Jam jar is rhyming slang too of course but, unlike daisy roots, one I've actually heard used... probably in The Sweeney!
"Sitting In My Hotel" Shivers down the spine for this one, especially at the start with the distant echoed vocal. Wonderfully melodic and epic - it achieves the kind of epic sweep they were aiming for later with "Brother". Ray delivering a lyric that's obviously personal and poignant to him, and singing it superbly. My copy doesn't have the original lyric sheet, so I don't know whether this is how it was printed on there, but "poove"? The word as I know it is spelt with an "f" instead of "ve". It's a word that was thrown around with alacrity during the 70s - I probably said it and had it said to me in the school playground - although obviously frowned on these days. It fits perfectly in this song though. It's just a brilliant track and should be much better known. Just a pity that I missed out on hearing it for the last 30+ years! Has anyone written more "sitting" songs than Ray? On my sofa, by the riverside, in my hotel, in the midday sun....
Robert Wace is on film stating that The Kinks did not want to get out on the road and work hard like The Who or The Moody Blues.
Sitting in My hotel: I am traveling for the holidays so I won’t try to analyze the lyrics as I know that many on her will do so, and do it better than me, but suffice to say that I think this is a great one. Finally a song on this album that sounds less like a character sketch and more like one being sung to us straight from Ray’s heart. It has a beautiful melody that promptly insinuates itself in your head and won’t leave. It took a while for it to settle all the way in for me though, probably because I was passively listening the first bunch of times, but one listen with the lyrics in front of me then had me fully sold. This is a top notch Kink’s song.
I think "Poove" was a kind of jokey version, I'm sure Monty Python used it. It sounds like a kind of Private Eye joke/invention to me
I always felt that this song seemed like a apology for the excesses and indulgences of the preceding 4 songs Ray's just made his audience sit through, as well as for the ultra-camp effete persona he'd come to affect (and perfect!) over the last few years and how it now sat awkwardly with The Kinks original image and fanbase. If you compare them to in some ways their closest peers The Who, despite Pete Townshend at least actually originating from a more middle class background than the bros Davies, the Acton boys seemed to stay more in touch with their working class audience in image and outlook, whereas The Kinks who had like many of their contemporaries presented as 4 rough'n'ready oiks back in '64 had by '72 morphed into some kind of John Waters character fronting a Ziegfried Follies showband. Admittedly you could point to similar lurches into glam peacockry by the Stones and The Faces within the same timeframe but it was still safely under the lampshade of the good old lads acting out after a few whereas I suspect The Kinks (or Ray anyway) were a bridge too far into effeminate coquettishness not to mention manic eccentricity for burgeoning classic rock respectability for some. Placing this track after Rays made the rock classicist strain and wince their way queasily through those first four tracks is such a kaboom: yes I can write a classic pop song as good as ever, maybe ever better in some ways than before, I just chose not to ace card moment. That Penny Lane flourish in particular I always felt gave it that 'official seal' of pop/rock quality: it sounds a lot like the kind of masterful later McCartney track Beatles fans would hope for on the post Let It Be 14th album of their collective imaginings.
If I remember the Dave Davies autobiography correctly the Kinks were camping it up from the start, especially Dave, whose sexuality seems to have been somewhat on the fluid side.
That's very true: an example being him and Peter Quaife putting Mick Avory ill at ease at his audition by acting like a couple of old queens. And indeed Dave was brazenly and blithely bisexual in the mid 60s, pre the 1967 UK sexual offences act. I would argue that this aspect didn't openly become part of their brand/fully embraced by Ray until post-Lola though, reaching its apex round about the album we're currently on.
Sitting in my Hotel Great song, one of my favorite by the band. Everything has been said, and very well said by the Leader and following reviewers. So only the nitpicking's left. I'll try to pretend not to like this chore. Masterful review by Fortuleo as usual, but I beg to disagree on one point: I don't believe Ray is singing falsetto here. He actually catches that A with his "normal" voice. Young and innocent days. I'm not sure it's out of character, but it definitely is out of tune at several key moments, and that's a shame ! Playing high notes on the trumpet is very difficult, I gathered, but they could have given it a few more tries. Not easy, because horn players tire a lot at that height. But come on. Maybe this "the Kinks were lazy" thing has something to it ?
Sitting In My Hotel Majesty rises from nowhere, well silence really from the songs beginning and from the agreeable but a little subpar previous four songs to shine with luminance. Sweet melodies that rise and fall in a poignant circular fashion that resolve and repeat, all the time with a quiet, wistful achingly honest beauty. Instrumentally it all resolves around the delicate piano & vocal figures with uplifting swells provided at key times by Gosling's organ, Mike Cotton' s horns and in the build even with Mick's drums. I love how Ray looks at himself and cognizantly recognises the mental distance between he and his pre-fame friends whilst healthily poking himself with some well placed self deprecation. If Ray has inhabitated and so endured the unreal reality consumption of what for him is just another day, he now truly transcends it by ending side one seven stories high!
Sitting In My Hotel: This always takes me back to my original exposure to it. In my case "the friends " were my high school friends. It was all about "selling out" and not living authentically. "What is it all leading to?" They would be looking at me and laughing because I had"sold out". They had pointed out to me my hypocrisy, which left me alone "Sitting In My Hotel" a prisoner to my own insincerity. Ray hit the nail on the head for me with this one. A personal favorite.
Sitting in My Hotel Lots of great commentary already. Not much to add here. I'll just reinforce the idea that this song is brilliant in how it covers a topic which has become cliché without being at all cliché itself. It is totally unique, vote lyrically and musically in that sphere.
"Sitting In My Hotel" was actually offered to Andy Williams, but he objected to the "two tone daisy pooves" line & Ray refused to change it. To me, it's one of those songs about the thoughts in your head when it's 3 AM, you're in a strange room & you reflect on where you are, where you came from & where you are going. As the other Avids have pointed out, the protagonist is acutely aware of being in an absurd profession that is show business & how the friends that he had before embarking on his journey towards fame & fortune must be thinking about how he's doing. Maybe they are happy for him or maybe bemused of his new circumstances & lifestyle. It's a very beautiful song & a great way to end Side One before we wake up on Side Two and fill the next few pages about Cheese Whizz & other gastronomic horrors again.
