Ray Davies Live At The Roundhouse (part 1) Pretty great set-list, kicking off with some Kinks Cult Klassics (can't make all 3 of those K's!). That joke about the place being a dump is really quite funny, and the punchline is delivered perfectly. Ray's vocals are pretty solid, and seems to really enjoy being on that stage, and I would have really enjoyed to see a show like this. I still own the ticket stub for a 2010 Ray solo show in New Jersey that he had had to cancel due to a health issue. Sigh... Regarding the Kinks 60 event, I am glad to see the 3 of them together, it makes me very happy! Mick and Dave look great, Ray does certainly seem to be a bit frail, I do hope he doing ok. I don't see any other performances, but I do wish the three of them could at least record a final EP, but they are of course under no obligation to do so. Perhaps just being seen together, and getting some more attention this year, should be enough for us.
I’m just going to spit it out. ‘Working Man’s Cafe’ has hereby cracked the Top 100 Albums list, ousting The Doors self-titled. And so it goes. I’m listening to the album in its entirety right now…and, come on, this undoubtedly falls under late-career-masterpiece.
I'm with my fellow occasional Japan-dwelling gaijin on this one. 80 Days might compete if we had a good recording of it, but to me this LP is one of Ray's outstanding achievements.
I wondered whether I had archived the Roundhouse performance to my hard drive, but having checked, it's not there. I can't even remember whether I watched this. I do have Ray Davies at Glastonbury from 2010 though. The first four songs are solid enough performances. Ray must have played these songs countless times, but he's still able to bring the magic out of them every now and again.
I'm sorry to say it was either my spellchecker or an error on my part so i'll confess my sin if you want me too!
Ray Gets Around To The Roundhouse Pt.1 A great intro track and performance and it (so far) seems that Ray and his great band can do no wrong as he betrays a happiness and verve (all sweet) that makes one wish they were at this show. I'm enjoying some of the lead guitarists playing so give him his due and acknowledge it can still be great live if we don't hear all Dave and all of the night!
I just amended my punchline and ironed out a Kink in my previous post! Now i hit the road with a special all Kink USB that an Avid Sydneysider slipped me most kindly & cautiously! Edit: Took me over 2 hours to realise I hadn't hit send on this post!
Good to see Ray attend this event. With no public appearances in many years this helps ease some of the anxiety we fans have about his current health. His absence in this event would have ramped up that speculation to a fever pitch no doubt. I truly hope he is well and that goes for Dave, Mick, and all living ex-Kinks major players John Dalton, John Gosling, and Bob Henrit. I hope all of these surviving members are asked and are involved with whatever reissue campaign surrounds the 60th anniversary of the founding and eventual legacy of the band. Surely it is manifest. To paraphrase a popular phrase “God Speed The Kinks”.
Ray Davies Live At The Roundhouse, London Part 2 . Ray pulls out the first original The Tourist. Ray gives us a bit of an intro for context, and then can't help himself throwing in a "weoh" followed by the obligatory "ya not ready for it yet" This comes across really well, and the live version kicks the power up a little, particularly in the change. We get a spoken section and the music fades to almost nothing, which would have worked as a really nice ending, but of course we slide into a big power rock finish, and it all works really well. Sunny Afternoon. Ray makes mention of it being a very London kind of night, and introduces a guy called Johnny Borell. They do the song as a duet, and Borell does well. I'm not generally a big fan of this kind of duet on a classic thing... but it leads to two things We get the whole song... which seems rare Borell does a pretty good job. I have never heard of him, but he is apparently the frontman, singer/guitarist, for a band called Razorlight. For me it's just nice to get a full version of the song... it always seems like one Ray feels he needs to play, but doesn't really want to, or something. So here we get the guest vocalist giving Ray a break from singing it all, and we get the vocals trading off each other, and I think it works well. Workingman's Cafe. They play a short kind of reprise as Borrell leaves, the crowd sings along on their own. Ray seems friendly and chatty, and this may have been posted for the intro when we did the song, as Ray chats about the fact that he miraculously has a new album out, and goes into some minor details about the song. Not much to really say about this one, it is pretty much what we heard recently on the album. This is another solid version. The Morphine Song. a quick look at the video, I see Ray wipe off his face and get his acoustic and sit down in his chair, and he gives a nice introduction.... it seems it was a place and circumstance that actually really touched him, aside from some of the issues that we know of. I'm still kind of blown away by this song. There are many tracks in the post Kinks era I love, but this is really sticking with me. It probably does miss the horns a little, but in a live setting I don't get too messed up about that kind of thing. This is another great version. 0:12:00 05 The Tourist 0:18:08 06 Sunny Afternoon (with Johnny Borrell) 0:23:55 07 Working Man's Café 0:28:18 08 Morphine Song
This is very cool, happy to hear the new songs. He plays three from Working Man's Café in this show and they are my three favorites, by way of this thread's exploration. Ray seems super-relaxed and easy going. Whenever we saw footage of his Kinks-self, he was usually fantastic but perhaps more in a “rock star” state of mind and attitude, somehow stressed by his responsibility towards the band. He was the frontman, not the "act", my guess is it's a huge difference and that fronting the Kinks is in some ways harder : you've got to be Pete Townshend and Mick Jagger, all in one, which can be some heavy task. And in the previous solo footage we saw, he’s always great but almost too focused on his performance to really have fun. This was true of the Storyteller thing, in which he really had to be in a "stand up" mode all the way through and keep the pace of the show. I also felt it in most of the images (TV or else) from the Other People’s Lives period, trying his best, sometimes trying too hard. Here, it’s almost like we get the no pressure Ray from Sold on Song, but doing a big show. Relaxed, smiling, completely at ease with himself, with his band, with his material, with his audience, with his place in the rock pantheon and with his place in life, at 63. Love the changes of outfit, too. I’ll try keeping the shirts count before the end of the show!
Oct 1963 - Nov 1966 Starstruck promo video/ Days video/ Sunny Afternoon TOTP Barry Fantoni - Little Man In a Little Box Apr 1967 - Feb 1970 The Long Distance Piano Player Nov 1970 - Jun 1976 Feb 1977 - Dec 1983 Dave - Guitar Player 1977 The Kinks Punk Christmas Artificial Light or. mix Life Goes On OGWT Morphing docu of Hotelroom sessions + interview Ray + live KinKs in Vienna 1978. One For The Road - the lost videos 1981 A Woman In Love (chorus girls) Oh Tokyo live in 1982 - lyrics Jan 1984 - Dec 1993 Ray - Musician mag - Q questions Dave - Guitar 1990 1994 - 2006. Mojo 1994 Mojo 1995 Dave - Guitar Player 2002 Quaife Holland 2004 1998 Ray Davies Flatlands live - Visions Of England edit - VOE complete Kompilations 2005 Kompilations 2005 Americana (Hey Big Fat Cowboy) - live Jane Street Otis Riffs Filter 2003 The Gap - pt2 - Yo La Tengo - Jane Street Feb 2006 Ray Davies - Other People's Lives - album Things Are Gonna Change (the Morning After) - Alt After The Fall - Leno Next Door Neighbour All She Wrote Creatures Of Little Faith Run Away From Time The Tourist - ac live - ACL Is There Life After Breakfast The Getaway (Lonesome Train) Other People's Lives Stand Up Comic Over My Head Thanksgiving Day - alt mix - VH1 - Conan Kompilations 2006 Ray - The World From My Window Austin City Limits After The Fall Next Door Neighbour Run Away From Time ACL - Pt1 Pt2 Pt3 Long Way From Home 1970 - Lola SDE mix Q interview Mojo Entertainment Weekly Word Mag Sold On Song - live Sold On Song Pt1 Sold On Song Pt2 S.O.S. pt3 Ray live in Berlin 2006 Barrymore Theater 2006 Mar 2006 Dave Davies - Kinked God In My Brain 2006 Ray gets top honour at BMI awards 2006 GQ magazine 2006 Dave - Too Much On My Mind Kompilations 2007 Jan 2007 Dave - Fractured Mindz This Is the Time - edit/remix Free Me All About Me Come To the River Giving Remember Who You Are The Waiting Hours Rock Siva The Blessing Fractured Mindz Oct 2007 Ray Davies Workingman's Cafe - EPK Vietnam Cowboys - Demo You're Asking Me Workingman's Cafe - live Morphine Song - live In A Moment - live - Letterman Peace In Our Time No One Listen Imaginary Man - live One More Time The Voodoo Walk - Demo Hymn For The New Age The Real World Angola I, The Victim Americana: A Work In Progress Ray Davies Live At the Roundhouse/Electric Prom Part 2 2007 Word mags interviews with Ray Sunday Times Culture Mojo Uncut 2008 Rolling Stone 2008 Stop Smiling magazine - pt2 Performing Songwriter 2008 2009 Fretboard Journal 2010 Ray on Alex Chilton 2010 Come Dancing play Spin 2010 Oct 2018 Dave Davies - Decade - interview If You Are Leaving (71) Cradle To The Grace (73) Midnight Sun (73) Mystic Woman (73) The Journey (73) Shadows (73) Web Of Time (75) Mr Moon (75) - Why Islands (78) Give You All My Love (78) Within Each Day (78) Same Old Blues (78) This Precious Time (78) 2019 Kast Off Kinks with Ray 2022 Muswell/ Showbiz box 2022 Celluloid Heroes Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues Travelling Montage Travelling With My Band - I'm Going Home - You Can't Stop The Music 2022 remixes pt 1 - part 2 - part 3 2022 Dave - Something Else - Josh Meyers Podcast 2022 Dave Davies - 21st Century Creem articles - Mar 70 - Mar 71 - Feb 72 - Nov 72 - Aug 73 - Apr 74 - Jul 74 - Aug 75 - Feb 76 - Aug 77 - Apr 78 - Aug 78 - Oct 78 - Jan 81 - May 85 - Apr 85 - Apr 87 - May 87 - Jun 87 - Jun 88 Rare Silent Video Dave Interview 2022? newspaper Rob Kopp has made his 1999 Kinks discography 'Down All The days Till 1992' US Chart Stats The Music Industry Machine Album flow chart Album poll graph Mick Avory - Shut Up Frank -Lola - We Gotta Get Outta This Place Pete Quaife - interview - Kast Off Kinks - I Could See It In Your Eyes - Dead End Street Rasa Didzpetris Davies John Dalton John Gosling Jim Rodford Ian Gibbons Andy Pyle Gordon Edwards Clive Davis Bob Henrit Mark Haley - info Jakko Jaksyk
After beginning with a blast of Kinks, the show focuses on Workingman's Cafe for three of the four next songs. For "The Tourist", I like the intense revved-up musical interludes ("give me the money money") and that organ all the way through the song. I find it hilarious that Ray talks about the North London feel at the show before the duet version of "Sunny Afternoon" (never heard of Johnny Borell but he is good). "Workingman's Cafe" and "Morphine Song" bring the focus back to the new record and Ray makes reference to everyone having a copy (needed this thread to know what that refers to). I generally like live and I would put Ray in the natural performer category so I enjoy these performances.
Johnny Borrell was the frontman for Razorlight, a major UK band in the 00s post-Libertines slipstream that was probably the last stand for guitar rock acts as pop music with genuine currency in this country. This 'movement' (which amounted to a successful press-orchestrated reset of Britpop 10 years on) was widely derided by UK tastemakers even at the time and has since been disparagingly referred to as 'landfill indie' (probably because discarded CD relics from this era now kipple up second hand stores and landfills across the UK) but despite being slightly too old for it at the time I actually liked a lot of this stuff and I reckon we're just a few years off it being fairly reappraised. Interesting to see from Mark and Stew's posts that Borrell and and his gang seem to have made little lasting impression across the pond even as a punchline. I think The Artic Monkeys were the only group from this phase that really endured in time and space. I have to say, Razorlight were far from my favourites from this era (a bit too cliched rock troubadoury) but they were ok, below is a representative hit:
I vaguely remember Razorlight getting airplay in Australia but, based on that song, I can see why I never bothered! Arctic Monkeys however deserve their longevity and high critical acclaim.
The Kinks' 20 greatest songs, ranked - Gold Any list that includes 'Scattered' amongst their top 20 Kinks songs, is fine by me! 20 Best The Kinks Songs Of All Time - Singersroom.com Same article in the reverse.
