Richard Thompson Autumn Part One: Come All You Roving Minstrels

Periodizing Thompson's career at the outset is pretty easy, since he spent significant time in Fairport Convention before rolling on into his long solo career. Fairport is the most popular and significant band to come out of Britain's folk rock scene of the 1960s. It's also no mistake that they recorded some of Dylan and the Band's Basement Tapes material before it ever saw an official release. Like that project, Fairport Convention were looking for innovative ways to incorporate far older musical traditions into rock in ways that weren't just imitation or archeology. Like The Band's similar material in that era, this is essential listening. 

Fairport Convention, 1968

Rarely is a band's first album a complete outlier the way this one is. Instead of folk rock it's psychedelic music that sounds straight out of Haight-Asbury, not the wind-battered shores of Albion. It's also the only album with Judy Dyble singing. She would give way to Sandy Denny, whose presence really brought Fairport Convention into their own. This is by no means a bad album, it's just not what the principals involved do best, like if Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers cut a thrash metal record. I like late 60s San Francisco psychedelic rock, and Thompson and company come at it with creativity and verve. Thankfully they managed to find something more original on their next album.

Rating: Three Richards (out of five)

What We Did On Our Holidays, 1969

Right off the top with "Fotheringay" Fairport's evolution is manifest. Sandy Denny's haunting voice and the medieval ballad feel call upon something far more mysterious than a Sixties "happening." Whereas the debut album has 1968 stamped all over it, this song sounds like it could have been written yesterday or a thousand years ago. Also striking is the incorporation of blues and slide guitar on other songs, showing that this band was not just sticking to folk orthodoxy. They also had good taste in covers, doing Dylan's "I'll Keep It With Mine," a song left on the cutting room floor during the Blonde on Blonde sessions. Not every song is a banger, but the good ones are stunning, none more so than "Meet on the Ledge." It's one on my funeral playlist, and I've recently discovered that even Thompson's own mum wanted him to play it at hers. On its face it's a song about friends growing up, but it sounds like the yearning for transcendence after death. Thompson wrote it at the age of 17, a sign of his growing ability. His talents would be even more manifest on coming Fairport records.

Rating: Four and a half Richards 

Unhalfbricking, 1969

On the second of three (!) albums released in 1969, Fairport more fully realized their folk sound. Yet again they show excellent taste in picking Dylan songs, going with multiple unreleased songs, including some of the Basement Tapes material. On "Si Tu Dois Partir" they even have a lark by translating "If You Gotta Go, Go Now" into French. The lightheartedness of this and the Basement Tapes fun of "Million Dollar Bash" is tempered by some heavier material befitting the fact that original drummer Martin Lamble and Richard Thompson's girlfriend Jeannie Franklyn died in a crash as the band was returning from a show. Though it was written before, Sandy Denny's "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" is a haunting meditation on mortality. The long workout of "A Sailor's Life" also gives that song a melancholy air of the type that Thompson would milk in the 1970s as a solo artist. Speaking of, Thompson's "Genesis Hall" shows his continuing power as a songwriter. 

Liege and Lief, 1969

On their third album of 1969 and the last with Denny, Fairport Convention managed to craft the apotheosis of the whole British folk movement. Like The Band's self-titled album of the same year, it masterfully blended traditional forms of music with a rock sensibility with results that are spookily effective. In Fairport's case they drew on medieval English folk traditions, giving these songs a timeless quality even though Thompson shreds on electric guitar when he needs to. Dave Mattacks' rolling drums give the music a renewed drive and Dave Swarbrick's virtuoso fiddle playing (present as a session musician before) bring Fairport's music to an entirely higher level. The songs here are almost all traditional, but are played in such innovative, creative ways that I never get tired of listening to them. It's a shame that Denny would soon leave the band. 

Rating: Five Richards

Full House, 1970

This is the band's last album with Thompson as a full time member, and the first after Sandy Denny's departure. It's a real shame because the drums and guitars have never sounded better. Unfortunately, the loss of Denny's voice is apparent. For example, a BBC sessions version of "Sir Patrick Spens" with Denny on vocals is one of my favorite Fairport songs, but this studio version without her sounds kinda flat. Neverthless, it's still good, with an emphasis on longer instrumental breakdowns. Thompson's virtuosity is more apparent and songs like "Flowers of the Forest" are just gorgeous. Special shoutout to "Now Be Thankful," a non-album single I bust out every Thanksgiving. 

Rating: Four Richards 

Introducing Richard Thompson Autumn

I've really enjoyed writing my "listen throughs" of different legacy artists: Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, and Wilco and my readers (there are TENS of you out there!) like them too, so I am going with a new one this fall. There's also the fact that the school year has started and I am at a new job, so the brainspace I would use to come up with things to write about is pretty limited. It's better in these moments to go with a series.

I tend to listen to music seasonally. There are albums and artists I listen to heavily in some parts of the year and little in others. Richard Thompson has been in my autumn heavy rotation for a long time now, and now that he's come out with a new record I figured he was the perfect choice for this particular moment. 

Beyond that, Thompson is interesting because he is one of those legacy artists with a large following and massive catalog who still records and plays yet is practically unknown to most people. I do not think I have ever heard a single song of his on Top 40, classic rock, or "oldies" radio. Freeform radio, community radio, or public radio? You betcha! There are plenty of artists beloved by the real heads and ignored by the public (Big Star, Townes Van Zandt, Captain Beefheart, etc.) but none with a catalog as extensive as Thompson's, which makes him ideal for my purposes. He's also one of those artists who has some of his stuff tied up in rights issues, but I happen to have all of those things on physical media, so I am in a unique position to complete the mission. 

The first installment will be just about his years in Fairport Convention. After that I will have some fun with periodization. 

Visiting a Diner in Trump Country (Road Trip 2024)

While I returned from my big summer road trip about a month ago, I've been doing my fair share of local rambling. Last weekend I ventured with my kids to Central Pennsylvania to visit a dear friend who normally hangs his hat in Pittsburgh but has a lake house up in the hills. My kids and I cherish these visits, which we make as often as we can. They also provide an opportunity for armchair political science, since the surrounding area is about as Trumpy as it gets.

In an election year the tension I sometimes feel is more intense. On our drive out we stopped for lunch at a McDonald's in Danville, Pennsylvania. It was a clean, efficient, and well-appointed Mickey Ds, a real top of the line franchise. My enthusiasm was tempered by seeing a guy sitting at a table with his arms crossed and anger on his face wearing a Trump cap. He didn't seem like he was there to eat. In fact, he went over to the family at the next table over and engaged them in a political conversation saying that "she" (I knew who that was) was "scary" and a "socialist." This of course was a day after Harris gave a speech noteworthy for its emphasis on law and order and that did not contain any sweeping new progressive goals like universal child care (which this guy surely thinks is socialism.) A woman talking to him replied that Harris was not really leading in the polls, but that "they" were just saying that. 

It was an interesting thing to see. This guy was acting like an evangelist, but he wasn't selling Jesus, he was selling Trump. This struck me because on my trip out to Nebraska this summer I noted how support for Trump seemed to be dimming among the base. Perhaps this was the sign of desperation, or that my earlier observation was just plain wrong. 

Apart from hearing the usual dumb Boomer joke about "global warming" when someone said the lake water was cold, I did not get much sense of the political temperature until we went out for breakfast at a diner in a nearby small town. I knew from our last visit that this diner had a giant "BACK THE BLUE" sign on the outside and lots of Christian nationalist iconography on the inside and fake money with Trump on it pinned to the wall behind the register. Last time we were there I also had to hear a table of old white guy fogies hold forth on their hatred of liberals. The thing is, there is nothing in this world that I can resist less than a breakfast at a really good greasy spoon diner. Living in cities and college towns in my 20s and early 30s these places were my favorite haunts. When I moved to Jersey, the Valhalla of diners, I was elated. I'll be damned if someone else's lousy politics are going to keep me from enjoying a "hungry man" breakfast. I also grew up in a very conservative rural place and was less intimidated than most people from a progressive New Jersey suburb would have been in these environs. 

The diner in question is really small and there was only one waitress working. We remained patient and appreciated how hard she was having to work. This time around there were no Trumpy conversations to listen to, but I did notice something strange in the air. My friend guessed that some of the patrons thought he and I were a couple, since there weren't any adult women with us and proper menfolk in that region did not take their children out to diners by themselves with another man. Maybe that was the case, maybe not. I still had myself a delicious breakfast and my kids left happy. 

Driving down the road back home I started to think, and something did not sit right with me. I may live in New Jersey now and have a PhD and taught at an independent school in New York City for 13 years, but I am still the same person who grew up in rural Nebraska who has always loved diners. The diner I went to had all kinds of stuff hanging up to let me know that I wasn't welcome because of my politics. My background and upbringing, however, were pretty much the same as the other people in there. The political candidate they love, Trump, is a billionaire's son from New York who wouldn't be caught dead in a place like this. 

Instead of making the usual accusations about this discrepancy, I want to think a little deeper. Trump has an electoral advantage in that he could do pretty much anything, including being convicted of 34 felonies and inciting an attack on the Capitol, and still keep well over 40% of the electorate in his pocket. What I have come to realize in my interactions with Trump voters is that they don't really care about anything he does. I know that sounds obvious, but the reason isn't. They don't care not because they are hypocrites (a tired accusation) but because they believe in what he SYMBOLIZES, not who he actually is. 

Trump and his MAGA slogan symbolize the maintenance of all kinds of hierarchies. His name on a sign means support for men in charge, white people in charge, LGBTQ people in the closet, Christianity assumed, and immigrants deported. While not all Trump supporters fit all of these categories, each has at least of one these hierarchies in mind when it comes to their support. Trump could indeed shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose support because what he does is literally meaningless. All of his meaning is symbolic. 

What makes me sad is that so many people prefer this symbolic ecstasy and its attendant hatreds over human relationships. This is why I sometimes never feel lonelier than when I visit the types of rural places that made me and the kinds of humble diners I love more than the fanciest restaurant. 

Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff as "Reagan Dawn" Artifact

First off, I want to acknowledge that I have not been writing in this space. I have been focusing my efforts on my Substack (where I tend to do more political stuff) and on a couple of research projects. Come autumn I am planning on doing one of my patented "listen throughs" on Richard Thompson. In the meantime, I am re-reading a book that has me thinking again about what I call the "Reagan Dawn."

This is my name for the pop cultural moment lasting roughly from 1979 to 1981 that coincided with Ronald Reagan's election. The culture in this moment both reflected and drove the conservative political turn. I first wrote about it back in 2015 (!) and if I had the time, tools, and talent I'd write a book about it. Some of these pop cultural artifacts are pretty obvious, like Disco Demolition Night. Others are not.

That hit me while re-reading Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff. I'd read an interesting piece on him for The New Republic by Osita Nwanevu that made me want to revisit this book, and one of my daughters had also recently gotten obsessed with NASA. I first read it in 1999, before I had really started digging into the history and culture of the 70s in a serious way, and so did not contexualize the book as a product of the Reagan Dawn back then.

From the outset, Wolfe has embarked on a project of reclamation. In heaping praise upon military test pilots and the Mercury astronauts picked from them, he is intentionally elevating the kinds of men and qualities poo-pooed by the counterculture. In a foreword he wrote in 1983 he explicitly states that his point was to elevate military officers, who he felt had been denigrated in books about war going back to key Great War works like All Quiet on the Western Front. The men he profiles -military, white, traditionally masculine, Protestant, family patriarchs, lovers of hot rods, disdainful of NASA scientists- are exactly the kind disdained by the counterculture. In the context of post-Vietnam War America this reclamation project is freighted with deeper meanings and symbols.

Wolfe makes clear that the men he profiles love their country above all else, which is the reason why they are willing to face death and make widows and orphans of their families. These men themselves stand for a "real America," one that Reagan promised to revive. Writing in the late 70s after the big cultural and political breaks of the 1960s, Wolfe offers a tantalizing nostalgia for the Mercury program, with its origins in the Eisenhower years and the first orbits before that fateful day in Dallas in 1963. Wolfe's book came out in the era of the Iran Hostage Crisis and a general yearning for national renewal, exactly the thing Reagan promised. Nor for nothing, Reagan's campaign slogan in 1980 was "Let's Make America Great Again." Then under Reagan and now under Trump the "great" era is located before 1965. 

The thing with Wolfe is that he is such an engaging prose writer (in non-fiction, at least), that I am happy to go for the ride even if I can tell where he is slipping in his own ideological commitments. The test pilots and astronauts are indeed impressive people and their accomplishments are worthy of praise. What's funny reading the book today is just how much his side won. You can't go to a baseball game without there being a moment or two of military worship, for example. I have also been struck by how much conservatism has degenerated in the past four decades. As much as I disagree with many of Wolfe's assumptions, he's a good writer and a person that I am inclined to take seriously. I was trying to find the equivalent today of a conservative kind of writing meant not to be polemical but entertaining and all I could come up with was The Babylon Bee. That pretty much says it all. 

This got me thinking even more whether Reagan's long shadow has finally passed. While supply side tax cuts are a zombie idea that won't die, Trump's economic policies are hardly the kind of thing that would have pleased The Gipper. Democrats are also now far less likely to be cowed by charges of "socialism." I used to think of Reagan Dawn as the moment that our current political economy came into being. Now I am not so sure.

Reflection (Road Trip 2024)

I got home to New Jersey from my Midwestern road trip last Friday, and I want to conclude my travelogue with some reflection. Before I left I had pretensions of seeing what was going on in different parts of the country during a contentious election year. Little did I know my trip would coincide with one of the most tumultuous two weeks in American political history. 

The assassination attempt on Donald Trump happened two days before we left. At that time the calls for President Biden to withdraw from the race were dominating the headlines. That left the center stage of the political news for maybe two days. The Republican convention followed while we were on the road and in Chicago. Despite some rather, well, weird behavior at the convention, Democrats still dedicated themselves to a circular firing squad instead of highlighting the extremity of their opposition. Speaking of, JD Vance gave a straight up blood and soil nomination speech to began his run as a true wet fart of a candidate. By the time my trip was over the couch memes were dominating my feed.

That week ended on the Sunday when Biden announced his withdrawal from the race. The news flashed across during a family gathering, and I have to thank my cousin (who does not share most of my politics) for jumping in and cutting off any political discussion. The next day Kamala Harris had already claimed the mantle of presumptive nominee. I ran some errands with my wife and kids in the car, abuzz with the kind of political conversations we were avoiding at my parents' house. I knew things were changing when my 12-year old daughters whooped and hollered when we told them the news about Harris. I had been thinking that the Democratic Party was in an impossible situation, that either with or without Biden the election was unwinable. Suddenly progressives had their mojo back, and the needle had been threaded. Biden had stepped down, and a new nominee had been found without a destructive intra-party dispute. That nominee was already generating the kinds of enthusiasm from Democrats unseen since 2008. It was some kind of miracle. The last night of our trip my family gathered around my laptop in our roadside hotel room in Ohio, watching a Harris organizing meeting with barely contained energy. Between July 15th and July 26th it felt like the entire world had changed. 

On my trip I kept looking for clues to the national mood, but since I spent most of my time with family and old friends I would have to admit I can't say I observed much. My anecdotal observation is that I was pleasantly surprised at how little evidence of MAGA I detected. A house in my hometown not far from my parents that once flew a "Fuck Biden" sign no longer did. (I did see another house in another part of town flying one, though.) On our drive to and from Nebraska I saw a lot fewer Trump bumper stickers and fashy emblems than usual. I have long suspected that Trump is losing the juice, and that Biden's fumbling had obscured Trump's decline. With Harris's vitality dominating the news, Trump's doddering incoherence seems that much more pronounced. Nevertheless, one day when we drove through the Nebraska countryside a house on a backroad decorated to their fence to say "I am voting for the convicted felon." As the ranks of enthusiastic Trump supporters have dwindled it feels like the remaining ones have only intensified their zeal. This is a dynamic that mimics that in the churches many of these folks belong to.

It was eerily appropriate that we spent the last morning of our trip on the campus of Kent State University. We had decided to spend the night before at a random spot in Ohio because it was eight hours down the road from our previous stop. I soon realized we were right near Kent State, and I was lucky enough to have an online friend there in the history department who showed us around the site of the 1970 massacre. I learned a lot, to be sure, but I was also shook by the knowledge that when deep political divisions meet authority figures willing to wield violence, the blood will flow. As excited as I was that Democrats had come back from the dead, I also knew the reality of the situation we are in. Thinking about May 4th, 1970, I could not help but be reminded of the violence of our own political moment. I could not stop thinking that a new Trump administration would probably result in dozens of Kent States. My trip to the Midwest and back reminded me of how much I love this country, but also that the people who cheered the National Guard gunning down protestors are still alive and well. I'm more committed than ever to keeping them out of power. 

Nebraska Sojourn (Road Trip 2024)

I'd been too busy back in my hometown to write much, but now I am back on the road and staying the night at a hotel in Iowa City and able to get my thoughts down. I spent almost a week in Hastings, Nebraska, seeing family and friends alike. It's always a joy to see my loved ones again, and sad that I only get to spend this much time with them once a year. 

This time I also had the good fortune to be home during a spell of moderate weather. Three years ago we got to go tubing on the Niobrara River, but temperatures jumped up to one hundred degrees. This coincided with staying in a bargain-basement motel in Valentine, Nebraska, that never seemed to be comfortable. That year over Christmas we had to drive to the airport in Omaha in an ice storm. The next Christmas bad weather had us stuck at O'Hare. Last year it was brutally hot again in that blustery Great Plains way that make you feel like you are living inside of a hair dryer. 

This year the moderate weather reminded me of just how beautiful Nebraska can be in the summertime. The corn rises tall and the grass waves green under impossibly vast blue skies. In the evening the sunsets dazzle on the flat horizon, while the coolness of the morning air makes perfect weather for thoughtful walks. The cottonwood trees, which look like weeds with trunks and branches in winter, abound with thick green leaves.

We had some escape from last year's hotter weather via a trip to the Black Hills of South Dakota, where I luxuriated in the cool mountain evenings. This year we stayed in and around Hastings instead of taking a long trip with my parents, and I was glad for it. This year more than any other I have witnessed how my hometown has become a more livable place. In my earlier memories (which date to about 1978-1980), the downtown was bustling, the commercial center of an agricultural region. As the 80s progressed the mall near my house grew in popularity as the downtown stores started closing. At the end of the decade the arrival of Wal-Mart put this dynamic in overdrive. Out in the surrounding countryside, farmers were getting slammed and leaving the land during the Farm Crisis. By the end of the 90s, the once mighty Imperial Mall had become an empire in decline and downtown was almost completely dead. Come this century venerable local restaurants like Bernardo's and the OK Cafe closed for good, leading to a restaurant situation so dire that people welcomed Applebee's and Dunkin as saviors. 

Miraculously, in the last few years things have completely shifted, thanks to people from the area who moved out than came back and to new arrivals from elsewhere. There is an abundance of tasty Mexican food, for example. Downtown there is a microbrewery, artisan bakery, new bookstore, multiple coffee houses, and a cheese shop and wine bar opened by a childhood friend who once plied his trade in Los Angeles. This morning at the Back Alley Bakery I had a delicious brunch I would put up against any place in Brooklyn. More importantly, these new, more interesting local businesses seem to be doing well. My friend told me to come to his place on Monday because that was his slow day, but it was still bustling. 

The foodie revolution has even penetrated rural Nebraska. More than that, people there were yearning for alternatives to the dominant corporate chains and boring traditional local food culture. The whole thing is a great example of what a little new blood can do. I guess it was appropriate to witness that first hand the same week a generational shift happened in the presidential election. 

While it might sound strange, the founding of better restaurants in my hometown gives me real hope. In so many ways we are oppressed by the dead hand of the past and by older people committed to keeping the status quo, no matter how shitty it is. A little bit of faith in the future, even in the form of a tasty breakfast, goes a long way. 

Back in Chicago (Road Trip 2024)

On our way out to Nebraska we decided to spend a couple of days in Chicago, a city I lived in for two of the richest years of my life yet haven't seen for 16 years. Growing up in the Midwest it loomed large in my imagination, especially at a time when several beloved movies of my generation from The Blues Brothers to Ferris Bueller's Day Off were set there. When I finally got to visit in high school and in college, I fell in love. Living in Chicago only deepened that love, and when I was a grad student at the University of Illinois after moving out of Chicago, I made the trek up interstate 57 as often as I could. 

After that, a strange thing happened: I spurned Chicago for New York City, the place I worked for the past thirteen years. I used to resent the condescending attitude of New Yorkers to "the second city" when I lived in the Midwest, but I slowly began to adopt it myself. Today I am reproaching myself for this, since I have had an absolutely delightful day here. My children had never been before, and they absolutely LOVE it. They have called it "New York but clean" and "New York but chill." While Chicago has a tough spikiness, it lacks the overbearing neuroses that hang in the air in the Big Apple. As I get older my tolerance for managing other people's anxieties has frayed to the breaking point. People in New York desperately need to get a dose of Midwestern reserve. 

Today has included some old stomping grounds, as well as things I never did when I lived here. On the former count, we spent the morning in Hyde Park and on the campus of the University of Chicago, where I excitedly pointed out locations of major and minor events in my young life. On the latter count, we went to the top of the Hancock Building (I know it's not called that anymore, but whatever) and took at architectural history boat tour on the river. Both let me see a city I thought I knew with new eyes and appreciation. It also didn't hurt that in between we ate Chicago-style dogs from Devil Dawgs. 

For most part I have been quietly pleased with how the city has matured since I lived here from 1998-2000. Hyde Park in particular feels safer and more economically stable, as do the surrounding neighborhoods. Driving up Stony Island I marveled at all the new buildings and flourishing businesses. The experience really shows how much all the Fox News propaganda about Chicago is lying. Yes the city has plenty of problems, but it has figured some things out that its supposedly superior cousin New York could learn from. Putting trash in alleyway bins is probably better than dumping it on the street, for example. Trees can, you know, shade the sidewalk in the summertime. These facts and the Fox propaganda bullshit are good examples of how you shouldn't always believe what you hear.