| 06/27/2008 | Offbeat Magazine |
| 06/21/2008 | Billboard |
| 06/13/2008 | Chicago Sun Times |
| 06/12/2008 | BlogCritics Review |
| The Washington Post 01/27/2008  Washington Post Review of 1,000 Years Calls Judith "amazing"... by Chris Klimek British folkie Richard Thompson took under two hours to work his professorial way through "1,000 Years of Popular Music" at Lisner Auditorium on Wednesday night. To be fair, he cheated a bit, leaping from the 12th-century chart-topper "Praise to You, Queen of Heaven" to the 1590s' "So Ben Mo Ca Bon Tempo." Thompson introduced the latter as "a cuckolding song," one he sang not in modern Italian but in "that tricky, colloquial, medieval Italian we all struggle with." He was kidding, but he wasn't. Who does this dude think he is, Sting? You might be forgiven for thinking he was someone other than Richard Thompson, Venerated Songwriter, whose material was absent, or Richard Thompson, Guitar Genius, who turned up only intermittently. His subtle, masterful fingerpicking made highlights of Cole Porter's "Night and Day" and Abba's "Money Money Money" in the concert's 20th-century second half. Thompson has toured this show for years -- it started when Playboy magazine asked him in 1999 to choose the 10 greatest songs of the millennium; he called their bluff by actually starting his list with a circa 1068 tune -- so by now, fans know what they're getting. But still: Would it have killed him to play a song or three of his own? We'd happily have traded in his version of Nelly Furtado's "Maneater" (funny on the page, boring onstage). The best performances were the ones that relied on the amazing singer Judith Owen and vocalist-percussionist Debra Dobkin. The trio sang a beautiful 1608 madrigal, "Pipe Shepherd's Pipe," and their spunky nods to British musical hall and Gilbert and Sullivan actually sounded better than the Kinks and Ray Price covers you'd have expected Thompson to knock out of the park. The audience was reverent enough to save requests for Thompson's own songsuntil the encore. He ignored them, playing a song written by Richard the Lion-Hearted when he was imprisoned after the Third Crusade. He sang only two (he said) of the song's 407 verses -- in French -- before closing with the Beatles' "It Won't Be Long." That's Thompson for you: always playing to the crowd. |