I have always enjoyed "Motorway" perhaps because I first heard this on vinyl and it was placed at the start of side two but it also includes one of my favourite Ray lines - the last one "I never thought I'd travel so far to work". I just find that an incredibly funny line coming from a touring musician. Musically, it is of a piece with Muswell Hillbillies but the organ reminds me a lot of Ian MacLagan of the Faces and Rod Stewart and that great cover of Tim Hardin's "Reason To Believe" from the previous year.
I love the arrangement on Motorway, though the food-and-toilet theme is getting a little redundant and whiny. Agree with @stewedandkeefed (were you ever on the Rocks Off Stones board?) that "I never thought I'd travel so far to work" is a very funny line. The menus are getting obscure, especially with the British-American juxtaposition as @Fortuleo pointed out. Can anyone confirm that "cat's eyes" are referring to shortbread cookies and "Thousands on a raft" to beans on toast? I had to google that one and opinions were mixed. Someone said cat's eyes were reflective thingies on the highway, but we are def. referring to food here imo.
No, cat's eyes is definitely the motorway reflectors, it's a good rhyme for meat pies. Also shortbread cookies in a UK motorway service station in the 70s? Not sure about that one!
I have been thinking the same thing. Every time the chorus hits with those great harmonies, it makes me think of .....something! I can't place it and it is driving me nuts! The harmonies themselves sound like Pure Prairie League circa "Amie", and I have to believe Eddie Rabbit heard this song before writing "Drivin' My Life Away". Very good track. I like it very much. I also believe it would have fit great on Muswell Hillbillies.
No. I used that handle on the It's Only Rock 'n' Roll message board and later read a post alluding to stewedandkeefed on the Rocks Off board. I had no idea because I was never on the Rocks Off board.
Yeah I always thought 'cats eyes' was the motorway safety things. It's great simple propulsive imagery to use, as often when you're driving at night sometimes about all you can see are the rows of reflectors illuminated by the car lights coming at you and disappearing endlessly. The liminal tedium of long term confinement in a vehicle is definitely evoked with the mention of these items. The guy who invented cats eyes, Percy Shaw was a bit of an eccentric, as you can see in the video below, as I can't pass up the chance to post more archive semi-relevant British TV with Alan Whickers profile of Shaw from a 1968 edition of 'The World Of Whicker':
Motorway Again purposely only read Mark's post before jumping into the deep end. Our hosts horror inside industry food story struck an uncomfortable chord which triggered my memory bank of being in his backyard. Fresh out of school and after a Perth Holiday I get on a bus a couple of days after new year '87 to voluntarily travel from there to Melbourne. Pretty green I thought time would go fast and we would stop at interesting and differing cafes on the motorway with differing & reasonable food offerings but little did I know! I quickly learnt that choosing anything from a hot box was like Russian roulette as you attempted to guess the least awful reheated item that wouldn't mess with your belly on the bus not withstanding that the onboard loo was broken which brought the term Bondi cigars to mind. Mark what's the chance that as I was visiting one of these fine W.A. food emporiums that you were there just out of earshot warning staff to not reheat food as you may poison someone? No wonder they didn't care as throwing away their motorway food ate into profit and they regularly received unsuspecting captive audiences that were hungry and couldn't imagine the food on the menu was amongst the worst in the world! Fortunately I can't remember the loos except that I tried really hard not to visit them but I do recall arriving at motorhouses at all hours to see bleary eyed staff that looked like they would rather be held at gunpoint if it meant they could go back home and go to sleep! Anyhow when I first heard the song I just thought it very slight and it took some time to grow on me into a bit of a fun singalong. The opening chords hint at Powerman but quickly we are jauntily off up the motorway and seeing Ray's lyrics in audio visual style as we share in his (and the bands) misadventures. I love the amusing yet bleak line; "I never thought I'd travel so far to work!" The reason? The great length of the journey dictates potentially endless motorway stops for food that our bandleader hadn't comfortably bargained for. In closing have I mentioned this is a fun song rhythmically, lyrically and melodically yet? Well so much so I think Ray stole it, yes that's right took it without giving credit as it was very clearly written by Bill Oddie for a future Goodies episode! After all he had written "I Want To Drive In My Motor Car" as a dry run, or was it a follow up?
Motorway As @ARL mentioned, the beginning absolutely sounds like the acoustic intro of Powerman. There was a track very early on that for the first few seconds sounded exactly like the intro of Tired of Waiting before completely changing it up for the rest of the song. So for whatever reason, this may have been a conscious choice! Perhaps as a Lola Pt 2... leftover? The lyrics and metered rolling delivery is fantastic, and I think my favorite delivery may be this line tucked in there quickly between other lines: "The rain is a pouring and it's four in the morning" I can picture this being a song for truck drivers or convoy complaining about their last meal on their radios to each other. Is this another quasi-novelty song? Perhaps, but its got a good driving beat and that country-rock feel executed well. Dave's harmonies work really well in this style too. And finally, to circle back to the beginning of this post, the structure of "so tired, tired of livin', tired of livin' this motorway livin'" is an updated version of "so tired, tired of waiting, tired of waiting for youuuu"!
I’m utterly amazed at how you whip out these clips at lightning speed. And can then identify the exact point in the timeline (that’s relevant to our discussion).
I was wondering this the other day, Are those 3-part harmonies in Motorway? If so that would be rare for the Kinks seems to me.
Thank U Very Much, Avid Ajsmith, for finding that sketch. YouTube once had that sketch w/the Beatles song, but I guess it was taken down. I also have the DVD & the sketch doesn't have the song either. I also liked that Beethoven sketch, which has him as a Tom Jones type, w/Peter Cook playing a poet (forgot which one). They couldn't do a sketch like that today.
Not much lol I was a drunkard in the Bank at that stage I started at Mrs Macs in 1990... I think, probably repping in 97/98
Ha I just got particularly lucky with the Cook and Moore clip cos I’d watched it recently. As for the other stuff, I’m a nerd for archive TV (esp UK 60s stuff) so I’m always looking for an excuse to shoehorn some into the thread for context. I think it’s amazing with YouTube these days how we can link directly to something so people can see or hear it for themselves, rather than describing things second hand. I also think it’s interesting to add contextual stuff to try and give more colour to the times these songs were released in.
I always thought "thousand on raft" was dressing (Thousand island) on lettuce, the lettuce being a large single leaf that resembles a raft. My mom used to call such a piece of lettuce as a raft. I'll admit I googled it just to confirm it and found nothing. (....and we all know nothing is true if it can't be confirmed by googling!) Anyway, maybe it was a regional nickname. Not sure where my mom picked it up.
“Motorway” – My initial impressions were: The last of the food trilogy, this time served UK style. By now Ray is totally exhausted, road-weary, cranky, running on (motorway) fumes, and doesn’t even attempt to be clever -- he’s mostly just listing complaints and more menu items. I suppose it’s relatable in that we’ve all been there on some travel experience or another, the difference being that most of us share our complaints with only a few people close to us and not with thousands of listeners (well, at least up until the time of social media). The mildly amusing joke “I never thought I’d travel so far to work” isn’t a rewarding enough lyrical destination to justify the tiring trip. Musically, we are back to the Kinks’ hillbilly hoedown mode that is usually a turn-off for me. Is he now determined to use Americana music for all of his British themes??? By and large, what Ray and his British Invasion counterparts created by harmonically expanding basic American roots music and blending in other influences is more interesting and engaging to me than the original source material….so play more of that! But this one finally won me over with the downhome “so tired, tired of livin’, tired of livin’ this motorway livin’” lament, and ultimately it’s catchy and fun. I do like Pure Prairie League’s “Amie,” and it does have that vibe. And as noted, is that Bach showing up midway through the hootenanny??? Now I find myself singing it around the house. Using the @Zeki litmus test (which has been quite useful in rating these albums by the way, so thanks!), would it make my favorites playlist? Probably!
I was thinking Thousand Island dressing too before I read the bean theory. But I'm not hearing the word "raft." Sounds more like "thousand on rye" or maybe, as you say, "thousand island raw" or "rock."
Yea, I reckon it is an ironic (?) musical statement... the joy of man's desire is twice heated cold food, that could result in hospitalization
I just conducted two forensic listenings ( ) and it does sound like ‘thousand on ra’…and that’s as far as I can make out. Closer to rock or rye. Not ‘raft.’ (The Apple Music singalong lyric shows ‘raft.’) So I am in the it-isn’t-raft camp. Edit: I meant to quote @Zack
I'm struggling to believe that we in the UK had anything as fancy as Thousand Island dressing in 1972, though I'd be happy for someone to prove me wrong!
I have no point of contact for thousands on a raft... The only one of those I know is "airship and a cloud", "bangers and mash" = sausages and mashed potatoes... and so we come full circle lol Someone may have hinted at this, but it is interesting that as we move along the food trilogy, we start off with a fairly decent broad range of food, move to the wholesome yet eventually boring humble spud/potato, then we move to the very bottom of the food level with the trash at one of the "gourmet" hwy/motorway/freeway stops.
