Founded 1983: Liberal Mindset; Conservative Morality

February 14, 2011

Ray Davies Sings Waterloo Sunset in Performance Over Time

We love the Kinks, and we especially adore Ray Davies. Ray has been making music for popular culture for over 45 years. One of the more pristine songs Ray sings is “Waterloo Sunset” and watching him in performance of that song, over the years, tells us precisely what we need to know about longevity, historical station, and how celebrity singers must sustain their craft in performance over a decades-long career — and you do that by bringing something new to the song each time you sing it.

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October 18, 2010

The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society as Performance Piece

I’ve been listening to the magnificent album The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society a lot recently, sometimes as much as a few times a week. I have come to regard it as sort of a performance piece — like a short play for the ears that I can enjoy wherever I am whether through the magnificent cigarette pack sized iPod or, more properly, spinning thirty three and a third revolutions per minute. It is a brilliant thirty-nine minutes performance although it usually feels longer than that, particularly when you think about the words being sung.