Kentucky Moon Quite an affecting piece with the contrast of piano alongside a lazy slide guitar and Ray's languid vocal. The near constant movement & repose of the vocal & piano flourishes is interesting as is the variations of scale which I believe are both major & pentatonic but please feel free to set me straight. This sounds not unlike an original blues as filtered through the jazz lens & sensibility of a 70's solo era Jack Bruce. Mark's got it right about the guy on the porch pondering life after too many drinks only he's slid of his chair down the wall & is supported for the time being by one hand entwined in his railing.
Nobody's Fool Really liking the at times stately piano & the departure from the albums theme. A fine vocal from Ray who might be homeless but may also just be lost inside his mind, so numbed from hurt, loss & confusion that he can only operate and function inside his created shelter of parallel reality.
I told you I had a few too many yesterday... Muswell Hillbillies opens Side B, Lavender Lane closes the album. Sorry ! Side A: 1. 20th Century Man 2. Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues 3. Holiday 4. Skin and Bones 5. Alcohol 6. Nobody’s fool Side B: 1. Muswell Hillbillies 2. Have a Cuppa Tea 3. Holloway Jail 4. Oklahoma, USA 5. Mountain Woman 6. Lavender Lane
Queenie I like the groove and structure and feel this was a missed opportunity for some straightforward lyrics to provide us with an engaging and commercial number. Whilst Ray's "got everything" do we have a second embryonic hint of the riff of My Woman From Tokyo?
Anyone hear *Big Sky on the intro & throughout & some of Rosemary Rose in the verses? Edit: *Or do I mean Animal Farm!
Just discovered that Paul Weller and Suggs (of Madness) covered ‘Nobody’s Fool’! Talk about the centre point of the Venn diagram of quintessentially English pop songwriting!
"Nobody's Fool" I love these days when there is a new song this good that I have never heard before. It has a hint of "The Way Love Used To Be" but is also reminiscent of a ballad that might be on an album like Misfits or Sleepwalker. This is a lovely song and I even love his over the top warble. The cover by Cold Turkey isn't anywhere near as good. No one knows the definite answer on this one? We could bombard Dave's twitter and simply ask him. It kind of sounds like Dave, but the vocal has an annoying nasal character to it that doesn't really match Dave's singing around this time. I will stick with the Ray demo. "Queenie" This is not anything I would ever listen to again. All it does is get the song "My Woman From Tokyo" stuck in my head, and that's something I want to avoid.
Yes, but I think it's still missing a Partridge in that particular pear tree. Not too soon for that pun I hope
This is my favorite song on the album, and it wasn't even on the album. It's all major chords, making it perfect for a slide guitar tuned to a major chord. Although the moon is often visible in the daytime, this song is clearly taking place at night. I picture a man on a small wooden raft with a single oar, crooning this at midnight while he floats down the Mississippi River as it passes Fulton county at the southwestern tip of the state. It's a common bluesy piano lick. Georgie Fame used it for the intro and outro of "The Ballad Of Bonnie & Clyde" and Leon Russell utilizes it in strategic places throughout Bob Dylan's "Watching The River Flow." Now we're talkin'. It reminds me of "End Of The Night" in the same way that "Rosemary Rose" kind of reminds me of "I Can't See Your Face In My Mind." Obviously The Doors were fans of The Kinks, but I wonder if Ray Davies might also have been at least somewhat aware of their oeuvre throughout the last three years of the 1960s.
