Richard Thompson

CHECK LIST **** Great Balls of Fire *** Good Vibrations ** Maybe Baby * Running on Empty *** 1/2RICHARD THOMPSON. "Amnesia." Capitol. Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen may have the household names, but Richard Thompson is at least their equal as a singing-songwriting-guitar-soloing triple threat. "Amnesia" continues one of the finest bodies of work in the '80s.

MUSIC The guitarist Richard Thompson started in the virtuosic traditional-folk outfit Fairport Convention, but his songwriting has always strayed ambitiously wide. For this tour in support of his new album "Interviews With Ghosts," he joins the new music ensemble So Percussion to perform from it, along with experimental pieces including Chen Yi's "Tone Poem," Peter Askim's "Elsewhere," John Cage's "Credo in US" and Steve Reich's "Music for Pieces of Wood. " Barnsdall Gallery Theater, 4800 Hollywood Blvd., L.A. $20. Barnsdallartpark.com.

If Richard Thompson keeps doing shows like this, he could be in danger of losing his standing as a "cult hero." Though hailed by Rolling Stone as the creator of two of the best albums of the last 20 years, and heavy with the hosannas of his musical peers, the British singer-writer-guitarist is far from household-name status. Yet, at Seattle's Bumbershoot Festival Friday, Thompson played to a packed field of hard-core fans that was augmented by several thousand Thompson novitiates.

Cul de Sac Golden Treasury A Keepsake Garland of Classics Richard Thompson Andrews McMeel: 200 pp., $16.99 paper Pundits have long predicted the imminent death of the comic strip, even before the Internet threatened to put the daily newspaper on the endangered species list. But Richard Thompson's delightfully quirky "Cul de Sac" proves the comic strip remains a viable art form while bucking current trends. It's not an exercise in merchandising, niche marketing or political ax-grinding.

Richard Thompson had a nifty rejoinder when he began to be flooded with requests during his late show Friday at the Roxy: "We did all the great ones in the first show," he told the adoring audience. "The record company came to the first show, you see. . . ." Ah, that Richard, what a kidder. So only three of the dozen-plus songs in the late set were repeats from his earlier show.

In the admiring opinion of several other songwriters, Richard Thompson has written some of the most depressing songs of our time, tunes in which love turns to bile, crippled war vets are chucked into the rain, babes are warned "there's nothing to grow up for anymore." Thompson can dispatch such songs with a Dickensian detail rooted in traditional, somber British music that leaves one imagining that he spends his free moments brooding in the heath somewhere.

As an electric guitarist, Richard Thompson is a string-bender extraordinaire, never bending to convention with his definably weird, siren-like, jazz-baiting solos that insanely intensify and bite, sting and buzz around the key. On acoustic, though, he's something else altogether: a correct English gentleman, doing the most muss-less, careful, dead-on picking a craftsman could cultivate. He's the Jekyll and Hyde of guitar heroes.

Few things may be as frustrating for us rock critic types as trying to describe the music of Richard Thompson. Sure, we'll go on about his eclecticism--spanning ancient Celtic hornpipe tunes and electric avant-garde explorations--and how he is a peerless, literate writer of songs both ludic and fell, and a nothing-less-than-splendid guitarist, and the creator of two of Rolling Stone's "100 best albums of the Last 20 years," and...

"Hand of Kindness" had the misfortune of being Richard Thompson's follow-up to "Shoot Out the Lights," the album he recorded in 1982 with his then-wife and musical partner, Linda Thompson. An inspired work that mirrored in strikingly honest terms the couple's deteriorating marriage, "Shoot Out the Lights" ranks as one of rock's all time great albums.

You can think of Richard Thompson as a sort of quirky Clapton--a '60s survivor with a common-man voice, a supernatural touch on the guitar and scars on the soul, an inconsistent but ambitious artist who at his best forges spiritual and carnal concerns into music of rare resonance. This time around he seems a little restless, stirring up his formula of folk rock and exotica by encouraging producer Mitchell Froom to go slightly wild with the atmospherics.

Loudon Wainwright III and Richard Thompson wrapped up their five-week tour as a duo under the ironic title Loud & Rich at UCLA on Friday with a sterling display of songwriting acumen and musicianship -- but one that wasn't particularly loud or likely to make anybody rich. Not in the filthy lucre sense, anyway. These two folk-rock veterans appeared long ago to have achieved peace in the knowledge that their astute brand of music fills clubs and theaters, not arenas and stadiums.

Officials at the International Society of Bassists wanted new music featuring the instrument for its convention this week in Philadelphia, and one of the composers they turned to for a commission was British guitarist-singer-songwriter Richard Thompson. Rather than dashing off a quick melody and variation, Thompson delivered an hour-plus song cycle of sorts titled "Cabaret of Souls," the tale of a talent contest set in hell. "Originally it was going to be eight to 10 minutes long," he said Friday morning from Ohio after a solo performance there, "but it just got bigger and bigger and I just couldn't help it. I thought, 'I could abandon this and go back to the drawing board, or follow the muse and see where it takes me.' " The premiere of "Cabaret of Souls" was given Wednesday.

Renee Bodie, the driving force behind the Los Angeles Acoustic Music Festival, managed to snare an impressive roster of classic folk music artists for the inaugural event, taking place Saturday and Sunday on the Santa Monica Pier. Nanci Griffith, Richard Thompson, Bruce Cockburn, David Lindley, David Bromberg and Eliza Gilkyson are slated to perform this weekend at what Bodie hopes will become an annual celebration of music from the heart.

IN one, a poor woman from the west coast of Ireland flies, to the strains of a lonely Celtic melody, to Graceland to pay homage to Elvis Presley. In another, a British soldier wounded in World War II wanders London, recalling the days when he danced to the music of a long-dead big band singer. In yet another -- the beat is faster now -- a reckless young man who loves vintage English motorcycles and red-headed girls tangles with the law. The law wins.

Until recently, British folk singer-songwriter Linda Thompson's career seemed nearly as tragic as the dire songs from her heyday with folk-rock giant Richard Thompson, her ex-husband and former musical partner. Absent for 17 years due to an anxiety-based disorder that prevented her from singing (or, for a time, even speaking), she performed at the Troubadour on Saturday, her first local appearance in 20 years. The first L.A. stop on her U.S.

It was strange hearing someone perform Britney Spears' bubble gum hit "Oops . . . I Did It Again" in the setting of the stately, sophisticated Getty Center's Harold M. Williams Auditorium on Friday. More strange was that it was Richard Thompson, one of rock's most respected singer-songwriters. Most strange, though, was that his performance of the song, capping off a show billed as "One Thousand Years of Popular Music," in the end did not seem, well, strange.

Like just about every performer who comes out of a folk tradition, Richard Thompson knows the value of mixing it up on stage with varied shadings of light and dark, comic and tragic, silly and somber.

ANAHEIM 8pm Pop Music A guitar-heads' dream bill pairs veteran British singer-songwriter and fretboard whiz Richard Thompson with Southern California musical gnome David Lindley, who makes extraordinary music on anything with strings this side of a clothesline. Thompson's latest album, "Mock Tudor," is an ambitious trilogy exploring the peculiarities of modern life, while Lindley has released a sterling series of self-produced live albums through the '90s.