20th Century Man

Ray Davies — Irv­ing Plaza, March 25, 2006

Play­ing to a packed house, Ray Davies opened Sat­ur­day night with “I’m Not Like Every­body Else”, an ode to rebel­lious indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and a sting­ing tes­ta­ment to his nar­cis­sism. Late­ly the song’s been fea­tured in IBM com­mer­cials that show office work­ers lip-synch­ing the lyrics as they go about their day, robot­i­cal­ly rid­ing in ele­va­tors and expe­ri­enc­ing the mun­dane as a thrilling new busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty wait­ing to hap­pen. Once a curi­ous rave-up from The Great Lost Kinks Album, “I’m Not Like Every­body Else” has become a strange, iron­ic anthem to con­found­ing the busi­ness hivemind.

What’s become of Davies him­self is a lit­tle clear­er now that he’s recov­ered from a shoot­ing two years ago in New Orleans. Tour­ing in sup­port of his new album, Oth­er Peo­ple’s Lives, Davies per­for­mance attempts to col­lect the dis­parate ele­ments of a forty-year career as a song­writer. It ain’t easy. A remark­able show­man, Davies enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly engages the audi­ence with vaude­vil­lian antics one moment and deep sin­cer­i­ty the next. Backed by a tal­ent­ed band, Davies attempt­ed to dis­till a career in an evening’s time.

It’s hard to imag­ine how Davies views him­self these days. At once he’s the author of music so instrin­si­cal­ly and pre­cious­ly British and yet he’s revered for the clas­sic rock anthems from albums like Low Bud­get, Sleep­walk­er and Mis­fits. The ten­sions between the pecu­liar, the par­tic­u­lar and the uni­ver­sal is brought to the fore from one song to the next, result­ing in a tonal washout — karmic zero sum — punc­tu­at­ed by moments of resound­ing bril­liance and poignan­cy: a suite of songs from The Vil­lage Green Preser­va­tion Soci­ety; paper plate prompts for impro­vised busker ver­sions of “Har­ry Rag” and “Have a Cup­pa Tea”; the Sto­ry­tellers’ treat­ment giv­en to “All Day and All of the Night” and “Okla­homa, U.S.A.”; final­ly, Davies fin­ished with an impas­sioned ver­sion of “Lola”.

Yet some­how it seemed strange hear­ing these songs against the clas­sic rock bom­bast of “Low Bud­get”, “The Tourist” and “Stand-up Com­ic”. The cir­cus of char­ac­ters Davies cre­at­ed through­out his career, from David Watts to John­ny Thun­ders to “Next Door Neigh­bors”, were nev­er so broad and con­de­scend­ing, even behind the sneer. But it’s hard to rec­on­cile pre-1971 Kinks with The Kinks there­after: being pop­u­lar in Amer­i­ca comes with a price, right?

That said, there’s noth­ing disin­gen­u­ous about the show itself; even if the intro­duc­tions are rehearsed, as they undoubt­ed­ly are, they nev­er reach the bogus world-his­tor­i­cal blath­er incit­ed by the likes of Spring­steen, Bono, McCart­ney and, more cyn­i­cal­ly (and per­haps com­i­cal­ly), Mick Jag­ger. When con­sid­ered in light of the British Inva­sion canon, it’s hard to believe that Ray Davies runs a dis­tant third behind McCart­ney and Jag­ger, but then again, maybe it’s not. Can “too British” be con­flat­ed with “has integri­ty”? Ever an endur­ing enter­tain­er and song­writer non pareil, maybe “I’m Not Like Every­body Else” isn’t lost on him after all.

The Kinks — “20th Cen­tu­ry Man”