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The Kinks showcase a storming selection from ‘Sleepwalker’ live in 1977

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1973 was not a good year for The Kinks. Personal problems, changes in line-up and a whole shift in the music scene led Kinks frontman and main songwriter Ray Davies to question what he was doing with his life. In June of that year, Davies’ wife Rasa left him taking their children with her. It sent Davies into a major depression.

During the band’s headline concert in July at the White City Stadium in London, Ray Davies announced from the stage he was quitting the band. According Roy Hollingsworth in his review of the gig for music paper Melody Maker:

Ray Davies should never have been at London’s White City Stadium, on Sunday. Physically, and more important, mentally. Davies was in no fit condition to play. And in no fit condition to stand on a stage and say that he was quitting, He was a man neck-high in troubles, and when he shouted “I quit,” he should have shouted “Help!”

Ray looked frightening in dark glasses for the sun wasn’t shining … He was a wreck that evening … Davies swore onstage. He stood at the White City and swore that he was ‘F—ing sick of the whole thing … Sick up to here with it … and those that heard shook their heads.

After this tirade, Ray walked across to his brother, guitarist Dave, kissed him on the cheek and exited the stage. He then collapsed from a massive overdose of “valium.” According to Dave Davies this was the night Ray had “tried to top himself.”

I thought he looked a bit weird after the show—I didn’t know that he’d taken a whole bloody bottle of weird-looking psychiatric pills. It was a bad time. Ray suddenly announced that he was going to end it all—it was around that time that his first wife left him. … She’d left him and taken the kids on his birthday, just to twist the blade in a little more. … I think he took the pills before the show. I said to him towards the end that he was getting a bit crazy. I didn’t know what happened—I suddenly got a phone call saying he was in the hospital. I remember going to the hospital after they’d pumped his stomach and it was bad.

During his recuperation in hospital Ray spent much of his time listening to Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony The Resurrection—the story of one man’s redemption and resurrection after death, which Ray described as “a moving piece of music.” It made him think about taking the band in a more theatrical direction.

When Dave came to visit him, Ray told his brother he no longer wanted to just be a rock band but “wanted to explore the idea of rock theatre, something no one else had really done before.”
 
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In many respects this idea—or concept albums similar to this idea—exactly what The Kinks had been experimenting with since The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society in 1968, and had continued with in Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (1969), Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One (1970), Everybody’s in Show-Biz (1972) and Preservation Act 1 in July 1973.

Out of hospital, Davies returned to the band and started mining his “rock theatre” idea with Preservation Act 2 (1974), Soap Opera—which was made into a TV musical extravaganza Star Maker (1974), and Schoolboys in Disgrace (1975). Though each of these albums has its merits—and all deserve considerable reappraisal—they performed poorly in the charts and did little to keep The Kinks relevant with a younger audience. In hindsight, none of this matters much as the quality of the songs and Ray’s ideas have outlasted the fickle fancies of pop fashion. However, the Kinks’ record company was not impressed and demanded that the band’s next album had to be a stand alone traditional collection of good songs—as if such a thing can be ordered to suit.

In 1976, Davies therefore started writing a non-concept album Sleepwalker, which was released in February 1977. Though the songs still reflect Davies’ own preoccupations—the title track dealt with the singer’s insomnia after moving to New York—it was the first album to give The Kinks a top fifty placing since the singles “Lola” and “Apeman” in 1970.

Sleepwalker was generally well received—Melody Maker said the record was “the group’s strongest and most organised album in years” which:

...emphatically testifies to the dramatic artistic revival of Raymond Douglas Davies, whose supreme talents as a writer have been so distressingly overlooked during the first half of this decade.

 
The Kinks showcase ‘Sleepwalker’ and more, after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.30.2016
10:58 am
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Bauhaus, Japan, Cocteau Twins and more on ‘The Old Grey Whistle Test’


 
This morning, in the course of searching for a King Crimson video, I ran across an incredible - and given the criminally low view counts, apparently undiscovered - trove of high quality New Wave and Gothic videos from the legendary British television show The Old Grey Whistle Test, few of which are to be found on the DVD collection. I’ve posted a few of my favorites here, but there’s plenty more on the profile of YouTube user ArtNoyze. Enjoy.
 

Altered Images - ‘Insects’
 

Japan - ‘Ghosts’
 

Adam & The Ants - ‘Ant Invasion’
 
The Teardrop Explodes, Cocteau Twins and Bauhaus after the jump…

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Posted by Ron Kretsch
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11.23.2013
11:57 am
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Alex Harvey was the Director: SAHB was the soundtrack

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They were making a film, and Alex Harvey was the director, creating the different scenes, to which SAHB put the sound track. And what a great film it was too.

It’s 30 years since Alex Harvey died on the eve of his 47th birthday. Hard to believe, but there it is. It seems so recent but is now so very far away. Yet, we all need some Alex Harvey in our life, just to remember the brilliance of the man, and of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band. Here is Alex in a brief interview with “Whispering” Bob Harris on the Old Grey Whistle Test, where he talks about his early days as the Scottish Tommy Steele, playing in the Big Soul Band, and performing in the musical Hair. The key thing to note here is the long apprenticeship Harvey had before he reaped success.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band


 
3 bonus tracks from SAHB, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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10.02.2012
07:35 pm
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Rocksteady your soul: When the Old Grey Whistle Test went reggae

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Nicky Thomas delivers…
 
The Old Grey Whistle Test was only in its second year on BBC2 when producer Rowan Ayers presented this reggae showcase in Edinburgh in 1973.

The lineup is almost completely comprised of Jamaican artists who had settled in London after touring Europe off of hits they scored in the British charts. The notable exception is the specially flown-in MC Dennis Alcapone, who delivers two of the three original tunes in this collection of excerpts (the other is Winston Groovy’s “I’m a Believer”—the one written by Mulby Thompson of Trojan Records, not Neil Diamond). It’s pretty rare to see footage from this early on of a reggae MC like Alcapone in front of a live band—until the late ‘70s, they were pretty much relegated to chatting over instrumentals at sound system dances.

After the agile Cimarons cover Bill Withers’s “Ain’t No Sunshine,” they back nearly all the other artists, until an all-white band pops up to back the Pioneers. The late Nicky Thomas offers up a compelling highlight with his paroxysmal covers of Syl Johnson’s “Is It Because I’m Black” and The Four Preps’ “Love of the Common People.”

The program was hosted by Alex Hughes, who as Judge Dread had just scored three charting British reggae singles of his own—the lewd nursery rhymes “Big Six,” “Big Seven,” and “Big Eight”—and was the first white artist to have a reggae hit in Jamaica.

One can imagine how many mods, skinheads, soul boys and other riff-raff this broadcast kept off the street at the time.
 
Part 1
The Cimarons - “Ain’t No Sunshine”
Winston Groovy - “I’m A Believer”
Dennis Alcapone - “Cassius Clay” & “Wake Up Jamaica”

Part 2
The Marvels - “Jimmy Browne” & “One Monkey”
Nicky Thomas - “Is It Because I’m Black” & beginning of “Love of the Common People”

Part 3
Nicky Thomas - end of “Love of the Common People”
The Pioneers - “Higher & Higher” & “Papa Was a Rolling Stone”
All Star Finale - “Freedom Train”

Pt. 1
 

 
Keep yr skank up: check out parts 2 and 3 after the jump…

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Posted by Ron Nachmann
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05.13.2012
03:17 pm
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Rare clip of John Entwistle on British TV 1973
07.28.2011
03:14 am
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Mick Stadium has uploaded another super rare clip to his Youtube channel: John Entwistle on the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1973. I may be wrong, but this seems to be the first time it has appeared on the Interweb.

1973’s “Rigor Mortis Sets In” was John Entwistle’s third solo release. LP featured classic covers, new versions of Entwistle songs and then-new recordings.
LP was recorded in less than three weeks and cost only $14,000 to make (with nearly a third of the total cost spent on liquor.)

Sounds like a better-than-average Who song.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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07.28.2011
03:14 am
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