The Monks - “Monk Time”
(from Black Monk Time)
The Fiery Furnaces - “The Wayward Granddaughter”
(from Rehearsing My Choir)
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
Elvis Presley (January 8, 1935 - August 16, 1977)
David Bowie (January 8, 1947 - hopefully a very long time from now)
January 8th: Helluva day to have a birthday, wouldn’t you say?
