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08 Feb 2003
Sometimes it takes the threat of missing out on something to force you take the plunge and buy some piece of technology. In our case, it was a documentary about Richard Thompson (to all intents and purposes the originator of folk rock) on BBC4 that made us get off our backsides and buy a digibox. We'd been thinking of getting one for a while (mainly to hear Radio 7---The Goons on broadcast radio again---yay!). We thought that if we were going to get one anyway, we might just as well get one now and see the programme.
The documentary was excellent. Richard Thompson is a fantastic song-writer, and an all-round nice, modest bloke. There was some classic footage of him in his Fairport Convention days, playing up a storm on the guitar, but with with the sort of blank expression one might wear when peeling potatoes. While he treats the music business as just another job, and yet his songs are dark, bitter little things that make you look into the abyss.
His whole demeanour was summed up by Billy Connolly---``He looks like a big English wally". Yes, but a big English wally who writes cracking songs.