Until Mr F's redemption dream, he was only out for one person, himself. There's a choice of living in poverty with Flash, or becoming a drone of the state with Mr Black. There's no saviour of the people either way.
Flash is at least a human being though, people love him (not least Ray Davies, I would argue), as I suggested earlier Black is Emperor Ming, only less sympathetic.
I’d also add Get Back in the Line - when the union man walks up to him the sun starts to shine. Then he walks right past… Having Here Comes Flash come after this never bothered me. I don’t think it really matters which specific crooked politician Black is referring to. Both Black and Flash are stand-ins for both sides of the political spectrum in my mind.
Wait, so this is the Kinks thread, not the Cricket thread? One thing I love about this tread is the diversions the discussion goes to & boy, we certainly have gone to various places. Anyway, now we're talking "Money and Corruption/I Am Your Man", another theatrical song, especially in the first half, where the people raise a litany of complaint about politicians & who will save them. Then it goes to Mr. Black, who sings about how he will solve all their problems in a soothing, passionate voice (maybe it should have been prefaced by the phrase "I'm Mr. Black & I approve of this message" ). Anyway, this song introduces Mr. Black, which the other Avids have pointed out, before Mr. Flash. It's my feeling, which I'll get to in Act II, that the character of Mr. Black is not as fully fleshed out as Mr. Flash.
I haven’t listened to Soap Opera yet. Will wait until we’ve started Act II but am looking forward to it.
David Hooker should of course read (The late) David Hookes, who was in fact a hooker! *Darn Spellchecker!!!
Yes, where are the people in all this? And the Village Green? If you assume that Ray sets out to show one side is as bad as the other, which I absolutely do not think is the case, then Ray blows the whole thing by being unable to stop himself humanizing and sentimentalizing Flash. He dresses him like Max Miller, his favourite comedian, and poses as him, cheeky grin and all, on the cover of Act 2. Black on the other hand is an inhuman monster, as one dimensional as the depiction of him on the cover of Act 1. Ray Davies is many things but Bertolt Brecht he ain't.
Yes sir it is the one and the same. Interestingly Javed Miandad was not given out LBW on home soil in Pakistan for an entire decade!
It really betrays the way the project did such a total volte face a quarter of the way through if you listen to the albums back to back, cos essentially you get half an albums worth of scene setting spent with characters who other than the Tramp we never see again. It’s like the first half of Act 1 is the pilot season and then half the characters got written out for the later series as the TV execs said ‘concentrate on these Mr Flash and Mr Black guys and ditch the rest’. I think it would have been good if the Vicar, Johnny Thunder etc, heck even some of the VGPS people had had some kind of cameo or mention at least in Act 2 to tie things together better and give the whole thing more heft and resonance when heard as one.
Money And Corruption / Iam York Man You can smell the show tune a mile away and some of it is quite mannered and forced. I like the medieval touches and will say that the female voices during Mr Black's speech seem to convey a righteous saviour or perhaps more specifically, dangerously create the veneer of one! Not one i will seek out with any regularity i am afraid.
Avid Martyj, I've been thinking about this & I think that Ray probably heard/read about the tragedies such as the 1955 LeMans race & all the great Grand Prix racers that lost their lives in the 1950s & 60s, such as Graham Hill & Bruce McClaren. I'm also thinking about the 1964 & 1973 Indy 500s. I can understand how Ray would feel, especially since he never learned to drive until late in life.
Both these comments are on to something, which backs my overall contention that Preservations Acts 1 and 2 are a mixed up, muddled up, shook up mess when trying to embrace it as a coherent, important statement on…well, whatever Ray was trying to do. My feeling has always been the whole thing feels like a first draft gone straight to final without much critical analysis by its creator on whether or not it works, or what to cut/alter to make it better. As one of the bands ex-managers said (I forget who), the problem with the Kinks after they dispensed with the Talmy/Wace/Larry Page’s of the world, was that there wasn’t an outsider to keep Ray in check. It more rewarding to approach Acts 1 and 2 by ignoring as much as possible the overall story and simply appreciate the tracks one by one. As such, today song, as well as the rest of Preservation Act 1, is far, far better than it is recognized for. I disagree with this. I find “Soap Opera” to be the most coherent, straight-forward of all Ray’s long-form conceptual projects with the Kinks.
I don't know about that. Having first watched the Starmaker play, I thought it was an interesting story where I got tricked. Granted, Soap Opera offers more songs, so maybe that's where one can poke holes?
Agree on both counts @Martyj ! If I have to try this hard to understand a musical, then I likely don't want to watch it. Ray seems to have reached for doing something pretty lofty, but maybe needed more time to work on it. And I don't even care too much about cricket to even learn more about it at this point in life. I like the terms, but don't really need to know WHAT they mean to enjoy the song Cricket.
There is also the environmental aspect. Motor sports have increasingly come under scrutiny for their carbon footprints. I can see how on that level alone Ray--he who longs for the bucolic pleasures of the Village Green, he who yearns for the simplicity of the age of Victoria, he who is a 2oth Century man who doesn't want to be here--would be abhorred by the wastefulness of motor sports. My God, the expenses are ridiculous. Until F1 governing body mandated a cap on such things, the Mercedes team was spending almost a half a billion dollars (BILLION..with a B) a year to keep Lewis Hamilton's trophy closet full. I get the criticism. But--much as Ray is devoted to Arsenal Football because he grew up around it--I love my hometown's Indy 500 too much to turn my back on it.
"Soap Opera" is the most interesting idea, or certainly had the most potential to be interesting. I'll leave off discussing it for now though.
Most people who dislike motorsports can't see what's interesting about watching dozens of anonymous cars racing by in endless noisy pointless laps, only for the winner to predictably be the driver of the best car with the best engineers. Formula 1 that is. It seems to be less about sport than mechanical engineering.
A valid observation. I just find really, really, really fast exotic cars at speed, in a pack, to be really, really.....cool!
Racing cars and soccer are the same for me, I like them both well enough, but I prefer to be driving/playing rather than watching
I can totally understand the comments regarding the seemingly non-linear approach to Preservation. I wonder to some degree if Ray knew his story so well that he figured people would know who was who, and what was what? With the first half of Act 1, and also another song to come here, I wonder if Ray was setting the idea in place that regardless of these criminal type people wrestling for power, that the majority of people just carry on their day to day lives and are somewhat disinterested ... De La Soul come to mind here funnily enough I can't understand what the problem is I find it hard enough dealing with my own biz.... At the end of the day, the wealthy and powerful are always going to have the upper hand, and even if there was some form of violent revolution that murdered them all, they will only be replaced by a new set of wealthy and powerful people. I think Johnny Thunder is here as a direct link to show it is the same Village Green we visited before. I think the Tramp somewhat represents "everyman" and somewhat shows that most of us want to sit on the sidelines when it comes to these oligarch types, because the action we would like to take is somewhat less than righteous and would land us in jail. I think it is pretty certain Sweet Lady Genevieve was something necessary for Ray to include, given his real life situation, and it does just flesh out that in amongst the wrestling for power, and in amongst the fighting for the minds of the people, love and heartbreak, and the regular day to day things of real life don't stop for the peeing contests of wannabe Kings. We enter with the peaceful strains of the morning, and we open our eyes to the everyday things with the coming of daylight. We reminisce about lost love, and a hope for new, or renewed love. We see that there are some changes in the air, that may not be so good .... but hey, we're the working class, we've been used to fighting day to day all our lives, so it just seems like more of the same really. Then we reminisce about the older writers and fashion icons and people of note that brought some pleasure to the place .... Then we see Johnny Thunder riding his bike listening to Little Richard, and not caring one bit about the coming changes, because he is going to ride his bike and listen to old rock and roll no matter what anyone says. The Vicar/Pastor/Preacher gives us a warning that we need to stand upright and be honourable folk, for our own benefit, and everyone around us, because there will always be a demon trying to bowl us over. Then we arrive to today's song where we find there is a feeling of discontent because the politicians and businessmen are .... well ... being politicians and businessmen .... that isn't really anything new, no matter what age we are referring to, but the people have been stirred up by someone or something, and decide they need a saviour of some description to step in and "fix things".... This is interestingly after the Vicar spoke, and we all know who the Vicar should be touting as a saviour, and it isn't Mr Black or Flash. So Mr Black steps up to the plate and says "I Am Your Man", much like a thousand despot dictators before him .... and we can probably all name quite a few of those from the history books. Then as @Fortuleo said earlier, tomorrow we have Mr Flash made known as the current problem, and he comes into focus as he appears to be trying to stamp out the resistance ..... The song is Here Comes Flash, but as he is already the leader, it isn't like he is being introduced to the people, as they obviously already know him. Here Comes Flash is the last gasp of a fallen leader trying to shore up resistance against the resistance lol.... anyway, we'll get to that tomorrow. So it all makes sense to me. We all know that places have leaders. We find out today the leader is doing a very bad job, surprise surprise, we just don't have his name yet .... Anyway, it is certainly an interesting discussion.
I agree with this. I guess it's fare to discuss and analyze the shortcomings of the plot, but it is all about the songs. I think both albums work great as a frame to build the songs around. It doesn't really need to be more than this. It must have been a very difficult task for Ray to pull off, but he did what he could and released it anyhow. Didn't he say he even scrapped the entire first recording of the album? If you get the basis of the plot, that is all that is needed to enjoy what he was going for. It was also a stage show that I have never seen, and maybe some of the holes would be filled in by the visuals. Not sure if anyone read this. It's a good article with plenty more discussion about the Preservation plot. The Kinks – Preservation (Acts 1 and 2) – Classic Music Review
