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Post by phil on Feb 16, 2006 10:46:45 GMT -5
FREE BIRD ... ??
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Post by dolly on Feb 16, 2006 10:51:05 GMT -5
Nice, I have a long list of request..... A few I'd love to hear: Tin Soldier Man David Watts Plastic Man Mr. Pleasant Dedicated Follower of Fashion Wicked Anabella Sitting By the Riverside Did you request anything? I didn't, actually - I was on a balcony seat - which in Shepherd's Bush meant I had a great view as the upper levels sit over the ground floor, if that makes any kind of sense at all. But still, my lungs aren't that powerful. I was hoping he'd play dedicated follower of fashion and David Watts out of your list there, but he did Dedicated Follower last time, so can't complain... Being close to the front at Richard Thompson last month my forlorn shouts of "Beeswing" failed where "Britney Spears!" and "Jimmy Shand!"were successful. F*ckwitz deserved a lynching. |
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Post by dolly on Feb 16, 2006 10:51:23 GMT -5
You were that guy, weren't you? |
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Post by Paul on Feb 16, 2006 11:00:30 GMT -5
That's funny ;D I was thinking of requesting "Lola" actually, and if I'm lucky hopefully he'll play "You Really Got Me". How many people does the club you were at hold? I think the 9:30 Club holds 1,200 people. To date the biggest bands I've seen there are: The Beastie Boys (2004), Wilco (2002,2005), and Sonic Youth (2003, 2004). Oh, and John Fogerty (2004) |
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Post by dolly on Feb 16, 2006 11:05:39 GMT -5
Shepherd's Bush is 2000. It's a nice little venue. Preferred it to the Brixton Academy, which I think holds more than twice as many (that's where I saw Dylan the other month). The little club you're at sounds wonderful - I always prefer the smaller venues. I hate arenas - can't see bugger all unless you pay through the nose for a front-seat ticket.
Trust me, he WILL play both Lola and You Really Got Me - he always does. He managed to get everyone chanting Lola before pulling off a spectacular final encore of it.
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Post by Paul on Feb 16, 2006 11:19:37 GMT -5
Shepherd's Bush is 2000. It's a nice little venue. Preferred it to the Brixton Academy, which I think holds more than twice as many (that's where I saw Dylan the other month). The little club you're at sounds wonderful - I always prefer the smaller venues. I hate arenas - can't see bugger all unless you pay through the nose for a front-seat ticket. Trust me, he WILL play both Lola and You Really Got Me - he always does. He managed to get everyone chanting Lola before pulling off a spectacular final encore of it. Unless you see Pearl Jam live....They tend to keep their ticket prices relatively low compared to the likes of U2, Rolling Stones, Cold Play, DMB, and many other comperable bands...I think their ticket prices, even for pretty good seats, go between 40 to 50 US dollars. I'd love to hear "Lola" live, just b/c it would be a fun crowd participation number; but there are about 50 other Kinks songs I'd rather hear. I don't want to be the guy to yell out "Lola" b/c odds are he'll play that one; it's much too obvious. I think I'll yell for "Brianwahsed". You'd love the 9:30 Club, it's a pretty small venue and has a great sound system. I'm hoping Pearl Jam will play @ the 9:30 one of these days....Wilco was stunning both times I saw them there. |
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Post by dolly on Feb 16, 2006 11:34:26 GMT -5
Ray's big on crowd participation. Even staid old stiff-collared middle-aged Brits relent in the end. That was no problem with the enthusiastic Shepherd's Bush crowd - and of course there's the added snse that he's one of London's favourite sons and therefore speaks directly to half the people in the audience - but the somewhat older Sheffield crowd I saw him with last time were more than a little held back - until he got them all dancing in the aisles to "You Really Got Me" - I think my sister and I, being by FAR the youngest in the audience, were at the forefront of the march to the front, thinking about it.  Good times. Good venues make all the difference, and that one sounds great. Birmingham Academy, where we usually go to see bands is of a similar capacity, but being all standing it can be hard for a small bod like me to see anything, unless I kick and scratch my way to the front, of course. Which I absolutely did when Interpol came to town. I showed no mercy. |
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Post by Paul on Feb 16, 2006 11:59:14 GMT -5
I know what you mean by the large venues; unfortunately that's the only place I ever get to see Pearl Jam. Something about those big places, maybe not being able to see the band, maybe the shitty echo sound, just really takes away from the live experience. Rock and Roll was not meant to be heard in an arena.
Do you find the all standing venues tend to have greater crowd involvement? I've seen a few bands at Constitution Hall in DC ; it's an all seat venue, and the crowds are generally lame there, even with bands like the Pixies, Sonic Youth, or Wilco playing there. Wilco I've seen both at a theatre style venue, and an all standing club like the 9:30, and the latter IMO is far superior.
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Post by Paul on Feb 16, 2006 12:00:16 GMT -5
Then again, I'm a big fellow....at 6 feet tall and 190lbs I don't really worry about getting knocked around.
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Post by dolly on Feb 17, 2006 16:06:59 GMT -5
Do you find the all standing venues tend to have greater crowd involvement? I've seen a few bands at Constitution Hall in DC ; it's an all seat venue, and the crowds are generally lame there, even with bands like the Pixies, Sonic Youth, or Wilco playing there. Wilco I've seen both at a theatre style venue, and an all standing club like the 9:30, and the latter IMO is far superior. Well I love the fact that you can always see at a theatre-style venue, but unless it's something that suits being sat down, like Lambchop, or Richard Thompson's accoustic set, then it can really stilt the atmosphere. It didn't actually make a jot of difference at Ray Davies as there was standing on the ground level, then seating on 3 balcony levels. I would have bought the standing tickets, but unfortunately still having my nerve-damaged back, it is totally out of the question for me to stand still for longer than 10 minutes at a time. However, were that not the case then I love standing - and although I'm not of imposing height like you (I'm 5'3ish), I can flutter my eyelashes (ok, elbow the shit out of everyone) to get to the front. Except when PJ Harvey was at the Brum Academy and I hung back. Ruined it for me that did. Atmosphere is always lively though... |
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Post by Paul on Feb 17, 2006 16:33:45 GMT -5
I've rallied many of my friends to buy tickets for the Ray Davies gig next month; can't wait! So far it looks like the goon squad (my friends) will be out in high numbers and make for a rowdy Monday evening; I may have to call in sick for work on Tuesday....
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Post by Paul on Feb 21, 2006 14:23:17 GMT -5
Dolly, or anyone who gives a rat's ass....
The last two issues of Entertainment Weekly have had write-ups about Ray Davies. The first was a feature article titled Return of the Kink, and in this weeks issue, they rate his album.
It got an A- for the record.....
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Post by bowiglou on Feb 21, 2006 14:56:29 GMT -5
hey dolly and pcook.....comments on Ray Davies solo..I'm seriously thinking of availing myself of such after reading one very favorable review
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Post by Paul on Feb 21, 2006 15:07:22 GMT -5
It's out today, but for unknown reasons was not shipped to my record store.....I guess I'll have to wait a bit longer.
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Post by Paul on Feb 21, 2006 15:39:17 GMT -5
Here's a review from RollingStone mag.....
Ray Davies Other People's Lives (V2 Records)
"Things are gonna Change (the Morning After)" -- the opening track on Ray Davies' first album of new original songs since the quiet death of the Kinks in 1996 -- starts with peals of sea-gull-cry feedback and the surprised grunt of a guy who sounds like he's been shaken awake for a new day of hard luck and trouble. "My turn to get punched in the face," Davies sings, and he's just getting started. "You feel shite/ The air bites/Oh, will I ever learn/Your ear's deaf/Your girl's left/Never to return." No one should have to face all that before the first cup of coffee.
But when the rock kicks in, it is with reassuring familiarity: a chunky metallic heft hearkening back to the Kinks' arena-era winners Misfits (1978) and Low Budget (1979). And there is, Davies swears in the song, light at the end of the bruises: "You've paid your debt/Get up, you wreck/And crawl out through the door/Love will return." It's hardly a warm bedside manner, but nearly everything Davies wrote and recorded in the Kinks' three decades came with a sting in the tale, slugging guitars or both. In that way, Other People's Lives is a typical, welcome Kinks album -- with no other Kinks.
It is hard not to miss them, especially the slightly loose, animal-instinct crack of drummer Mick Avory and the combative crunch-and-shove guitar of Ray's brother Dave. The straightforward arrangements and well-groomed playing of the studio hands on Other People's Lives(recorded and mixed over four years) all but scream "solo album" compared to the pub-combo charge and fighting tension in even the Kinks' most sophisticated Sixties art pop. But there are jolts of expertly conjured deja vu: the "Waterloo Sunset"-style background ooo's in "After the Fall"; the blowsy Preservation-flavor horns on the recent single and hidden bonus track, "Thanksgiving Day." And Davies, who turns sixty-two in June, sings with the bright, slightly sour force and thespian's flair of his greatest hits. He doesn't sound a day over "Lola."
This is, however, a darker Davies than you remember. "I just had a really bad fall/And this time it was harder to get up than before," he sings in "After the Fall," a song actually cut in late 2002 but now impressively prophetic, given Davies' subsequent encounter with a mugger's gun in New Orleans in 2004. In "All She Wrote," what seems like your basic Dear John letter with punchy guitars -- "So don't pretend to be a new man/Be chauvinistic, that's your way/Now you're free to make your play/For that big Australian barmaid" -- turns out, at the very end, to be a suicide note. And the disgust in "The Tourist" ("Checking out the slums/With my plastic Visa") runs both ways; the locals, bitter and greedy, are as jive as the day-trippers.
The pessimism is no surprise. Davies' bluntness is. The most endearing quality of his incisive Sixties studies of Britain's class system and stiff upper lip -- the fallen noble of "Sunny Afternoon"; the prancing fops in "Dandy" and "Dedicated Follower of Fashion"; the prisoners of suburbia in "A Well Respected Man" and "Shangri-La" -- was Davies' ambiguity, his curiosity for foible and sympathy for dreamers. In contrast, the title track here is just cannon fire, a cantina-noir broadside against tabloid journalism: "Can't believe what I just read/Excuse me, I just vomited." Well, scandal sheets are as old as printing itself, and there is profit in hurtful gossip only when someone buys and believes it.
More often, Davies is at his best on this album: as a melody man in the bruised romance "Over My Head"; a portrait artist in "Thanksgiving Day," a sharp, bemused look at American myths of bounty and family; and a power-chord Noel Coward in "Stand Up Comic." When he played the latter song live in New York last fall, Davies acted the part in full -- a cockney nightclub joker stuck doing low-rent gags for low-brow joes -- the way he used to do the lovable boozer in the Kinks' "Alcohol." But "Stand Up Comic" is less about cheap laughs than how far we are willing to sink for the sake of sensation. "Style/Never was much/ Never has been/But the little bit that was/Was all that we had," Davies laments before bidding his audience good riddance. "You've all been watching too much television," he snipes on his way to a nice stiff drink. "Well, I'll be in the public bar, minding my own business."
It is a cocky, winning performance by a singer-songwriter who, on this album, for the first time in his rock & roll life, is truly on his own. But Davies is, as he once wrote and sang, "one of the survivors." We are lucky to still have him. (DAVID FRICKE)
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