The Taxman’s Taken All My Dough…
As I type the pundits are on the election shows examining the sacrificial entrails in the absence of any hard news and I am sipping Glenlivet as a precursor to either silent satisfaction or misery.
I got a text from a friend yesterday who is a lighting engineer asking if I wanted guest passes for the Ray Davies show he was lighting at the Usher Hall last night and the answer was, of course, “yes”. The first thing to say is that the newly refurbished Usher Hall and particularly the new box office and bar area is seriously impressive. The second is that Ray Davies was great.
I last saw Davies with The Kinks at the Playhouse in 1982 in what was a fantastic gig. I had not been to see Davies solo since, partly through circumstance and partly because I didn’t want to run the risk of spoiling the memory of that 1982 gig. I needn’t have worried; he was excellent and, for a man pushing 67, pretty sprightly as well.
He played a lot of Kinks’ songs too – I wasn’t noting it down but from memory the (2 hour) setlist included Waterloo Sunset, 20th Century Man, Well Respected Man, Celluloid Heroes, Lola, Days, All of the Day and All of the Night, Dedicated Follower of Fashion, Sunny Afternoon, Set Me Free, and Victoria. Many of these were, of course, sung along with by the audience with gusto – particularly Days in which he sang the first line and the audience did the rest.
And the title of this post? an apposite prediction for whichever party gets into power – and the parties are kidding us on if they try to claim otherwise.
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