Music Arcades: Tom Robinson: Live at Abbey Road

Same story with this CD as with Having it Both Ways and the MIA Castaway Club Volume 7 (this is Volume 5, if you're keeping score).

The set-up here is pretty much the same as I saw at the two Castaway Parties I went to: just Tom and Adam Phillips. They pack a good punch for guys who aren't young and hungry any more. But then Tom's presence has that combination of passion and wisdom of someone who's been on the brink, looked over the edge and come back.

Take that verse of Blake that Van Morrison sang, about wisdom coming at the cost of "all a man hath… in the desolate market where none come to buy".

This special show for worldwide broadcast — and webcast, which was brave in 1998 — comes from towards the end of Tom's career as a musician. His later songs included a lot of very sharp social commentary, like Living in a Boom Time on this set, as well as a smart translation of Jacques Brel's Les Bourgeois, which comes out as Yuppy Scum (and, incidentally, leads me to realise that Philip Jeays drew from the same song for his Ed is at the Ritz, which I hadn't noticed before). Sadly, not many come to buy sharp social commentary, unless it comes in a fashionable (w)rapper. I'm only guessing, but this may have nudged Tom towards concentrating on his broadcasting career.