Reviewed by Ian Phillips.
By Richard Thompson, www.richardthompson-music.com 2006.
Do you remember Y2K and what you were doing at the time?
Of course the world didn’t end when the clocks ticked over midnight and the lights stayed on as we partied our way into the new millennium.
At the time of the millennium change Richard Thompson was invited by Playboy Magazine to submit a list of the 10 greatest songs of the last millennium.
Taking them at their word he produced a list of songs that covered the best songs from 1068 up to 2001.
It wasn’t what they were after, they might have said millennium but they really meant from the 1950s onwards.
I mean who would be interested in songs going all that way back into history?
Anyway Playboy didn’t publish his list but the process of compiling it provided Richard with the material he needed to produce a touring show, 1000 Years Of Popular Music, which proved to be wildly successful.
This boxed set contains the DVD of the show plus two CDs of songs and it shows what a master musician Richard Thompson is.
Not only did Richard research and produce the music for songs that were lost in antiquity but he then set out to perform it all with just three musicians: himself on vocal and guitar; Judith Owen on vocals and keyboards; and Debra Dobkin providing vocals and percussion.
The oldest song on the discs is Sumer Is Icumen In, written in 1260 by an unknown author (but possibly William of Winchester) and the youngest dips over into the current millennium, 1985, written in 2004 by Bowling For Soup, a little-known band from Texas.
In between these tracks there’s a variety of songs from the unknown to some all-time classics.
Some of the highlights are the early 19th century American sea shanty Shenandoah (apparently there’s a Shenandoah off the Missouri River and another in Virginia); Night And Day written by Cole Porter in 1932 for the movie The Gay Divorcee; Java Jive written in 1940 by Ben Oakland and Milton Drake but forever linked to The Ink Spots; Cry Me A River written by Arthur Hamilton in 1953 (it was the only hit that he and singer Julie London ever had); and we Aussies make the list with The Easybeats Friday On My Mind.
Richard Thompson is a master guitarist and has been voted as one of the greatest of all time.
It takes someone of remarkable ability to pull off a project as audacious as this and I doubt that anybody else would have attempted it.
Playboy were wrong to reject the only list that met their stated requirements and they were also wrong to assume that no one would be interested in hearing the music.
The concerts played to packed houses over a tour that lasted a couple of years.
