Ray Davies Live 2012: The Canterbury Tale

Canterbury and Croydon shows are missing from this flyer

So, for those unable to make it to a solo Ray show, here’s one he made earlier. Spoiler alert for those yet to attend one. I went to four (which I thought excessive until I met fans who were doing many more). They were all similar and all different, the shows not the fans – no, actually both were.

The duo Dead Flamingoes (James Walbourne and Kami Thompson) open most nights. James Walbourne is in the Pretenders line-up, with Ray’s ex, Chrissie Hynde so perhaps that’s how they connected.

I’m not sure that this name is right for them. It makes them sound more like a comedy double act than anything with serious intent. I wonder if it were adopted as a joke. I suppose Dying Flamingoes would be worse. It certainly doesn’t do their country-style songs, lovely harmonies, passionate and intricate guitar work justice. I particularly like the song they tend to start with, ‘Bonnie Portmore’; it reminds me of early Fleet Foxes. Having listened to some tracks on the net, I can report that the DFs sound better live: louder, more committed.

James Walbourne wrestles his guitar, with a pained expression, for all the world as if it’s a recalcitrant cat which has decided it no longer wants to be picked up and is doing everything it can, including scratching, to escape his arms. It takes all his effort to contain it. But he sure can play that cat.

At Nottingham, he appeared alone. I was disappointed that he didn’t introduce himself as ‘a Dead Flamingo’.

This review will be too long if I include all the shows we saw so I’ll start with the first one we went to, also the first of the tour, and see how I go.

Ray Davies and Band at the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury 30 September 2012

Here (and later at the Royal Albert Hall), there were some slow handclaps when Ray failed to materialise exactly on schedule, a few more elderly audience members possibly being better accustomed to the rigid timetabling of the residential care home than the vagaries and unpredictability of a rock concert. No, seriously, they weren't that old, just a bit impatient.

Ray’s entrance follows a particularly annoying piece of frantic music with revved-up trumpet blasts on the otherwise dreary warm-up tape (which actually makes me want to blow my brains out on fifth hearing at Canterbury, and so enter the territory of a Kami Thompson song about suicide, ‘Hold Your Fire’).

After the applause has died down, he says ‘That’s alright for Bill but what about me?’, initiating a second burst.

The shows follow a standard format, with variations on a theme, according to audience input and how Ray’s feeling. Usually Ray performs some songs unplugged, with Bill Shanley before the rest of the band make their appearance.

Nobody dances or even gets up and I start to feel like a volatile patient in a hospital ward, strapped to the bed, who keeps trying to rise, except the restraints are regrettably self-imposed. Why do I do this to myself?

By the second show, I’m able to recognise most songs by Ray’s introductions.

Ray starts with:

This Is Where I Belong (The line ‘Tell me now if you want me here to stay’ warrants crowd confirmation, but at many of these shows, this is only realised by the front two rows so that intimate connection isn’t made. It's a beautiful song, sensitively performed.)

Audience participation is de rigueur on the choruses of the next two numbers, reconfigured as vaudeville turns here:
Autumn Almanac (‘Roast beef on Sundays/Alright’ usually accompanied by a line such as ‘I take it you’re all meat eaters then?’, the response in Croydon prompting him to alter it to ‘Nut roast on Sundays’)

Dedicated Follower of Fashion (Introduced as an old English folk song, occasionally sung in the style of Johnny Cash, along with the reminder that ‘That’s dedicated, not medicated’.)

Admittedly, some Kinks songs Ray always treated as singalongs – see these 1973 performances of ‘Dedicated’ and ‘Lola' – and the audience was often slow to pull its weight. I really don’t mind it on the choruses but sometimes, given a little encouragement, it gets out of hand and you can imagine yourself at some kind of old-style Cockney ‘knees-up’. Plus Ray’s in fine voice and I would rather hear him.

In a Moment (Introduced as a new song for all the insomniacs out there and I say again, 2007 is not new, honey, when you have an album in the pipeline, still lovely though. Ray mentions that the album, Working Man’s Café, was recorded in Nashville. I wish he would play more of his solo material live – The Real World, Vietnam Cowboys, so many of these songs deserve attention. Dave mixes it up more at his Satsang shows but then he’s assured of a receptive group of people who don't only know the Kinks 60s and 70s hits – I’m afraid that Ray has made the right assessment of the majority of the people here tonight.)

See My Friends (Ray’s ‘gay’ song. Still defeats me as to why when he’s written many ‘gayer’ ones.)

The Kinks as the audience remembers them

Sunny Afternoon (Ray claims he wrote this as a joke. Cue more singalong and Ray gets to say the line that he’s been using since the early 70s, ‘If you don't know it, learn it’.)

Dead End Street (The band come on and join in during this and sound pretty excellent and things start to get rowdy for the next three songs.)

Time to introduce the band who are absolutely excellent. Both Dave and Ray are adept at choosing people to accompany them. We have Bill Shanley on lead guitar, former Kink Ian Gibbons on keyboards (and accordion), Richard Nolan on bass and
Damon Wilson on drums.

Till the End of the Day (Still sounds so vital.)

Where Have All the Good Times Gone? (A crowd pleaser whether with Dave, Ray or the Kast-offs.)

I'm Not Like Everybody Else (Expected more reaction from the crowd but this song doesn’t have the same resonance with UK audiences as it does in the US where it was featured in The Sopranos and found a new lease of life live.)

Waterloo Sunset at Marlowe Theatre

Waterloo Sunset (A request from the stands that Ray immediately obliges unlike any of mine.) (Describing this as a secret song that he didn’t want to share, it doesn’t seem to matter where he plays it, in front of how many people, the Olympics closing ceremony, for instance, it always retains a certain atmosphere of intimacy. Invoking us to do the ‘shalalas’ makes us feel part of something great, this triumphant paean to London. He usually follows the lines ‘As long as they gaze on Waterloo sunset/They are in paradise’ with ‘And so am I’ and somehow manages to sound completely sincere each time and his voice is perfect, delicate, evocative.)

Lola era Ray

Too Much on My Mind (On a par with Dave’s version at Satsang.)

Mentions his See My Friends collaboration, ‘managing other people’s egos’, etc. when introducing the next song and meeting a pretty blonde in cowboy boots, Lucinda Williams, who chose to cover it.

A Long Way from Home (points out that this was directed at Dave, a way of saying ‘Why don’t you just fuck off?’ at which point I call out ‘He loves you too’ but he doesn’t hear me – probably just as well. The lyrics and melody capture Ray’s wistful regret.)

Lola (Bill Shanley reproduces Dave’s guitar riff. The crowd oblige with backing vocals.)

It would be impossible to reflect the sheer diversity of the Kinks output in one show plus we would need more instruments so Ray chooses to showcase a couple of albums here: Muswell Hillbillies and Sleepwalker. These slightly lesser-known songs are a little taster of what’s out there. He could choose two different albums each night and I would still want more.

So James Walbourne (also from Muswell Hill, accompanies Ray for:

Muswell Hillbilly

and

Oklahoma USA at Marlowe Theatre

Oklahoma USA (Great to hear both of these, one jaunty, Ray’s voice way more tuneful than it is on the rather flat, whiny LP version, the guitars ramping it up into a good ole country romp, the other a beautifully plangent ballad about how going to ‘the pictures’ allowed Ray’s sister Rose to escape the drudgery of factory life. Music helped the Davies boys evade a similar fate.)

Misfits (I wasn’t expecting Ray to play this and find it really moving.)

Full Moon (Complete with howls from Ray and enthused reception from the Americans at least.) 

Come Dancing (Ray describes his sisters' sorties to the Palais and claims one would return and tell him ‘I came dancing tonight, Ray’.) 

You Really Got Me (Ray talks about the blues genesis of the song and wanting to be Johnny Lee Hooker, a difficult aspiration for a ‘honky’ from North London, then has Ian plink the notes on the piano as Ray himself did for Dave. I imagine this to be a little like the scene in ‘Close Encounters’ when they play pipe tones to try to communicate with the spacecraft – Ray strikes them on the old upright in the famous front room, then when Dave plays them on the guitar, it’s the moment when the spacecraft repeats the notes at a deafening volume, blowing the glass in the window. An understanding, an accord, a momentous breakthrough. Ray says something like ‘and Dave picked up his guitar and played the Kinks into rock and roll history’.)

All Day and All of the Night (Let’s rearrange those chords again and have another hit. Mission accomplished.) 

Low Budget (A new one to many here tonight but a staple of the Kinks live shows since the late 70s as in this 79 version in which Dave lets rip on the guitar. And who can fail to be entertained by Ray’s lyrics: ‘Even my trousers are giving me pain/They were reduced in a sale so I shouldn't complain/ They squeeze me so tight so I can't take no more/They're a size 28 but I take 34’. I love these lines as it always gives Ray a chance to flaunt his arse. Let's face it, any excuse. But if you’ve got it …. And we all join in on: ‘At least my hair is all mine/My teeth are my own/But everything else is on permanent loan’ – well, not all but we devotees in the front.)

Before he leaves us, Ray comes to shake hands with some of us in the front row. I resist the temptation to pull him off the stage for a hug.

Tired of Waiting for You or Tired of You Waiting for Me …

Hung around fruitlessly at the Stage Door afterwards but feeling like a predator lying in wait for prey made me uncomfortable, as if I were about to ambush him, especially when I learned that Ray had managed to avoid us. It wasn’t that hard – we’re pretty pathetic predators. It was like sending a couple of rabbits to capture a lion. That’s what happens when you pit amateurs against experts. This whole fan thing is so weird. Now, having read that he gets tired of seeing the same old people, I’m anxious not to become one of them although I expect there’s something reassuring when you look out from the stage and spot some familiar faces.

See Our Friends

Ray has described his songs as his friends and what we discovered when we saw the those original BBC4 programmes on the Kinks, Ray and Dave, about a year ago, is what some of the Canterbury crowd find out tonight, that they’re our friends too (or at least nodding acquaintances that we’ve always wanted to know better), that we’ve assimilated them in the collective unconscious, they’re part of our history, and though dressed in different clothes, they’re instantly familiar and it warms our hearts to see/hear them again.

So all in all an exciting show. Ray’s energy is astonishing. I can't understand why reviewers complain about him still doing scissor jumps or leaps. God, do everything you can until you can no longer do it. I won't sum up yet as I have three gigs to go … it’ll be a marathon rather than a sprint.

[All 2012 images and video are mine.]

 

Dave Davies: Unsung Guitar Hero

An appraisal and appreciation of Dave’s untrammelled and unparalleled live performances with the Kinks, with examples of how his playing expands the horizon of a song until the possibilities seem limitless at which point he’s able to bring it home to a flawless finish, like allowing a wild pony to have its head, run free, all the time keeping a hold of it so that he can rein it back in when it’s time. 

‘Davies' guitar was the dynamo that drove the Kinks. Brash, aggressive and entirely unforgettable, his chord progressions on their early hits have become a rock & roll rite of passage for any aspiring guitarist; "You Really Got Me" has alone launched countless garage bands.’ (Rolling Stone)

I’m not a muso, never learned an instrument, never had a piano in the house or all that jazz. For me, having a piano rather contradicts the Davies' working-class roots.[It reminds me of what a friend once said to me. Her grandparents had servants. I expressed surprise, thinking they must have been rich but she averred that her background was working class and that ‘everyone had servants in those days’. Anyone see anything wrong with her logic here? She certainly didn’t. My grandparents were her grandparents’ servants. Oh dear, starting to sound like one of those Monty Python sketches, 'You were lucky...'.] My parents thought a useful extra-curricular activity would be getting us to drag the washing down to the launderette every Saturday and bring home fish and chips for lunch. Forget about doing something we enjoyed or acquiring a useful skill. Anyway, I’m only trying to explain that I love music while not always understanding how particular effects are achieved, or which guitar is which (although the names are so evocative – Harmony Meteor – who wouldn’t want to take that home?) and I can distinguish a guitar from a bass guitar (even though Dave thinks I can't count beyond three, that’s only when breathing) and recognise a Flying Vee. I respond to the emotion generated by how the instrument is played. But even I can tell that Dave is something of a virtuoso. Shel Talmy, interviewed recently, agrees.

FZ: How would you rate Dave [Davies] as a guitarist?

ST: I think he’s one of the more underrated guitarists there are. He was an extremely good guitarist.

FZ: He doesn’t quite get the credit that he deserves.

ST: Never, I don’t think he ever got the credit. His inventions of the solos and stuff, I mean, Jimmy Page did not play the solo on 'You Really Got Me’ which I’ve said about 5,000 times to people who insist that he did. The reason I used Jimmy on the Kinks stuff is because Ray didn’t really want to play guitar and sing at the same time. In fact, Jimmy was playing rhythm guitar.

(The more people mention this, even to deny it, the more robust the myth becomes somehow. And what did I just do?)

Ray admits that Dave’s contribution was vital, saying:

‘If Dave never plays another note, his performance on “You Really Got Me” will always give him a special place among guitar players. The sound was created in our parents’ living room and ended up being copied by nearly every rock guitar player in the world.’

And Ray asserts that what Dave brought to the band was ‘the angst, the energy and an incredible right hand’.

But it’s as if Ray’s always sidelining Dave’s influence to one particular song, or sound, suggesting by this quiet insistence that that was the only thing he ever did. What about the electric guitar riff on ‘Lola’? Then, when the Kinks went ‘rock’ in the late 1970 to 1980s, a move that attracted a whole raft of new fans, particularly in the US, it was Dave’s playing that led the way and his charisma as a guitarist that helped to make the Kinks such a terrific experience live. And it sounds like it was also his initiative – he says in ‘Mystikal Journey’ that he wanted

‘to get back to a more fundamental basic rock thing’

and this was seconded by their new record label honcho, Clive Davis, who advised Ray that

‘Sometimes to move forward you have to take a step backwards.’

This was after the concept album shows, which looked like great fun to me. Ray has said:

‘Oddly enough on the shows that had themes to them, the band was much tighter as they were playing to cues’

but unfortunately there’s no good footage of these shows on YouTube.

To begin with, discovering them in the 2010s, I thought the 80s songs were too generic, too obvious, but a few listens down the line, I now appreciate all the layers of influences, irony, humour, intensity, the riffs that sound vaguely familiar, as if they’ve always existed, have entered your subconscious via some other means and can recognise that they’re still imbued with Ray’s idiosyncratic inventiveness. Perhaps it was a direction that appealed more to Dave than Ray but it became another means to demonstrate Ray’s versatility as a songwriter. And popularity in the US is really what kept the Kinks going despite NBC’s recent shameful omission of Ray at the Olympics closing ceremony. You only have to watch Ray’s ‘Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’ speech to see how important this support was to them.

But, more than providing the band with rock credibility, Dave’s enthusiasm was infectious, even when he and Ray were having difficulties, the enjoyment he exudes when on stage playing, is almost tangible (witness he and Jim Rodford dancing, running and jumping about as they play in this version of ‘Catch Me Now I’m Falling’, they’re so obviously having the time of their lives), his extraordinary talent and innovation added depths to songs live that were never reached in the studio versions. Unlike (the) Eagles, for instance, whose concerts sound just like the recordings, with the Kinks, nothing is ever that set in stone (except some of Ray’s jokes – bless, ‘If you don't know it, learn it’). Dave hardly ever plays the same solo the same way or even the same solo, if you know what I mean because he can do anything with a guitar. His ability means that he’s spoilt for choice. Why stick to the same old thing? He constantly improvises and invents so that every song played live is a work in progress. Fluid. Unrepeatable. Inimitable. He can make it scream, sing, cry, take us in any direction. Dave plays the guitar like it’s an extension of his body, like it’s completely natural to him. It doesn’t ever look like something he has to work at.

It makes each concert an adventure into the unknown as Dave is constantly upping the ante. In the 90s, his guitar work rejuvenates, transforms and beefs up ‘I’m Not Like Everybody Else’ for a new generation. It sounds like a completely new song. Perhaps that’s why Ray sings the lead although he originally wrote it for Dave’s voice.

[Admittedly, I’ve never been to a Kinks concert, having only liked them a year or so; I can only judge from videos on YouTube and people’s recollections. With the Kinks, I didn’t so much come late to the party as turn up not only after it had finished but when the people holding it had got married, had kids, watched these kids grow up, moved into a retirement community and sold the house to fund their care in old age. I arrived in time for the new owners’ housewarming do.]

This mutability might also hint at a lack of discipline, another recurring feature of some Kinks gigs. A friend saw them at a festival in 71 I think and they only played three songs before Ray poured beer over the musicians at the front and then stormed off stage. In the Jon Savage biography, he mentions a gig in the US in 1965 where the Kinks

‘played one song – ‘You Really Got Me’ – for the whole act’.

You take the rough with the smooth. No wonder their managers were sometimes at their wits’ end.

In 1979, Dave invests ‘Superman’ with rock kudos, conducting a guitar masterclass from about three and a half minutes in, fleshing out a fairly ordinary pop song so that it sounds entirely different, he and Jim on backing vocals. (I always thought the female backing vocalists were unnecessary.) There’s nothing better than hearing the counterpoint of the brothers’ vocals. It’s even better when they share the lead, changing for the verse, the chorus or the bridge, as on ‘Arthur’ or ‘Artificial Man’. Dave’s vocals on the latter (very Ian Hunter-ish) surpass Ray’s, the aural equivalent of a colour segment in a black and white movie.

The dual vocal on this version of ‘Jukebox Music’, with Dave singing the lead works in a similar way, his pitch suiting perfectly and contributing that emotional edge. There’s something very special about the combination of their voices when they come together, blended like a good malt whisky, like on the chorus of ‘Hatred’ in this live rendition; Ray’s smile (2.09), Dave’s quick solo (3.25), a certain relish in the delivery of
‘Why don’t you just drop dead and don’t recover?’
(at 3.40) create utter magic.

‘Life Goes On’ 1977. How difficult it must be for Dave to accompany Ray’s vocal, its phrasing always changing, on guitar but he manages it, again with exquisite touch, so we can forgive a little ‘guitar face’.

When Dave is told to run with it, he extemporises with such talent and virtuosity, you wish all this was in the studio version. Thank God for YouTube. Rockpalast shows seem to bring out his inner guitar god, investing ‘Yo-Yo’, for instance, already a delicious diatribe, with an extra dimension, effectively changing the whole character of the song. The original’s relative resignation and restraint are ratcheted up to rage, with both Ray and Dave totally focused and committed. If they can play like this together, why would they ever want to stop? The whole climactic crescendo of sound is simply magnificent.

If looks could kill

But after watching this interview at the time of 'Scattered' (1993), I can see how Dave would never want to put himself in a similar situation again, where he’s literally frightened to speak, even to interject a frivolous comment, that it’s not worth the risk of Ray’s wrath, that look he gives him is so cutting and demoralising (see 1.17 to 1.29 for their awkward interaction). And yet, there’s affection there, in the video of the same song, when Ray sings

‘I feel older, I feel fatter’

and their exchange of smiles around two minutes in looks genuine but is it only for the benefit of the camera?

They would have to be willing/able to put aside their own past personal grievances and behave respectfully towards each other if there were ever to be a Kinks reunion. Although Dave is all about forgiveness, it’s one thing to forgive and another thing to put yourself in a position where you know you will have to exercise the muscle of forgiveness in advance.

Everybody’s waiting for the blog on Satsang 3 but I left everything I wrote in the hotel and have yet to get it back. It’s in transit. The gigs were great and we got to hear some tracks off Dave’s new album, very interesting, very varied – the five tracks we’ve heard so far (either live or as album mixes) are quite different. Dave still rocks, still emotes, still surprises. I don't know whether I’m allowed to divulge track titles yet.