it won't be long

In 1999, Playboy Magazine asked singer-songwriter Richard Thompson for his favorite songs of the millennium. He knew they wanted a list of “Hey Jude” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”….big hits going back a few decades, but probably no more. Instead, he went back a thousand years, and gave them some of the oldest songs in the English language. Mining songs, sea chanteys, madrigals, opera, show tunes, etc. Playboy didn’t print the list, but Richard Thompson turned it into a show, where he more or less consecutively traces the history of music.

The show has been captured on CD and DVD, but Richard still tours with that set list occasionally. My dad and I went to see the “1000 Years of Popular Music” show in Asheville on Sunday night. It was really great. Frankly, Richard Thompson could probably sing the phone book and I would post something laudatory, but it really did felt like being in the audience for a living legend.

You can read about the songs that were chosen here: http://www.richardthompson-music.com/catch_of_the_day.asp?id=118. The show kind of switches out a few here and there to keep it interesting for people who already have the CD, but you get the point. It always seems like on the modern hit that is chosen, be it Britney Spears’ “Oops, I Did it Again,” or Nelly Furtado’s “Maneater,” the band throws a little segment of medieval music in there, to show that pop music may look different, but it’s all based on the same chords, sounds, etc.

This will be clumsily expressed, but those kinds of touches are things I really like about “1000 Years of Popular Music,” or Bruce Springsteen’s “The Seeger Sessions,” or Nanci Griffith’s “Other Voices” albums. It’s an acknowledgment that music is handed down through generations, and that it’s important to acknowledge history, but in a way that is fresh, so that each generation can take a stab at it. Everything came from somewhere, and we might as well know where.

This might not make any sense. I bought the tickets guessing that if I worked in Atlanta I’d have Monday off for the MLK holiday. But I didn’t, so I had to drive back at 5 am today. So I’m tired. But I digress. I would say the only drawback of the night is that I really love Richard Thompson’s original stuff as well, and I hope I get to see him again singing his own songs. At the end of the night, folks were calling out requests for RT originals, and he had to be like, “no, we don’t do that at this show; I don’t put myself in this category of song, the best of the millennium.” And someone shouted back, “but you are in that category,” and I whole-heartedly agree. Plus that dry British wit is so funny!

In apartment news, I came home to my alarm system beeping continually. I haven’t activated the alarm system yet (which might have really helped me last Friday morning), so after an hour of beeping I finally called maintenance. They talked me through pulling all the plugs that need to be pulled to make the thing go completely blank. It really doesn’t make a difference, since it wasn’t activated anyway, but now I feel even more unsafe, like the beeping was engineered by the police so they can come back tonight and I will be even more defenseless. I figure if they really are the police, they had the weekend and also the holiday off, and they might be back tomorrow morning. In happier news, I assembled my end tables and carried 40 boxes of books in from my car.