Is There Life After Breakfast - A like the lightness of this song. Our positive vibe Ray is back with a wrinkle or two for the trip. I like the little steel guitar flourishes as well.
‘Is There Life After Breakfast’: Nope. I mean, I certainly hope there is life after breakfast but that swooping, trilling “self pitteeeee!” No, no, not my cuppa. I suppose I should say this is a pleasant ditty but it’s just too by-the-numbers for me. (My notes call it “fluffy.”)
Is There Life After Breakfast? Not sure i prefer this to the last song but it sure is easier to approach writing about and Mark as per usual s(pills) out the story with no stone unturned. A good effective number that sounds of more regularity than a tourist even if the slumming is in their own home. Again there's that elementary English elixir of tea, (referred to four times) there to help you look a little on the sunnyside up if you can no longer manage your meat and two vege. I like the brief nursery intro which reminds me of the slightly more articulate and strident intro of They're All In Love by The Who N.b. If it's all the same to you i can't picture Ray as mum as i get a visual more akin to Mrs Brown's Boys! Edit: Its just another way Ray has of saying to an older person that has forgotten part of themselves: "Don't forget to dance!"
Ray said in interviews that he was never diagnosed with depression. Yet we know he’s often been depicted as bipolar and we’re aware of at least one serious breakdown episode in 1972. His quote about never being “diagnosed” must mean that the question arose a few times along the way. When I look at the songs we’ve covered so far from this album, they sound like the diary of a man who recovered from depression. Having difficulties to get up the morning after. After what? After the fall. Never being really capable of sustaining relationships. His neighbors were just abstract names he’s never fully engaged with, he drove his partners to leave him (and/or to kill themselves) because of restlessly looking for the life of a “sex-crazed rock'n roller”, hitting on everyone from hot bartenders to gay guys, being an unfaithful and untrusting control maniac, running away from time to take refuge in la vida loca and being a tourist in his own life, trying to kick himself in the back every morning and looking for a getaway (tomorrow’s song). I don’t know if the record was written with that in mind (probably not, because I don't think the upcoming Stand Up Comic would fit in this interpretation) but subconsciously, I think that’s what Ray’s talking about, what he’s telling us song after song. He’s been away because he was depressed, he couldn’t really see his place in the world anymore. Years passed in a flash and here he is, at 62 years old, coming out of that dazed and confused undiagnosed state.
Is There Life After Breakfast: This is indicative of some of the things not quite clicking on this album. Around the 2:30 mark, I could sense the song winding down and was waiting for a fadeout ... yet it kept going for another two minutes. It's way too padded. Ray treats the refrain like a caveman discovering fire. It's OK, but it's not that OK. This isn't the second half of "Hey Jude"! And the production isn't very good. I can't quite put my finger on it. Sterile? Usually a guy pulls out a dobro, you're going to get a nice/warm/acoustic sound. I'm not sure if it's how he recorded his vocals or simply arranging too much electric guitar over the top of the dobro? But it just doesn't sound right to me.
I should let the thread know that it was recently brought to my attention that someone uploaded The Long Distance Piano Player to Youtube as a single upload a few weeks back, including that opening 6 minutes Uk residents weren't allowed to see in the previous Youtube version:
I find Life After Breakfast to be clever, witty, ironic, enjoyable: in other words, more Ray being Ray. Several excellent rhymes: gutter/fluster, tea/pity, depressive/breakfast, kettle/forget her. Favorite line: Don't become a total embarrassment to your friends and family!
This seems a pretty good encapsulation of the lyrics to me. As my sixties start to land their blows, I'll take all the Boomer Pep Talks I can get (especially if done with humor). Musically, it's a singalong that with a minor change in arrangement could fit on Muswell Hillbillies (or as an optimistic Kinks album closer circa 1969-1972). I do fall on the @fspringer side of the fence (great fire analogy BTW) in feeling the music doesn't grab me as I wish it would and goes on longer than I'd like. Avid @Fortuleo, I don't know what to say other than you need to put all your astute observations and dot-connecting about Ray and the Kinks into a book. You have a real gift for digging into words and music to put a picture together and I'm grateful I get to share in it...and for free, at that! [EDIT: Oh, and good catch on "Daylight".]
Catching up after Monday meetings stacked up on top of each other all day yesterday. Ugh. The Tourist As I mentioned this was the first new song I heard via the UK promo CD single which I somehow acquired way before the album was released and also before the US Thanksgiving Day commercial CD single which also preceded the album. As @CheshireCat told us this was sold (given away?) at UK (European?) tour dates in the Summer and Fall of 2005 and was more to do with giving the fans who came to the shows at least one song as a preview of the upcoming album than it was to do with promoting it at radio at least in how I see it. The addition of the other extra non-Other People's Lives album songs with older tracks in different versions/mixes, plus it being an enhanced CD granting access to a website with an exclusive video, seems to put this into something other than a radio station promo. Not sure how a radio station could have shared the video. The song? Underwhelmed at that time and still not a highlight of the album for me, but the analysis of the lyrics the last day or so here helps me like this a bit more. The soft/loud back and forth seems a bit over the top, and maybe that’s the point, but the grunge chords repeating the same up and down chord changes but in reverse order each time through don’t quite hit the mark for me. This song did work better in concert when I saw him as I recall. The Tourist is a nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there. Is There Life After Breakfast? This works better for me with Ray’s vocals being the highlight here. He’s actually singing some of these lyrics for a change with this album and the softer frail style vocals and voicings he uses throughout this album, maybe too much elsewhere, do work well here by adding to the effectiveness of highlighting the age of who is singing these words and what the song is trying to convey. Another direct lift @Fortuleo is here. The melody of this line “There’s no point in being glum” is straight out of Loony Balloon. I want to sing “Drift away, hey, just drift away” every time I hear this track at this spot in the song. I do know there is work after breakfast, so I better get to it. Only two meetings today. Such is life.
“Is There Life After Breakfast?”: A modern version of “Have a Cuppa Tea”, a very Ray song about getting your life in gear despite your age and problems by having a nice warm cuppa and a hearty breakfast. Another good/great song from this album. Avid Fortuleo is rather perceptive in his analysis of this song and how it fits w/the rest of the album. On an unrelated note, Mark, did you have an ice storm in your area last night? I’m wondering because I was watching last night’s episode of Jeopardy last night on YouTube (no bloody commercials!) and there was a crawl in the bottom of the screen about a major ice storm that included Arkansas.
The song has a very—dare I say--predictable Ray lyric. And, yeah, repeats itself for about a minute longer than it should. But arguably its the album’s most memorable melody. Once that catchy, humble chorus gets stuck in your head it won’t leave. After playing this LP in moderate rotation in the several months after it came out, I only occasionally pulled it out afterwards for a listen. When I did it was only this song and Thanksgiving Day that I could remember just by looking at the title, and start playing the tune in my head. When over a decade later Carl Reiner came out with that documentary with a similar theme “If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast.” I started thinking about this song and humming it. I could remember this tune with only that kind of prompt. I don’t think I could do that with any other track on this disc. That counts for something, right? Another winner.
Yea, a bit of an ice storm last night. That's why I was a few minutes late this morning... I drove slightly slower Apparently another Ice storm this afternoon, and tomorrow. Little Rock, snow hides from us, but ice likes us
Here's an interesting article from August 2001 I found on the KPS mailing list archives (among many other things a fantastic repository/Noahs ark for online Web 1.0 Kinks articles that no longer exist out in the wilds of the internet) regarding an early tilt (over 4 years before it's eventual release!) at recording Ray's debut solo album where he was, as at the Jane Street shows, using Yo la Tengo as his backing band. At the time the working title of the album was 'Why Suddenly Now?'.. somewhere in the bowels of Konk these versions will still exist.. Head Kink Ray Davies Recording With Yo La Tengo By Jon Wiederhorn 08/21/2001 Rock He wrote the soundtrack for the 1985 film "Return to Waterloo" and released the 1998 live album The Storyteller, yet Kinks frontman Ray Davies has never released a solo studio album. That's soon to change. Over the last 18 months, Davies has finished a batch of songs he's been working on for five years and demoed a bunch of newly written material. At present, his publicist said, Davies has about 40 songs to pick from for an upcoming record, which is tentatively scheduled for release by next winter. The disc is still untitled, though the publicist said Davies is considering Why Suddenly Now? Last August, Davies showcased a handful of the new songs with indie rockers Yo La Tengo during three shows at New York's Jane Street Theater. Although the relationship took over eight more months to develop into something substantial, in July Davies invited the group to lay down tracks with him at Konk Studios, where the Kinks recorded. Davies and Yo La Tengo recorded four new songs: "Next-Door Neighbor" (which "rocks like vintage Kinks," according to Yo La Tengo frontman Ira Kaplan), the uptempo rocker "The Morning After," the poppy "Vietnam Cowboys" and the ballad "Creatures of Little Faith," said Davies' publicist. They also recorded a version of the Kinks' "This Is Where I Belong," which Yo La Tengo had previously covered. The track will likely appear as a B-side. In addition to Yo La Tengo, Davies' touring guitarist Pete Matheson will play on the album. Other guest musicians are likely to appear on the disc, the publicist added.
All we got up here was small snow showers that stuck to the grass and cars only. Was that a piccy of you that you posted in another thread back in December? (Musicians Stuck With Their Image) You don’t look too bad at all.
Is There Life After Breakfast? Having only listened to this a handful of times, & since lots of the songs on OPL have unexpectedly blossomed after multiple listens, I'm going to be careful what I write here. First impressions, this is in the Cuppa Tea/Sunnyside/Hot Potatoes realm, a bit of fun, a poke in the ribs, an optimistic little ditty delivered with a knowing smirk. It may go a bit long, though it's worth listening through to the end for the bizarre false-falsetto bit, very music hall, very Holiday Romance, very Ray. Otherwise it hasn't quite burrowed its way into my hind brain. We'll see whether I'm humming it this time tomorrow.
As Mark notes, the lyrics especially are very show tune y, but Ray manages to pull it off and it’s one of the more memorable songs on the album. I wish he hadn’t gone with piteee though!
So back home now... super short day, only seven and a half hours, so it's 12:30 pm... and the day is at my disposal ... while the second wave of ice storm rolls overhead... hmmm? I guess I might go to bed lol
Life After Breakfast This may not be the best song on the album, but it's my favorite. After playing this album several times over the last couple of weeks, this is the one I find myself singing in my head. I don't think you can underrate a good catchy sing a long chorus. The guitar even plays the entire melodic line at one point during the song. It's a great throwback to the era of the Kinks where I joined the party. Maybe eight seconds in, there are a couple of strummed chords that make me want to start singing Lady Genevieve. Unfortunately, I hate that I'm at the age where I needed no explanation of the plumbing verse. Fortunately, the only med I'm on is for cholesterol. I get a real kick out of the line "don't turn into a total embarrassment." Least favorite would be Ray struggling to make "don't wallow in self pity" fit the meter of the verse. Ray's sure having fun with this, and it's infectious. As @Smiler said "I'll take all the Boomer Pep Talks I can get (especially if done with humor).
