Body. How much longer must we linger on, In this wonderland, In this unreal, And this is not our home what we are doing here, We are pure my love, we are energy, Things never change but we must move on, Through the galaxy, It is true my love. Distraction, Everywhere, Programmed people, Study the genetic tapes. Chorus: Who's in that body, Who's in that jail, Who's in there with you, Can we get bail, You're not your body, Though you treat it like gold, No you cannot deny it, Oh, we'll never get home, Who's in that body, A slave within time, Who's in that body. We are slaves of time and stranded here, In this sad, sad world, In this tragedy, This is the strangest place I've ever been, Is it real my love, Or is it fantasy, We cannot hide here forever, For we are pure my love, For we are energy, Decipher, magnetic code, DNA, Computer bank, 4, 1, 8. Chorus: Who's in that body, Who's in that jail, Who's in there with you, Can we get bail, You're not your body, Though you treat it like gold, No you cannot deny it, Oh, we'll never get home, Who's in that body, Trapped within time, You're in that body, Trapped within time. Written by: Dave Davies Published by: DABE Music Limited, London, 1981 So Dave gives us a somewhat strange lyric that seems to be speaking to the idea of a body as a prison... I guess the lyrics here may seem deep and meaningful to somebody, but I find them a bit goofy. The song though is pretty good... We get an uptempo rock track that rests on a fairly propulsive guitar riff. Again we seem to get a vocal that is mixed a little lower into the music, and probably for Dave's style of vocals that seems to work quite well, taking a little edge off it. We essentially just have verse, pre-chorus, chorus, twice. I like the melody of the main verse, and the pre-chorus has, again, a sort of Devo-like twist, where Dave delivers a semi-spoken, semi-robotic kind of vocal. The chorus works pretty well too. This is a pretty good song, that is typically unusual lyrically, to me at least. It works in the context of the album.
Too Serious. stereo mix (3:24), recorded Mar-Apr, 1981 at Konk Studios, Hornsey, London How much more do we need, Money, power and greed, Possessions steal your soul, ooh. Why are we so blind, An arrogant, thoughtless kind, We use our bodies and waste our time, ooh. Social difficulties, desperate politics, Disorders of the mind, Ooh. Life is a drag and it's too senous, I'm so much in love, But I'm too serious, The world is so sick, And I'm delirious. Morality bores me it's so serious, No minds of our own, And it's too serious, Governments lie and it's so curious. Too serious, Too serious, Too serious. Tell you what we need, We need less authority, A lot more honesty, ooh, I've been preached to all my life, I've listened till I could cry, But I don't need anymore, ooh, Now we must make a stand, To fight for the spirit in man, The future is in our hands, ooh. But life is a drag and it's too serious, I'm so much in love that I'm delirious, Life is so strange and it's mysterious, No minds of our own, And it's too serious, Morality bores me it's so serious, Governments lie and it's so curious. Too serious, Too serious, Too serious. Written by: Dave Davies Published by: DABE Music Limited, London, 1981 Lyrically we open with a valid observation, and then Dave kind of sidelines after a list of complaints into an idea that life is just too serious and that he is tired of morality, and apparently any form of moral guidelines are just too serious and interfere with his ability to express himself. Then we get to another government diss .....and to be fair it isn't just governments that lie. We open up with a fairly straight rock delivery. Then when we move into the vocals we have this kind of stuttering run up on the guitar with the vocal following the guitar. It's an uptempo feel and a thick eighties rock sound, and it comes across pretty well. The change comes in well, and adds a much needed variation. This isn't bad, but it feels a little monotonous to me.
Telepathy. stereo mix (3:36), recorded Mar-Apr, 1981 at Konk Studios, Hornsey, London Chorus: Telepathy For you and me, We can be A unity. It threads right through the airways, On a long magnetic tube, Then joins into your brainwaves, Sees everything you do, It is no science or miracle, There is no place to hide, Oh, when we have telepathy, There will be no more lies. Chorus: Telepathy For you and me, We can be A unity. Project electric fibres from your mind to the sky, Direct it to a Martian, And tell him why you cry, Or send it to the children on earth, They have no one, And alter your telepathy into magnetic sun. Chorus: Telepathy For you and me, We can be A unity. Mentally, Telepathy, We can be A unity. Feel my thoughts, Guide and surround you, Free your sorrow, Feed your soul, Heal tomorrow, No more shadows. Chorus: Telepathy For you and me, We can be A unity. Mentally, Telepathy, We can be A unity. Written by: Dave Davies Published by: DABE Music Limited, London, 1981 We open with a bang, and some crunchy guitar chugging. This track sounds very quirky early eighties pop/rock. I don't know why Devo is coming to mind. It just seems to share a certain quirk that I associate with Devo. I look at lyrics like this and think , wow, I wish I had some of what Dave was taking. Telepathy sounds like a bit of a curse to me, I don't think I need to know what people are thinking. I have a hard enough time keeping track of what I'm thinking. I certainly wouldn't want anyone reading my mind.... it's a mess. Musically we have a chunk chunk rhythm, with some nicely placed power chords that give it a bit of punch. The double time chugging on the verses works nicely to counterpoint the more drawn out vocal lines. Not a bad track. Again, it is unusual and seems very early eighties Dave.
Too serious seems like quite an accurate description of Dave's approach to lyric writing. Even though Ray seems to be overdoing the jokiness at times in this era, there's no prospect of Dave doing the same!
"Body" F***in' abaht! This is another of Dave's songs made up of verse and chorus fragments which seem to have no right to exist in the same song, yet somehow it hangs together nicely for me. I like the way the main riff switches between the initial slow beat, then the double-time tempo. The first part of the verse has a nice ascending/descending chord sequence. Then there is the bonkers pre-chorus section, and then a relatively sensible chorus - which possibly reminds me of another song but I can't pinpoint it. I love the screeching guitar bit at 4:00. I think the addition of the synths to Dave's sound is a real plus to this album, adding atmosphere, colour and quirkiness, and filling the sound out more. As for the lyrics - "Decipher, magnetic code, DNA, Computer bank, 4-1-8" might just be peak Dave word salad. "Too Serious" A sense of humour is also a good addition to this album compared to the previous one. A rock 'n' roll guitar riff to open, but the offbeat drums give it a twist. The revved-up verse section leads into a strange pre-chorus section with the popping synth sound, and then into the chorus - again these sections have no particular right to exist together but Dave makes it happen, while also managing to complete the bingo card of all his usual lyrical references in one song - in fact almost within the opening verse! "Telepathy" A touch of Ultravox in this one? A Flock of Seagulls? Very contemporary-sounding...new-wavey, synth-poppy. This one might get monotonous with the repetitive chorus, but the middle section comes along to add a much-needed change of atmosphere - particularly the female backing vocalist. Ends up as a rather nice 80s pop confection, moving further away from the hard rock sound. You could say that musically it is heading towards "Planet Earth" while lyrically heading in the opposite direction... I should add that I like all three of the above tracks. It's been pleasing to see the quietly positive reaction to this album so far. I had hoped that would happen once people got to hear it. Wonder if that will persist through Side Two? I'm also wondering if there might be a similar "not as bad as expected" reaction to Think Visual, when we get there.
Body has some serious shredding guitar riff and licks. This sounds like it could’ve been the single if there'd been one. The “distraction” pre-chorus is quite er… distracting ("bonkers", says @ARL, ahahah, exactly!!), but the verse and actual chorus are obviously catchy and effective in a 1981 radio kind of way. Except for the excessive length of most songs (Body should never be 5 minutes long, it doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense), I find Glamour to be a tighter set of songs than the bar code one. It's still loud (but less so), still strident (but less so), still convoluted (but less so), it’s radio friendly (maybe even more so) and the songs are a little bit easier to read (musically), albeit over long. And just as I’m saying this, we get to Too Serious, the shortest one on the record and it's by and large my least favorite (so far) and a contender for the worst fade out I’ve ever heard in my life. To be fair, I'm not likely to get to that point often. As soon as the rock'n roll intro’s over, I’m out… Telepathy’s much more interesting, the new wave meets power pop influence is well realized. The opening chorus is quite distinctive and memorable, another Devo/Siouxie (or even Patti Smith) sounding vocals, then the "it reads like through the airwaves" verse is very XTC or even Squeeze, its melody could be taken from Cool for Cats or Argybargy (I reckon it’s actually quite similar to It’s No Cricket from the former). A nice surprise. Two out of three today, that’s a pretty good score for me and Dave. I must say I'm very impatient to get there and anxious to see how it turns out, as it's probably my favorite of the six remaining Kinks studio albums…
Gotta stand and face it...maybe Glamour was meant as a concept album, perhaps in Dave’s own way, an homage to Philip K. Dick. He has certainly created a world (of his own) for the listener to escape to (or from). Love it or loathe it, his beliefs are stamped onto every song. It was a very brave release for it’s time, in a world much less open-minded than the one we live in today. Along with his next lp Chosen People, it amounted to solo-career suicide. Body Is Dave bellowing an off-handed ‘F*@kin’ about’ by way of introduction here. I choose to believe so, that’s his type of humor, no doubt. Slaves of time, genetic tapes, magnetic code...as a teen listener this was all very exotic, but what did it mean? Listening today, jaded in technology, knowledge at a fingertip, how could it contain the same energy? Too Serious Sometimes I sneak this one onto mix cd’s, just to keep people guessing. I luv luv luv the competing low and high register vocal blend. This was played at some Kinks shows but to my knowledge Dave has never performed this or any other song off Glamour as a solo artist. I had a drummer friend in the late eighties, his name was Rob but we all called him Mouse. Anyway, I had this tape on in the car one night and he thought this was how our band should sound, whilst my vision was to be Philip Larkin fronting the Mekons. Ah, youth. Telepathy Highlight’s for me: Dave’s vocal in the verses, the guitar in the bridge, and the ghostly outro. What’s happening to me, I used to give this one the old skip-er-oo.
Body: I was in a bit of a grumpy mood this morning but am smiling from ear-to-ear after coming upon: Distraction, Everywhere, Programmed people, Study the genetic tapes. —- And by the time I hear: Who's in that body, Who's in that jail, Who's in there with you, Can we get bail, —— I’m in a jolly good mood. (And on that positive note, I think I’ll walk the dog).
Avid Pablo Fanques, first off, how are you doing physically? Getting better? Where did you get that new avatar of yours? At this point, the only thing I hope from Ray and Dave is just one more album. I don't expect either of them to do an extensive tour again, considering their current physical conditions. Also, I'm going to take what you Aussie Avids call a "walkabout" until we get to Give The People What They Want. I recently picked up a bunch of interesting stuff and I can't really concentrate on Glamour. There's nothing that stands out for me. However, to give Dave his due, there's at least one song on Chosen People that I like very much, albeit in a different version.
That's the intangible White Whale for the modern day Kinks fan, and tbh has been since the group dissolved in the late 90s and a frustrating quarter century of ever more spurious and fanciful reunion talk ensued . I know it's pompously self centred, but having started my Kinks obsession in spring 1996, just months before they played what remain their last concerts to date (two bewilderingly unceremonious and isolated Scandinavian festival dates in June of that year) I can't help but feel personally slighted, that on some cosmic level my first and favourite band have been taunting me ever since, and that if for some reason I stopped being a fan, the very next day they'd finally announce those comeback tour dates. Has any other legendary band talked about a reunion so much and at such length without anything substantial ever happening? Nearly all the other hold outs did it eventually, (heck, even The Byrds managed a quasi reunion tour with those 2018 Crosby-excluding Sweetheart Of The Rodeo dates) or in cases where they're even more estranged and irreconcilable than The Kinks (The Smiths say, or CCR) the prospect isn't actually ever seriously discussed in such a dangling Lucy Van Pelt holding up a football manner of raised then dashed hopes as Kinks fans have endured season after season, year after year, occasion after occasion of the well meaning friend who knows you're a fan, saying 'did you hear they've reformed' on the basis of another trumped up news headline with no actual substance . I'm reconciled/largely at peace with the idea that any more substantial live work under The Kinks banner is almost certainly out of the question (hasn't seriously been since 2004 really, with Dave's stroke taking him out of action up to the point when Ray's powers began to seem to seriously decline ) but that hope of one last album still endures, and always will do while they're still around. I know they don't owe the fans anything, but beyond that they're family, perhaps they owe themselves one last statement. Or maybe not. But my quarter century as a serious Kinks fan since '96 has always had this significantly maddening undercurrent thanks to this always-present Elephant In The Room.
Dear Team Avids: I want to apologize for abdicating my responsibilities for this week and previously when we explored Dave’s first album. I have been very busy (see list of excuses below*) and I just really did not get a chance to listen closely to these albums. I can see from others comments here that Dave’s solo music is not your typical poppy, easy-to-digest-in-one-sitting type of music. As I have expressed previously, there were a number of kinks albums that we covered that I had never heard before. Because I know myself and wanted to give the music a fair chance, I typically started listening to these albums weeks before we began covering them. I like Dave’s music (he is definitely an acquired taste, but in the small doses we get in each Kinks album, I typically appreciate his stuff), so I do not want to be unfair to the solo albums and comment on them without the deep listen I know that I require before I pass judgment. Because I knew most of GTPWTW already, I’ll be ready to jump back into the fray when we kick that off. Until then I’ll just be lurking around unless I have something intelligent to contribute. * List of VALID excuses presented to the Headmaster: (Headmaster please spare me I beg you, Don't make me take my trousers down!) 1. We had a massive flood in the apartment from the apartment above us a few weeks ago. 2. We were already planning on painting the apartment but that became a much bigger project due to the flood. 3. We had to be out of the apartment for two weeks while they painted so we traveled to Colorado to hang with my fiancé’s family. 4. We have a new puppy, which in and of itself is a ton of work, but it’s even more work when you have to travel and bring her to a new environment. 5. I’m actually back in my apartment now because my daughter is visiting for the week from Nashville, so hyper focused on her this week. 6. …and now I am getting ready to return to Colorado, before we head down to LA for a few days on business.
Ahhhhhh, the ol' dog ate my homework excuse 'ey.... drop 'em! It's all good mate. I know life continues to continue. I completely understand that life is a constant array of curveballs, gutters and strikes.... When you're able to jump in, I'll enjoy reading what you have to say... and in the meantime, I'll hope things settle down for you a bit
I have dialysis treatments 3 days a week but I’m responding well and it could move to my home over the summer which will be a welcome change. I’m only 52 and this really came out of nowhere but I’m getting a ton of support and have my own business so I’m making it all work. The upside is I’m spending more time listening to and enjoying music and my 5 year old is right there with me. We are seeing The Who at months end and she actually started doing the Abbot & Costello bit without ever hearing it herself. I hope I can speak for avid @ajsmith in saying that this thread goes a long way in supporting our physical and mental health at times like these. Though most or none of us will likely meet in person, the support provided here can equal or surpass that which we get from longtime friends and family. It means a TON. Thank you
It is a strange and beautiful thing that us just talking about the music of a band we like/love can create such love and camaraderie... so many miles between us all, but we're all just right there.. Cheers people's, be as well as you're able, and know you're never too far away from a friend, even if only in spirit.
I love the revelation that Kinks fans can find a lot to say about and like in Dave's solo lps. I must confess on likely no more than 3 listens to any of them over decades I never did. This thread may have me give them a more sympathetic close listen in which I try to find some value. (And I tend to like/love ALL Dave-written actual Kinks songs.)
Oh and the Avatar made its way to me from a listener. No idea of its origin but I saw one of Nesmith’s final shows and met him afterwards though sadly he was no longer himself by this past October and we know what happened next. All the more reason I’d love to see Ray and Dave do something again. Even if it can’t be in person
Body The intro drum fill, dare I say, sounds like John Bonham leading off a Zeppelin song. But then the similarities end. I like how the riff sort of surrounds itself at the beginning and end of it, so it makes this really nice continuous flow through the chorus. I could actually imagine this riff as fitting onto Preservation Act 2 (not the rest of the song's style though, but just the sound of the riff itself). Such an odd song! But yeah, it works. Definitely doesn't need to be 5 minutes though, and I'm trying not to make sense of the lyrics. Too Serious That boogie rock intro makes me think of like 60s surf/tiki bar rock. If anybody's been off the strip in Las Vegas, there is Frankie's Tiki Room that always plays that kind of 50s/60s surf/exotica loungy jazzy guitar based rock. It's a great spot. Anyway, the point I am trying to make here is this song would fit nicely on a Tiki Bar playlist! The lyrics are ridiculous, but I guess we are sort of getting used to that now with Dave. Good fun song. The double-vocal makes it even more interesting and odd-sounding. Telepathy Again, this is a weird, but well put-together song. Very of its time. The riff alone though is rather timeless and I could imagine it on a late 60s Dave song. The ending is a bit odd though, because I think it ends on the pre-bridge? I had thought that part had led into the bridge earlier in the song. We get it again, but then the song ends. Maybe Dave didn't want this song to be 5 minutes also, so he ended it there .
We'll probably discuss this later on in the thread, but from reading Doug Hinman's book, I got the feeling that Ray got rather disprirted w/the lack of public response to Phobia and the subsequent live dates in the early 1990s, as if he received a message that no one cared about the Kinks anymore. Maybe he still feels that way, despite the continued and sustained interest in the reissues. They blew a couple of chances in the Britpop era and before Pete Quaife died in 1998. There's still a chance for an album, even one cobbled together from unreleased material, but the chances seem slim in today's music industry.
I'm itching to hit GTPWTW.... There is something great about every track.... yes I tells you, every track
Glamour Well, I'm having something of a re-evaluation of this side of the album. I guess it's due to not paying it enough attention. I like this song, well, mostly, it's just that I'd like Dave to develop a better hook to the song than 'Glamour - today'. Other than that, a well thought out interesting song. it's Reveal Yourself After initially reading the lyrics, I thought this is just going to be Dave repeatedly shouting 'reveal yourself'. And that I wouldn't like it at all. Instead, I've enjoyed listening and it is quite funny in parts! It's OK. A World Of Our Own This was the only track from this album to make it onto my 2CD Dave compilation for listening pleasure in the car. Nice melody, vocals not too shouty. Doesn't scare the neighbours when you play it. Like it.
Body This one has on occasion made it onto one of my Dave playlists. Does it need the swear word at the beginning? Not in my view, it detracts from what develops into a good melodic song, with a strong vocal from Dave. Not sure what he's going on about at times, but that's Dave... May go back onto a future playlist. Too Serious Another one about money and corruption. Not particularly keen on this one. At least it's short. Telepathy Oh 'eck. The Martians have arrived. I like the musical style, it's actually a much more varied album than I had it down for initially. Dave's vocal is just right for this. It works.
On a side note, I've today received my copy of Dave's 'Kinked' album on its vinyl reissue. Anyone else got one?
Body The words remind me of My Body Is A Cage, a song by Arcade Fire I guess, but I only know the Peter Gabriel version. The music is problematic to me, because the chorus opens with the same melodic line as a hit by French-Italian singer Dalida (who died tragically almost exactly 35 years ago), entitled Laissez-Moi Danser. It's a song I was never aware of at the time, but I had to record a mock version for a birthday party (or a wedding, I don't remember) a few years ago with a bunch of friends and the melody has entered my long-term memory against my will. So Body re-awakens this painful aesthetic memory. I thank you not, Dave. Too Serious An OK song, but I agree it feels too long, while it's actually the shortest song on the album. Telepathy I like that one. I have to listen to it again.
