Well now that I've taken some time to recover from the shock of finding Kinks reunion headlines in my news reader, I can refer you to the original Mirror report here. We see that a retrospective box set is due to be released next year, which would certainly help motivate a tour.I also took the opportunity to open up the pages of Doug Hinman's amazing reference work, The Kinks - All Day and All of the Night, which is a day by day time line of all Kinks concerts, recordings and other events. (Read Dave Emlen's review here.) I could go through this book and find every concert I ever attended, starting on Tuesday, April 15th, 1975 at the Akron Civic Theatre at 8 PM. The Soap Opera tour and ending with the band's last appearance on stage, Saturday Sept 2, 1995 at Memorial Stadium Cleveland Oh for the Rock and Hall of Fame concert.
That's twenty years of Kinks concert-going, followed by another decade plus of Ray and Dave solo-show attending, and I'm only sorry I wasn't following them in the first decade of their careers, but hey -- better late than never.
As to this reunion, I'm sure that most Kinks fans will be telling ourselves, "we'll believe it when we see it." When it comes to the brothers Davies, you just don't know until you've turned in your ticket and you are sitting in your seat, and even then tempers can flare and curtain calls can be cut short.
The latter memory prompted me to look up the concert I attended at Constitution Hall in Washington, DC on Tuesday, May 3rd, 1977, in which Dave and Mick had a spat on stage and walked off in the middle of the encore, "Juke Box Music," leaving Ray all alone on stage to apologize and back off as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately, Dough Hinman's book is out of print, but you can find it at various used book emporiums using the trusty Google search option.
As for the Kinks reunion, I wish them good health in the new year. May they go back into the studio and find their creative groove together again. As for me, I'll be waiting with itching fingers, for the day and exact hour tickets go on sale.
2 comments:
It would be great to see them do a really solid theater tour and, hopefully, introduce the band to a new generation of fans. I get the sense that a lot of music fanatics under the age of 35 or 40 have no idea what a great songwriter Ray is.
Kids today wear so many throw-back rock tee shirts like Pink Floyd, Ramones, Beatles, the Clash, the Who, etc -- but I have yet to see a Kinks shirt.
My students are "educated" about the greatest UK band ever, as soon as they approach my door. For 15 years, the sign on the door to the Little Theatre has said:
"Everybody's a dreamer
And everybody's a star
And everybody's in Show Biz
Doesn't matter who you are!"
Pretty amazing serendipity, you asking the question who would you pay $300/ticket to see, and my response -- only for a Kinks reunion! Let us hope tix aren't that expensive if and when it finally happens.
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