From: owner-jinglejangle-digest@smoe.org (jinglejangle-digest) To: jinglejangle-digest@smoe.org Subject: jinglejangle-digest V4 #57 Reply-To: jinglejangle@smoe.org Sender: owner-jinglejangle-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-jinglejangle-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk jinglejangle-digest Sunday, April 15 2001 Volume 04 : Number 057 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [MLL] Richard Thompson - Best of Capitol Years CD ["Thomas A" Subject: [MLL] Richard Thompson - Best of Capitol Years CD Some of you may already know this...but I just picked up Richard Thompson's The Best of Capitol Years CD and it contains 1952 Vincent Black Lightning and Beeswing. Plus if you get it from Borders, it comes with a bonus CD with three live tracks. And what's below is from the liner notes...pretty interesting I thought. Thomas From the Liner notes for Richard Thompson - Action Packed The Best of the Capitol Years 1952 Vincent Black Lighting to this day is the most requested song on NPR in the United States. To write the song Thompson did a considerable amount of research. The Black Lightning was a high-end motorcycle manufactured by the British Vincent company between 1948 and 1954. Considered the fastest motorcycle in the world, fewer than thirty were actually manufactured in 1952. To both James Adie and "red haired Molly," the heroes of Thompson's song, the Vincent Black Lightning represents risk, danger, speed and romance. For Richard Thompson, it's just as important that these feelings are conjured up through a piece of British popular culture. As he told biographer Patrick Humphries, "A lot of the mythology of popular music is American..being British, I've always tried to look for objects that have some kind of mythological appeal, that you can write about as a British songwriter. The Vincent is a fabulous beast, it really is a thing of fable and beauty and it's mythological, it's the lodestone around which teh characters in the song evolves." While 1952 Vicent Black Lightning is full of action and drama. Beeswing is a slower paced, more delicate love story lovingly captured with the aid of Northumbrian pipes, acoustic guitar, fiddle, flute, concertina and mandolin. Sporting perhaps the prettiest melody Thompson has ever written, the title is both the name of a small Scottish village and an entirely unconnected Scottish hornpipe. Years earlier Thompson had written a completely different song, also called Beeswing, that was never deemed good enough to record. He subsequently named his publishing company Beeswing. Clearly the name had a lot of resonance for him. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com ------------------------------ End of jinglejangle-digest V4 #57 *********************************