, although he has the louche glamour of a heartbreaker, as well as the reputation (“I haven’t been invited on the Lilith tour,” he once dryly pointed out in an interview). Tall, fair, lean and British, he sang that night, with what one admiring critic has called his “keening tenor,” a series of songs about failed relationships in which Thompson, single at 38, was usually the bad actor: “I was born with a love disease/It’s known as chronic hard-to-please.”…
As he neared the end of the show, Thompson announced, “This is a song I wrote for my mother.”
The audience immediately hushed. Some might have even been there because they were fans of his mother, the singer Linda Thompson, and his father, the legendary guitarist and songwriter Richard Thompson, who began their musical collaboration in 1974 with “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight,” an album considered a folk-rock masterpiece. Eight years later, in 1982, they released the album “Shoot Out the Lights,” which Rolling Stone deemed one of the 10 best of the decade. On it, Richard plays guitar with an exquisitely controlled rage, and Linda, with her clear alto, sings spare, timeless lyrics that catalog the implosions of their dying marriage. The couple separated that same year, when Teddy was almost 7….
Over the past 15 years, Teddy Thompson has sung and written songs about love, about sloth, about partying, about murder. On Nov. 18, his latest project will be released, a collaborative effort called “Family,” which both directly engages that topic and tries to engineer, through harmonies and technology and talent, a kind of musical reunion. His mother and father each contribute songs and music, as does his nephew, Zak Hobbs; his sister Kami Thompson; her husband, James Walbourne; and Richard’s son from his second marriage, Jack Thompson. “At first I just thought it would be something fun and easy,” said Teddy, who eventually realized his motivations were more complicated: “I definitely was trying to repair some kind of damage.”
Or possibly inflict some, Kami, also a songwriter, later suggested. “The whole album,” she said, “is like a family songwriting competition — it’s a bloody nightmare. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?”…
Four tracks from the album at the link, if you care to listen.
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What else is on the agenda, as we start a fresh week?