I'd like to think that Ray Davies did this on purpose -- sat down and thought, "What holiday doesn't yet have too many songs written about it?" And when he realized how few Thanksgiving songs there are, he decided to write one, hoping for that late November airplay.
I'm not much of a radio listener, so I don't know whether his stratagem worked. But I do know that this has become my go-to song for the Thursday before Black Friday.
But trust Ray Davies not to slack off, to keep at it until that song had some meat on its bones. And of course, as he homed in on the holiday, he just couldn't help himself: Instead of going all sentimental, which would have been the obvious easy choice, instead he made it about loners and misfits -- the universe Ray understands best -- struggling to find their home against all odds. The feast they find isn't Hallmark-perfect -- no Martha Stewart perfection, no Instagram fantasy -- but it's what they need.
If you want to know more, here's what I wrote about this song a few years ago.
But maybe it's enough just to listen. Having just come back from a four-day Kinks trip to London (of which more soon), for now I'm happy to let his songs simply melt into my consciousness.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Friday, November 02, 2018
Juliet, Naked
Okay, I finally saw it. (Pay per view alert!) I can't even explain why it took me so long, considering how absolutely this film dovetails with everything I'm about. But a few thoughts:
1. Nick Hornsby is my favorite living writer. I'm not claiming he's the greatest literary talent or anything like that, but everything this man writes makes utter and perfect sense to me. This blog owes its existence to his book Song Book; I've read everything he's published. And of all his novels, Juliet, Naked is quite possibly my favorite. (Notice how I hedge my bets, because, jeez, I love everything he's done.) Nick, if by any chance this blog post surfaces on your feed -- please do let me know. I promise I won't get weird.
2. Kinks world lives. Casually, walking through Waterloo Station, a snippet of dialogue -- a throwaway, really, if you didn't know better -- mentions that the station is a big deal if you're a Kinks fan (KAPOW). Later, Ethan Hawke performs "Waterloo Sunset" at a local gig, and it's almost unbearably beautiful.
3. Chris O'Dowd is so underated. So many of us have connected via fan websites; O'Dowd plays a superfan we can all identify with. I love how his passion for the music, versus his cluelessness in life, is so delicately delineated. His face registers all the nuances of a response to music that is heartfelt and yet, hell, totally beside the point. Except okay, but whoa . . .
4. And the songs? If you're gonna do a movie about an elusive rock talent, you gotta line up some quirky folks to write his songs. Monsters of Folk's Conor Oberst and M. Ward, Robyn Hitchcock, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy-- I've written about them all over the years. Click on their links in the column to the right. This film totally gets the music right, which buys it major cred.
5. Okay, now I get Ethan Hawke. He started out so young, and so beautiful (really, those cheekbones are so unfair), I never thought much of him. It wasn't until I saw Boyhood a couple years back that I realized he is actually an actor of a very high degree. Here he's playing a grizzled, washed-up musician who dropped out of the biz and disappeared 30 years ago, inadvertently gaining a cult following. He's a mess of a human being, and Hawke plays it to the core, never making excuses for him. All right, Ethan, now I officially forgive you for Great Expectations.
6. Gotta stand and face it -- life is so complicated. One of the things I most love about Nick Hornsby's novels is that there are no pat solutions -- lost loves lead to new opportunities, and we all pick up our sorrows and move on. I love how this film doesn't settle for a cheesy plot resolution, but still leaves us encouraged for the next chapter. Viva life!
Sunday, August 23, 2015
"Sitting in the Midday Sun" / The Kinks
Okay, MINOR Kinks track. Preservation Part 1 if you want to be precise. An album that was delivered to me at college, because I was the de facto college newspaper music reviewer in 1973 and that was the record album that they were desperately trying to sell.
And, oh, by the way, I had already been converted to an insane Kinks fan, so of COURSE I was going to review this album, and review it well.
But -- let me go on record with this -- in the 42 intervening years I have seen absolutely no reason to alter my critical assessment.
The Kinks' resident genius Ray Davies adopts in this album the wistful persona of The Tramp (a character who inexplicably fades from view in Preservation Part 2, an album which has its own glories.) I'll confess it here: I like Preservation Part 1 more than Preservation Part 2. And perhaps it's because the Everyman figure of the Tramp gets lost in PP2. We need that Everyman perspective to help us negotiate through the property struggles of Preservation Part 2, as the real estate developers (hello, reality check: WHO ELSE WOULD BASE A WHOLE ROCK OPERA ON REAL ESTATE NEGOTIATIONS?) scheme to destroy communities.
And after all, it's the Tramp who sings "Sitting in the Midday Sun." It's a brilliant antithesis to the Kinks's huge hit "Sunny Afternoon," where the singer is ostensibly scaling things back, but he's still
got the yacht, the stately home, et cetera. In "Sitting in the Midday Sun," he has totally let go, meditating upon the "currant bun" (Cockney rhyming slang for "sun"), giving up on all the rest.
There's an almost Beach Boys groove going on, "with no particular purpose or purpose / For sitting in the midday sun." There's the background singers, the twee organ, the whole sense of a track waiting for the resident genius to sign off.
And the resident genius is Ray Davies. Which, basically, tells you all you need to know.
On the occasion of the 70th birthday of Ray Davies, once and future frontman of the Kinks....
"See My Friends" / The Kinks
Not only do I love Ray Davies, I also love the many amazing friends I've made over the past decade of following Ray, on-line and in-person and in any other configuration you've got. (You know who you are, Kinksters.)
And so this one seems a particularly apt birthday tribute to The Man Who Makes It All Worthwhile.
It's fascinating, really, when you listen to this track, to realize that Dave Davies isn't playing the sitar; he's just faking it on a regular electric guitar. The shimmery-spangly weirdness of this raga is the same, and in true Kinks fashion, if they only did one psychedelic track it would be a real humdinger. The Kinks were always great musical chameleons, borrowing from music hall here, jazz there, blues here, country music there. Even if psychedelic raga wasn't their signature sound, when they turned their collective hand to it they were bound to nail it.
Not only nail it; nail it. What Ray somehow intuitively grasped was the power of the circular form of the raga, like a poetic villanelle. Sure, the modern Western verse/chorus-verse/chorus-bridge-verse/chorus form implies a progression of thought, but the Eastern form allows us to return over and over to the undeniable truth of loss. So what if we don't end up anywhere different?
Just try singing this song -- it's incredibly powerful. It's almost mandatory to throw your heart into the recurrent phrases and chord shifts. Everything always shifting and morphing -- how psychedelic is that?
Ray say he wrote this in Bombay, listening to fishermen's voices floating over the water. In 1965, everybody who was anybody was going to India in those days for spiritual enlightenment. But in true Ray Davies fashion, at the same time he was emotionally being pulled home to England; those mournful voices triggered him to brood over the death of his sister Rene, who died when he was 13. Rene was the sister who bought him his first guitar; this had to have hit him hard.
"She just went," Ray muses in the second verse; "She just went / Went across the river." Crossing the river, a classic image of death. Though Ray darkly follows that up with "Now she's gone / Wish that I'd gone with her" -- whoa, nothing like a little suicidal note to skew a song. But hey, it's the 60s, we were all into that then.
Ray's no fool; the lyrics are ambiguous enough to let listeners apply it to a romantic break-up ("she is gone / She is gone and now there's now one left / But my friends"), but the emotional reality of this song for me is that of a mourner. That melismatic melody line, keening from one note to another nearby note -- isn't that the wail of grief?
Maybe I hear that especially hard because I'm still mourning my brother, who died in March. But Ray, too, recently lost another sister, Joyce, as a result of which he couldn't make it to his June 12th induction into the US Songwriters Hall of Fame. We're on the same page, Ray. I'd like to think that this song comforts you now as it did then.
Apparently this is a thing now on Facebook -- Throwback Thursday. Everybody's doing it. But I'm not like everybody else, so I'll call mine Reverb Thursday...and try to remember every week to post an updated version of an earlier blog post about a song I love. So why not start with a Kinky favorite? "Holiday Romance" / The Kinks Might as well give in to it.
The thing is, when I regress into non-stop Kinks listening, it's not the hits like "You Really Got Me" and "Waterloo Sunset" -- I'm talking oddities like "Holiday Romance." This is Ray Davies at his music hall best, with corny strings and tap dance rhythms and campy voices and all. It's a novelty song from their Soap Opera album, right smack in the middle of Ray's theatrical period. Even on Soap Opera, a high-concept story about an ordinary man who is transformed into a star (or is the other way around?), "Holiday Romance" is a strange interlude.
It's one of Ray's many escapist fantasies -- a tale of a flirtation at a dowdy seaside resort, with its own weird sort of Edwardian naughty-postcards charm. It's all about trying on other lives, a tried-and-true Ray Davies theme. He lapses fondly into clever Noel Coward-esque patter, with a histrionic upbeat: "I -- had -- a -- brrreak for a week / So I booked my seat / And confirmed my reservation." You can almost imagine his arched eyebrows as he sets the scene "at a quiet little seaside / ho-tel." The indelible way he sings that "ho-tel" -- well, I tell you, that's how we tell a true Kinks fan, if he or she sings that line just so. No other intonation will do.
Our hero arrives at the resort "just in time for the dinner gong / Ding-dong!" If this were a movie, it'd be in black-and-white, but stylishly lit; the staginess of it all almost fits better into a silent movie, or one of those herky-jerky little films you'd watch on a scope at an old-timey amusement arcade.
The shot zooms in on his love interest: "Then I saw Lavinia / Standing at the bottom of the stairs / And I fell for Lavinia / The moment that I saw her standing there." Echo of the early Beatles song? Maybe, but even closer is this song's affinity with Magical Mystery Tour's deliberately nostalgic "Your Mother Should Know." ("Let's all get up and dance to a song / That was a hit before your mother was born..."). The difference is that Ray doesn't bother with the ironic parentheses -- he just projects himself right into that other era and goes for it.
There's something deliciously fey about the mincing way Ray sings, "Lavinia looked so divine / As she walked up to the table to dine / And then Lavinia's eyes met /Mine!" Ah, that falsetto trill at the end is just priceless; Tiny Tim couldn't have done better. With all due histrionics, he wonders, with a suitable flutter in his voice, "Can this be love / Can this be lovey-dove / Or just a holiday romance?" He jumps up to another register to reiterate, "Can this be long-lost love at last / Or is it just a flash in the pan?"
His excitement is so endearingly innocent, an innocence he carries on as they dance ("after cheese and liqueurs) to the hotel band ("We did the foxtrot, samba, and danced through the night"). In later verses, they stroll on the beach and drink lemonade, and he says to himself, with a frisson of delight, "I thought, 'I must be on a winner'." That's probably my favorite line, followed closely by "And my holiday treat was / Com-plete." How he manages to make all this sound so lascivious and yet so quaint is beyond genius.
It's a hazy out-of-time idyll, even for our hero, who knows perfectly well that this will only last for the week. He ties it all up with a lovely comic bow at the end, when, in a Monty-Pythonish female warble, Lavinia pushes him away and trills, "Better stop, / My husband's coming to collect me today." Breaking his rhyme scheme, his syncopation, completely puncturing his balloon, she appears in her own skin for the first time, and Ray lets the mask slip just enough for us to wonder if she's actually a silly cow. But who cares? It's such a tidy ending! With a cascading embroidery of strings, he pans away, waving a handkerchief in farewell. Nothing will ever spoil the perfection of this little romance. No ties, no regrets -- ah, that's what we all need, isn't it?
Okay, it's not the first song I'd play to try to convert somebody to being a Kinks fan. But this is the sort of stuff that made a Kinks fan of me, for better or worse. What a hopeless case I am.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Random Dial-Up
A new feature wherein I write about the first song that comes up on my shuffle -- sort of a musical Russian Roulette. So here goes...and the wheel lands on...
"Quiet Life" / Ray Davies
From the Julian Temple film Absolute Beginners, a musical adaptation of Colin McInnes' novel (itself well worth reading) about 1950s London and the birth of British rock 'n' roll -- if you haven't seen it, check it out; it's one of my guilty pleasures. The story rambles, but it's visually stunning, and it's appropriately packed with musical guest stars: David Bowie, Sade, Sandie Shaw, Zoot Money, Tenpole Tudor, and -- my primary reason for seeing the film in the first place -- the ever delicious Mr. Ray Davies. Here's a clip of Ray's scene in the movie (hang in there, there's a minute or so of dialog before you get to the song itself).
Unfortunately this is only part of the movie in which Ray appears, but it's beyond wonderful. Playing the much-put-upon father of the main character, young photographer Colin, Ray doesn't exactly look glamorous in his undershirt and braces, his hair slicked back and grayed at the temples. But Ray's bit is totally entertaining, and his dancing is simply to die for.
Anybody who was ever in doubt about Ray Davies' fondness for English music hall tunes only has to listen to "Quiet Life." Underlaid with Dixieland horns and jazzy percussion, it's a classic softshoe, tripping lightly along. Yet while the sound of the song is like Noel Coward champagne, the storyline is more Ealing comedy slapstick, with a Monty Python nudge-nudge wink-wink thrown in for good measure.
"Something's happening, but I'm just gonna turn a blind eye," Ray begins the patter, in his breathy, earnest innocent-bystander voice. "If I see no evil, I ask no questions and I hear no lies" -- his whole existence is a masterwork of self-protective denial. In low, confiding tones, Ray keeps suavely declaring that he's not such a fool as everyone thinks -- "Confidentially between these walls / I'm on top of it all." And indeed, he does see all the salacious shenanigans in his household -- it's like a saucy seaside postcard come to life. But he shows no intention of doing a bloody thing about it, so what's the point of knowing?
Listen to how Ray's voice trembles and squawks on the high-pitched refrain -- "All I need is a QUIET life!", like a blowsy trombone wail. Keeping his head in the sand takes every ounce of energy this hapless bloke has. It's a lovely little comic portrait, and Ray hits every mark. Oh, the rest of the soundtrack has some other gems -- I particularly love Bowie's rendition of the theme song, Style Council's "Have You Ever Had It Blue?", and Sade's "Killer Blow." But in the end, there's one reason I go back to this film again and again. Ray.
Monday, May 13, 2013
"Sunny Afternoon" / The Kinks
By chance it IS a sunny day today, although a little chilly for May. Still, that's not why this song popped into my head and will not be budged.
It began a few days when, someone asked me to list my top ten favorite Kinks songs. I realized that "Sunny Afternoon" is perhaps their only genuinely big hit (#2 in the UK, #14 in the US) that still makes the list for me, no matter how much it's overplayed. Then today, posting This Day In Kinks History on the Kinks fan forum, I discovered that today is the anniversary of the day, 47 years ago, when the Kinks went into Pye Records Studio #2 to record this song.
Or rather, re-record it -- in 1966 Ray Davies was just beginning to become the studio perfectionist who would later hold up their classic album The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society for months, eventually releasing it by chance on the same day as the Beatles' White Album. Ah, the history of the Kinks is full of such disastrous decisions.
But in the case of "Sunny Afternoon," Ray knew what he was doing. He brought in session keyboard whiz Nicky Hopkins to add some plinky good-time sounds, played on a Hohner Melodica. Those iconic pub-sing-along backing vocals were dubbed in by Ray, Dave, and Ray's wife Rasa. "'Sunny Afternoon' was made very quickly, in the morning," Ray recalled in a Rolling Stone interview. "It was one of our most atmospheric sessions. . . . Pete [Quaife] went off and started playing funny little classical things on the bass, more like a lead guitar, and Nicky Hopkins was playing 'Liza'. . . .Little things like that helped us get in the feeling of the song."
At the time, Ray recalled, he was listening almost obsessively to two other artists -- Frank Sinatra and Bob Dylan (now there's an odd couple for you). I can hear Sinatra's impact in the campy croon Ray puts on; Dylan probably accounts for the sly satire on Britain's Wilson-era tax policies. (George Harrison's "Taxman" was written the same year.) But as always, the whole is so much more than the sum of all these parts. And the minute that great bass line begins -- two notes plopped wearily on each step of a descending minor scale -- I'm hooked.
Just watch the Kinks cavorting in the snow. But, wait -- I thought this was supposed to be a sunny afternoon? Well, the song was a summer hit, but the Kinks didn't make this video until the following February, for a Belgian TV show. The contrast just underlines the delightful irony of this song.
"The tax man's taken all my dough / And left me in my stately home..." Beneath the satire, of course, Ray Davies was as always working out his personal issues. In 1966, Ray was up to his eyeballs in lawsuits to recover withheld royalties from music publishers and former managers; no wonder he felt a stab of sympathy for the property-rich, cash-poor singer of "Sunny Afternoon." And if that felt like a betrayal of his working-class roots, even more need to work out his anxieties in satire.
No wonder Ray had suffered a nervous breakdown only two months earlier, which explains the wail of "Save me save me save me from this squeeee--eeze" in the bridge. Nothing like turning your own existential despair into comedy. And in the second bridge, he changes it to "Help me help me help me sail awaa-aay" -- the trademark Kinksian longing for escape. When conflicts and pressures pile up, introvert geniuses like Ray Davies often long just to run away.
I suspect there's another autobiographical hint in verse two: "My girlfriend's run off with my car / And gone back to her ma and pa / Telling tales of drunkenness and cruelty"? It would be seven more years before Rasa Davies would finally move out, taking their two daughters, but there's already probably a sting of truth to this detail. I picture Rasa in the studio, listening to Ray deliver those lines with a mocking flutter in his voice, and wince on her behalf.
So here we've got a song about lazing on a sunny afternoon, living a life of luxury -- it should be a mellow blissed-out song. Instead, it's built on a minor-key bass riff, with jerky rhythms and ping-ponging melodic intervals. This guy is at the end of his rope, moaning and miserable. In a way, this is the comic bookend of "Shangri-La" -- now that he's found his paradise, his reward for working so hard, why the hell is he unhappier than ever?
And then here's the genius part. Ray Davies managed to pack all of that psychological complexity in this song -- and STILL made it one of the most delicious singalongs ever. The tongue-in-cheek humor, the bouncy arrangement, and the cheery harmonies turn it all into tailor-made for hoisting a pint. The Kinks may be dancing in the snow, the tax exile weeping in his beer, but all I want to do is croon along with a grin on my face. Give Ray Davies life's lemons, and he'll turn them into the most delicious lemonade ever.
Monday, August 13, 2012
Waterloo Sunset / The Kinks
I don't know how long this YouTube link will remain viable, but since the American network NBC -- which paid a truckload of money for the exclusive right to broadcast the Olympics Game -- saw fit to cut Ray Davies' performance of this quintessential London anthem from their broadcast of the Closing Ceremonies, I felt it was my civic duty to post it here. (Ray's bit starts at about 1:30 in the clip.) Enjoy!
I won't rant on here about how stupid it was to edit out Ray (considering that such luminaries as George Michael, Annie Lennox, and Fatboy Slim were given plenty of airtime!). But here's a rerun of a previous post I wrote about "Waterloo Sunset":
Although Ray Davies claims this song was written as an elegy to the end of a
musical era -- at one time, he says, he considered calling it "Liverpool Sunset"
-- by the time he got done it was something else entirely. Even as he was
writing it, he suspected it might be his masterpiece (although for a long time
he kept the lyrics a secret from the other Kinks, fearing they would think he
was daft). After the Kinks' producer, Shel Talmy, had finished mixing the song,
Ray stole back into the studio with the other Kinks and recorded it all over
again, until it was just the way he wanted it. I love those majestic marching
bass thrums of the opening, the twangy counterpointing guitar riff, the ethereal
oohs in the background (Ray's wife Rasa singing an octave above Dave), the
"sha-la-la's" in the bridge and the overlapping repeats of "Waterloo Sunset's
fine." It's a damn near perfect recording.
Even the melody sounds like a
sunset, with sets of gently descending D-A-G chords, each short phrase making an
arc until the final phrase dips below the horizon. Each verse begins with a
widescreen panorama -- the "dirty old river" flowing under the bridge, the
lovers Terry and Julie meeting by the platform, crowds swarming "like flies"
into the tube entrance. Then, in verses one and two, after the panorama Ray
telescopes his view, bringing himself into the picture -- saying the busy crowds
make him feel dizzy, and he's too lazy to leave home and meet friends. It's not
just about London, it's really about his aching heart. The end of verse one
shifts into minor chords as Ray plaintively muses, "But I don't need no friends"
and protests "But I don't feel afraid." And yet, in his isolation, he still is
nourished by the world outside his window, as he return to the D-A-G chords for
that grand final line: "As long as I gaze on Waterloo sunset / I am in
paradise."
The tension between the lonely observer and the teeming
metropolis is the bittersweet heart of this song. He never gets out of that
room, as he admits in the bridge (all those wistful 7th chords): "Every day I
look at the world from my window," a memory drawn from Ray's childhood, when he
was confined by a long illness in St. Thomas hospital near Waterloo. His
perspective is tinged with a fear of death -- "Chilly, chilly is the evening
time" -- but at the moment, nature
uplifts him, and "Waterloo sunset's fine." Not since John Keats wrote his ode
"To Autumn" has anyone quite so poignantly etched the intersection between life
and death.
It's almost as if writing the song itself conquers death. By
verse three, notice, he has shifted the story completely away from himself and
over to Terry and Julie -- they're the ones who "don't need no friends" now. And
unlike loner Ray, they don't need friends because they have each other. They're
in love, and we get our happy ending. Or do we? The shadows haven't entirely
been chased away -- as Terry and Julie "cross over the river," I recall old
myths in which crossing a river means death (which gives the line "they are in
paradise" an extra twist). Love and loss are intertwined, tragedy and comedy are
two sides of the same mask.
"Waterloo Sunset" is like a great landscape
painting, worthy of Turner or Monet; it's also a cinematic piece, with its
wide-angle shots, dissolves, close-ups, and long tracking shot. It's a lyric
poem, and it's also an epic novel. To do all this with one pop song, in the
space of three minutes and seventeen seconds -- and to do it with a simple
four-piece band (no added strings or horn sections, thank you) -- well, it's a
wondrous achievement. If Ray Davies had done nothing else in his life, he'd be
worthy of undying respect.
Friday, June 29, 2012
The Friday Shuffle
Big summer weekend coming up -- so here's a little music to get you started....
1. Black Lincoln Continental / Nick Lowe
From the sadly out-of-printPinker and Prouder Than Previous (1988)
"There's only one way to the American dream . . ." Nick throws some rockabilly swing into this Graham Parker-penned gem -- whoohoo! I'm not sure who was backing him on this track, but I bet anything those organ riffs are Paul Carrack, doubled by Kim Wilson on harmonica, and Martin Belmont (who'd played with Graham himself in the Rumour) on guitar. YepRoc/Demon, please reissue this album!!!
2. Picture Book / Ray Davies & the Crouch End Choir
From The Kinks Choral Collection (2009)
I know some Kinks fans thought this album turned old Kinks material into Easy Listening Schmaltz, but I disagree. I think most of it worked beautifully, especially the stuff from the Village Green Preservation Society album. Give the link a listen and see what you think...
3. Blue as Blues Can Get / Chris Farlowe
From As Time Goes By (1995)
Overshadowed by Van Morrison and Eric Burdon, British white soul singer Chris Farlowe never got much exposure Stateside, which is a shame. He shows off his mellower side on this great Delbert McClinton cover -- tasty!
4. Leaving the City Behind / Georgie Fame
From Georgie Fame (date unknown -- I bought the vinyl LP in 1974...)
Couldn't find a sample for you to listen to -- so I made a video. Because you need this song to play as you drive out of the city for your July 4th celebration. Dig the back-up singers, and those coolcat brushed drums. Pop shading into jazz (portents of Georgie's future direction), and what a light touch Georgie had on the keyboards!
5. Don't Stand Too Close To Me / The Police
From Zenyatta Mondatta (1980)
No trouble finding this monster MTV hit from the dawn of the 80s. Who could resist that predatory bassline, or the reckless smash of Stewart Copeland's drums. Sting, the former school teacher, writing about a schoolgirl stalking him -- or is it the other way around? "It's no use, he sees her / he starts to shake and cough / just like the old man in / that book by Nabokov" -- hee hee hee!
6. Sour Milk-Cow Blues / Elvis Costello
From Goodbye Cruel World (1984)
EC's slyly "updating" the old Sleepy John Estes blues song, covered by the Kinks in 1965, with Dave Davies on lead vocals, on The Kink Kontroversy (you can't tell me that Elvis wasn't thinking of that track). But Elvis's song is much meaner (whoa, big surprise) raking some girlfriend over the coals for who knows what imagined grievance. Gee, it was hard to love Elvis for awhile there.
7. Lost in a Dream / Shivaree
From Who's Got Trouble (2005)
Ah, the shivering vocals of Ambrosia Parsley (can that really be her name?) Deliciously woozy and spooky little track. Too bad this band broke up -- they had a great distinctive sound...
8. Take Off Your Uniform / John Hiatt
From Slug Line (1979)
I always imagine a diner waitress in a pink uniform, a la Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. JH is still in his Costello wannabe phase in this song, and he's probably satirizing something else -- women in the military? -- but I dig the image of him romancing that diner waitress when she gets home, and I'm sticking to it.
9. The Reason Why / Ron Sexsmith
From Long Player Late Bloomer (2011)
Philosophical Ron, still searching for the meaning of life. Or what if there is no meaning, he wonders in this song, "as I glance up to indifferent skies" (an obvious "Big sky" reference -- I know Ron is a huge Kinks fan). So why not just "let the path go hungry / And head at last to country / Or a small town away from here"? Another getaway tune for your weekend!
RAY DAVIES IS IN THE HOUSE! I'LL BE OTHERWISE ENGAGED THIS WEEK -- BUT JUST TO KEEP THE KINKS CHANNEL ON THE AIR, HERE'S A 2007 POST ABOUT MY FAVORITE BRITISH INVASION BAND. *
*WHAT AM I SAYING? MY FAVORITE BAND OF ALL TIME!!!
Autumn Almanac & Shangri-la / The Kinks
Long before Ben Folds and Fountains of Wayne started writing their odes to suburban life, there was Ray Davies, peering out the windows of his East Finchley villa to chronicle the lives of his neighbors.
Take the narrator of his 1967 single “Autumn Almanac.”
It opens with such nostalgic pastoral charm: “From the dew-soaked hedge creeps a crawly caterpillar / When the dawn begins to crack / It’s all part of my autumn almanac / Breeze blows leaves of a musty-colored yellow / So I sweep them in my sack.” You can’t tell me that’s not lovely, despite the twinges in our hero’s rheumatic back. I’m warmed by the comforting image of his friends gathering for “tea and toasted buttered currant buns.” The sound is a music hall softshoe, with corny horns, plinky piano, and sugary backing ooh’s; good times, good times.
But once Ray has hooked us, he begins to layer on mundane details that spell out the guy’s complacency: “I like my football on a Saturday, / Roast beef on Sundays, all right. / I go to Blackpool for my holidays, / Sit in the open sunlight” (sung in a plumping rhythm in a wavery old-timey Victorola voice -- this is where the satire starts to really dig in). In the last verse -- if you can call them verses; the melody never repeats itself, just rambles in a senile wool-gathering way -- Ray lets his narrator hang himself: “This is my street / And I’m never gonna leave it,” he stoutly declares, “And I’m always gonna stay here / If I live to be 99 / ‘Cos all the people I meet / Seem to come from my street”). Well, yeah, if you never go anywhere else, that’s who you’re bound to meet, innit?
Just two years later, Ray Davies revisits this territory with “Shangri-La,” a single off their LP Arthur (the soundtrack for a never-completed teleplay that would have been the first rock opera – but that’s another story).
Ray isn’t playing a character this time, he’s addressing a man who’s finally “made it” to that detached villa. All the flip satire is gone; Ray sings with earnest poignance, “Now that you’ve found your paradise / This is your kingdom to command / You can go outside and polish your car / Or sit by the fire in your Shangri-la.” The rueful melody drifts down the scale, ending every line on a gruff low note. Even before Ray tells you about the hollowness of this dream fulfilled, the melody’s made you feel it.
Yes, “Gone are the lavatories in the back yard” (a vivid and totally English detail, baffling to us Americans) – but Ray counters that with the reminder that “You've reached your top and you just can't get any higher.” How depressing is that? Then the satire turns even more biting: “The little man who gets the train / Got a mortgage hanging over his head / But he's too scared to complain.” I don’t know, I think Ray sounds terrified by this prospect -- terrified because he’s tempted by it too. And here’s the capping image: “And all the houses in the street have got a name / 'Cos all the houses in the street they look the same.” That English penchant for cutesy house names – “Rose Cottage” or “Storm’s End” – we don’t do that in America, but we’re just as guilty of building cookie-cutter housing developments. Little boxes on a hillside – there’s a nightmare for you.
Ray actually seems fond of his “Autumn Almanac” geezer and his cozy neighbours, but the guy in “Shangri-la”? He’s a gloomy wreck, surrounded by vicious gossips and weighed down by debt payments. Comedy and tragedy – just two sides of the same coin, courtesy of Mr. Ray Davies.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
The Christmas Shuffle
Not Wednesday, sorry! Lately it seems I'm either a day behind or a day ahead of myself at every turn. Perhaps it's best that I waited until today for this, though -- so you can hold this seasonal collection of tunes in your head all the way through Christmas day.
1. Postcard From London / Ray Davies with Chrissie Hynde
From The Kinks Choral Collection (2009)
Don't worry -- Ray and Chrissie were never in the same room when they recorded this "duet." Nevertheless, it was a brilliant move to have his ex add her vocals to this poignant number. Ray scores an emotional trifecta, wrapping three of his favorite themes -- Christmas, London, and long-lost love -- in one song.
2. I Told Santa Claus / Fats Domino
From Christmas Is A Special Day (1993)
Mmm, this laidback boogie-woogie is one of my favorite Christmas classics. Fats has one request for the Man In Red -- he wants his baby to marry him. Yessiree -- "We'll have a boy for you / And a ten-pound girl for me," he croons happily. Was life ever this simple? Listening to Fats, you believe it could be.
3. "We Call It Christmas" / Keb' Mo'
From Christmas Calling (2003 various artists compilation)
I love it when Keb' gets his social conscience going, putting the blues on a back burner and reaching into his gospel/protest folk bag. Just listen to him testify about the power of the holiday season -- "It's bringing out the very best in all of us." Amen, brother!
4. "Merry Christmas Baby" / The Beach Boys
From Christmas With the Beach Boys(1991 re-issue)
Man, did the Wilson brothers love holiday numbers -- maybe it's that seasonal Southern California yearning for snowy climes. I've got their whole Christmas album in my iTunes, and I can never get enough of it. Here Mike Love pleading with his ex to make up in time for Christmas -- like "Help Me Rhonda" with a wreath and spray-on snow.
5. "Merry Christmas, Baby" / Charles Brown and Bonnie Raitt
From A Very Special Christmas (2003 various artists compilation)
An entirely different song, Charles Brown's stellar contribution to the contemporary Christmas catalog. Could this song be any sexier? Here's my original post...
6. "Christmas for Cowboys" / Jars of Clay
From Maybe This Christmas Tree (2003 various artists compilation)
A John Denver song, I think, but I love the way Jars of Clay earnestly lope their way through it. These guys pretty much own the Christian alt-country niche as far as I'm concerned, and they never let it go corny.
7. "Valley Winter Song" / Fountains of Wayne
From Welcome Interstate Managers (2005)
Wouldn't you know that FoW -- our great troubadors of suburban pop culture -- would have a Christmas song or two up their sleeves.? Okay, technically not a Christmas song (for that, you'd have to go to their "I Want An Alien For Christmas", from Out-Of-State Plates), but this sweet little song shimmers like a fresh snowfall.
8. "Get Behind Me, Santa" / Sufjan Stevens
From Songs For Christmas (2005)
No surprise that the defiantly unconventional Sufjan would release a five-disc Christmas album, mostly featuring sincere arrangements of traditional carols. But then there's this insanely fun original tune, subject of my very first Christmas song blog.
9. "Sock It To Me Santa" / Marshall Crenshaw
From A Home for the Holidays(1997 various artists compilation)
Add Marshall to that list of artists who really love Christmas novelty tunes -- I've got several MC numbers on my playlist, courtesy of a bootleg disc of Crenshaw rarities. Here he has some rockabilly fun with a Bob Seger tune, featuring the inimitable James Brown reference,"Christmas ain't gonna be a drag / Santa's got a brand new bag!" Take my word for it, Marshall's version knocks Seger's down cold.
10. "Zat You, Santa Claus?" / Buster Poindexter and His Banshees of Blues
From How Cool is Christmas (2006 various artists compilation)
Gotta love Buster's infectiously fun take on the old Louis Armstrong classic. Buster (aka David Johansen, aka Sri Rama Lama Ding Dong) has no shame about being theatrical, which is exactly what this jump-jive number craves. Merry Christmas, Buster!
Monday, December 06, 2010
"Days / This Time Tomorrow" Ray Davies and Mumford and Sons
Just a little taster from Ray Davies' new duets album,See My Friends. It's not out in the States yet (sorry to tantalize you all), but impatient fangirl that I am, I managed to order a copy from amazon.fr and have been listening to it all day.
Now, normally I am constitutionally opposed to duets albums. To my mind, they are even lower on the opportunism scale than best-of compilations -- most often a cynical late-career grab for new market share, wherein a veteran musician lines up "collaborations" with younger artists in order to jump-start awareness of his old hits. I had thought Ray Davies was above such shenanigans, but apparently not. (Although Ray's notion of "younger artists" seems to include Bruce Springsteen, Lucinda Williams, and Bon Jovi -- go figure.)
Translation: this album was not made for the hardcore fans like myself, who presumably already possess seven or eight versions of songs like "You Really Got Me" (performed this time with, I regret to say, Metallica) or "Waterloo Sunset" (performed with -- wait for it -- Jackson Browne, of all people). Well, actually, I really like the duet with Jackson Browne, but you get my point. We the Kinks faithful do not need this adulterated product. Which makes it even more galling that it is selling like hotcakes over in Europe, giving Ray Davies the chart success that by all rights should have been won by his recent solo albums, Other People's Lives and Working Man's Cafe. Don't you just hate it when the marketing people are right?
But Ray being Ray, this shameless hustle -- like his equally shameless recycle of old Kinks hits, The Kinks Choral Collection -- turns out to have several very lovely tracks. And even the kalloused souls of Kinkdom generally confess that this track, where Ray collaborates with the hot young UK indie band Mumford and Sons, is a wonderful thing indeed.
Now, if you're going to perform a cover of a classic rock song -- and especially if you are going to perform that cover with the living legend who actually wrote it -- I believe you need to bring something fresh to the table. On that score, this track succeeds brilliantly.
First and foremost, they don't just do one song, they do a medley, yoking together two songs: the 1968 single "Days" with the 1970 album track "This Time Tomorrow" (from Part One: Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround). Iconic songs, both of them -- you've got to admire the Mumfords' nerve -- and it was a stroke of genius to combine them.
"Days" is surely Ray's most wistful break-up song ever, a gentle valediction for an ex-girlfriend, while "This Time Tomorrow" is part lonely meditation on the road, part philosophical musing on the mutability of human relationships. In both songs, however, Ray Davies is playing with memory. "Days" tenderly recalls the happy moments of this ended love affair, but then it also projects into the future, reflecting on how those happy memories will sustain him in the days to come. (Typical Ray Davies write-off.) "This Time Tomorrow" time travels more consciously -- "This time tomorrow / Where will we be" -- but as it depicts the jet travel of the touring musician as a sci-fi scenario of space flight, it deftly projects that "tomorrow" eons into the future. Which is probably how the lonely, disconnected touring musician feels, right? In its own way, it's just as poignant and wistful as "Days."
The contrast in tempo between the two songs -- "Days" gentle and folky, "This Time Tomorrow" a banjo-fueled hoedown -- works better than I could ever have imagined (it's also perfect for the Mumfords, who feature virtuoso banjo stylings on all their own tracks). The song choices also allow the Mumfords to show off their gorgeous vocal harmonies -- for once, I don't miss Dave Davies' harmonies.
I love the Kinks' versions of both these songs, but this is one case where I don't at all mind Ray recycling his classics. It proves one thing for sure -- your duets album can only be as good as the artists you invite to duet with you. I suspect that the marketing people wanted Ray to line up artists like Bruce and Bon Jovi who could deliver their own audiences. Of course, that does make marketing sense. But screw marketing sense: I'd rather have the enthusiasm and energy that the Mumfords bring to this track. Watch Ray performing with them -- doesn't he seem invigorated, too? God bless his little heart.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
"Quiet Life" / Ray Davies
I'm shocked to realize that I left one essential film out of our recent discussion of movie soundtracks: the Julian Temple film Absolute Beginners, a musical adaptation of Colin McInnes' novel (itself well worth reading) about 1950s London and the birth of British rock 'n' roll. If you haven't seen it, check it out -- it's one of my special little guilty pleasures. The story rambles more than a bit, but it's visually stunning, and it's appropriately packed with musical guest stars: David Bowie, Sade, Sandie Shaw, Zoot Money, Tenpole Tudor, and -- my primary reason for seeing the film in the first place -- the ever delicious Mr. Ray Davies.
I was reminded of this because, in my role as house historian for the Kinks Fan Club forum, I just posted that the Absolute Beginners soundtrack album was released 24 years ago today. Here's a clip of Ray's scene in the movie (hang in there, there's a minute or so of dialog before you get to the song itself).
Unfortunately this is only part of the movie in which Ray appears, but it's beyond wonderful. Playing the much-put-upon father of the main character, young photographer Colin, Ray doesn't exactly look glamorous in his undershirt and braces, his hair slicked back and grayed at the temples. (In contrast, Bowie is glam-tastic in his big scene). But Ray's bit is much more entertaining, and his dancing is simply to die for.
Anybody who was ever in doubt about Ray Davies' fondness for English music hall tunes only has to listen to "Quiet Life." Underlaid with Dixieland horns and jazzy percussion, it's a classic softshoe, tripping lightly along. Yet while the sound of the song is like Noel Coward champagne, the storyline is more Ealing comedy slapstick, with a Monty Python nudge-nudge wink-wink thrown in for good measure.
"Something's happening, but I'm just gonna turn a blind eye," Ray begins the patter, in his breathy, earnest innocent-bystander voice. "If I see no evil, I ask no questions and I hear no lies" -- his whole existence is a masterwork of self-protective denial. In low, confiding tones, Ray keeps suavely declaring that he's not such a fool as everyone thinks -- "Confidentially between these walls / I'm on top of it all." And indeed, he does see all the salacious shenanigans in his household -- it's like a saucy seaside postcard come to life. But he shows no intention of doing a bloody thing about it, so what's the point of knowing?
Listen to how Ray's voice trembles and squawks on the high-pitched refrain -- "All I need is a QUIET life!", like a blowsy trombone wail. Keeping his head in the sand takes every ounce of energy this hapless bloke has. It's a lovely little comic portrait, and Ray hits every mark. Oh, the rest of the soundtrack has some other gems -- I particularly love Bowie's rendition of the theme song, Style Council's "Have You Ever Had It Blue?", and Sade's "Killer Blow." But in the end, there's one reason I go back to this film again and again. Ray.
Monday, March 16, 2009
"London Song" / Ray Davies
I'm leaving tomorrow evening for a week in London, so I may not be posting for a while. Oh, my hotel over there purportedly has Wi-Fi and all, but I doubt I'm going to want to waste my time in the Big Black Smoke blogging. I may even miss my usual Nick Lowe Birthday post -- and on his 60th birthday, yet! -- but rest assured I'll be celebrating in my own way.
So before I go, I wanted to share this with you. It's definitely one of my favorite odes to London, written by that quintessential Londoner Ray Davies. Part travelogue, part potted history, it's little more than a stream of London placenames, from Chiswick Bridge to East Ham (mostly outlying places that only resident Londoners know), as well as names of famous Londoners, both real (William Blake, Charles Dickens) and fictional (Dick Whittington, Sherlock Holmes). But don't expect some perky tourism promotion -- done as a sort of spoken word set to a jazzy staggered syncopation, it's in a brooding minor key, totally befitting a city Ray describes as "a dark place, a mysterious place" (back-up singers add "it's a cruel place, it's a hard place").
Ray begins with an almost cinematic panning shot: "There's a room in a house in a street in a manor in a borough / That's part of a city that is generally referred to as London." He employs the same device twice more, tracing the course of the river ("there's a tap by a reservoir, leading to a stream, that turns into a river estuary that eventually opens to the sea") and again celebrating its mercantile power ("there's a docker by a wharf, sending cargo overseas, unloading foreign trade from a large ocean vessel /In the mighty metropolitan port of London"). But this is no Brittania Rules the Waves vision -- the spooky way he enunciates "London" loads the city up with typical Daviesian ambivalence. Or, as he says towards the end of the song, "There's a part of me that says 'Get out' / Then one day I'll hear somebody shout / 'Sounds to me like you come from London Town'."
My favorite parts of this song happen to be the two details that Ray repeats. I love how he winds up his roll call of celebrated Londoners by adding, with an ominous echo effect, "And don't forget the Kray twins," referring to a pair of 1950s-era gangster siblings who terrorized the city in their day. I've been creeped out by these guys ever I saw the 1989 film The Krays starring the Kemp brothers of Spandau Ballet. (You may know the Krays better as the inspiration for Monty Python's Doug and Dinsdale, the Piranha Brothers.) The British Tourist Authority does not push the Kray Twins in their brochures, needless to say -- but to me, the Kray Twins are an essential part of why I'm drawn to this teeming metropolis.
And then Ray elevates the whole song with this sweeping panorama, pushing to his highest range, singing an unsettling series of jumpy intervals: "But if you're ever up on Highgate Hill on a clear day / You can see right down to Leicester Square." The second time he sings it, he adds, with a mysterious little trill, "I'll be there." Love it or hate it, he can't leave the place; it exerts its restless fascination upon him still, and always will. Well, me too, and you can bet I'll be up on Highgate Hill to get that same view sometime in the next week.
I love this London Song video, because whoever made it went to all the places Ray mentions, dredged up images of all his famous Londoners, and put it all together on screen. The version behind the video is a live acoustic version from Ray's Storyteller show; the Storyteller album is where you can pick up this London Song sample. If you want a more rocking version, of course, here's a clip of Ray performing the song on Conan O'Brien's show.
As one of my favorite Londoners would say, "It's all good."
Saturday, January 03, 2009
"Why Not Me" / Locksley
The opening act for Ray Davies on his most recent tour was this effervescent young indie band out of Madison, Wisconsin, by way of Brooklyn. I for one was pleasantly surprised by Locksley's infectious music. With their bright, bouncy backbeat sound, these guys make no secret of their debt to British beat bands like the Beatles and the Kinks. In classic Britpop style, it's a four-man group -- two guitarists (Jesse and Kai), a drummer (Sam), and a bassist (Jordan, who's also Jesse's brother -- how's that for following the Kinks' example?). Bottom line: I loved 'em, and after the show I made sure to buy their self-released CD Don't Make Me Wait (available at a bargain price on their website if you should be so inclined).
Crowded into the Hammerstein Ballroom, there was a flock of teenage fangirls behind us who clearly weren't there for Ray. In no time we were slipstreaming on their Locksley infatuation. (Locksley's front man Jesse, in his stovepipe trousers and Spanish boots and shaggy haircut, is pretty damn adorable.) The sound was unfortunately muddy so I couldn't catch all the lyrics, but these guys know how to work a hook, and soon we oldsters were singing right along too.
This song was a clear highlight for me, with its punchy syncopated repetitions: "Oh, talk talk talk / Oh, shut your mouth / A little kiss kiss kiss, / Come on and help me out." While some of Locksley's songs are earnest pop confections, this one has a little more grit and angst to it, as if you'd thrown a little Replacements into that Britpop mix. Skipping along through simple major chords, it's upbeat and yet urgent -- or as the next lines put it, "Desperate times call for desperate measures, / and desperate desires lead to desperate pleasures."
Hormones seem to be raging, and the emotional landscape is muddled and confused: "You know? / Oh yeah, you know don't you? / Oh god, you don't? / Oh no, you don't, do you?" It's not just sex putting him in a tailspin, but social identity issues as well: "Won't you teach teach teach me if you can / How to be more cosmopolitan / Who needs class when you got money? / Well I've got cash, but you've got everything else."
As the song pogos along, seduction becomes less important; what really matters is matching this girl's ineffable coolness: "Oh, it's so easy for you to be, / Just what everyone wants to be. / So, why not me? / Tell me, why not me?" Sneaky shifting verbs show just how malleable his identity can be: "Now listen to me, listen to me, /You're what I should be, what I could be....I'm willing to pay, begging to pay . . . get me a break, give me a break?" and eventually the pronouns start morphing as well: "Oh what can you do, what can I do, / To make you like me, make me like you?" That robust rhythm section, though, keeps him from sounding too neurotic -- that and Jesse's energetic, flirtatious vocals.
Will these guys make it? They were sure working their asses off that night, doing the most enthusiastic meet and greets out in the lobby, signing everything in sight. In this MySpace/Facebook age, self-promotion may be more important than having a label; for the moment, Locksley seems to be on the rise, getting attention from MTV and, well, opening for Ray Davies. They just may be the future of rock and roll -- I wish them well.
Darn! I came on here this morning, all charged up to write about two of my favorite Kinks songs, which Ray Davies performed last night at this over-the-top fabulous show at the Hammerstein Ballroom. I never thought I'd hear either of them performed live, and there they were, more glorious and wonderful than I could ever have expected. But lo and behold, I've already written here about Shangri-LaandStarstruck. (Well, I said they were two of my favorites, didn't I?) Then I was gonna write about The Getaway, one of my favorites among Ray's solo tracks -- but guess what? I wrote about that one last March, the last time I saw Ray live.
But never fear -- Ray's got a million of 'em! And now I realize I haven't yet gushed sufficiently about "Working Man's Cafe," the title song from Ray's most recent album. (It's impressive how Ray can perform this new solo stuff alongside the vintage Kinks classics, and it fits right in.) Last night Ray prefaced this one with an anecdote about trying to meet his brother Dave for a chat at some cafe Dave knew about, and when Ray got there, it had disappeared. Anytime one of Ray's songs references Dave, you know it runs deep -- that tortured relationship he has with his little brother is all tangled up in his own ambivalence about being true to his working-class roots and yet being a rich and celebrated artist.
Next verse, he's trying to meet up (with his brother, we now know, via cell phone), and the rhymes disappear, the melodic line falters, as he stumbles uncertainly: "I thought I knew you then, but will I know you now / There's gotta be a place for us to meet / I'll call you when I've found it / I only hope that life has made us a little more grounded / Hey man, I see you now." Later on, he gets more topical, though still bemused, as he sings about loans and mortgages (hmm, he does that in "Shangri-La," too -- financial dealings really do make Ray nuts) and contrasts the working man's cafe to the internet cafes that have replaced it. And then he bursts out in a poignant self-assertion -- "I'm the kid with the greasy spoon / Firmly held in my hand." That is, in the end, who he wants to be; at any rate, he never wants to lose that part of himself.
With some performers, at this stage in their career, this would just be a pose. Does anybody believe the common-man attitudes the Rolling Stones and Bruce Stringsteen still crank out? (I buy it from Paul McCartney, because I think he's deluded enough to really believe he's still an ordinary guy.) But Ray? He's not trying to sell us a bill of goods; he's just fretting over whether he's working-class anymore. Of course he isn't; what's important is that he wants to be (well, sometimes at least). That sense of loss, and that struggle, make this song so much more interesting than a simple diatribe against malls.
Introspection, irony, poignancy -- this is why Ray Davies is my favorite songwriter. In case you're wondering. Working Man's Cafe sample
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
"All She Wrote" / Ray Davies
Finally, the Great Music Transfer is finished!
But now, alas, I still have to redo my playlists. If you're a little OCD like I am, you know how important it is to get those playlists just right. I had 130 of them, and they were good. I may not replicate all of them, though, because making them up is half the fun -- why not do some new ones while I'm at it?
So here's the first new playlist I've invented. A lot of these songs I've written about on here already; they're all about break-ups of one sort or another, each one capturing its own sliver of heart-wrenching pain. The first three are all snide little dialogues taken from the last stages of a crumbling relationship: 1. Is That Love -- Squeeze 2. Don't Wait Up -- Dr. Feelgood 3. Remain Silent -- Keb' Mo'
Then here come three that represent that bitter moment when you realize you've given up on saving things: 4. Angel/Asshole -- Jill Sobule 5. Crawl Back (Under My Stone) -- Richard Thompson 6. She's Already Made Up Her Mind -- Lyle Lovett followed by the moment of truth, the actual confrontation -- or in these two cases, cowardly break-ups by letter: 7. All She Wrote -- Ray Davies 8. Hold Me Down -- Motion City Soundtrack Ray's is bad enough, the reaction of the stunned recipient of such a letter -- but MCS's is even more squirm-inducing, being from the standpoint of the person who wrote the letter, and knows how despicable he is for doing so.
At the middle is the depths of self-pity and pain, the gloriously miserable 9. Solo (So Low) -- Joe Jackson a song which absolutely shatters me every time I hear it. It's followed by three morose little mini-dramas, describing the last moments of packing to go: 10. Things We Never Said -- Thea Gilmore 11. Really Glad You Came -- Ian Dury & the Blockheads 12. Property -- The Kinks Jeez, those three, one after the other, are like, whew! And then comes a melancholy drive past the old house, from someone's who's not healed yet: 13. Where Home Used to Be -- Marshall Crenshaw
And finally, to emerge from all this pain and misery, three brilliant comic mopes from two masters of the Lovable Loser song: 14. I'm a Mess -- Nick Lowe 15. I Don't Even Try -- John Hiatt 16. Lately I've Let Things Slide -- Nick Lowe BTW, I've always wondered if Nick got the idea for his song from John's , which was written earlier, I think. Not that Nick Lowe ever stole any ideas from anybody, ever!
Well, there it is. Anybody out there know enough of those songs to tell me if this playlist works for you?
Saturday, June 21, 2008
"Shangri-La" / The Kinks
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RAY DAVIES
I wish I'd been at Hampton Court the other night when Ray Davies performed this song in concert, with the Crouch End Chorus joining in on the la's and ooh's. Ray hardly ever has performed it live. "Shangri-la" is one of those sleepers in the Kinks catalog; like the entire Arthur album, it's often overlooked even by Kinks fans, let alone people who barely know who the Kinks are. But the more I've listened to it over the years, the more I realize what a superb and profound song it is.
In the late 1960s, Ray Davies evolved from writing pop songs about love/sex to writing wonderful little three-minute satires of English life. He started out with barbed comedy in "Well-Respected Man" (September 1965) and "A House in the Country" (April 1966), but two years later, a tender note of sympathy has crept into a song like "Autumn Almanac" (October 1967), despite its snarky list of knee-jerk middle-class pleasures ("I like my football on a Saturday / Roast beef on Sunday / All right"). Even though its music-hall arrangement telegraphs parody, when the protagonist of "Autumn Almanac" declares "This is my street / And I'm never gonna leave it / And I'm always gonna stay here / If I live to be ninety-nine" -- well, I don't know about you, but I sense that part of Ray (the same claustrophobe who won't leave his room in "Waterloo Sunset") feels absolutely the same way. Why shouldn't we want to stay in a place where we feel we belong?
By the time Ray got to "Shangri-la" (September 1969), he had an even more complex attitude toward the middle-class Englishman whose home is his castle. The melancholy minor-key melody is your first clue, as well as the pensive ballad tempo -- this is a song that should be taken seriously. Now, the whole Arthur album was originally intended as the soundtrack for a TV film; these songs are sung by characters in the play, not in Ray's own persona. I've never seen the film (mostly because it was never made), but I have always assumed that "Shangri-la" is sung by an omniscient narrator to the main character (loosely based on Ray's brother-in-law), who has left England and family to relocate in a planned community in Australia.
That first verse is unbearably poignant: "Now that you've found your paradise / This is your Kingdom to command / You can go outside and polish your car / Or sit by the fire in your Shangri-la." This isn't just some snide put-down of middle-class complacency -- though there's surely a strain of that in there -- it's also an epiphany about the moment when one's dreams ring hollow. "Here is your reward for working so hard / Gone are the lavatories in the back yard / Gone are the days when you dreamed of that car / You just want to sit in your Shangri-la." I love that detail about the lavatories in the yard -- talk about fixing a cultural reference in one sharp stroke.
Oh, the satire comes stealing in in the later verses, as Ray describes the "little man" catching his commuter train and fretting over his mortgage; it's a pathetic tradeoff, on a time-installment plan: "Got a TV set and a radio / For seven shillings a week." Then Ray pans out, almost cinematically, for the wide-angle view -- "And all the houses in the street have got a name / 'Cos all the houses in the street they look the same / Same chimney pots, same little cars, same window panes" -- that's such a resonant little observation, about the English penchant for giving their houses cutesy names, even in a cookie-cutter development. It's details like that that make Ray Davies one of our greatest living songwriters.
Eventually Ray does dismiss the character as "Too scared to think about how insecure you are / Life ain't so happy in your little Shangri-la." But I don't know -- I still think he's identifying with him, and more than a little bit.
There's always been this tension in Ray Davies, between the restless misfit genius and the champion of the common man. Eventually he wrote a whole rock musical about it, Soap Opera, where he played both the Starmaker and the bland suburbanite Norman -- who turn out to be one and the same. That tension may make it hard to be Ray Davies, god knows, but it also happens to be the wellspring of some of his very greatest music.
Today I finally finished this book I've been slaving over for months -- HOORAY!! So what song popped directly into my head? Well, first of all it was the Beach Boys' "Fun, Fun, Fun" (always my go-to song for cranking up the first sunny day of spring) but then Daddy took the T-bird away and I fell into a more meditative groove.
I saw Ray Davies perform last week (even in the midst of a deadline crunch, who could pass up Ray?) and while I adored hearing his new tunes from Working Man's Cafe (not to mention Kinks Klassics like "Sunny Afternoon," "Dead End Street," and "Waterloo Sunset" -- whooHOO!), being the greedy person I am, I was sorry he didn't sing much from Other Peoples' Lives this time around. I saw him quite a few times when he was touring to support that 2006 album, and hearing this song live was a near-religious experience.
Not typical Ray, of course -- at times it sounds like he's channeling Neil Young (not that that's a bad thing) -- but the underlying message is pure Daviesian romantic longing. I buy one-hundred percent into the notion that Ray Davies is a fragile, lonely soul who can't handle the stresses of modern life and wants to escape it all. Other artists would just write an escapist song; not Ray, he's stuck in tortured longing. Though the track starts out with a laidback rootsy riff, moseying along a railroad track, watching a train rumble past, eventually Ray whips himself up into an impassioned cry: "It's time you made your / Getaway." It's torn from the heart, and it gets me where I live.
Mind you, nothing actually happens in this song -- it's all in the singer's mind. "It might hit you on a sunny afternoon" -- nice self-reference there -- "Without a warning, there's a thought that just comes over you / And is a shadow on the sidewalk, / Someone like you / In the blink of an eye, waving goodbye." Shadows, thoughts, fleeting gestures, that's all he's working with. It's not even him who's breaking free, it's some nameless stranger -- not even that, it's just someone he's imagining -- but it's enough to make him intensely jealous and totally miserable. The individual phrases waver up and down hopefully, yet "Someone like you" drops downward with a sigh of despair. In the break, there's a crazed electrified jangle of sound (God love Mark Johns, Ray's guitarist on this album) that perfectly embodies his wrenched emotions. He wants to jump on that train, but he can't quite do it -- and that's why he's singing the blues.
Class A neurotism? Could be. But that's what I love about Ray. He's all about the interior life, which is never simple territory to navigate. (He does the same thing in his new song, "In A Moment"; it's not about losing love, it's about watching yourself lose love.) For some of us, working up the courage to break free is a monumental task. Most musicians would be on that train already, reaching down a hand -- or even worse, thumbing their nose as they pull out of the station. Not Ray. He's right beside me on the platform, chewing his nails, agonizing. God bless him.
Ray Davies performed this new track from WMC last night at the Tibet House Benefit, which unfortunately I did not attend (anybody who saw me there must have been hallucinating). It’s a natural choice for Ray to have done last night, not only because he wrote it in New York, but also because it doesn’t sound like an old reworked Kinks song--this is the new solo Ray, and I love it. I love the loose-limbed rhythm of this song, Ray’s breathy vocals, the almost reggae-like way he accents odd syllables. It’s really a mood piece, not a story—coming from one of the world’s great storytellers, that’s surprising--but that just proves Ray’s willingness to grow as an artist.
A single harsh guitar strum wakes us up, then Ray begins, in a husky earnestness: “Sunlight, and the city / is barely awake.” I love that time of day, too; I’m captivated at once. As he says at the end of the verse, “Still I love the dusk, the dawn / Between times / They are mine.” He tries to pin it down in the bridge, saying, “Everything around is so transitional / Momentary lapse of rational.” Those abstracts seem out of place in a rock song, I’ll admit; they grated on my ear at first. (Plus “rational” doesn’t seem right – shouldn’t it be “rationality”?). But as the song goes on, I realize that the struggle to put things into words is a big part of what’s going on.
After all, being only human—and Ray’s a great chronicler of human failings—we often overreact, or read a situation wrong, or just plain have lousy timing, don’t we? And often it's those things that kill a relationship, not the grand romantic twists of fate. With tantalizingly vague descriptions, Ray depicts those knife-edge moments when love turns to hate, or joy to pain; when you change your point of view, or just look away, and suddenly the whole affair goes sour. “In a second you can look away / Turn around to find it’s all changed.”
That tripping syncopation and staggered syntax are perfect for a song about relationships going out of kilter. Even though he tries to end on a positive note – “But in a moment / Hope will find a way” – it’s not very convincing. If anything, this song is kin to a couple of sleeper Kinks gems I’ve always loved, “Stormy Sky” and “Lost and Found” – it’s got the same floating-above-it-all quality, a philosophical detachment that I find oddly comforting. Sure, things are crap, but we can rise above it, can't we?
I suspect this won’t go down in the pantheon of great love songs – but then the Kinks were never big on simple love songs. (Tortured love songs, that’s another matter.) But the restless dreaminess of this song is totally seductive. It’s a watercolor, not a big broad canvas, but drawn with all the delicacy and feeling of a master.
/ Ray Davies with Chrissie Hynde
/ Fats Domino 
(2003 various artists compilation)
" / The Beach Boys
(1991 re-issue)
(2003 various artists compilation)
" / Jars of Clay
" / Fountains of Wayne
" / Sufjan Stevens
(1997 various artists compilation)
featuring the inimitable James Brown reference,"Christmas ain't gonna be a drag / Santa's got a brand new bag!" Take my word for it, Marshall's version knocks Seger's down cold.
?" / Buster Poindexter and His Banshees of Blues