Friday Utilitarian Music 4/19/13 — Midnight Girl in a Sunset Town

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With some help from Derik Badman, I finally figured out how to upload zips to HU…which means I can provide music downloads again. This one is Midnight Girl in a Sunset Town.

Here’s the playlist

1.Don Quixote — Gordon Lightfoot
2.Man in Need — Richard Thompson
3.Something to Talk About — Bonnie Raitt
4.Midnight Girl/Sunset Town — Sweethearts of the Rodeo
5. Bluebird Wine — Emmylou Harris/Rodney Crowell
6. Lonesome, On’ry and Mean — Waylon Jennings
7. Little Chapel — Heahter Myles and Dwight Yoakum
8. Diggin’ Up Bones — Randy Travis
9. Hurt Me Bad (In a Real Good Way) — Patty Loveless
10. Love in Store — Fleetwood Mac
11. Bring Love — Carlene Carter
12. Double Knots — The Living Sisters
13. Matchbox — Willie Nelson
14. Witches Hat — Incredible String Band
15. Our Town — Jody Stecher and Kate Brislin
16. Little Matty Groves — Norman and Nancy Blake
17. The Needle and the Damage Done — Neil Young

You can download Midnight Girl in a Sunset Town here.

And let us know in the comments what you’re listening to.

15 thoughts on “Friday Utilitarian Music 4/19/13 — Midnight Girl in a Sunset Town”

  3. Is that “Man In Need” from the highly overrated “Shoot Out the Lights?” I mean, I think even Thompson himself isn’t terribly moved by that record. With him it’s just about anyting else but that. I think his follow up “Small Town Romance” is far better, though he apparently wasn’t pleased with that one either.

    Was listening again to the B52s second album “Wild Planet” which I just adore. It starts out strong of course but it just keeps getting stronger. Ricky Wilson can’t get enough kudos. So crafty.

    Also finally heard Tom Verlaine’s first record, with the excellent final track including work from Wilson- Breakin’ In My Heart

    Also listened to the Smithsonian Folkways “Classic Bluegrass Collection,” “Creation’s Journey: Native American Music” and “Folkways: the Original Vision” Of course all great.

  4. Yep, that’s where Man in Need is from. I agree that that record is overrated, though I enjoyed it more the last time I listened to it. That song’s enjoyable though.

  5. What exactly do you guys find to be so overrated about Shoot Out the Lights? Small Town Romance is fine, but it’s one of many live Thompson recordings and apparently he’s indifferent enough about it that it’s currently out of print. There are much better live Thompson recordings available. I particularly recommend the widely available bootleg Live At Crawley Jazz Festival with Danny Thompson (ex-Pentangle, no relation) on double bass.

    I own just about every Richard Thompson album, with and without Linda, and I can honestly say that all of them are great. There are some where the production is a bit dated or inappropriate (First Light as an example of the former, Mirror Blue, the latter) but the songwriting and guitar playing is never less than top-notch. There are certainly albums every bit as good as SOTL. His first post-Linda release Hand of Kindness is especially good, featuring many of the same musicians used on SOTL. (Essentially the Full House lineup of Fairport Convention, minus Dave Swarbrick, plus Pete Zorn) Even his comparatively lightweight stuff on that album (e.g. “Two Left Feet”) is delightful and the heavier songs (e.g. “Devonside”) are among his very best. An argument could be made that I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight is even better than SOTL and the presence of the title song, “When I Get to the Border”, and the mighty, Robert Graves-influenced Calvary Cross almost bear that out. But I think I prefer SOTL by a small margin.

    Perhaps there’s a natural tendency to question an album that routinely appears on various “greatest albums of all time” lists; I can certainly understand that, but honestly, SOTL is an album I never get tired of hearing. Interestingly enough, they actually recorded it twice, once with Gerry Rafferty producing and once with Joe Boyd. The Rafferty version was never officially released, but it’s easy to find (usually under the name Before Joe Pulled the Trigger). Richard hated it, and it’s pretty easy to understand why. It has a slick, overproduced sound that seems entirely at odds with the material, largely the same set of songs as on the released version (with the addition of Sandy Denny’s “I’m A Dreamer”, you can hear that one on the all-Linda compilation Dreams Fly Away). But I’d probably rate SOTL just a bit higher due to Linda’s contributions and the presence of The Watersons on backing vocals.

    One reason that many critics seem to love it is that it can be read as a comment on his deteriorating relationship with Linda. OTOH, despite its many songs dealing with crumbling relationships, Richard denies that it’s in any way autobiographical whereas Linda insists that it certainly felt autobiographical to her! To be fair to Richard’s claim, many of his songs before and after that dealt with similar themes; indeed, he’s still writing songs about crumbling relationships even now!

    Richard Thompson is one of a handful of performers whose abilities as a player and songwriter have not diminished with the passing years; if possible, they’ve actually improved. His latest album Electric is astonishing and his current three piece performing group is wonderful.

  6. I prefer I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, I guess. Also Hokey Pokey and Pour Down Like Silver. I like Shoot out the Lights fine, but the others much more. I think as you say it gets booted up the list because of the autobiographical content.

  7. Daniel, I’m with you on RT…I too have nearly everything he’s ever done, and there’s always something to enjoy (and often much more0. He opened with Man in Need, actually, when I saw him last year (with the trio) in Tampa. I prefer the regular release of SOTL to the Rafferty version…but different strokes.

  8. Probably the weakest album, if only because of the weird vocals is Henry the Human Fly…but I like that one too.

  9. Oh I definitely prefer the released version of SOTL too. The Rafferty version is an intriguing curiosity though.

    Pour Down Like Silver is astonishing, with “Night Comes In”, “Streets of Paradise”, “Dimming of the Day” and the should-have-been-a-hit “For Shame of Doing Wrong”. Several of the songs from that album and era seem very much influenced by the Thompsons’ conversion to Islam. Hokey Pokey is a great too, with “Mole in a Hole” (written by Mike Waterson) being a particular favorite. Kind of an underrated album actually, along with Sunnyvista (that album’s “Justice in the Streets” with its call for revolution and chorus of “Allah! Allah!” might raise a few eyebrows these days!)

    BTW, my old band used to do Thompson’s “Calvary Cross”. Here it is, if you’re at all curious (with me on bass guitar and piano): http://abunai.bandcamp.com/track/calvary-cross

  10. I agree that Henry the Human Fly is sort of an odd one in the Thompson back catalogue. The songs are great, but he definitely hadn’t quite found his singing voice yet. I especially love “Nobody’s Wedding”, which is a kind of mutant version of the Irish traditional song “Marie’s Wedding”.

    As for what I’ve been listening to this week, I saw a great show by the band Kinski (named after Klaus, natch) in Brooklyn last night. This song is a pretty good example of how they sound:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSH16CFuV4A

    The dreamy, hypno-drone band Landing (whose name you might recall from the Fort Thunder show poster I posted a few days) ago opened.

  13. Maybe I should add, just to contextualize, that Emilie Simon’s songs above (and the other songs in the album Frankie Knight) were composed after her boyfriend, François Chevallier (hence: Frankie Knight), died in Athens of H1N1. He died while they were vacationing together in Greece.

  14. A sad story indeed. Interesting how in the first one her vocal timbre blends very nicely with the sound of the brass instruments. Not what’s usually meant by a “brassy” voice though.

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