Night and day

So last night we headed off to the Anvil in Basingstoke. Not a very glamorous venue, I'll admit, but it was well worth the trek. Richard Thompson brought his 1000 years of popular music tour to the UK and we had tickets!!!! The concept of this tour is brilliant in its simplicity, Richard Thompson (who is a genius, I know its a strong word but well he is soooo brilliant) performs songs from the different eras. Quoting from his website " Richard starts in the 13th century and then moves to medieval Italian ballads to selections from the songbooks of Gilbert & Sullivan, Stephen Foster, Ray Charles, Hank Williams, The Beatles, The Who, Squeeze, Prince, and even Britney Spears" He's not on his own during all of this sublime songbird Judith Owen and percussion maestro Debra Dobkin join him on stage and they literally played everything they could possibly think of, throwing all caution (not to mention fear of mixing genres) to the wind. My own personal, highlights were one of the earliest songs (written by Richard the lion heart and sung entirely in French), the Kinks, See my friends, Night and Day by Cole Porter (which was sung by Judith with RT doing some very melty guitar stuff over the top, lush, it really was), a nice Irish ballad which I forget the name of but I remember it was about consumption (always a good ballet topic :-) and the finally songs by the Beatles and Maneater by Nelly Futardo. This last number kind of encapsulates the reason why RT is so great. He introduced it as a modern song which for the most part they would be performing in the style of the artist who sang it. However the middle 8 he would be reverting back to a madrigal style singing in Latin, the translation of which is 'she is an eater of men'. Why they were doing this was just because they could, because it was there, and I just think that is a really great attitude to have. It was brilliant and I will never forget it.