You mean like "Lola" or "Celluloid Heroes"?

Ok, perhaps, "Sunny Afternoon".

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Heck, from that all the way to his latest album, "Other People's Lives," which I'm listening to today.

It thrums through me. It's like I wrote it for me and then forgot that I created it.

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Just when I thought I couldn't like you anymore, you go and write an entry about Ray Davies...

Have you read his autobiography/novel? There's a reason Pete Townshend called him the poet laureate of England.

I met Ray Davies when I was 14, and he made me feel like he and I had been friends for years.

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I read it a while back. I still like his music a lot better.

Ray just strikes me as being an everyday guy, and I envy you deeply for having met him.

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'Come Dancing' is an entire novel in three minutes and fifty-seven seconds. Davies evokes time, place, character, even musical style in one pop song that also manages to be both beautiful and catchy. It has a warm nostalgic narrative arc — to say nothing of the brilliance of the startling hard-rock guitar barging in after 'Part of my chlildhood died, just died' — and completes its loop gorgeously:

My sister’s married and she lives on an estate.
Her daughters go out, now it’s her turn to wait.
She knows they get away with things she never could,
But if I asked her I wonder if she would
Come dancing,
Come on sister, have yourself a ball

If pop songs can be masterpieces — and why not? — 'Come Dancing' eminently qualifies. I'm done now.

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Here here. And I was just advocating "Celluloid Heroes": a song I want to write an essay about.

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'Celluloid Heroes' is also magnificent, and I would've talked that up too (and about ten others) had I not gone on a bit re: 'Come Dancing.'

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'Come Dancing' is one of my favorites ever ever ever. Highly underrated.

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Davies is brillian. "Celluloid Heroes" is genius.

I must get his solo album. I went through a Kinks renaissance last summer. It was wonderful.

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It's good. It sounds exactly like the Kinks, which is pretty much what you'd expect.

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I love him, he's wonderful. And he shares a lot of history with Chrissie Hynde. She sings things that describe how I feel...

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It's true, Ray is the shit.

And X-ray is a weird, but quite tasty book.

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According to his interview on NPR today, he does it by hanging out in train stations and watching people.

Works for me.

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That sounds like what he'd do.

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Gotta love Ray.

Craig

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He is amazing. Soren was playing one of the albums (I have not tracked on all the information, but it had "Shangri-La" on it), this weekend, and that entire album is amazing.

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Shangri-La is a brilliant song. But the amazing thing is that it's just one of many.

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I was thinking about Ray Davies yesterday too.

Actually, though, I was thinking more along the lines of simplicity in the midst of complexity... and remembering The Kinks...

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