The Post-Rockist

Ray Davies knew exactly where he was playing, knew his audience. Taking the stage at the Comerica Tastefest in a location that is not exactly in the murmuring heart of Detroit but more right atrium, the legendary performer and songwriter made very clear what he and many native Detroiters have in common—that we wear our blue collars like a lackluster yet glistening medal.

Speaking for those who can say (to borrow from rock’s other blue-collar saint) that “the country I come from is called the Midwest,” I can say that Davies’ upbringing and our upbringing is not so different. Ray grew up in the north London suburbs, the son of a life-long industrial worker whose hard work allowed Ray to choose a path foreign to his kin. Davies’ music has never strayed from this basic touchstone, those early experiences. Many of his characters may have been dedicated followers of fashion, but such were always presented in the satirical tone that betrayed in the songwriter the kind of superiority in which only a blue collar son can bathe.

Detroit is trying to dig itself out of the mire of the post-industrial world. Folks are hard-working, suffering badly, and are paranoid and anxious about the future. But still they try to make do. Ray Davies knows this. Why else would he have begun the show with “Low Budget,” a paean to just barely making do. To wit, these are the first words Ray Davies delivered to the Detroit crowd:

Cheap is small and not too steep
But best of all cheap is cheap
Circumstance has forced my hand
To be a cut price person in a low budget land
Times are hard but we’ll all survive
I just got to learn to economize

After the song and a resounding applause, Ray strutted up to a microphone raising a bottle of Corona in his left hand with his right hand tucked in his pocket and said “Hello. Hey, you don’t drink this shit in Detroit, do you?” The crowd responded raising hundreds of warm Buds and Bud Lights with a “nooooooo!” Well, some of us do drink Corona (it’s not exactly the most aristocratic of beers, is it?) but the sentiment came through to the audience all the same.

The show was a mix of old Kinks songs and songs from Davies’ excellent (in this Post-Rockist’s opinion) new album Other People’s Lives. As you can see from the setlist (below), there was a nice mix of old tunes and new. Although Kinks-o-philes would have like to have heard myriad other songs (Here’s what I was hoping for: “Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues,” “This is Where I Belong,” anything from Preservation) Ray delivered a representative set and from such a prolific master-songwriter that’s all you can expect and is certainly nothing to quibble over.

The highlight of the set was probably “20^th Century Man.” Davies introduced the song as a little number from a little album called The Muswell Hillbillies and, at first, beginning with gentle arpeggios on the acoustic guitar, it sounded like “Oklahoma, USA” or even “Here Come the People in Grey,” but in a slow croon Davies disclosed “I was born in a welfare state…” I was glad that Davies didn’t change the chorus to “21^st Century Man,” but of course he didn’t really need to—the song is just as applicable to the first years of this 100-year cycle as it is of the one that just passed. The crowd got particularly rowdy (ie. empathetic) when Davies sang “Don’t want to get myself shot down / By some trigger happy policeman” with lots of fists pumping in the air.

As he’s done for much of his performing career, Ray was speaking as much to his audience as he was singing. The following flourishes ensued:

During “Next Door Neighbor,” Davies explained that Mr. Smith threw his telly out the window “‘cause he didn’t want to watch the Fox Channel anymore.”

When a fan in the crowd asked him why he doesn’t cover any songs, Ray replied, “I cover my own songs.”

Telling the story behind “A Long Way from Home” (a song to his brother to beware getting “too cocky” even though you’re famous), he notes “When my brother first had a number one record he was 16 years old. I was 45.”

He continues: “But it’s a song that warns you about getting too cocky when you get success ‘cause you’re just a person after all, s’that right? ‘Cause we’re just people right? (Crowd Cheers) Are you people like me? (louder crowd cheer) Alright!” (as a guy next to me yells out “play Superman!”)

Telling the story behind “You Really Got Me”: “I wrote this in my house, this little blues song I had imagined in my head, and when I played it for my brother, my brother said (pause) “what the fuck’s that!”

Right after a fine two-song set that featured Ray and guitarist Mark Johns alone on acoustic guitars singing “Sunny Afternoon” and “Dead End Street,” the rest of the band returns to the stage as Ray exits stage left to a tented area, and returns not in the silky red button-up in which he played the first half of the show but a ragged denim button-up, untucked. “See,” he says, “blue collar.”

And the crowd goes wild. Ray Davies is one of us.

The show ended with two encores. You know which songs he played, of course. Encore 1: “You Really Got Me.” Encore 2: “Lola.” It’s not as though I don’t love these songs, or that when I’m listening to a Kinks album that they don’t surprise me everyone once in awhile. I’ve just heard them thousands of times and have proclivities for the many great Kinks songs that didn’t become hits. My ambivalence to these two songs allowed me to separate myself from my fellow concert-goers.

I was able to take my eyes off of my hero for the first time in over an hour and look at others. I saw eyes nearly glazed over in excitement at hearing the songs they’ve been awaiting since this morning when they awoke. I saw 60-something ex-hippies (well, probably not quite ex-) bouncing up-and-down on faulty knees. To my left was a large man decked in cowboy hat and boots, a Tigers T-Shirt tucked all the way into his Levis, and a big cigar. He had been playing air guitar for the entire show, but when Ray played “You Really Got Me,” the man intensified from a less-than-satisfying Dickey Betts imitator to almost the real Jimi Hendrix at Monterey, dropping to his knees playing along with the solo. Married couples in their forties and fifties were to my right. They held hands and danced, whispered to each other memories of their courtship. Twenty- and thirty-year-olds stood in awe that they were actually seeing such a great show from a man twice their age who they had only known through CDs, MP3, or their parents’ fanatic ravings. The younger crowd were steady at 50/50 on the Visible Excitement Scale: Half played it cool, not really dancing or singing along, but unable to prevent themselves from beat-keeping foot and finger tapping. The other half of the youngsters were to be seen dancing and singing right along the older fans. Hearing these classics–the few of the Kinks’ many gems that actually seeped through the cracks of the American musical unconscious–direct from the man himself, both young and old were taken back in time to the first time these songs entered their psyches and became a permanent part of their lives.

So a new memory has pervaded my consciousness. This surely is the film that will be playing in my mind when these songs bluster from my radio. I know the Kinks’ music intimately—all the songs I’ve listened to innumerable times. But it was only when I could experience the songs through others that they truly became known to me. Ray Davies certainly didn’t see me do it. I was too far away from the stage to be anything but a shaggy-haired spot in the crowd from his view. But I gave him a wink all the same, to let him know that I know that he really does know us.

Set List:
Low Budget
I’m Not Like Everybody Else
Where Have All the Good Times Gone
After the Fall
20^th Century Man
Next Door Neighbor
Over My Head
Sunny Afternoon
Dead End Street
The Tourist
Till the End of the Day
A Long Way from Home
Well-Respected Man (well, two verses and two choruses)
The Getaway (Lonesome Train
All Day and All of the Night
Tired of Waiting for You
Encore1: You Really Got Me
Encore 2: Lola