Ray Davies at the Beacon Theatre Part 2

(For Part 1, go here.) Finally got round to looking at the rather lame phone-captured pics from the NYC Ray Davies' concert. As you can almost see -- at the Beacon it was:

Ray Davies
Tonight Soldout

Nothing I took inside was any good. I didn't bring my digital camera because I thought security would be tight, but instead it was a do-what-you-like kind of night inside that theatre. Great pics can be found on Flikr and elsewhere. Another blogger (a professor of taxation!) was there and posts commentary and a pic.

I hear recordings are going the rounds already. Here's a link to a site that hosts the Philadelphia Tower Theatre show. Scroll down the left side to find the Ray Davies mp3 concert.

Number One Fan FranK attended the entire tour, handing out goodies to all members of the Kinks Preservation Society. I was glad to get another fresh bumper sticker, as the one on my vehicle has been there since the mid 90s -- and looks it! I'm saving the God Save Ray Davies sticker for whatever vehicle I might purchase next. Preferably some form of transportation that runs on something non-toxic and is made from sustainable materials like this.

Thinking back on the concert, I found myself responding to the music with deep reflection on matters personal, both past and present. Working Man's Cafe will always be linked in my mind to my dad. I wrote about it here and showed my dad. It made him very pleased, although he really didn't care for Ray's vocals. Couldn't catch all the words, and commented that the crooners of old -- you could always understand them. Ah well YouTube does nothing for one's diction. Months later, when dad was in the hospital for what would be his final day, the Morphine Song kept rolling round in my head as I sat staring at the diminishing vitals accompanied by the drip drip of the drug that must be so powerful it can rid one of all pain and fear at the end.

Ray's tribute to his dad was an especially poignant moment for me, and 20th Century Man is one of my all time favorite Kinks songs. Class divisions continue to wrap in and around the lyrics of his recent songs. I was glad to hear The Tourist and Vietnam Cowboys, both odes to the excesses of consumerism and globalization:

Mass production in Saigon
While auto workers laid off in Cleveland
Hot jacuzzi in Taiwan
With empty factories in Birmingham
Now it's baby boomers in Hong Kong
And cowboys in Vietnam
Making their movies ...