Lupo's, Providence (show taped for DVD), July 23, 2003

A piece from the RT list, subject line "Love and Rockers"

After missing two Richard Thompson concerts in less than a week, I am being forced to recognize that I'm getting old. Perhaps this isn't so bad; I take solace in the immortal words of Prince, as sung by Richard Thompson on my CD player when I was stuck in the 17th traffic jam of a 12-hour day on the road:

Women, not girls, rule my world, I said they rule my world
Act your age, mama, not your shoe size, maybe we could do the twirl

You know, in China my shoe size is nearly the same as my age. But I digress.

A certain chronological awareness came upon me this morning just before 1 a.m., as I attempted to explain to the desk clerk at the Biltmore Hotel in Providence, RI, why I was checking in so late, why I had driven all the way to Rhode Island from Virginia, and (the unasked question) why I looked like I'd been doing heavy-metal-style headbanging for several sweaty hours. The clerk, with aged wisdom scarcely matched by the fuzz on his chin, offered up bromides about following your bliss. Then he sent me to my room.

I got into my car in Arlington, Virginia, just before 10 a.m. At around 6:40, with my gas-tank-empty light on, I wrestled the Escape into a tiny parking space two blocks from Lupo's, stepped out of the car, locked it up, heard Richard's voice, and broke into a run. It was a soundcheck of "Taxman." Half a dozen of us pressed against the doors in adoration.

I ended up front and center once more. So glad there was a rail around the stage; they should have made the roller-coaster announcement "Please hold onto the bar." The show was loud and wild and wonderful. This band has really jelled since the previous U.S. leg of the tour. Whether RT has made a conscious effort to bring Rory and Earl into the foreground more, or whether they've just asserted their musical ideas as they've gone along, I don't know.

RT was playing to the cameras a bit, I think. I'll bet that if someone didn't tell him "Open your eyes when you sing!" he must have thought of it himself. And his guitar solos were often stretched out in appealing, all-the-time-in-the-world fashion.

One thing I've noticed on this tour (after seeing five shows on it--so far) is that this live-band configuration favors RT's angrier side. I wanted to write about the Kimmel Center show last week with the words "blunt" and "brutal." Also "lacerating" and "metal." Last night had less abruptness, less confrontation, but fully as much indignation and passionate catharsis.

I was going to write about this last week, but I woke up the day after the show too sick to stick around for the next one in Philly. And the same thing happened today; I should be at Falcon Ridge right now, but I couldn't face it today. Too tired, post-virus, to hang around so far from home on the rest of a long-planned mini-vacation (which included a mere two RT shows). Too homesick for my husband (who has now caught the bug I had last week).

So I spent today in my car, Virginia bound, thinking about how The Old Kit Bag sounds to me now. I wondered whether, of all RT's albums, it's the one that sounds least like it could have been made by a person under 40. And I pondered its gentle, melancholy sweetness. It's not a downer, but it generates fewer laughs than any album he's made in a long time.

Whereas the band is excelling at portraying the release of pent-up anger--mostly in older barnburners like "Can't Win" and "Shoot Out the Lights"--OKB doesn't so much take aim at targets as get inside and deconstruct them. Only "Pearly Jim" comes close to attacking, but it does so by a rather theatrical description of a community laid waste by its attachment to a two-legged golden calf. (An R.D. Laing joke, for heaven's sake.)

I was thinking today about "First Breath" and how Marc and others have suggested that it and its ilk "appeal to the ladies." (That's not meant to be a direct quote from Marc, and if he's around I'm sure he'll come back and correct my paraphrase of his ideas.) How part of me gets all feministically riled at such an assertion (don't get me started on you guys and your "RT newbies and their wives" generalization!) and part of me thinks maybe straight guys don't get it (and straight women do) because it's such an erotic, mystical elixir (yeah, yeah, thus falling prey to generalization myself).

This spurred me to think of two other key ideas:

(1) Although RT is sometimes known for his songs about love gone bad, a great number of his strongest songs aren't about romantic relationships.

(2) OKB presents an uncommonly blame-free, almost fatalistic approach to romantic love. When it fails, there's no implication that either party is at fault; everyone involved is grown up enough to acknowledge human frailty and, perhaps, superhuman intervention. Not that they're cold-blooded about it. "I've Got No Right" is "Keep Your Distance" in different clothing--and is sadder and more passionate (though not necessarily a better song overall). "One Door Opens" and "First Breath" are back-to-back rides on that old Wheel that lesser songwriters like to spin: Love comes and goes in surprises and disguises, to be savored while it lasts, and sometimes humans can't do much about its forces.

Then, of course, round about the 15th stop in my Jersey Turnpike Service Center women's room mini-tour, I was thinking about the powerful effects of two OKB songs at the Lupo's show: "A Love You Can't Survive" and "Word Unspoken Sight Unseen," both of which are nominally about love affairs. The latter always sounded more like the travel plans of a hejirist (is that a word?) to me, and it's had a particularly luminous quality at the OKB tour shows, probably because it generally comes late in the set when everyone's defenses are totally worn down. But "Survive" is also about more than its plot (which some have found an inconsistent one). I think it's all about "bearing a scar" and being thus changed, wounded and seemingly visible. He doesn't say the love doesn't survive; he says "you can't survive" the love.

Anyway, I know I can't survive too many more of these road trips. They're just too peculiar. After last night's show, I was literally shaking and staggering, my head reeling. (I had one gin and tonic. ONE.) I have a hazy memory of conversationally pingponging off a bunch of people; I awoke this morning all insecure and weirded out and tired and rain-averse and homesick.

There's no place like home. But there's also no place like an RT show, dammit. Sometime earlier in my life, I must have eaten the seeds of one hell of a pomegranate.

Questions I wanted to ask RT last night but didn't get to (although I did say hi to him):

--Whose Mission chair is that on the OKB art?

--Did Wordsworth really have a tattoo?

--You said on the "My Life in CD" program that you like to spend time in Costa Rica. Do you know the name of the villa there that's in a remote area, made out of stone (including, I think, the furniture), has no windowscreens, and is available for rent? Seems like I read about it last spring, and now I can't find it.

--Did you have a lighting tech traveling with you on this tour?

--Have you read the new Harry Potter book? 'Cause it has a St. Mungo's in it.

--Where did you go during that "Can't Win" solo? 'Cause I'm glad you came back alive.

--Do you want to hear my joke? Driving on the hell that is Interstate 95 in Connecticut, I passed by the town of Mystic and was amused by the sign that said "Downtown Mystic." I pictured some old holy man holding court outside a Starbucks. So when you said "Pearly Jim" was about a guru and asked, "Do you have those around here?" I wanted to blurt out, "Sure, there's Downtown Mystic." You can use it if you want, but only in New England.

(Actually, getting back to a more topical note: When RT asked if there were any gurus around here, someone apparently yelled out "You!")

OK, guys, I'll stop blathering now, but I hope somewhere in here are a
couple of points worthy of discussion.

Pam