Why doesn’t anybody every tell me anything? What happened to my sources? I did what I was supposed to. I’ve been checking Pitchfork 7-10 times a day, Brooklyn Vegan 5-6 times a day, Tiny Mix Tapes 2-3 times a day (they use bigger words sometimes, so I don’t hit them up until my caffeine buzz is in full effect, after 3pm or so) (And, to TMT’s credit, they did carry the news.)
Why am I finding this out now that Ray Davies is releasing a new CD titled Working Man’s Cafe in February? Doesn’t everybody know how big of a Ray Davies fan I am? Don’t y’all know how much I’ve been looking forward to this? This album was released in England in October. Don’t you care about me at all? Why do you like playing tricks on me? I hate you guys. Especially you, Pitchfork. Dickhead.
Three tracks are available for listnin’ on the Myspace and, eh, they’re pretty good. I mean, it’s not like he’s going to put out an album like Menomena or M.I.A. As has been his wont, Ray is writing sentimental songs about fictional characters who are really his different possible selves or alter egos. He injects his own blue collar background into songs about people he’s passed on the street, people who he empathizes with because they would have been him if it weren’t for those opening five notes to “You Really Got Me.” He writes about growing old, looking back, and peeking around the corner of old age.
Not exactly the type of avant guard stuff Pitchfork is giving high marks these days. The title track, “Working Man’s Cafe,” is a nice song. Introspective and wistful, full of longing but also courageously accepting, the song is told by an older man who reflects upon the loss of his way of life as a working man, complaining that now “we all seem to pass the time of day / online at the internet cafe,” battling this new world by reminding us that he’s “the guy with the greasy spoon” and that “long ago, I was a working man.” Ray cares deeply about his past, his upbringing in the Northern, middle class suburbs of London. It’s a badge of honor that he’s always clenched tight to his heart, a badge that has ingratiated him with his many audiences in America while touring his last album, Other People’s Lives.
Ray is successful in offering novelistic detail, something he has always done well, but overindulges in his message by calling the cafe “The Working Man’s Cafe”–a randomly named cafe would have lent more credibility to the story he tells. Nevertheless, the song is moving, even to a young chap like me who still has some years to live before I start ruminating back upon the old days.
–Posted by Scotter
4 Comments
From what I’ve gleamed from quick internet searches, part of the reason we haven’t heard much about this album is that Ray Davies was having trouble finding a label/distributor to sell this stateside (the Kinks have a long and troubled history with hitting it big in the USA, Wes Anderson notwithstanding). Maybe he should have angled for an exclusive Starbucks deal?
Yeah, the “working man” label can be a hard sell, even if he has blue collar roots. “Working Class Hero” is still my least favorite Lennon song; hopefully this album fares better. So do working men in the UK spend their time in cafes, not bars? Is this a cultural thing, or a reference to the old man/changing times theme?
I agree about the working class label. There’s something disingenuous about music describing tough times and hard work by someone who never had to work in a factory or whose only callouses are on the fingertips of his guitar-fretting hand, no matter how empathetic and well-intentioned that writer may be. Although both Lennon and Davies grew up in working class families, those working class families sent them to art school.
I think Springsteen pulls it off, but maybe it just seems that way to me because he is an American and has a better grip on our culture because he grew up in it. Perhaps working men in the UK do spend their time in cafes.
Hello Post rockist,
Thanks fo rthis update, I had not heard of this yet eiether and can’t wait to hear some new Ray Tracks. I won’t comment too much on the working man line of thought except that you are both (as always) right and I am sure Todd of all people can understand john’s sarcasim in that song and that all three of the gentlemen mentioned pull off all sorts of songwriting that I buy into, certainly including working roots.
Anyways, I am also writing to ask if you have heard of any Kinks Tour I heard whispers of. Is this true? I also heard Mick Avory was joining the tour.
Can this be true?!!
Thanks James.
Well, Ray said that the Kinks could re-unite in 2008, as reported by the Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=504710
But I think that Ray may have temporarily gone out of his mind. Sure, the reunion may happen–it isn’t outside the realm of possibility. But I think that the chances are very, very slim:
http://www.undercover.com.au/News-Story.aspx?id=3732
http://music.yahoo.com/read/news/54640584
Bummertown.
However, I’m sure Ray will get a chance to visit the US this year, with the new album and all.