Dave Davies: Satsang II: April 2012: You Only Live Twice

So we decided to have this once-in-a-lifetime experience twice. Starting to remind me of a title for a James Bond movie.

I’m not going to write a complete blog as I don’t want to repeat what someone else might do or has done. Instead, a few snapshots of the weekend, in words. Plus ruminations on the nature of faith.

‘I'm all about denial/But can't denial let me believe’ (‘Pavlov’s Bell’ – Aimee Mann)

I suppose that’s how I would categorise my feelings for Dave’s credo and in fact, any religious doctrine or spiritual creed. Simply wanting to believe cannot make it so because logic, reason, a natural propensity for scepticism often triumph over need and desire. They’re the Spaniards in the works as Lennon might say. Ok, I’m not the world’s most logical person but I do tend to ask too many questions.

So my beliefs bear more resemblance to superstition than anything else. I pray to St Anthony for lost items and to St Jude for lost causes. For me, faith of any kind is a triumph of will over common sense. Dave is obviously very well read and has done his research but me, I judge by results. If it works, I do it again. (Talking of ‘Do It Again’, have just seen the documentary so a review will follow shortly.) I’m not someone who ponders on whether the tree falling in the forest makes a sound kind of thing. Life’s too short; let’s not go there.

Say you watch a fantasy series, you need to suspend your disbelief in order to accept that vampires exist, that Buffy can kill them, that Sunnydale is the Hellmouth, etc. My attitude reminds me of something my Dad once said, while watching an episode of Smallville (I’ve long since stopped worrying about my Dad’s unerring interest in US teen dramas); one of the teens with meteor powers uses them in a destructive way, so, in order to control this, she’s forced to wear a bracelet made of lead, which prevents her from accessing her powers. My Dad is up in arms over this: ‘Ridiculous! As if a lead bracelet could do that! …’, etc. He’s happy to believe that a meteor shower could give people special abilities, that an alien arrived from the Planet Krypton and is living as a Kansas farmboy before becoming Superman but he draws the line at the efficacy of a lead bracelet. Now, whenever we’re watching something that does invite the suspension of disbelief, and we’re tempted to question an event that seems even more unlikely than the general tenor of the film might dictate, we call it ‘having a lead bracelet moment’ and laugh at ourselves – why is this one thing less credible than the rest? But we all have them, I think, those moments, however spurious, the lines we’re not willing to cross, either out of reason or out of fear, the bridge too far. I’m not sure Dave has them though and that’s what makes his outlook and his conversation so fascinating. It could lead anywhere.

Dave doesn’t discount or disavow other religions, mentioning Christ, Ganesh and Buddha – he’s inclusive and accepting and has cast his net wide in search of enlightenment. So, we’re looking at a patchwork quilt of different philosophies, so that, as well as a buffet lunch, we can partake of a spiritual smorgasbord (always wondered if I’d ever get a chance to use that word), with some options for the more refined palate, or those who have acquired a taste for something relatively rare, and others more easily digestible to the spiritual novice.

It’s the sort of thing I’m perfectly at home with, although I don’t accept that any of it is necessarily true or real; I have a similarly inclusive mentality. Why shouldn’t it be so? Although I’ve never seen an angel, I believe Dave when he says he has. At the risk of sounding facetious, I always wanted a visit from the Blue Fairy.

Perhaps my problem is that I’ve never particularly desired enlightenment. I’m more at ease with confusion. Should the divine be explicable or should it remain a mystery? Transubstantiation, the Trinity (such a beautiful word), reincarnation, all lovely ideas that might fall apart under analysis.

What seems contradictory though is the rejection of the ritual of established Western religions (vicars, communion, incense, kneeling to pray and so forth) and the embracing of concomitant rituals in Eastern faiths, such as gurus, types of breathing, mantras, chanting, meditation, all of which to me are just symptoms of the same kind of mind control. Why should chanting a certain phrase be any more effective than saying a Hail Mary? I’m sure Dave would say it wouldn’t be, that they would both have value.

Maybe I harp on about this because I find being instructed, however gently, when and how to breathe extremely stressful, partly because of my complete inability to comply, and thus, while for others, it is inducing a sense of peace, the perfect prelude to meditation, in me, a state of panic is rising and the very opposite is achieved.

[In the ante-room, there’s a statue, a Buddha or an Indian god, I can't remember, with a bowl of satsumas in front of it. I was just about to nab one before I realised that possibly they were an offering to the deity – I’ve been on a Buddhist retreat so I’m a little wise to this sort of thing – I do see someone else take and eat one later though but I won't tell on them.]

‘Look through any doorway/Tell me what you see’

Who’s to say what’s real, whether the voices people hear are those of spirit guides or demons or aliens or the result of drug-induced psychosis? If the latter, does it make them any less valid? Maybe it’s simply another way of opening the mind, of looking at the world? Perhaps it’s how we react to them that determines our fate, whether we consider them friend or foe. I know many people who have, sometimes as the result of a bad trip, sometimes through stress, developed what used to be diagnosed as schizophrenia. Some have never returned to ‘normality’ (whatever that is – I know the way I live would not fit most people’s definition; as Dave says in Kink, ‘What’s normal, anyway?’), some are fine for a while on medication, then relapse, some just cope with the existence of a certain amount of what could be deemed ‘unreality’. Just watched a documentary on Peter Green; his experience with mescaline is a good example.

Dave copes well without his spiritual helpmeet, Rosina, absent through illness but the schedule suffers a little – I wanted to hear about the UFOs but, for some reason, we never got round to this.

Without the constant rain of last year, we were able to appreciate the location. Although not far removed from town, there was still a sense of remoteness, of cut-off-ness, ideal for a retreat. Plus this time we took the Magic Bus (some of our number having been on the real ‘Magic Bus’ that I had only read about in novels and didn’t imagine had actually existed), so the length of the path we were on felt emphasised as we were driven through picturesque chocolate-box villages on our way out to sea.

‘True Phenomenon’

That connection with Dave, not as pronounced this time, but he certainly felt my breathlessness, as an asthmatic without an inhaler, when I entered the room, asking ‘Are you having trouble breathing?’ I was suffering from a sense of disquiet too that I hoped I hadn’t communicated to him (or that he hadn’t communicated to me) as a friend thought he seemed more relaxed than last year. I thought he was pretty relaxed last year.

I was more in awe than last time, perhaps because then I had only liked the Kinks for two months and had had only a little time to absorb the huge amount of material they had produced over their thirty-year career, not to mention all the solo stuff. I knew they were amazing but hadn’t really absorbed the scale of their talent.

Highlights of the gigs: Dave on acoustic ‘Are You Ready, Girl?’, ‘Fortis Green’ a stormer both nights, ‘Milk Cow Blues’ a rousing finale, the new songs, ‘Green Amp’ and ‘Remember the Future’, which he did when requested. Dave, ever obliging, sang, when asked ‘Visionary Dreamer’, with a member of the audience and delivered ‘Dead-End Street’ almost word-perfect although it had not been rehearsed. Surprised by how much I enjoyed ‘Hare Krishna’, even the singing along and ‘Creeping Jean’ which used to frighten me. Loved dancing to ‘Sea of Heartbreak’. I had requested ‘Imagination’s Real’; they had rehearsed it; but Dave didn’t seem to want to play it so I said I didn’t mind if they didn’t. Listening to it now and it’s so darn pretty, I wish they had played it.

As Molly, our lovely yoga teacher, was about to leave, there were calls for ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’. Thank God Dave had the presence of mind not to comply; the lyrics would have been a little inappropriate ‘Good golly, Miss Molly, Sure likes to ball’ for this remarkably prescient young lady.

Band personnel (as last time but minus Kristi – we missed you): Jonathan Lea, David Nolte, Frank Rawle. And Dave of course!

People: There were fewer of us (due to some last-minute cancellations) so it was great to see some familiar faces and get better acquainted as well as meet some new recruits. Last year, there were some people I only spoke to on the last day and wished there’d been more time. With fewer people, it was easier to get to know each other. Although the instant sense of camaraderie wasn’t there – that first time was different probably because it was the first time – they were all lovely, like- and open-minded folk.

The artwork: I did manage to add something to it this time; last time I never got round to it and thought any addition I made could only detract from the general effect. So I went with words instead of images. As Jackie (Leven) was very much on my mind, I used an album title of his. Luckily, writing with a paintbrush looks sort of artistic.

Mementoes: There was a raffle and I got a copy of The Aschere Project: Two Worlds, which is probably ‘prog’ enough for my Dad to like. I’ll have to lend it to him. Interesting and actually much more listenable than I expected. (Actually two days since I wrote this, I woke up singing the title track - it's a grower.)

Also managed to scalp a setlist that the band was kind enough to autograph and received another special memento, courtesy of Jonathan (it’s nothing inappropriate).

‘There were times when there was absolute compassion in the air’

(Sorry to quote Ray here but he does have a way with words)

For all of us there, I can only say follow Dave’s advice and ‘Trust your heart’. Surely any issue or disagreement can be resolved if we simply allow love, compassion and respect to prevail.

In the back of a record rack/There's an old double pack/Twelve inches and black/With an old crumpled cover/But every track is stacked

On our last night, members of the group said they were going to reconvene at the Anchor in the evening and gave us very specific directions to reach it. We passed these onto the rest of the party. Left Dave’s house and tried to find the pub. Came across another one, the Crown, but had somehow missed the Anchor, I thought because we’d been talking, and walked past it. I was dispatched into the pub to ask. The natives were friendly and happy to engage with me on the subject of the mysterious Anchor although they listed all the pubs in town (which I already knew) and could only surmise that we were expected to go to a nearby town (we’ll call it ‘Mordor’) where there was a Blue Anchor. Mordor was a long way away, down a very steep hill. I said ‘I’m not going to **** ing Mordor!’ Then my sister came in, and noticed people waving at us from the back of the room, the people who’d told us to come to the Anchor. Even now, they had no idea this was the Crown. Girls! Anyway, then I went back to the bar and asked the regulars to pretend this was the Anchor if anyone else asked. Sure enough, another group arrives, puzzled too that here’s a pub at the exact location but it’s not the right pub. So they ask a man smoking outside – ‘Do you know where the Anchor is?’ and he replies, ‘Apparently, it’s here tonight’. It was a lovely pub though, with a turntable and we could choose our own music from a box of records on the table, so we started off with a Kinks greatest hits, so inevitably there was dancing; the backroom looked like a record library. What an amazing collection. Plus they stayed open till 1 a.m., still serving one of us. How welcoming.

So the tale of how we renamed Dave’s local for one night will make us legends in our own lunch hour.

‘Sleepless Night’

Had a strange experience in bed that last night. I take a lot of medication to help me sleep but suddenly I found myself thrown off the bed so violently that I bit through my lip, causing it to bleed and swell up. I’ve never fallen out of bed in my life before and this was a double bed, much bigger than mine. Now, if I’d bitten my tongue, I could have taken it as a sign … . Annoyingly, we were going to meet someone we work with the next day, for the very first time, so he’s going to think I’m a bit of a bruiser, like the young Dave, picking fights in bars. I did notice that everyone was very friendly to me on the train home, no doubt anxiously wondering what the other guy looked like.

Anyway, it was great fun but it feels weird to blog about it because it’s a little like going to stay with friends then writing a report afterwards ... what they said, what you ate and so on ...

Booked tickets to see Ray now but can't imagine it could compare to being a foot away from Dave when he’s performing. If only Ray were playing some more intimate venues. Looking forward to it though.

Adventures in Levenland: Celebrating Jackie Leven

A report on our Easter escapades in Levenland, which probably won't help to demystify any of the list correspondence from that time, but wouldn’t we all rather be mystified than demystified anyway?

After our experience with Dave Davies last year, this seemed like a cinch – no pre-payment, a fraction of the price, no terms and conditions, no cloak and dagger, just a ‘let me know when you intend to get there’. Mind you, Jackie never really played the star card and only occasionally the hero one.

What worried us was that all these people knew each other and had been congregating as/at the Church of Leven for nearly ten years. We were the strangers on the square. Although a very welcoming group, they were very different to us; we must have seemed like we were from the Stone Age, having only succumbed to a mobile phone last year, and that because a friend bought one for us. It’s not an iPhone or a smartphone or anything like that. We can text, take pictures, but rarely give out the number so hardly ever get any calls. Every time someone calls, there’s some confusion over how to answer it, usually resulting in the caller getting cut off. As for laptops, tablets, iPads, don’t go there. We’re from a long line of Luddites, deeply entrenched in the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ school. We still have vinyl, for God’s sake.

Phil said the cabin might need to be spruced up a bit (note woodland reference).

But soon we had it looking like this.

The location was lovely and the cabins were triangular (A-frame we were reliably informed) although there was no triangular honey from triangular bees. We were warned that a dangerous cupcake- crème egg-eating ogre was en route, the indomitable Emjay. The men took refuge behind a forest of laptops. The ladies were braver and offered tea and biscuits. We eschewed the forest and wandered out into the ancient woodland. What an idyllic setting – bluebells, the river, birdsong.

Weirdly nearly everyone there (with a couple of exceptions) had only started liking Jackie around the early 2000s, at exactly the time we stopped going to gigs for some reason or other, and none were Doll by Doll fans. Felt a little guilty that we hadn’t seen Jackie live for so long. Our loss of course.

Good Friday

A singer-songwriter called Jinder (don’t ask, we did, and forty minutes later …) was kind enough to visit in the afternoon and sing us a song he’d written for Jackie, so far entitled ‘A Song for Jackie Leven’, part-tribute, part-manifesto. Very moving; some of us cried. ‘In the meantime, I’ll work hard to see, that you weren’t the last of a dying breed.’ Bless you.

A trip to Portsmouth to see him play a full gig in the evening followed. We enjoyed the other acts too – Piefinger tried hard to engage with an audience whose main concern was to shout loud enough to drown them out – they were Jayhawksy, pretty harmonies and a ukulele. Bemis were met with an extreme lack of interest by the rest of the Levenites (despite their partiality to one of our number, he knows who I’m talking about), who interacted via phones with the list and each other throughout their set (hmm – wouldn’t have got away with this if it had been Lee Griffiths – you’d definitely have got ‘the stare’) but I actually really enjoyed them. Great spirit and camaraderie when they took the stage and their enthusiasm was infectious. Plus their harmonies were lovely. I liked their own material as well as the covers. And I never thought I’d be in a pub in Portsmouth, dancing to ‘The Stray Cat Strut’! Not in 2012 at any rate.

Easter Saturday
Walked to Botley (recently featured on ‘Countryfile’, a UK TV show, as the perfect village, according to William Cobbett), where Jackie lived. Not sure how long it usually takes Phil but with a group, it was a two-hour trek, partly owing to the cross-examination he received on the John LeBourne Incident – a tragic tale in which a poor upstanding family man is vilified and slandered although all the evidence against him is purely circumstantial. Phil has been reading the Botley Parish Register and informs us that people used to die in entertaining ways. Wonder if they thought, God, so and so’s death was so dull, I must make mine more entertaining. The more intrepid of the party climbed trees. Our leader was on hand to identify every flower: from wood anemone, butcher’s broom, dog violet ‘to the humble forget-me-not’ (‘Standing in Another Man’s Rain’).

Met up with some late arrivals at the Deep Pool, yes that Deep Pool and at the Leven local, the Brewery Bar, including Adrienne and Hollie, surely the best-behaved dog in the universe. During the meal, Deborah, Jackie’s partner, arrived, with her new dog, Treacle, and she was gracious enough to supply a carrier bag of items for a Lucky Dip. I was fortunate enough to get some of Jackie’s guitar strings, which I will treasure; wore them as a bracelet to the Dave Davies weekend the week after. Other people got Doll by Doll or Remember badges. She also let us leaf through some of the great man’s notebooks: fascinating stuff, with shopping lists intermingled with poetry and commentary on life. I was very touched because his handwriting is so familiar to me as he sent me a lot of faxes in the days before he had email. Somewhere, an inveterate hoarder, I still have them all, on yellow fax paper. Such a distinctive hand and such exciting times.

Repaired to the centre to eat, watch Leven videos, and then (the) Lee Griffiths played a set, including a cover of ‘Wish You Were Here’ (mention that for my Dad) and ‘Meet Me Halfway’; I remember when he first played the latter at a Castaway party. Great stuff. Ambience had been supplied, with tables of candles either side of him and, after I’d fetched my Parka, I was fine but everyone else was freezing so we adjourned to the largest cabin. Lee is a revelation to me – what a lovely guy, what great stories.

During the course of the evening, Phil’s dark secret is revealed. He used to be in a band, The Dead Trout. With that name, you can tell they didn’t covet success. And they got their wish. But, undeterred, the more curious among us, and let’s face it, the more masochistic, discover that we can still subject ourselves and our enemies to the joy of their music, if we really try.

Easter Sunday

Today we walk in Jackie’s footsteps, encountering the sights he’s described in various Deep Pool pieces – the white horse – it breaks my heart to leave this friendly animal alone, especially as it follows us to the far reach of its lonely field, the abandoned train engine, the graffitied tunnel, the ‘rickety bench’ (so shaky that only Lyn dares sit on it), the Romany encampment.

Jackie wrote:

‘To the right, nearly wholly hidden in creeper and silver birch saplings, is a beautiful old bright blue and yellow steam train engine,still with wheels and everything. I first saw this, and maybe wrote about it then, on a fine winter’s morning with the lightest of snow covering on it. It’s completely magical – the engine has such presence: I’d love to find someone who could tell me how it got there – it doesn’t look like it will be going anywhere else in a hurry. No matter how banal the story of how it came to be there was,there would be a moment of absolute magic in the telling, of this I am sure.’

The more adventurous of our expedition set forth to investigate and brought back photographic evidence.

Yes. The steam engine turns out to be of the Thomas the Tank variety.

A compellingly powerful illustration of how we make our own myths.

Soon we are overtaken by the Gary Numan Crash Team Investigators (identified by Phil’s sighting of a Tubeway Army badge or could he be pulling our legs?), our progress being more peripatetic and desultory than theirs. But do they climb the forbidden bridges? Do they heck? Or did they? No way of knowing as they left us for dust ages before. Gratuitous Tubeway Army link for my sister-in-law.

Yes, Phil leads us across bridges clearly barricaded as unsafe. Undeterred, we follow. He knows best.

Later, Lyn comes down to the main cabin, with a robin standing in her hands. This bird sat outside the window, and didn’t move when she approached and spoke to it. When she put her hands down behind it, it hopped onto her palms, and doesn’t seem to want to leave. We worry that the bird is injured in some way although it looks fine. Decide to put it back on the grass by the cabin, to see if it can fly. On our way back up, it takes off. Just dropped in for the photo opportunity. I like to think it was Jackie’s spirit that came by to tell us he was ok and no longer constrained by any physical impediment, now free to come and go at will. The more prosaic say it had flown into the window and was stunned – but why get on someone’s hand? Whatever, it was a pretty special encounter. I’m on the side of magic and poetry. Honestly, can't you hard men believe in fairytales?

Along the trail, I learned that it’s protocol (whenever I use that word I feel like I’m in a Bond movie) not to use your real names on the list and am asked to choose something. Opt for Wyrd Syster(s). Now I’ve just got to start using it.

Thanks to: All the people who provided plentiful food on a tight budget and introduced us to Manchester tart, to Phil who organised everything brilliantly, kept us on track as well as leading us down the garden path a few times. It was great to meet everybody. Emjay wasn't frightening at all.

Photos of the miraculous robin and Thomas: Lord Oates, Captain of the QEII.

Next stop: Exmoor and random ramblings on Satsang II. For more on this, see bashful.

Village Green Preservation Society – The Kinks

This purports to be an analysis of concert footage from London in 1973, specifically of the song ‘Village Green Preservation Society’, but diverts from its purpose many a time.

This video is a virtual microcosm of the Kinks’ career and Dave’s trajectory within it. A foretaste of what was to come. It’s a falling line on a graph: from singing lead vocal on much of the Kinks early output, albeit B-sides or album tracks, some self-penned, some by Ray and many of the covers (‘I Wonder Where My Baby Is Tonight’, ‘Got My Feet on the Ground’, ‘I’m Not Like Everybody Else’) to joint lead on some songs (early, ‘Milk Cow Blues’, 'I Don't Need You Any More', slightly later, ‘Juke Box Music’, at least live), to backing singer (‘Life on the Road’, ‘Slum Kids’, ‘The Informer’). Later, and you imagine it’s in the manner of a papal dispensation, he’s granted a temporary recall from banishment and brought in from the cold to sing a song or two live (with some kind of entente cordiale in the early 80s when he gets to sing three: ‘Come On Now’, ‘Living on a Thin Line’ and ‘Bernadette’) unless a song proves very popular like ‘I’m Not Like Everybody Else’, in which case Ray resumes lead, even though he wrote this song for Dave’s voice, as he did ‘Sleepless Night’. (For more on this, please see 'bashfulbadgersblog'.) Sometimes he’s allowed to sing ‘Too Much on My Mind’ but they never seem to play ‘Strangers’, ‘Mindless Child of Motherhood’ or ‘This Man He Weeps Tonight’. At least, if they ever did, they’re not on YouTube, which is I’m afraid my only point of reference since I never saw them live. If only.

[In fact, ‘Milk Cow Blues’ proves an exception to the rule, with Dave originally singing a verse then passing the lead to Ray as in the 1965 version above - Dave’s like a wild animal, a tiger (in fact, in 'My Way', he sings 'I was born a tiger'), there’s often something uncontrolled about him, in his guitar playing and his singing – you’ll never hear him play/sing a song exactly the same way – it’s all fluid and flexible and when he gives, he gives it all, totally instinctual, the lyrics are mutable; at this stage, Ray’s more like a pussycat, riled enough to reveal his claws and rhythmically thump his tail but back to refuting my own point, in this 1966 performance, Dave starts the song, Ray takes over lead vocal then it reverts to Dave at the end and it’s as if they’re competing with each other as to who can hold the notes longer and deliver them with the most passion.]

While I’m on Dave’s backing vocals – well I was on them till I went off-track – I have to eulogise them a little. Their voices are so distinctive and they blend so well; Dave’s higher-pitched tone an emotional echo (it is an echo as it’s often just slightly behind Ray’s lead as people have commented on the Ray Davies Forum but it works like this and I’m sure is deliberate) and counterpoint to Ray’s voice of reason. Listen to ‘Scattered’, ‘Life on the Road’, ‘Slum Kids’, ‘Picture Book’, 'Jukebox Music', ‘Mr Pleasant’. I said in one of my first blogs, how live, Ray quite often acknowledges the advent of Dave’s distinctive backing vocal with a smile of recognition, sometimes combined with a sexy hairtoss, no doubt realising that this is a pretty irresistible combination, the incorrigible flirt. [It reminds me of a Bratpack movie, where a girl could flick her hair and smile and it was wryly considered a great accomplishment. Might have been About Last Night.

Googled it and it was (how’s that for my memory of total trivia?), found this:
Joan Her big move should be coming up any moment. The combination hair flip with a giggle.
Debbie There is a 3.2 level of difficulty here, Joan. Let's see if she can pull it off.
Joan This is it... this is it... Oh Yes!
Debbie Oh Yes! Yes! Oh Bravo! Bravo! 9.0!]

Don’t get me wrong. I love Ray’s voice and appreciate the way he can turn on a dime, from playful and affected to impassioned. To see him perform ‘Yo Yo’ (1982, Essen), with such total and more-than-adrenalin-fuelled commitment, is astonishing. He’s completely mesmerising. He gives everything. And so does Dave on guitar, so powerful; they match each other’s intensity. I love it when Ray reaches the top end of his range in ‘Million Pound Semi-Detached’ – it’s really touching. The choices he makes musically are always spot on. It’s not so much that he can do something as when he decides to do it, sometimes on the most unromantic word, like ‘semi’. ‘Real World’ is a beautifully put-together song, in which Ray’s vocal wrenches your soul. Listen to the last verse/chorus ‘So head off in the car and follow the stars’ – it’s heart-breaking, the first half of the line plain-speaking, the second imbued with that wistfulness that only Ray can impart, in lyric, voice and melody (his signature move, level of difficulty: irrelevant to him because it comes so naturally). When he writes about Dave, and I don't think I’m reaching here (‘So you headed down south, left your old home town, … relocated so far away from the real world’ – it doesn’t take a detective to work this out although I admit that it could just as easily be about an ex-girlfriend), there’s always a special intimacy plus a real evocation of loss and regret. You can hear the love in his voice even if he’s unable to express it when they meet. I don’t think Dave needs to worry that Ray sometimes minimises his contribution (after all, what better way to wind him up?), because it’s obvious that he’s always in his thoughts. And I’d venture much more so than the other way around.

Anyway, I digress: Ray is sweaty and preternaturally pale and extraordinarily beautiful in this particular incarnation. Dave is slight (and perhaps used to being slighted), almost physically diminished somehow, insubstantial, an effect of his stance and position; as if he’s trying to disappear altogether. He looks like his body is there but his mind somewhere else. His eyes are glazed. They look without seeing, in complete contrast to this early ‘Waterloo Sunset’, in which he’s so alert to the camera’s every move, so intent on being noticed, forever making eye contact with the lens.

So, let’s (over-)analyse:
Ray is in shot as he shyly and somewhat disingenuously introduces the song.
Camera zooms out from Mick to a wide shot of the band.
Both Ray and Dave are shown, in the forefront of a wide shot, side by side, almost equal partners.
Then a two-shot, both in view, with Ray in focus in the foreground, Dave out of focus behind him.
Throughout the performance, the cameraman pulls focus now and then, rendering one clear, the other blurry, neck and neck, as it were. There are glorious stereo hair tosses as they synchronously approach the mikes to sing. Usually Ray is in focus and pre-eminent, with Dave out of focus; he seems to be first a shadow, a smaller image of his brother (because of perspective), then in his brother’s shadow. This is the most recurrent shot (this technique is also evident in this live version of ‘Juke Box Music’ although the emphasis on Ray is less pronounced). And possibly the story of Dave’s life; also used in this video of ‘Days’, with Ray mostly clear and Dave mainly blurred although it switches occasionally.
Dave medium close-up right, remembering the words.
Ray extreme close-up right – don’t need to say whether he knows the words or not – if he didn’t, there would be no song; he can't rely on Dave.
Back to the usual two-shot, with Ray clear in the foreground, Dave less distinct behind him.
Then they are shown separately, from different sides, superimposed on the background of the whole band, face to face, as it were, with Dave visible in the background and foreground, forgetting the words (well, there are so many!) and, in the background shot, looking somewhat dazed, perhaps by the onslaught of lyrical verbiage.
A technique much beloved of the BBC at the time is common here, where a dissolve is unresolved so that you can see through the subject in the foreground to the shot behind. Very noticeable in much ‘TOTP’ footage of the Kinks. See the aforementioned ‘Waterloo Sunset’, for instance. A contrariness in me always wants to see the person in the background.
The camera pans down from the right to show most of the band one by one.
Ray alone in medium shot, from front. Can hear Dave in background – it’s not fair – he knows this bit!
Shot of horn section.
Two-shot again, Ray in front, with Dave and John Dalton part of the indistinct background.
Camera swerves to show Ray from right.
Camera ranges to show most of the band.
Back to the recurring shot. Both again, in a two-shot and both in focus.
Switch to the facing images again but this time they’re both Ray, one medium close-up left and an extreme close-up right and only part of Dave is accidentally visible; he’s lost in some dark, out-of-focus (as out of focus as his eyes) hinterland, an in-between world, another dimension, between the two in-focus shots of Ray before disappearing altogether. This scenario is the one that seems to have most often proliferated in live footage of the Kinks ever since, with sometimes almost whole concerts in which the only parts of Dave you’re likely to catch sight of are his hands on the guitar, during a guitar solo – that’s if they’re not showing Ray’s by mistake.
Dave alone right.
Camera pans to two-shot again, this time with Dave in focus, everything but his eyes at least (and that’s no fault of the cameraman). A final reprieve.
Back to the horns again, with the shot gradually widening to encompass Mick then the rest of band.

After
Dave smiles shyly, timidly, at Ray, with something of a beaten dog still anxious to please an unpredictable and volatile master.

Ray graciously and flamboyantly receives the audience applause with a grandiose flourish.

Dave isn’t zoned out for the whole concert. He invests all his energy and enthusiasm in ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’, very obviously enjoying himself (and when you see him like that, how could you deny him the opportunity, the unadulterated joy, also apparent in his failure to hide his smile of anticipation before he sings the beginning of ‘Juke Box Music’); in fact, the whole band looks more relaxed, apart from Ray, whose engagement seems jittery and nervous in comparison and whose backing vocals sound a little strained and frantic. During Dave’s guitar break, they show Ray on the mouth organ, which you can't hear in the mix.

Poor John Gosling is so far over to the left that the camera can hardly ever include him. He can occasionally be spotted in the background of other shots. But at least he isn’t made to appear in some costume or other, those wicked boys.

Obviously, it’s natural for the lead vocalist (especially when he’s also the songwriter) to take centre stage in performance so this analysis is in a sense, a little facetious. But I had fun.

Intended to do a blog on the recent Satsang event at Dave’s house but I know someone else who’s writing one so don’t want to duplicate that. More later but suffice to say 'Milk Cow Blues' is still a showstopper.

First, I'll report on a weekend in the perfect village, according to William Cobbett, where the Church of Leven gathered for Easter.

Who should play Ray and Dave Davies in the Kinks movie?

Being driven to distraction by the people put forward on the Ray Davies Forum as possible candidates. I want to stick my oar in but have no idea how to upload pictures to a message so I have to do it via a quick blog.

No no no! Not Matt Smith. Have you all lost your minds? He can't be Ray. He’s not nearly attractive enough. Nor is Ben Whishaw. It’s not enough to bear a slight resemblance from a certain angle if you crop half his face off. He has to be beautiful.

It’s immediately apparent that we all see Ray and Dave differently. We can only be subjective. With that in mind, here I go.



Ben Barnes is a possibility and he looks great with long hair.

Or how about Hans Matheson? Great actor, plays guitar and has already accomplished the pseudo-Cockney thing Ray has going many a time. His performance in Dr Zhivago should have propelled him to stardom instead of the wooden Keira Knightley. But is his face a little too square?

Cillian Murphy has already sung ‘You Really Got Me’ in Disco Pigs. Also a musician and an actor. Perhaps he’s too extraordinary looking though, with those cheekbones and eyes. For Dave maybe? We’d have to tone him down and rough him up a bit (Cillian not Dave). But I think he could do that insouciant innocence Dave somehow retained while he was a rampant teenage sex god. And he could definitely achieve the femininity of the ‘Sitting in the Midday Sun’ Dave. See Breakfast in Pluto for proof.



Of course it’s going to be an impossible task to find anyone who could express their myriad qualities and different looks in a movie. You can't go with someone who, from a specific angle, bears a slight resemblance because they have to be as physically captivating as the brothers were. There has to be androgyny, ripeness (but not over-ripeness which would be the problem with Michael Pitt as Dave), a certain delicacy and amazing smiles, not forgetting the very uneven British teeth. The actors would need to have something comparable (rather than having any particular feature in common) that allowed the overall impression to be strikingly appealing in order to convey the indefinable, irresistibly attractive nature of Ray and Dave.

Perhaps the 70s hair can be achieved by a certain (un)styling – though I’ve never been able to get anywhere near it myself.

Not to mention that it might be useful if they could sing and play instruments …

But haven’t any of you seen the aforementioned ‘Sitting in the Midday Sun’ video? Perhaps looking at actors is the wrong way to go. How about some girls?

Mind you, I’m a little worried that this creative team will produce something dated and irrelevant: unimpressed by the ancient sitcom writers, none of whose work has been that entertaining or amusing, and Julien Temple, another one-trick pony although I don’t mind the ‘Come Dancing’ video. I know the Davies have a track history with him and it might be ‘better the devil you know’ although I’m loath to quote Kylie at this point. Perhaps they’ll prove me wrong. I hope so. But I really don’t want the Kinks story to be reduced to a comedy of hackneyed one liners. It has to be so much more than that because it was.

Gratuitous pic of Dave and Ray, looking beautiful.

I’m not sure whether Ray’s judgement can be trusted on these matters, given the almost uniformly abysmal videos the Kinks turned out in the latter part of their career. You know the ones I mean, with the repetition of clichéd tropes (images within images, the person stepping into the movie frame, the photo coming to life, the band on the TV in the living room, the camera passing through the window of a house into another time, and so on) and the obligatory unattainable (or now lost) wispy, ethereal girl wafting in and out of time and shot, for example, 'Lost and Found', 'Down All the Days' and 'To the Bone'. The sweet 60s promos were far preferable, charming and straightforward – ‘I know! We’ll show them sitting on a bench. In the park!’ or ‘I know! We’ll show them walking. In the park! But it’s called ‘Apeman’ so one can be costumed as a gorilla!’ or ‘I know! We’ll have them playing their instruments. In the park!’ Brilliant.

Anyway I’ve stuck my oar in and now I’m going to paddle my boat hastily away before someone scuppers me.

Here are some more images of Ben, Hans and Cillian.

Jackie Leven – Exit Wound

(This is a follow-up to my first piece on Jackie: The King of Love Has Died.)
‘i will be there beside you with my undiplomatic pain’
Watching ‘Single Father’, I feel tears in the back of my throat. Any song at any time, cheerful or mournful, can suddenly bring home to me that he’s gone; like learning it anew each time. ‘Another Man’s Rain’ has me sobbing for a minute before I pull myself together. I can forget for days at a time, especially if I don’t listen to any Jackie (but what kind of life is that?). When I do, sorrow resurfaces, like touching a bruise that just won't heal, like the scar in ‘Universal Blue’. My heart goes out to those who knew him well and must miss him exponentially more. But what I feel is also untainted by any personal experience of his flaws or failings – I only have the music and the memories of the gigs, always so amazing.

Yesterday, it was ‘God’s Children’ by the Kinks. Today, for some reason, it’s ‘Father and Son’ by Cat Stevens. And so what do I do? Play it again of course.

bittersweet – better late than never?
Somehow the belated recognition of Jackie’s genius seems to make his loss harder to bear, not easier. They didn’t want him when he was alive; he was ours then (I mean, ‘of us’); what do they want with him now? Our Jackie, who could find the romance in ‘burned-out cars’ and make a line like this sound hauntingly beautiful, through the grace of the melody and the tenderness of his vocal. Who could recognise that in the midst of death, we are in life: ‘A flower struggles through the steel’.

Part of me feels he’s merely a bandwagon for these Guardian or BBC dilettantes, hostages to the Zeitgeist, I call them, to jump on until the next thing comes along. You know the type, the people who, two records down the line, ‘discover’ the Fleet Foxes after the publicist has got to them and cut their hair, trimmed their beards, made them more palatable to the masses. Oh and after they’ve won a clutch of awards. Or who adore ‘The Wire’ because it’s so true to life, so real, having never been to Baltimore or anywhere similar, but who nevertheless feel qualified to pass judgement from their town houses in Kensington and Chelsea. (But, even if they had been there, they would have been booked into a four-star hotel in an upmarket neighbourhood, by some flunky at the office, taken cabs everywhere – God forbid that they should be exposed to public transport or to a millimetre of the seedy underbelly of the city.) They need everything validated by a critic in a paper or some style guru before they can like it themselves. Never really sure of their own opinions, they cite other people’s to vindicate their tastes. To quote Ray Davies (well, you know me) singing about the same phenomenon at a different time: ‘Your style, your views/Straight from The London Illustrated News/You speak your mind/Once you have read it in The Times’ (‘Who Do You Think You Are?’). My sister would cite (and has cited) those who suddenly thought Pulp were cool once ‘Common People’ became a hit, at the time when the rest of us believed they had become a parody of themselves, revisiting and rehashing something they’d done much better before. Perhaps they’re the sort who talk about iconic images. An icon is an image, you idiots. Who are always up to date with the latest fashions (what is current in nail design) and can spout designers at your blank face. To them, being hip is the ultimate goal. Yes, I’m selfish. I don’t want them to have him. They’re immune to the realness of Jackie because their lives are so effortfully ersatz. Their albeit fleeting interest devalues him somehow. But I suppose that appreciation is appreciation regardless of how someone got there and I know that there are genuine admirers among the journalists out there who’ve liked him for years and haven’t simply dropped in for one album or one gig, then hitched their horses to the next wagon.

I’m not saying it’s a crime to start liking something late in the day – I’ve just got into the Kinks so I’m pretty far behind the times. But at least I recognise I’m late. Oh, I think you know what I’m saying.

And I don’t really want Jackie to be considered alongside the ranks of those who become posthumously famous because this would put him in the same company as Eva Cassidy, whose anodyne, passionless versions of beautiful songs leave me cold, and Jeff Buckley, talented I’m sure but rather a one-trick pony. Jackie deserves a more discerning audience.

two tiny selves sleep (doll by doll)
Having been introduced to them early, I realise it is possible that I viewed (and heard) all music through the prism of Doll by Doll: ‘Eternal’, depthless ‘Grand Passion’, absolute extremes, that elemental quality that reaches into my very marrow: ‘That’s something my soul understands’ (‘Hey Sweetheart’). And maybe it ruined life for me by raising my expectations. But musically, how was I to fall prey to the retrogressive, rock-by-numbers of the Fearne Cotton age where everything is ‘amazing’ no matter how dated or derivative – from the Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays via Oasis to the Arctic Monkeys, Kasabian, the Kaiser Chiefs and the pomp and circumstance of Coldplay? How could I marvel at Ellie Goulding’s ‘voice’ when I didn’t hear a voice but an affected, watered-down whine, transforming a perfect pop song into a dreary dirge? But true talent transcends time, place, race, all those demographics. In ten years’ time, we’ll still be listening to Jackie but, hopefully, no one will remember Ellie Goulding. I say Ellie Goulding but it could just as easily be Lily Allen, Kate Nash, James Morrison, James Blunt and so forth. I’m not saying that collectively they have no talent, only that collectively they couldn’t hold a candle to Jackie.

‘marble city bar’
Listen to the extraordinarily powerful live version with the long introduction in which Jackie builds our anticipation by punctuating the story in which he recognises his own arrogance with the beautiful thrashing of his guitar and singing ‘Kilkenny, Kilkenny, Kilkenny’ each time he mentions the place as if it were an instruction to the audience: ‘Kill Kenny!’ Sublime crescendo. Such vehemence. Unforgettable. He could make believers of us all.

'midwinter in a minor key’
Listening to One Long Cold Morning, I can't help but feel that these songs were written, if not post-diagnosis, at least with the presentiment that all was not well. There’s a sense of assessment, acceptance, an ineffable sadness and an air of inevitable adieu, although this is all leavened with humour as ever.

music in ‘the word’
Pleased with the free CD. Although I would have chosen completely different songs to represent Jackie, the Twitter response shows that these will work just as well. It’s simply a testament to the breadth and quality of his output. Previously, I only had ‘Poortoun’ and ‘Another Man’s Rain’ live and, while I’ve been the first to champion Jackie’s peerless live performances, the studio versions, particularly of the former, do allow for nuances and delicacy that don’t always fully translate live. ‘Universal Blue’, on the other hand, sounds almost cheerful as if Jackie’s reached a point of philosophical resignation, a world away from the particularly trenchant rendition I’m used to on Deep in the Heart of Nowhere, in which each word is bitten off with venom: bleak, raw and uncompromising and as a result, heart-rending (or heart-rendering as a friend puts it – perhaps we should all have our hearts rendered in the first instance as it means ‘to apply a coat of plaster or cement directly to’; it would make these exit wounds easier to bear). Some songs, which are essentially the same as on a previous release, like ‘Men in Prison’, have a different (and in this instance, more poignant) resonance in this new context (of the CD and of its occasion). The sauntering swing of ‘Night Lilies’ matches the bad boy Jackie of old – ‘I live among lost men with winding down lives/I sleep on their sofas and feel up their wives’. Typically, Jackie manages to be clever, irreverent, honest, funny and profound.

I would have definitely included one of the following three tracks though: ‘Shadow in My Eye’, for its stripped-back simplicity and drama or the epic saga of ‘Call Mother a Lonely Field’, with Jackie’s voice omnipotent, the guitar answering the fourth line of the verse, like sunlight glittering on water. Jackie was an alchemist with the guitar. He could turn all to gold. [In a previous blog, I said he was a one-man choir but, with a guitar, he was a one-man orchestra. On these tracks, there are other instruments and backing vocals – the sound is full but, solo live, it would seem as if there were phantom musicians on the stage, playing alongside him; difficult to believe that he alone could create such a variety of sound.] Or ‘The Garden’, the reward of the sweeping chorus held off till the end, keeps a promise made by the verse; like wrestling through a dark tangle of briars to discover the perfect rose, or driving through the night and hearing Grieg’s ‘Morning’ from Peer Gynt at a resplendent dawn, the sad resignation of the words mitigated by the stirring melody, the message a reminder to us all.

We only ever get one rose in our overgrown garden and this is it.

words in ‘the word’
Informative and sensitive, Paul Du Noyer is obviously a longterm Jackie aficionado. I never knew Jackie’s real name was Alan Moffatt. Doesn’t have quite the same ring.

I was surprised by what Deborah had to say about fans (as if we were an amorphous mass proliferating discontent): ‘There was this view from fans that they almost wanted to see him suffering. They wanted to see him get wildly drunk … because that was their image of who they wanted.’ I don't think any fan of Jackie’s would want him to suffer in any way, for any reason. Jackie didn’t seem the sort to believe all that ‘I must suffer for my art’ baloney. I don't think he had to go in search of trouble, conflict or drama to write about. As Deborah says herself, he could probably create something magical and insightful on his failure to mend a fence. Anything could be grist for the mill of his imagination. It’s possible I suppose that people who knew him well might have encouraged or colluded in over-indulgence but with no intent to harm I’m sure. We’re all adults, tortured, talented or not, responsible for ourselves in the long run. I’m saddened that Deborah would think like this, that it’s been part of her experience and hope that she is able to feel less bitter as time passes.

‘fairytales for hardmen’
If you hadn’t heard any Jackie and simply read all the tributes, you might be left with the impression that he was a dour character, hard-living, hard-drinking (well that part may be true) with a troubled past, whose focus was on loss, pain and loneliness, that all this doom-laden introspection would lead you to depression and despair when exactly the opposite is the case. Jackie’s music isn’t like a Ken Loach movie, all gritty realism and futility (although these aren’t absent); it’s incredibly uplifting and joyful. Jackie has faced his demons, recognised and/or conquered them, with humour and grace. There’s wisdom, understanding, acceptance, even triumph. The music leads us into the light. I have to be grateful that we got as much of Jackie as we did, that he was so creative, so prolific, that he shared his heart and soul through his music and so allowed us all a glimpse of glory.

easter
Planning on joining the Botley motley crew for the get-together in Easter to celebrate and remember Jackie with like minds. This’ll be my first time. I’m sure there are people who can't conceive of going when they’re used to Jackie being there with them but I’m hoping it will help to share experiences, memories and emotions, walk, talk and explore.

some solace from Swinburne
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no man lives forever,
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.

Kast-off Kinks Live February 2012

Went to see the Kast-off Kinks last week, with some reservations. I’d tried to watch a few YouTube clips but most of them sounded like a giant singalong, with the audience attempting to drown out the band. As a very recent Kinks fan, I had never been to see them live and didn’t know whether I could bear to hear someone else sing in place of Ray or Dave, who have such unique voices. I was ready to be disappointed but I had to go because they were playing a little club just a couple of miles down the road. (Thanks to Pete Feenstra for booking them and the magnificent Colin Blunstone at the Beaverwood, our great local venue.)

As we waited for one of our party to arrive, my sister spotted Mick Avory standing by the T-shirt stand and was brave enough to ask for a photo and engage him in conversation. What a nice guy and he really doesn’t look that much different to when he was in the band. Great to hear that infamous, deadpan South London voice. So down to earth. Saw Jim Rodford in the interval. I did what I normally do when I encounter anyone semi-famous, acted like I hadn’t seen either of them. Unfortunately, in ordering my drinks, I was blocking Jim from his, so sister chatted to him meanwhile. Friendly guy.



I expected them to play all the obvious 60s and 70s hits (and they did) and a few of the more popular songs from the Kinks live repertoire. I was resigned to not hearing ‘Village Green Preservation Society’, for instance. I was wrong and very pleasantly surprised that they played this, ‘Muswell Hillbillies’ and ‘Better Things’. It was great to hear a live band play those songs and brilliant that someone who will probably never get to see the Kinks live, will still get to see a band play the songs, complete with amusing stories from their various experiences of playing with the Kinks, combined with their obvious appreciation and respect for the material. And yes, Dave Clark doesn’t play the guitar like Dave or sound like Ray but he has his own take on things and it’s pretty good. Plus they vary it by sharing out the lead vocals between Dave, Jim and Ian Gibbons – even Mick comes to the front to sing ‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion’ – he can carry a tune and performs it well and with humour.

Of course, we did see Dave play with a band last year, which was incredibly special, incomparable, but at that time, we’d been Kinks fans for less than two months so, although devoted, we still had 30+ years of material to catch up with; now we’re much more familiar with all the songs. And the songs are something else.

Of course there were die-hard Kinks fans there and then the people we were with who couldn’t name a single Kinks song when pushed, who’d never been to see live music before, one of whom informed me that the singer had played with the Beach Brothers. Yes. That’d be after he left the Isley Boys then. Bless. They loved it too.

Stole the setlist after (as I did for Colin Blunstone the previous week) – they'd planned to play ‘Death of a Clown’ but didn’t. Would have liked to have heard some Dave songs – ‘Strangers’ or ‘Love Me Till the Sun Shines’. Or some of the 80s numbers: ‘Yo Yo’ or ‘Art Lover’. And why no ‘I’m Not Like Everybody Else’? Nevertheless, the whole thing was tremendous fun. The singalong bits were nicely managed by Jim and not overwhelming. And did we dance! I'd still give anything to see Ray and Dave play together but really refreshing to see a few ex-Kinks get on with it, without punch-ups or egos to distract them. Highly recommended.

For more info on the Kast-offs, where to catch them live, etc., see http://kastoffkinks.co.uk/.

X-Raying ‘X-Ray’: Part 3: ‘Lost between tomorrow and yesterday/Between now and then’

I’ve written I don't know how many words and still barely scratched the surface, let alone exposed the exoskeleton of the story. But, if I go on much longer, my appraisal will be longer than the book itself so this is it.

I’ll summarise the points I’ve made already and add a few more that pique my interest.

First, the subterfuge
Ray toys with his readers. Crafty and a natural wordsmith – he is able to seem to be saying something and its complete opposite at the same time. In a sense, with the characters and personas he’s created, either in his songs, this book, on stage, he’s always hiding in plain sight. He’s a chameleon, changing with the times but sometimes deliberately against the spirit of the times so that, instead of blending into the background, he’s thrown into relief (for instance, with the Meisterwerk, ‘Village Green Preservation Society’). But, although not entirely candid, he does acknowledge his own errors or faults, is not uncritical of himself.

He loves to dramatise (or melodramatise, if I can invent such a word) hence all the devices – the possessions, the dreams, the fantasies, the dark clouds, the strange context he creates in which to set his tale, of the mysterious Corporation – which form a series of veils between the reader, the reality and himself, a smokescreen. It’s a little frustrating, like those TV docudramas that are neither one thing nor the other where dramatic licence is used to spice things up. But, although it might seem like an essay in distraction, we’re always being told something. On to …

‘The people in grey …’
The faceless Corporation a symbol of the establishment he fears and society’s power to eradicate individuality (the ubiquitous us and them), the theme of ‘I’m Not Like Everybody Else’ and ‘Here Come the People in Grey’. There’s the fear that Ray will be the butterfly broken upon the wheel, the beautiful, fragile wings of his idiosyncratic talent and his delicate mental state torn to shreds in the blind, relentless cogs of the machine.

Of course, even at the time that Ray wrote X-Ray (1995), the notion of ‘Big Brother’ retained all the negative connotations it had in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, of a society constrained and restricted by the attentions of a totalitarian state, a nightmare world where your every move was under surveillance. Since the advent of reality TV and Big Brother, in particular, in which members of the public gleefully and voluntarily subject their most private moments to the scrutiny of millions of viewers 24/7, it has become something that certain individuals actually aspire to as a quick route to fame, a privilege rather than an ordeal – hard to warrant I know. These days, celebrity is an end in itself, and it doesn’t seem to matter how you get there, for instance, by being clueless, shallow and loud (The Only Way Is Essex – apologies if I’m wrong about this because I’ve never watched the show). But, although RD’s paranoia about the tyrannical Corporation seems outdated now, the advent of the nanny state in the UK means that the notion of state-administered medication is actually quite plausible although any free medication’s ok by me.

Sex, love and so on
While Dave is happy to acknowledge a bisexual past (although often termed ‘bisexual’, this only means that he experimented with sex with men in the 60s not that he actually has any sexual contact with men now that he’s in his 60s), Ray is much more cagey and generally more of a private person so we have to make do with hints and suggestions. He might be leading us up the garden path but the flora and fauna we encounter en route are never less than fascinating, although they may very well be figments of his imagination. Was the mysterious man in Marianne Faithfull’s room really Ray? He’s a provocative little minx, forever leading us astray.


In the My Generation documentary, Ray admits that Kinks songs aren’t used to chat up girls because the ‘sexual overtones are not wholly masculine’. I’ll say. There aren’t many ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’-type exhortations in Ray’s lyrics.

An aside: Ever audacious, Ray is not afraid of tackling the taboo of paedophilia in the strangely touching ‘Art Lover’, with his usual humour and understanding, typically destabilising the preconceptions he set up with the title, the ‘Come to Daddy’ refrain and ‘Jogging in the park is my excuse/To look at all the little girls’ with ‘She's just a substitute/For what's been taken from me’, leading to YouTube comments that this is the point of view of a father who’s lost custody of his own little girl(s), etc. rather than a pervert in the park. So Ray takes us from perversion to subversion in two lines, which could also refer to his own loss of innocence. So clever. But what about the rather arch introduction and the shades and flat cap he dons to role-play the live version? Not to mention the saucy tongue action (2:28, after the shades line) that my sister pointed out to me – too lascivious for a father/daughter relationship. But his delivery is so tender. How does he make that creepy uncle look sexy?

Power and control
RD probably rails against the intrusion and the hegemony of the Corporation because he is something of a control freak himself. From early athletic meets to relationships (familial and otherwise) and band politics, he needs to prevail. This is evident in his reaction to school.

‘I was not particularly bright in the sense that I could only absorb information that interested me.’
Most of us are like this. Of course it’s easier to retain knowledge on a subject that appeals to you (for me at the moment that would be the Kinks). It doesn’t make Ray special, it makes him normal, the very thing he claims he is not. But we are all judged by the standards of the time. These don’t fit everyone as we all have different abilities and skills. He’s not the only child to have felt like a misfit. If children were allowed to do only the things that interested them, we’d have an education system where kids learn animation before they learn to read and write because kids like cartoons. Oh hang on, that's what we do have since the new powers that be have deemed that school must be enjoyable at all times. No one would study Shakespeare or Dickens because the language is too difficult or the texts too long. And they’d all end up with qualifications in nail technology or something equally fatuous.
He also makes a comment about his eccentric spelling (and later pronunciation – ‘Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues’, in which Ray sings ‘schizophrena’ each time). Hmm. I’m an editor by trade – there are two ways to spell words – the wrong way and the right way. There has to be consistency in education. ‘Schooldays’ is slightly more even-handed.

‘I could read, but I wasn’t allowed to read what I wanted.’
There’s always the library, honey. I read library books all the time as a child, some wildly inappropriate. I left primary school, having read most of Alexandre Dumas and the James Bond novels, pretty racy stuff for an eleven-year-old.
‘I had to decide whether to play the game their way, and succeed or fail according to their rules, or go my own way. I decided to settle my own fate.’
Ray opts not to participate in the Eleven Plus exam that could determine the course of his life. A bold move of rebellion or the avoidance of failure? It allows him the illusion of power at least.


Attention-seeking missile
‘This was my first victory over my newly arrived adversary sleeping in the cot by the kitchen table. All the pain I was suffering was inconsequential. I was once again the centre of attention.’
Three-year-old Ray throws himself out the door in order to wrest the family’s focus away from his baby brother.

‘I tried to toughen up my resistance to any further injuries by tapping away at my legs with a hammer. … it was … a horrible attempt to manipulate my parents’ emotions.’
Ray admits that this was really a cry for attention. We’re lucky that he found other, less painful ways to grab the limelight from the interloper as he’s evidently prepared to suffer to gain a little leverage. I don’t even want to think about the suicide attempts. Just grateful that Ray was as inept as the man he writes about in ‘Life Goes On’.

Fatalism
There’s a sense of fatalism in the book, with Ray sometimes wanting things to end before they begin so that all he experiences is the anticipation of possible bliss before it has a chance to turn into betrayal or despair. Of course this is written in retrospect – and we all see so much more clearly then. He reacts like this to certain defining moments or points of perfect happiness in his life, after which things usually alter for the worse. [I’m a great proponent of delayed gratification and I rather suspect that Ray is too. Dave would favour instant gratification. No surprise that this led to conflict between the two. I’m the sort of person who finishes their ice cream cone after everyone else or saves the thing they like best till last. But, of course, sometimes you can wait too long and lose your chance. Your ice cream has melted. Is the anticipation of desire better than the gratification of desire?]

‘I seemed to know everything I needed to know about her at that moment and actually considered walking away. It was almost as if this could have been the beginning and end right there, which would result in a perfect relationship full of thoughts of what might have been.’
Ray writes this of his first date with Rasa, when she has her back to him before they meet, the implication being that their union was less than the perfect one he envisaged.

‘Love like that is something beautiful but like cancer, it’s almost better to have it cut out before it can do any damage.’
Ray obviously does not agree with Tennyson that ‘Tis better to have loved and lost/Than never to have loved at all.’

‘England had won the World Cup and the Kinks were Number 1 in the charts [with ‘Sunny Afternoon’, this promo shot on anything but a sunny afternoon]. I wished that I had a machine-gun so that I could kill us all and everything would stop there.’
See what I mean about dramatic? We’ve all felt something like this though. I’m naturally nostalgic. I was filled with regret when I had to leave primary school. Nostalgia, a term coined for a type of homesickness, was originally considered an illness, and if the past really is a different country, it could still be accurate. Ray doesn’t let an appreciation of the past stop him from moving forward and urging others to do likewise.

‘Here's hoping all the days ahead/Won't be as bitter as the ones behind you/Be an optimist instead/And somehow happiness will find you/Forget what happened yesterday/I know that better things are on the way.’

Anyway I digress, what I mean to say is that I’m very glad that Ray didn’t have a machine-gun in 66.

‘Whatever else, that was the year RD’s life came to an end. He dreamed that he had been killed on that warm autumn afternoon as he cycled down the country lane. Perhaps he had actually died after the White City concert?’
‘He stood at the White City and swore that he was “F...... sick of the whole thing”... . He was “Sick up to here with it”.’
Management and financial wrangles and marital strife brought Ray to the brink in 73; he announced he was quitting, leading to …

‘Christmas day spent on the Circle line with a six-pack of Kronenbourg.’
Oh, Ray. The book imagines that the Kinks ended in 73 and although Dave might say ‘Imagination’s Real’, luckily for us, it wasn’t in this instance.

So what does Ray think about the rest of their career? Admittedly, there were highs and lows in the years that followed but the work speaks for itself (as Ray often says, his life is in the songs, subject of a future blog) and is testament to his genius and the hugely creative tension of the Kinks. As a recent convert (konvert?) to Kinkdom, each day I find a new favourite track (today it’s ‘Million Pound Semi-Detached’, a whole life in one song, as usual, with what should be hopeful horns sounding strangely mournful even as they valiantly try to counterpoint the poignant melody of Ray’s verse, but somehow end up generating additional pathos; the seemingly mundane subject matter at odds with the romanticism of the refrain but you know, not really as Ray’s always so blessedly profound) or see a long-lost promo (like the recently unearthed 'Sitting in the Midday Sun', God, they were beautiful boys! Or girls?) or watch a live performance on YouTube that I’ve never seen before.

I’ve read X-Ray twice now (once the lines and once between the lines as there’s often more subtext than text) and remain as enthralled as I was to start with, some of my questions unanswered but my senses sharpened and honed, my curiosity engaged and intact.

Inconclusion (as it’s inconclusive)
We’re left with a series of intriguing contradictions ….
Sometimes Ray claims he has no regrets, other times, he declares:
‘If I had my life to do over, I would change every single thing I have done.’

The book reflects its author, not just his image but the sinews beneath, what he’s made of (neuroses, psychoses, paranoia, narcissism but always talent and wit), what he’s made up ("I am the ‘Imaginary Man’"): simply fascinating and, like Gilbert Osmond in James's The Portrait of a Lady, ‘unfathomable’.

But, as for:
‘The past is gone; it's all been said.’
I hope Ray can bring himself to revisit the rest of his past soon and deliver the next instalment.