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MP3.com Live: Davies works out the Kinks
Former frontman for the classic UK rock band rips through a set of timeless music, both old and new, in San Francisco.
SAN FRANCISCO--Ray Davies has been away from the music game for a minute, to say the least.
Ray Davies
But in a spirited show at The Warfield in San Francisco last night, the former Kinks frontman laid bare the fact that timeless music has no expiration date.
He led a tight four-piece backing band through a 100-minute set that included classic Kinks songs, tracks from the first proper studio album of his 40-plus-year career, and a bevy of solicited clap- and sing-alongs.
Davies, 62, is touring in support of Other People's Lives, a February release that is technically his third studio album but the first to contain neither any Kinks members (as did 1985's Return to Waterloo) nor any Kinks songs (as did 1998's The Storyteller, which kicked off VH1's Storyteller series).
Sporting an untucked white dress shirt, jeans, sneakers, and an age-induced brand of the mullet hairstyle, Davies strode onstage alone to raucous cheers. He started into one of the songs that served as something of a summary of his career, the Kinks' "Not Like Everybody Else," and was quickly joined by his band.
The defiant tone of the next song, the Kinks' "Where Have All the Good Times Gone?," seemed a bit odd coming from a 62-year-old man, and it set up a clear juxtaposition: While the classic Kinks material gave the crowd what they came for, it was the new material that was the standout on this night. Several decades on, Davies' narrative skills and wry sense of humor have aged well, even if his voice hasn't.
After the early double-shot of Kinks songs, Davies played a series of songs from Other People's Lives, including the redemption-laced "After the Fall" and "Next Door Neighbor," a witty tale about eccentric neighbors. The best of those songs was "Over My Head," a slickly crafted tale of a romance gone wrong.
Davies did an excellent job of maintaining the show's flow, mixing in infectious Kinks tracks like "Apeman," "Celluloid Heroes," and "Dead End Street." As the show wore on, Davies hammed it up, playing the role of wacky Englishman, dancing around, making "wild and crazy guy" motions like the classic Steve Martin-Dan Akroyd Saturday Night Live skit, and directing the crowd to clap and sing along.
The highlight of the night was the new song "Tourist," written in and about pre-Katrina New Orleans, where Davies developed most of his new material. The deep, bluesy number contrasted the tourism that drives the city's economy and the reality of deep-seated poverty in the neighborhoods outside the French Quarter.
Even before Katrina and its aftermath exposed the poverty of the region, Davies experienced it first hand. While walking with a female friend in 2002, someone snatched her purse, and Davies chased after the suspect and was shot in the leg.
But while some of the new tracks proved the most compelling of the performance, it was up to the obligatory classics "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night" to bring the house down. Unlike baby boomer fans of bands like the Rolling Stones, Kinks' fans haven't had the luxury of seeing the Kinks live since they called it quits in 1996.
As a result, the exuberance in the crowd--and on the face of the resurrected rocker that incited it--was palpable.
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