Sunday, 1 November 2015
Ray Davies hints to ITV that The Kinks may reform for one-off gig
He is not
necessarily at his most comfortable in a TV interview situation, but our venue
got the famously reluctant Ray Davies talking.
Hornsey
Town Hall in North London is where he performed on stage as a schoolkid, and
where he formed the band that became The Kinks.
Ray Davies
has always lived close to this area - bar some time spent in the US - and he
works around here in his studio and is committed to helping this old building
come back to life again, after years left empty.
He has
been asked so many times in the past two decades if The Kinks can reform.
He has had
notoriously fractious relationship with his younger brother and former bandmate
Dave Davies which has seemingly made this a non-starter. But not now it seems.
He might
he said do a one off gig in the town hall to help save the venue, which has now
been taken on by a group of like-minded locals.
It is such
a tantalising prospect - the man lauded as one of the greatest, if not the
greatest British songwriter back on stage with the remaining band members.
It must be
hard for Davies, who wrote some of the most instantly recognisable and lovely
music to be asked about the great What Ifs in his career.
What if
The Kinks hadn't been banned from playing in America for years, which put paid
to their aspirations to join the British Invasion, a phenomenon that has since
been defined by those iconic images of The Beatles arriving to screams at New
York's JFK Airport.
How can
you ask the man who wrote Waterloo Sunset, Sunny Afternoon and You Really Got
Me, why his band wasn't as big as The Beatles?
Why The
Kinks have been called The Most Underrated Rock N Roll Band of all time?
But he is
gracious and honest in his answers - bad behaviour, bad management, The Kinks
made mistakes that The canny Beatles didn't.
But he now
says the fact they weren't in the US meant he was at home in Britain writing
about everyday life and ordinary folk, the musical documenting of England that
became his trademark.
Alongside his
brilliance, Davies' battles with mental health have been well documented.
But
although The Kinks split in the 90s, he continues to enjoy musical success.
In April
he won a coveted Olivier Award for the soundtrack for Sunny Afternoon, a stage
retelling of the early days of The Kinks.
Now, he is
releasing the original recordings of all the songs in a new album, and it is
clear when we talk how proud he is of the success of the production.
He is a
funny and gentle soul, fragile too.
And the
feedback I have received on telling people I was to meet him is testament to
the special place he holds in British music.
Tell him
thanks for Waterloo Sunset was said to me more than once.
Consider
it done!
By ITV
News correspondent Nina Nannar
Saturday, 31 October 2015
The Small Faces: The Decca Years 1965-1967 review – the story of mid-60s pop in microcosm by Alexis Petridis of The Guardian
In June
1967, the Small Faces released their second album, From the Beginning. Or
rather, the Small Faces didn’t release it. It was put out by their appalling
former manager, Don Arden, without the band’s consent, an act of revenge
against the quartet for transferring their business to Andrew Loog Oldham and
Immediate Records. It appeared in the shops days before the band’s “real”
second album, containing early versions of three of its tracks: given that
Arden tended to deal with those who crossed him by attempting either to
strangle them or throw them out of a high window, you could say the band got
off lightly.
A
thrown-together compilation of old singles and demos, conceived entirely out of
spite, it should make for an odd centrepiece to The Decca Years. It’s the third
disc in a 5CD set that collates pretty much every note the Small Faces recorded
while under Arden’s aegis: alternative takes of hits; an instrumental backing
track called, alas, Picanniny; live radio performances that sound like they
were taped off air by some enterprising soul with a microphone and a
reel-to-reel recorder. But From the Beginning inadvertently told the story of
British pop in the mid-60s in microcosm. Over the course of its 14 tracks, you
can hear a seismic shift in focus: from lightweight pop designed to wring some
quick cash out of what some people still thought was a passing fad and attempts
to mimic US R&B, to an LSD-fuelled musical universe in which you could sing
with impunity about listening to the flowers breathing.
It was a
journey undertaken at white-knuckle speed. Everything on From the Beginning –
in fact, everything on The Decca Years – was recorded in the space of 15
months. But the Small Faces should have been better equipped to navigate it
than most. They arrived swaggering, the cocky self-assurance of What’cha Gonna
Do About It? a counterpart to the Who’s twitchy anger and anxiety. Pete
Townshend constantly picked at the neuroses of the burgeoning mod subculture –
class, violence, sexual confusion, the moments when grimy real life intruded
upon the fantasy world of all-night clubs and clothes and drugs – but the Small
Faces were all strut and show. Even their amphetamine psychosis came with a
side order of bravado. “I just can’t stop my brain from running wild,” sang
Steve Marriott amid the noisy swirl of E Too D, but not before he’d assured the
listener: “I’ve got everything I want, there’s nothing that I need.” You could
see where their confidence came from. They looked great. Their take on R&B
was thrillingly tough and full, bolstered by Marriott’s voice – he could sing a
Sam Cooke or Otis Redding number without sounding hopelessly pasty and
knock-kneed – and a side-order of feedback and flailing, distorted guitar that
kept it from pastiche. They also had a blossoming songwriting partnership in
Marriott and bassist Ronnie Lane.
However,
as The Decca Years demonstrates, their passage through the mid-60s wasn’t
straightforward. Their second single, a glowering Marriott/Lane track called I
Got Mine, failed to chart, and Don Arden then lumbered them with
Sha-La-La-La-Lee, co-written by light entertainment staple Kenny Lynch. It made
No 3, but that couldn’t hide the fact that it was a trite song that might have
been by Freddie and the Dreamers, launched into a chart that contained 19th
Nervous Breakdown, Day Tripper, Dedicated Follower of Fashion and the
Yardbirds’ Shapes of Things. The Small Faces were understandably mortified, but
they toughed it out, roaring back with two superb Marriott/Lane singles, Hey
Girl and All Or Nothing. Their debut album was an odd compromise: more poppy
Lynch co-writes of varying degrees of charm – as with Sha-La-La-La-Lee, the
Small Faces play them with a ferocity at odds with the material –
wired-sounding R&B covers, the noisy pop-art experimentation of E Too D.
Everything
changed the moment Ronnie Lane unwittingly scoffed a segment of orange laced
with LSD at a party of Brian Epstein’s. A bass player nicknamed Plonk in
reference to the size of his penis, Lane was perhaps one of 60s pop’s more
unlikely gurus of lysergica self-realisation. But was a role to which he was remarkably
well-suited, as evidenced by My Mind’s Eye, an account of the spiked-orange
incident and its aftermath. It is the Small Faces’ equivalent of the Beatles’
Rain, the acid initiate staring back at the “straight” world, but while John
Lennon sneers from a position of enlightened superiority – “they might as well
be dead” – Lane sounds warm and open-hearted, forgiving the people sniggering
at his new-found spiritual leanings. The music on Rain sets out to
disorientate, but My Mind’s Eye sounds oddly comforting and familiar, as if
inviting the listener to join in: it swipes its melody from the carol Ding Dong
Merrily On High.
Acid
seemed to immediately strip the Small Faces of the preening machismo you can
hear on their debut album. In its place came a brand of psychedelia that was
charming and wry, devoid of self-importance, a veritable advert for the
benefits of doing your crust in with LSD. Its first stirrings are here, on In
the Beginning’s plangent That Man and Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, the latter
featuring a game attempt to approximate the sound of a sitar with an acoustic
guitar, and on the 76-second long Just Passing, its atmosphere – simultaneously
swirling and bucolic, the countryside viewed through an acid lens – and
exaggerated Cockney intro a signpost to their 1968 masterpiece Ogden’s Nut Gone
Flake.
Psychedelia
suited the Small Faces. Under its influence, they made better records than the
ones collected here – Green Circles, Itchycoo Park, Afterglow (of Your Love),
Tin Soldier – but that isn’t meant to damn The Decca Years with faint praise.
It shows them steering their way through whatever the mid-60s threw at them –
from new drugs to featherweight pop – with enviable panache. “Stay cool, won’t
you?” guest star Stanley Unwin implored listeners at the end of Ogden’s Nut
Gone Flake. As The Decca Years demonstrates, the Small Faces were never
anything but.
Paul Orwell's new 7" single, 'Fangz', (Heavy Soul) is available to order from today!
Fangz
available 8 a.m. Saturday 31st October
Video
exclusive 12 midday on Fred Perry Subculture
Friday, 30 October 2015
Deep Six, comprised of ex-members of Makin' Time, The Upper Fifth and The E-types, to start gigging in 2016
Check out the Deep Six Face Book page where there is video footage from their recent rehearsals.......
Thursday, 29 October 2015
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The Mark Three release second LP, 'Happy Today', on coloured 12" vinyl
https://marklegallez.bandcamp.com/
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