"I go to BlackPOLL for my holidays,"-- ILM Artist Poll #17 -- The Kinks RESULTS THREAD

never really listened to God's Children until yesterday and was really struck by how the appeal of the "don't tell me what to do!" sentiment is immediately undercut by a very unappealing conservatism

― Jilly Boel and the Eltones (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, April 18, 2012 8:51 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hence Ray Davies's career in miniature.

damn, God's Children is disgusting. I knew Davies is insane but he's usually more subtle.

like on Two Sisters, which is disturbing but beautiful

I haven't seen Percy in years but isn't the song meant to be in character? Pretty sure it stems from the movie rather than RD's own beliefs.

Then again, I can quite believe that Ray Davies was only looking for a "Quiet Life"..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eevhpfOjyKg

xp but he is a conservative, no?

Yeah, God's Children is a character song and not -- it's a moving target, which is part of why i love it. If I'd gotten my ballot in, there'd be two number one votes for it.

He's socially conservative (in the UK rather than US sense) but I've never considered him especially religious. This is very different from his 70s lyrics, which tend to resemble letters to the Daily Telegraph set to music. The boxset that came out a few years ago was increasingly dispiriting listening.

yes, it's certainly a character song but I find Davies's irony and misanthropy a lot harder to take than Newman's or Fagen's. I always feel like he REALLY is a prick (not to say that Newman and Fagen are not but it's a different kind)

maybe I'm just talking shit

A special moment of praise is in order for Bruce Springsteen stemming the tide of zillionaire groupie-groped rock stars complaining about their taxes.

Speaking of the Boss, check out this awkward interview with Bruce and Ray for the Kinks tribute album a couple years back. I don't think the Boss realizes that it was Ray's estranged brother who came up with the riff.

xp but he is a conservative, no?

from a 2008 Rolling Stone article:

Another reason I wanted to move to New Orleans was to escape Tony Blair. I'm a socialist, and Labor is not socialist anymore. The working man is still downtrodden and unheard. And now they're vanishing. Blair came in and it became uncool to be working class. ...when you forget your origins -- that's bad. That's why I don't fit into this culture anymore. I take the side of the underdog.

That's interesting. No way was he a socialist in the 60s and 70s, grumbling about taxes and trade unions and low-cost housing schemes. I alwyas thought that part of Davies's "I'm not like anybody else" deal was the refusal to sign up to any political platform. I interviewed him once and asked about his politics and he said they were ever-changing and impossible to define so to see him baldly define himself as a socialist is unexpected.

Judging by "Preservation" especially, RD Davies' political thinking was a bit confused in the 70s... or, better still, RD Davies' political thinking was a bit confused in the 70s

But, yeah, obviously a small 'c' conservative - not that unusual for someone from his background

Lots of people were confused in the 70s! That's part of what made it such a marvelous time.

The character Ray obv. most identifies with in "Preservation" is the Tramp, which is a bit of a cop out really

Crossposted from one of the Sandinista! threads --

Last week while I was thinking about my Kinks ballot, I started hearing "Washington Bullets" in my head set to the music of "Come Dancing." Can't get it out...need a new earworm.

Ray Davies has a classic case of the Morrisseys: is it possible to mourn the passing of a certain England without sounding a bit racist? Answer: no.

being American, all Kinks songs sound like they're sung in a funny accent to me lol

I pretty much agree with this. I guess I can hear a bit of calypso in the "Apeman" voice if I listen hard, but it doesn't bother me and anyway Ray's voice is always pretty unmistakably his own - he's not exactly Meryl Streep with the accents. If I didn't like British people putting on silly accents that would eliminate a lot of good music, from Exile on Main Street to Lily Allen.

holy shit @ that socialism quote. who'd have thought?

Kinks were ruined for me in 93 at Glastonbury; still by some distance the worst concert by a major act i've ever seen in my life. makes me queasy just to think of it.
hopefully this thread can bring me back round cause i really did love the hits as a kid.

props for that Quiet Life clip Mark G; best bit of the film.

Ray Davies has a classic case of the Morrisseys

I have to admit that I am not attuned to that pov at all. I get it, but from a very remote and unemotional place. A lot of my exposure to this band has been radio - library - store where i worked - walking to work my first year in Chicago and the songs just have personal reminders to me in them, but not like LOADED WITH XXXTRA RACISM or aaaaanything like that.

Honestly, I have always just heard The Kinks music and that's it. I have liked them since I was a kid even when I couldn't figure out how all of these weird songs were all by the same band.

I didn't think too hard about it either until ploughing through the 70s material on the boxset and discovering the (understandably excluded) Black Messiah. It's not a massive issue, but it does slightly change the tone of Village Green and Arthur when you know where this nostalgia was leading. Doesn't he also do a Shylock voice on the Lola album? There's definitely a weird line about Jews on When I Turn Off the Living Room Light as well, which he defends on his 2005 Livejournal (http://ray-davies.livejournal.com/):

Okay, a few of my managers and business associates in the 60s were overbearing cockney Jews. Believe me, growing up in Muswell Hill - I knew the type. I come from the Bagel Belt after all. Because a few people who screwed me over in life were Jewish and I like to make fun of them, does not make me a Nazi.

None of which means I don't love the Kinks, just that I'm fascinated by the weirdness of his politics and his tin ear for causing offence (cf the Apeman voice).

xp It blows my mind that the Kinks didn't split until 1996. The artist Jeremy Deller says that one of their 90s gigs is the only show he wishes he could wipe from his memory because it was so upsettingly bad.

By 1996, it was just Dave and Ray anyway, wasn't it? I mean they had some hired hands who may have been around for a little or a long time, but The Kinks ceased to be "The Kinks" a long long long time before 1996.

Ray's first wife Raisa was Jewish iirc. I referred to that line in "When I Turn Off the Living Room Light" on the nominations thread cuz I've had arguments with another Jew about whether or not it's antisemitic (I am firmly in the NOT camp)

his tin ear for causing offence (cf the Apeman voice)

I don't see why the Apeman voice is offensive - the song is pretty clearly not mocking islanders or whatever - it's clearly sung from the perspective of a liberal, middle-class educated person.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/e1a0ca078af39ab7116570a620b58ab9.png

The one Kinks show I saw, in 1993, was great. I felt bad for Dave, though; during his solo spot in the middle of the show (whatever his song on Phobia was), the aisles were filled with people rushing off to the bathrooms. The only seriously questionable moment was the extended set-piece of "Aggravation," with a couple of dancers and some pre-taped Ray commentary ("it was 50 years ago this year...that the aggravation started" or something).

Ray's first wife Raisa was Jewish iirc. I referred to that line in "When I Turn Off the Living Room Light" on the nominations thread cuz I've had arguments with another Jew about whether or not it's antisemitic (I am firmly in the NOT camp)

well...it's stupid at least

I don't think so...? it's about feeling insecure, and the different things people feel insecure about, particularly their bodies.

Looking at that chart you think, jeez, all those former Kinks could probably form a band of their own.

And they did: http://kastoffkinks.co.uk/

damn, God's Children is disgusting. I knew Davies is insane but he's usually more subtle.
― gospodin simmel, Thursday, April 19, 2012 6:29 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The weird thing is that it's such a non-sequitir. "We're all God's children, so I hate the welfare state."

It's uncomfortably close to--hell, it's the same as--the bizzaro "logic" of the Christian right.

Either that means that Davies is uncannily perceptive on how a certain layer of the middle class feels about things, or… he is that person. I suspect the truth is kind of in between.

I kind of suspect that Davies doesn't really understand what it means to be a "socialist." For seem it seems a totem of his identification with the working class, but I doubt he's big on nationalized public services and higher taxes.

wait why is god's children anti-welfare state

i think davies is confused about the kind of person he is tbh -- have you ever read X-Ray? he basically sees his life as one detachment after the next.

Yeah, the o_O nature of the lyrics and association with the far xtian right is a good explanation of why I like it + add the most churchy melody of all time, and you have a song that I would be horrified to hear coming out of the mouths of babes at a school that does not teach children about evolution. It's intense!

also i like davies' cod-calypso voice. most of the time.

been listening to this bonnie raitt track recently (calypso arrangement by van dyke parks):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLZVJ-lVmVA

i can see how someone would think this was kind of a minstrel act, although knowing the scope of raitt's career i don't think anyone would seriously level that charge. on some level it's terribly misguided (and her vocal rhythms are off a few times) but i think it works. it helps that it's a song about women's sexual independence.

back to the kinks...

wait why is god's children anti-welfare state

― iatee, Thursday, April 19, 2012 11:01 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the whole "they have no right to turn us into machines" echoes a common right-wing criticism of "left-wing social engineering"--also consistent with POV in a lot of other davies songs, no?

that line can be taken different ways tho - turning people into machines is also common language of socialist critiques of capitalism

the whole "they have no right to turn us into machines" echoes a common right-wing criticism of "left-wing social engineering"--also consistent with POV in a lot of other davies songs, no?

it was a soundtrack for this:

Percy (1971) is a British comedy film directed by Ralph Thomas starring Hywel Bennett, Denholm Elliott, Elke Sommer and Britt Ekland.

Edwin (Bennett), an innocent and shy young man, is hit by a nude man falling from a high-rise building while carrying a chandelier. Edwin's penis is mutilated in the accident and has to be amputated; the falling man is killed.

Edwin becomes the recipient of the world's first penis transplant: he receives the very large, uncircumcised penis of the womanizer killed in the same accident. With his new bit of anatomy (which he names "Percy"), Edwin follows the womanizer's footsteps, meeting all his women friends, before settling happily with the donor's mistreated widow.

The film is based on a novel of the same name by Raymond Hitchcock (father of musician Robyn Hitchcock), and is today remembered for its soundtrack by The Kinks. It was followed by a 1974 sequel, Percy's Progress.

wtf at Hitchcock connection

what's your point?

xpost

'turn us into machines' = 'penis transplant'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k0jO2lJ8fQ
looks hilarious?

That's what I thought the song was about at first, honestly. I knew it was from that movie, and I knew the plot of the movie.

maybe. i guess i'd have to see the movie? which i kind of... don't want to do.

Also cf. "20th Century Man" - I think Ray is perhaps distrustful of modern technological society, though I wouldn't equate that with conservative politics.

At the time I first heard it, I had a friend who also was making this movie, so there must have been something in the air
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi4ywfamd3I

You are not required to actually watch that trailer btw, I think the title says it all. But it was pretty funny iirc.

I keep thinking about "Uncle Son" (re: Ray's politics):

Liberals dream of equal rights,
Conservatives live in a world gone by,
Socialists preach of a promised land,
But old uncle son, was an ordinary man.

Bless you uncle son,
They won't forget you, when the revolution comes.

Unionists tell you when to strike,
Generals tell you when to fight,
Preachers tell you wrong from right,
They'll feed you when you're born,
And use you all your life.