Rock Hall Snubs: Richard Thompson and Los Lobos

Richard Thompson: The Poor Ditching Boy
Los Lobos: Will The Wolf Survive?

[purchase Henry The Human Fly]
[purchase How Will The Wolf Survive] 

When I posted my first piece in this theme, about King Crimson, I posted it in a King Crimson fan group on Facebook, hoping to draw some readers to the blog (and it seemed to work! One point for Facebook, although with the news the last few weeks, I think that its score is below water). I was heartened to receive a number of positive comments and likes, but I was also not surprised to also get a different reaction—essentially that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is rubbish, just a tourist attraction, and really, who cares if Crimson isn’t in? It was a combination of disdain for an organization that while going out of its way to induct lesser known artists, many of color (particularly in the Early Influences and “Sidemen” categories), is also filled with commercially successful shlockmeisters, and a Groucho Marxist feeling of not wanting to be in a club that would admit them as a member. 

I get it. Really—in fact, as an acknowledged Rock Snob, I mentioned in my original piece that I have trouble taking seriously an organization that inducted Bon Jovi, but not King Crimson, as a musical arbiter, and add to that, just as a few more examples, Def Leppard, Journey, and Depeche Mode, none of which would be in my HOF (much less in my collection). On the other hand, a pretty good case can be made for most of the inductees based on a combination of popularity and influence, even if I don’t particularly care for their music. The same way that when looking at the Baseball Hall of Fame, I can appreciate the talent of most of the players, even if some of them were Yankees, or Ty Cobb.

With all that extraneous background, as the theme heads towards its conclusion and we likely turn to something Halloween related, I wanted to briefly recognize two members of the Jordan Becker Rock Hall who have been unjustly snubbed by the bigger, more famous one in Cleveland, Richard Thompson and Los Lobos, a Brit best known for his folk based music, songwriting prowess and incredible guitar playing, and a band whose music has expertly spanned many genres, but is firmly rooted in their Mexican-American heritage. Showing the breadth of the “Americana” genre, both have won Americana Music Association Lifetime Achievement Awards (Thompson for Songwriting and for his entire career; Los Lobos for Performance), and they’ve even done a song together. 

I’m going to try to keep this short. But you know how hard that is for me to do. 

Thompson, whose first schoolboy band included his friend Hugh Cornwell, later of the Stranglers, first became known as one of the founders of Fairport Convention. He was all of 18, and already his guitar playing was remarkable enough to convince producer Joe Boyd to sign the band. Eventually, Fairport Convention became a major musical force in Britain, first covering mostly American folk artists such as Bob Dylan, but later focusing on originals, many written by Thompson, that had strong British folk music influences (as well as covers of traditional songs). Thompson left Fairport in 1971, and began releasing solo albums and work with his wife Linda Thompson, until their marriage collapsed publicly and spectacularly, but also led to Thompson writing some incredible songs. 

Thompson has continued to release solo albums, participate in the occasional collaboration, including with his extended family, and tour regularly, as a solo artist and with bands of various sizes. He’s even covered 1000 years of popular music, and recorded sea chanteys. Renowned as a guitarist and songwriter (particularly for dark-themed songs), he’s also become a more than capable singer. I’ve seen him a bunch of times, have never been disappointed, and have usually been blown away by his talent, his encyclopedic knowledge of music, and his humor. In addition to his AMA awards, he has won guitar playing awards, and often appears on lists of the greatest guitarists of all time. Considering all of this, and the number of years that he has been performing at an astoundingly high level, RT deserves to be in the R&RHOF. 

Los Lobos grew out of the high school friendship of David Hidalgo and Louie Perez, who bonded over music, including Fairport Convention. They formed a band with some other friends, Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles, releasing their self-titled first album, of mostly traditional Mexican songs, in 1973. Playing numerous live shows, including weddings and dances, they forged a sound that mixed American popular songs with Mexican music, and also began to incorporate influences from punk bands popular in Los Angeles in the late 1970s. 

Throughout the 1980s, they released a string of well-regarded and increasingly commercially successful records that continued to add influences to their sound. Of course, their recording of “La Bamba,” (and other songs) for the soundtrack of the Ritchie Valens biopic, La Bamba, shot them to greater prominence. Rather than follow up a No. 1 single with more of the same, they released an album of Mexican music, for which they won a Grammy, if not more English language airplay. After that, they’ve continued to release excellent albums, including a few that were a little experimental, while touring regularly. 

In addition to writing great songs and being pioneers of Latino rock music, they are one of the best cover bands, participating in various cover projects, including contributing a great version of “Bertha,” to Deadicated, and Disney covers. Not to mention a cover of “Down Where The Drunkards Roll,” on a Richard Thompson tribute album. In fact, their most recent album, created during the pandemic, is a cover album, focusing on California bands (with one original), 

Back in 2014, I wrote about Los Lobos for Cover Me, describing them as having 

demonstrated that not only can they play pretty much any style of music, they can play it very well. They have excelled with albums that have included blues, rock, R&B, experimental sounds, numerous styles of Mexican folk music, American folk music, Americana, and Tex-Mex, all performed and played brilliantly. They play acoustically and electrically. Their songs can be simple rockers, sinuous jams, complex sound collages, or heartbreaking stories of life on the margins. 

I then said that it is “sinful” that they are not in the Rock Hall, and I still believe that (despite the one time I saw them live, and they were having a rare off night). 

OK, not so short, but it’s really a twofer.

May/Might: She May Call You Up Tonight

The Left Banke: She May Call You Up Tonight 
[purchase]

When you think of the Left Banke, if you do, you probably think about “Walk Away Renee,” or maybe “Pretty Ballerina.” And maybe, just maybe, you think about “She May Call You Up Tonight.” After that, though, I bet you are drawing a blank. Certainly, those are three great songs that helped to define a style referred to as “baroque rock,” but after that, the Left Banke’s musical output is pretty much unknown.

I’m in the camp of people who know about those three songs, and basically nothing else about the Left Banke. Luckily, though, I have access to the Interwebs. Turns out, the band has one of those stories that is all too familiar. Early success, internal bickering, revolving door membership, even competing versions of the band, and various reunions over the years, with varying lineups. There are even some brushes with future fame—versions of the band included, at times, Michael McKean, better known as an actor, including as David St. Hubbins of Spinal Tap, and Bert Sommer, who played Woof in the original Broadway production of Hair in 1969-70 (and whose actual hair was immortalized on the Playbill). A young Steven Tyler sang background vocals on the band’s little-heard second album. But you cannot deny that the Left Banke’s sound was influential well beyond the band’s output or commercial success. You can hear their influence in early Linda Ronstadt, in Eric Carmen, and Belle & Sebastian, among many others.

I’m pretty sure, though, that while I may have heard the original version of “She May Call You Up Tonight” at some point, I really paid attention to it when I heard Richard Thompson do it live, with son Teddy, at the Tarrytown Music Hall. I remember thinking that it sounded familiar, but was totally unable to place it. There’s a recording of it, with Teddy, on 1998’s live album Celtschmerz. There’s also another version on Thompson’s Chrono Show album, featuring performances from his 2004 tour. The Wikipedia article for that album says that Thompson had been doing the song live since the 1970s, and it must have been something that the Fairport Convention crowd was into (Thompson has been quoted about his love for the Left Banke’s debut album)—The Albion Country Band, led by former Fairport member Ashley Hutchings, played it live in 1972 (with a gender change), with Richard and Linda Thompson guesting, Ian Matthews (who left Fairport in 1969) did a cover of it in 1980, and Linda Thompson did the gender-changed version of it on her solo album in 1985, after breaking up with Richard.

Family Bands: Thompson Family

[purchase]

Here we are, halfway through the second week of this theme, we only have one post. I suggested the theme, so it must be a good one. Therefore, I’m going to blame the lack of writing on the fact that it is the summer, and people are on vacation. Also, two of our writers live in a country that just had an abortive coup, and I’ve been busy with work and family obligations.

So, just time for a short piece about an album that came out in late 2014 called Family, from a group simply billed as “Thompson.” It is, overall, a very good album, if not a great album, but well worth checking out. The project began when Teddy Thompson, an excellent singer, songwriter and performer in his own right (when he is paying attention—don’t get me started writing about the time I saw him and he messed up most of his songs.....) reached out to members of his talented extended family to see if there was interest in working on a project. His father, SMM favorite Richard Thompson, and his mother, Richard’s ex-wife and legend in her own right, Linda Thompson, signed on. As did sister Kami and her husband, guitarist James Walbourne (who together make up The Rails). The next generation was also enlisted, including Jack Thompson, Richard’s son from his second marriage, and Zak Hobbs, the son of Richard and Linda’s eldest daughter Muna, who is not a professional musician, but also appears on the album (and drew the cover illustration). There are also contributions from Richard’s daughter-in-law Paulina Lis, Welbourne’s brother Rob and his wife Brooke Gengras.

The songs were, at Teddy’s direction, to be written where each of the writers lived. He gathered the basic tracks, then fleshed them out with overdubs in London and Los Angeles. So not surprisingly, the album jumps around stylistically, although if you listen carefully, there is a certain “Thompson-ness” about the album that somewhat holds it together.

Ultimately, the key song is probably one of the last written, Teddy’s “Family,” that opens the disc and gives it a title. A gentle waltz featuring Teddy, Zak and Linda, it opens:

My father is one of the greats to ever step on the stage,
My mother has the most beautiful voice in the world. 
And I am betwixt and between, Sean Lennon, you know what I mean. 
Born to the manor, never quite clamoring free. 
It’s family, its family. 

My elder sister is pretty than you believe, 
My younger sister is prettier still and can sing. 
And I am the middle child, 
The boy with red hair and no smile, 
Not too secure, very unsure who to be. 
 It’s family, its family. 

Because this is a fairly recent song, I will follow our informal guidelines and not post a downloadable copy of the song. And I can’t find a video just of the song, so the video above is a short “making of” piece about the album, and it does feature some of “Family.”

WHERE I LIVE: LICHFIELD

The British have always, at least in the canon of popular song, been coy about referencing our towns and cities, seeming much happier to fantasise around the US, with a decades long parade of the never traveled singing about Amarillo or somesuch. True, there are exceptions, if one enjoys paeans to the joys of Durham Town., but all pretty thin on the ground, with maybe more Yanks singing about Liverpool than actual Liverpudlians. But the field of folk is different, many of the songs stemming from a time before Uncle Sam was even a glimpse in the telescope of the Plymouth Brethren, and it is here I have had to search.

I live in Lichfield, a very small city, about the size of a market town, population about 35k, based around a cathedral (see above picture) built in between 1195 and 1249 and, yes, it did take that long, making Gaudi seem somehow less of a slouch down in Barcelona. In the English midlands, a 40 minute drive northward from Birmingham, it is close to the centre of the country. I love it and, after 12 years, feel proud to call it my home. So, songs about Lichfield?

Luckily I have one that hits all my spots, as I make no secret of my awe and admiration for the family Thompson. Richard Thompson has had a near half century of muted fame, usually happily ensconced to the side of the radar, preaching to  the converted, a hardcore base of staunch supporters stretching back to his actually only very brief tenure within Fairport Convention, to his duo with erstwhile wife, Linda, and beyond. RT has written many a song about his home country, perhaps most famously a hill in Surrey, and has become ever more English the longer he has lived in L.A. Well, this isn't about him. Nor indeed his son, Teddy, who has carved out a career singing such homegrown fare as this, showing apples don't necessarily always fall closest to the tree. No, this is another family member, daughter of Richard and Linda, sister of Teddy, one Kami Thompson. Her apple is perhaps slap bang right next to the trunk, as what she felt the 2014 world needed more than anything else was a folk-rock duo like, well, the comparisons are inevitable, her ma and pa. And so, with husband, James Walbourne, guitar on hire to many and varied, including Jerry Lee Lewis and Son Volt, the Pogues and the Pretenders, they form the Rails, their debut appearing last year. It is an unwritten rule that SMM avoids lifting music from under a decade old, even in these mp3 light, YouTube heavy days, but I feel I can get away with this, as it comes from an unreleased radio session. (Hell, without it, I would be scuppered for this piece as it so clearly references the city, my home.)



Trivia fans may also be intrigued to know that a frequent member of the larger live Rails band, on 2nd guitar, is one Zak Hobbs, Kami's nephew and, yes, RT's grandson. Here he is with grandpa.......

Of course, and there is always an of course with trad.arr., a slight problem is that many versions of the same song abound, each with a varied memory of who said what, living tradition and all that malarkey. So here, in memory of where my brother used to live, or, at least, relatively nearby, here's another version, by the seemingly now lost in action great folk hope of 2000, Bill Jones. Curiously, although she was born in Staffordshire, the county within which is Lichfield, her version talks of Southampton............

Buy the studio version by the Rails.
Or, for the full Thompson,  try THIS

SISTERS: SISTERS by RICHARD & LINDA THOMPSON

Sisters : Richard and Linda Thompson

Buy it!

Phew, I was worried I wouldn't get back on-line in time for this submission, the instantaneous thought that came to me, on reading about the theme from afar. Few can now claim to be unaware of the name Richard Thompson, the eternal critics favourite undiscovered artist, finally, finally seeming to get the attention due him, even if he is still hardly household. Indeed, he remains very much a marmite artist, to use the current british vernacular, marmite being a yeast based spread that advertises itself on the basis that you can only either love or hate it, with no middle ground. (I love it!) Elderly readers will remember him as the precocious guitar-slinger in Fairport Convention, doe-eyed and shaggy, effortlessly tossing off skewed and twisted lines, seeming to offer no links to the then received canon of blues and rock, with echoes of a deep folk mysticism, and hints of an eastern symbolism later more widely embraced. Indeed Fairport probably invented the european school of folk-rock, with their epochal album, Liege and Lief, from where this clip comes.
Following on from his exit from FP and an astoundingly unsuccessful solo LP, he teamed up with his then wife, Linda, herself already a well respected singer on the session circuit, producing 5 or so LPs, even managing a minor hit with this. During this period the couple embraced islam, even giving up the music business for a while, living on a sufi commune. The song I lead this piece with stems from this later period, which Thompson himself seems to think little of himself, it remaining resolutely unavailable on CD, re-mixed and added to or otherwise.(My purchase link comes from a later compilation of his oevre.)
They famously split up around their final LP, then experiencing an enormously vitriolic tour together to promote it.
Since then Richard has maintained a low profile permanent presence in the best of lists, whether as guitarist, songwriter or, less often, singer. Indeed, it his voice that tends to keep him away from any real chance of crossover, appealing mainly to bearded men of a certain age, perhaps explaining his place in the heart of so many music writers. Linda sort of fell by the wayside, having become prone to dysphonia, making singing live impossible. Fortunately, largely with the assistance and support of son, Teddy, she has again started to appear and perform again, and has just put out the 3rd of an occasional series of new songs. Which, full circle, includes her ex accompanying her on one track.
"Sisters" has a typically acerbic lyric, with bittersweet words of a distressed regret, fitting perfectly with the bleak vocal, and the typical spiky guitar underpinnings. A song, as are most of theirs, to listen to, to pick up all the words, all the instrumental nuances, to feel the pain and the pleasure of that pain, before committing it to fond memory for recall. Heart, head and soul music. Wonderful stuff.

We Are Family: We Were Family Edition

This week, we have had songs by brothers, sisters, and by parents and their children. But no one else has tackled married couples. Perhaps this has to do with a question: when should two (or more) people in a committed relationship of choice be considered a family? Surely, a same-sex couple, who can not legally marry, are no less a family than a heterosexual couple that can. And were Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer not a family because they never actually married? I wouldn’t think so. Still, society has its opinion, and those would have been controversial choices.

There is also another aspect to this. Were a couple who have since broken up a family while they were together? I don’t think the answer has anything to do with whether or not they had children together. I think the closeness they felt when the relationship was at its best is far more relevant. And the music they made together is often the best clue to this. Let’s look at three examples.

Richard and Linda Thompson: I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight

[purchase]

The most obvious example is Richard and Linda Thompson. They were married shortly after Richard completed his original stint with Fairport Convention, and they were together for many years. Their recordings together were always billed as being by both of them, and they achieved a style together that is demonstrably different from how either of them sounds on their own. I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight is a fine example of that sound.

Joni Mitchell: My Secret Place

[purchase]

Joni Mitchell’s jazz period ended after the Mingus album, (how do you top that?), and the death of bass player Jaco Pastorius. At that point, she did two things that would have been unthinkable to those who had followed her career to that point: she married bass player and producer Larry Klein, and she decided to rock out. The albums from this “rock” period are some of Mitchell’s least known work, and her most uneven. The best songs from this time, however, are as good as any in her catalog, although stylistically different. Mitchell’s marriage to Klein eventually ended, but he worked on her most recent album, Shine, although they were no longer married. So I would say that Klein is still part of Mitchell’s musical family.

Suzanne Vega: In Liverpool

[purchase]

My last example is also the most problematic. Suzanne Vega’s marriage to producer and keyboardist Mitchell Froom only lasted for one album, 99.9 F degrees. I remember that the reviews at the time of the albums release hailed the album as a bold new direction for Vega. And I remember reading an interview with Vega at the time where she talked about how excited she was.

I saw Vega live a few years later, after the marriage was over. Vega reached a point in the performance where she was ready to take requests from the audience. But first, she cautioned us that she would not play any songs from 99.9 F degrees. But, to my ear, there was one song on the album that sounded like the rest of Vega’s material to that point. So I blithely shouted out, “In Liverpool”. Sure enough, that was the one song she had done with Froom that she was willing to lay claim to at that point, and it sounded great that day. So I don’t know how Vega feels about Froom or these songs nowadays. But I also don’t know if that answers the question of whether, however briefly, she and Froom were a family.