Here Comes the Weekend: Richard Thompson, “Beeswing”

As I have been driving around in my car the last week I have been streaming Spotify, so far in a primitive fashion, by just selecting the artist I want to hear, and hitting shuffle.

Though you can scrounge through the Spotify archives and pick up just about anything imaginable (still looking for a copy of Voodoo, by Quicksilver Messenger Service, though) I do find that the shuffle is largely from a handful of albums. Some might be greatest hits, and some re-issues with added stuff, but the spectrum is not always as random as I would imagine.

Still, while streaming Richard Thompson, I got I Wanna See the Bright Lights in 1974 and then the lovely Beeswing from Mock Tudor two decades later.

Thompson is a tremendous wordsmith and song writer, but similarly, he is such a ridiculously imaginative and tasty guitar player that it is often hard to take it all in. Not that he is inaccessible, for Thompson is as fun a stage presence as there is.

So, Beeswing did coarse through my IPhone and into my car stereo and all the words really got me for the first time, and well, whew. So, saying the guitar playing is almost secondary, well, you judge and figure it out.

 

But, just in case you don’t know Thompson that well, here he is like, cranking it out on his Revering, on Elvis Costello’s late TV show with Elvis struggling to play rhythm guitar (maybe they even turned the volume off cos he looked so lost?).

I did search for Thompson doing this with bay area axe-man Henry Kaiser, whom I have twice seem play the song with the songwriter, but nada. So, let’s go with this.  Tell me you have seen a more relaxed or competent guy (let alone confident) jacking with his tuner as part of the solo in the middle of the song?

 

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