Let me bring you up to speed…

Reviewing the new Richard and Linda Thompson box set in MOJO 323, Andrew Male tells us there are no live recordings of the couple’s 1972 folk club tour. Actually, there are at least two. There are 40 minutes of the couple playing the Kew Bridge Folk Club, plagued somewhat by feedback and crude edits, along with a full hour from Durham University, where they run out of songs they’ve rehearsed. Both feature lots of banter, a relaxed atmosphere, a wide range of material and a never-released RT song called When I’m Prime Minister. It’s his earliest lyric from the point of view of a sociopath – one who could easily be mistaken for Boris Johnson.

Neither of these are sufficiently well recorded for official release, but Richard and Linda’s set from the Memphis Folk Club at The Guildford, Leeds, in 1973 exists in good quality. This provides an interesting link between Henry The Human Fly and I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight, several of whose songs feature. These three were the only recordings that circulated when I was heavily into CDR trading in the mid-noughties.

David Belbin, Nottingham