Great news, i too will be feverishly hoping for another cd-r arrival from generous @Steve62 over the next few days. N.b. A couple of years ago i ordered the Living In A Ghost Town 10" vinyl single from The Rolling Stones Shop in London. It had clearly gone around the world as it arrived in Australia in exactly 83 days!!!
Did anyone here actually see this? It came and went, in San Diego, in a month and a half. I'm sure the plan must have been to successfully play it there then take it Broadway. Would "disastrous" be the wrong word to use here? Even someone like Paul Simon later staging his Capeman musical had severe problems on Broadway, despite the music being top-shelf Simon. (I would gather in that case Broadway audiences weren't flocking to a show about a Puerto Rican teenager killing two white kids in 1959.) I remember being in the huge Virgin Records store in Times Square when someone put on the CD of Simon's songs for the play and had my mind blown - I still think that's a great album, particularly the songs with doo-wop elements. This just feels like a strange episode in the Kinks/Davies history, and the fact that Ray's songs haven't officially seen the light of day doesn't help matters any. In some ways, this feels like going from Steve Hoffman's Music Corner to Steve Hoffman's Music Coroner. Let the examination begin?
Well according to the write up, I think it comes down to being an artistic success, fairly successful at the theater, but according to the report too complex and involved for Broadway... I certainly never saw it, Perth is a long way from San Diego lol
@mark winstanley , thank you for all the prep work you did for 80 Days (always do…but today’s presentation is especially wonderful). I have only one book that I kept, left behind after my mother passed away, and it is this Jules Verne story (so now I’ll have to revisit it again).
I’m not sure when I’ll get the chance to listen to the whole play, but the idea of it, with Ray Davies original songs, and an added theme of writers block near and dear to Ray, sounds very interesting. I’m not a Broadway play kind of guy, but I did get to see a Des McAnuff directed play on Broadway, going to see The Who’s Tommy twice, I liked it so much.
I loved the novel as a kid, but could never quite relate to the idea of it as a musical. Ray’s demos are amusing, and he was scarcely ever again so droll, but I think he addresses Englishness and Empire far better in Arthur and VGPS, and even in the Artista records. That said, the demos reveal how hard-working Ray could be when there was a project at hand!
You're welcome. It's as much for me as all you guys. I read Journey To The Centre Of The Earth when I was working as a T.A. on nights once, essentially watching the guy on the floor borer, and making sure he didn't come to grief, but aside from the cartoon version with So-So the monkey I have neither read the book nor seen the movie. I don't think it is imperative to enjoying the album, but I think it gives a rough context... The movie and the play are a bit different too.... I love this album.... I wish it had been recorded properly with horns and strings instead of the synths, but I think it works anyway. It's going to be very interesting to me to see what everyone thinks. The album intro will be up tomorrow, and the first song Saturday. It's a bit of a slow start, but it gives a couple of folks a chance to catch up, and everybody else a chance to have a listen or two before we hit the songs.
I don't think that's important. I posted it mainly "just in case" someone wanted to check it out. I listened to about three skipping minutes lol
Interestingly somewhere along our journey through the songs I mention that it is almost like zooming in on a particular aspect of Arthur
Another albeit very tenuous Kink link is that Dave's friend Lindy was at one time the next door neighbour of Michael Palin. Lindy told me Michael was a lovely fellow and that she had been invited into his home.
So this was in the making for 6 years but it seems that it took some sway to get Ray on board. It seems he was sure listened to as he wanted Verne to be the protagonist and to include his vision of the time of England and Empire and got both of his wishes. N.b. It seems between the US play and the Australian animation it was preferential to include at least one or two contributors of each production with the letters B, R & G in their surnames.
80 Days Back in the mid-nineties I acquired a boot of these songs along with a handful of concert videos in a swap for a couple Kinks concert posters. I was still living in Park Ridge, NJ and became friendly with another member of the KPS mailing list, Wes Gottlock, who lived just across the state line in NY and I believe now resides in Florida. Lovely man and, obviously, a dedicated Kinks fan. Anyone here remember Wes? I know I listened to these cd’s at least once or twice, initially. Maybe once or twice more over the next quarter century. So I’m excited in a way I haven’t yet been on this thread, because I’ll be hearing songs with virtually no preconceived notions, no baggage or history. Here is a mixed review of 80 Days during the first week of its run. '80 Days' A World Away From True Emotion The central character in the musical "80 Days" at the La Jolla Playhouse is Jules Verne himself, a dreamy French romantic turned deadline-desperate by publishers and domestic realities. When Phileas Fogg, Verne's intrepid Englishman, sets out on a bet to circumnavigate the world in 80 days, Verne himself signed on as valet. So the author of "Around the World in 80 Days" is constantly present, in person, to plead excuses for the loony plot he used to bind the scenery and adventures of his popular 19th century novel. The world premiere of "80 Days" happened Sunday. At the Playhouse today, director Des McAnuff must be slumped down, panting and exhausted from his remarkable endeavors to breathe some fun and life into Verne's fantasies. And his "80 Days" is in fact a dizzy, complex, glittering pageant of stagecraft, an encyclopedia of tricks and gimmicks, a fancy mechanical marvel in the spirit of Verne's own baroque sense of technology. The trouble is there's no soul in the show. When sentiment threatens, everything goes stiff and formal. Lack of coherence is one thing. A quick dance routine or some moving scenery distracts from minor plot details. But a musical unable to take sentiment seriously is in trouble. Verne, the character, acknowledges the problem and addresses it at length. But English playwright Snoo Wilson, who wrote the book for the show, never comes close to generating genuine human emotion. Instead, he dwells at length on the same matched set of leather-bound British idiosyncrasies that have served satirists from Gilbert and Sullivan to Monty Python. Wilson is fine with wry, sly material - the pub around the corner is called the Squid and Ferret, the French after the Second Empire are "the poodles of Europe." He just stirs no juices between his characters, leaving them mostly utilitarian cartoons. The Phineas Fogg of "80 Days" makes Sherlock Holmes and Henry Higgins look like fraternity boys. He's stern, prompt, sober and not amused, virtually everything that a Frenchman might both deplore and respect in a Victorian bachelor. So much the better, of course, when it comes time for him to fall in love, the Shakespearean Beatrice and Benedict principle. Only this Fogg, severely smitten by the lovely Indian princess he rescues from cremation beside her late husband, never is able to express his feelings for the woman and her infant in a believable, not to mention moving, fashion. Even after Queen Victoria herself has blessed the union and the couple push their baby buggy off into the sunset, there's no sense of satisfied relief, of lovers united, despite all the babbling and cooing by the on-stage Jules Verne. Ray Davies 17 songs never hurt the show and often help. Obviously, he must be encouraged to keep writing show scores. This time, though, there's a feeling that Davies has tried too hard to be part of a package and help push the plot. Johnny Bowden conducts a nifty nine-piece band in Robby Merkin's clever, driving orchestrations of the score. The biggest challenge in adapting the Verne novel to the stage is the middle of the show, which sags noticeably in La Jolla. The beginning and ending take care of themselves. In between, though, there's a wide world of picturesque adventure as Fogg slogs onward and the gents back home follow his progress. Verne's subplot about a pursuing police inspector with a mistaken warrant for Fogg's arrest is gratefully embraced by "80 Days" creators, who give the cops a libidinous mother and a missing father. Queen Victoria and Prime Minister Gladstone even turn up, with innuendoes more comprehensible in England than elsewhere. But textually, there's not enough. So McAnuff throws a thick mixture of imagination and craftsmanship at the problem, hoping something will stick. He offers various variations on a balloon theme (despite Verne's insistence that he wrote of no balloons) and such other diversions as rickshaws, boats of various splendor, a steam elephant and a grotesque typewriter table that follows Verne around like something loaned by "Star Wars." Douglas W. Schmidt designed most of this stuff and deserves considerable commendation both for the quality of his work. Admittedly, the tricks eventually are whizzing by so fast that they begin to blur. And, with so many ideas in the pot, extremes tend to cancel each other out. Susan Hilferty has assembled an endless parade of vivacious costumes and, though David F. Segal's lighting design might have been more helpful, there's always something to watch. A major part of the "80 Days" book comes from the use of stylized half-masks to turn 18 supporting actors into 70 characters. Christina Haatienen fashioned those fascinating devices, and Jared Sakren helped integrate them into to show as an ingredient arresting if dramatically ambiguous. As with Wilson's book, Davies best music is the least sentimental. "Well-Bred Englishman" is a dandy number, sung with ringing enthusiasm and debonair insouciance by Fogg and fellow members of his club. "A Place in Your Heart" is an outdoor rouser for a speeding ice boat that recalls some of Roger Miller's "Big River" songs. "Against the Tide" is a neat soft-shoe and "Be Rational" has some depth. But the Princess' "Who Is This Man," Davies best shot at a ballad, starts vague and meanders. Timothy Landfield has carved his Fogg from the marble of the Empire, a ruthless figure from Victorian mythology. Stephen Bogardus plays Verne much more softly, easily identifiable as a human striver adrift in uncertain creative seas. They make a neatly contrasting pair, and each in his own way helps the creators enormously. This is a show that pushes against the limitations of theater, not always gracefully and never with a definition breakthrough. A judicious selectivity in simplifying the shows dense mix of tricks would be in order. More important, though, might be a general rewrite of the script to introduce some recognizable human emotion, even at the cost of cleverness and wit. Welton Jones, The San Diego Union, August 30, 1988.
wait wait WHA!!!!!!??? 'A Place In Your Heart' from 2017's Americana was in fact first written for 80 Days in 1988!?!? (though not included on Rays demos) Damn, that does kinda explain why it seemed like such a late period highlight :/
I got my copy of the 80 Days demos from John Dunbar of the Confederacy of Dunces (the band, not the book, although both were entertaining) in the very early 2000s (it’s amazing to write that now). Props to Our Headmaster for tackling this material which some of our Avids, heck, most other people, have never heard of before. Several of the people who worked w/Ray on this project later worked on the more successful Broadway version of Tommy, which probably didn’t make Ray happy.
Yes. You'll notice that the beautiful Message from the Road melody also comes from the Ladies of the Night bridge. That's the most depressing piece of information I've got so far from this Thread. Two of the best Ray Davies songs of the 21st century were in fact written in 1987… It's particularly hard to take for A Place In Your Heart, as it holds a very special place in mine. That tune was a wonderful highlight of my recent "around the Montana in 20 days" road trip. And it was my main "Ray still got it" piece of evidence… Now i'm not so sure anymore. But what a sublime, sublime song…
I've never read any Jules Verne, but the one thing I will add here is that in 1994, there was an entire SNL skit (featuring Phil Hartman and host Kelsey Grammar) where Captain Nemo (Grammar) had to explain over and over to the crew that "20,000 leagues under the sea" meant distance, and not depth.
When I was a kid I also wondered about this, though the ambiguity is less pronounced with the original French title, which has "seas" in the plural!
Yeah I put the play on this morning while I was shaving, and quit after a couple of minutes also. I listened to the first of Rays demos right after. Much much better. I’ve never heard 80 Days before - looking forward to it.
The Road To Nowhere is close, but there is another even more obvious road I'm on: Dead End _______. sorry folks
For interest sake... I actually thought it may come up, but hasn't yet, I am particularly interested in @Fortuleo and @The late man 's thoughts on Jules Verne in particular. I sort of assume that he would be quite highly regarded in France? being fellow countrymen and all? Obviously very famous worldwide and at the very least three classic novels made into movies and such.
Speaking of Jules Vern, there is a movie by Karel Zeman called Invention For Destruction, which was also titled The Fabulous World of Jules Vern. If you have never seen it, or any other Karel Zeman films, be prepared to be in awe of his magnificent films. Invention For Destruction was made in 1958, and it's a visual masterpiece.
I lived in San Diego 18 years too late! I was about 20 minutes from the La Jolla (it's pronounced La-HOY-a) Playhouse, which I believe is still going strong today. I downloaded 80 days and I will be spending some time with it today.
Yes, I guess he is considered kind of a national treasure. I would say he's seen more as an author of adventure novels for the youth, but nowadays you're really happy when you get your young ones to read him! He's been hailed as a prophet (the submarine, the voyage to the Moon) and a precursor of French Science Fiction. Well I'm trying to answer but the truth is I'm not great at knowing what the general opinions about any cultural topic are. There must have been some controversies about him in the past (this is France) but I don't really remember those. I'd say he's less affected by controversy than most of his fellow national symbols such as Tintin or Cousteau.
