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Post by Smiley on Mar 14, 2008 21:30:56 GMT -5
From GUNNARS BLOG ;D Thursday, March 13, 2008 Perth will do just fine, i hope...
Just arrived to Perth, Australia after houers and houers of travelling. Trip wasn’t that bad, thou. A few minor hickups wich could be sorted in a smooth way by the tour management. I almost forgot my laptop in Singapore when putting off my head for a few seconds, but woke up from my mind-timeout just in time to save it. The first people I met at Landvetter when starting my travel 48 houers ago, was actually my mates in Gothenburg Band Soundtrack Of Our Lives on their way to Austin, Texas. I wouldn’t have minded going there, Austin beeing my favourite spot in the US besides NYC. But Perth will do just fine, i hope... Hanging out at the Lhe Lucky Shag Current mood: focused
Celebrating blog nr 200 today! Feel like yesterday i started doing this, but time flies when having a good time. Yesterday found us hanging out at cosy seaside bar "The Lucky Shag" (!) here in Perth, practicing teambuilding activities like having a few pints of JB. It gets quite chilly here in the afternoon, climat being just like the swedish summer this time of the year as far as i have seen so far. But me trying to be on the healthy side this time decided at breakfast to go for a run with Dick the bassplayer in a few houers. Not very rock n’ roll, maybe... But prob a good idea if we want to keep ourselfs together on this trip. (I wonder if kinksters like say, Gosling and Dalton, ever went running when touring with Ray in the 70’s? Prob not...) I’m really looking forward to the gig tonight. I had some of my mightiest experiences ever playing outdoor festivals, and hopefully this one’s gonna be up there with Roskilde -90 with my old band Psychotic Youth. My only fear right now is that my dear ol’ squeezebox didn’t make the trip down under without getting demolated. But if so, i guess they got decent accordions in this corner of the world too. www.myspace.com/gunnarfrick Check out Gunnars Blog.. he has posted some pix as well!
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Post by rose on Mar 15, 2008 7:06:03 GMT -5
Hooray! The ole' squeezebox! The Lucky WHAT??? Me thinks our fellas need a chaperone! I VOLUNTEER! ;D
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Post by nancyb on Mar 15, 2008 11:18:52 GMT -5
I volunteer to chaperone ROSE
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Post by rose on Mar 15, 2008 11:22:23 GMT -5
What happens down under STAYS down under! ;D
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Post by nancyb on Mar 15, 2008 12:30:44 GMT -5
DEAL
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Post by franklima on Mar 16, 2008 9:10:01 GMT -5
Here comes yet another day...tune up start to play or Life on the road....
Sunday, March 16, 2008 Perth Austrailia
First one out of the way, twelwe more to go! Yesterdays gig with Ray at the Blues and Rootsfestival outside Perth was actually the first gig with this comfiguration of the band since august last year. Festival gigs always being tricky ones, no real soundchecks, just go up there and fire from the hip. And so we did indeed. It took a few songs to calibrate the machinery, but i think we hit home with a raging version of 20th Century man, performed as fifth song in the set or something likely.
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Post by franklima on Mar 16, 2008 14:11:52 GMT -5
the above is from Gunnar's my space blog.... and here's a behind the scenes photo I took when Ray got me in to The Regis and Kathy Lee show last month in NYC. Here's Ray and regis doing a Perry como song together during commercial breaks.
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Post by rose on Mar 16, 2008 14:21:28 GMT -5
Catch A Falling Star? ? or another? Gosh! I coulda joined in on any of 'em!
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Post by Iñakink on Mar 16, 2008 14:42:41 GMT -5
Thanks, cool picture, and even cooler that you were there!
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Post by franklima on Mar 17, 2008 9:08:15 GMT -5
Crows are everywhere Crows get around
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Post by franklima on Mar 17, 2008 9:21:02 GMT -5
More news from Gunnar from the Land down Under.... Sunday, March 16, 2008
Talking to the officials about poetry
Band and crew just spended the whole morning at the US consulate here in Sydney sorting out visas for the trip to The Land And Hope And Glory. You always get interviewed separatly as a part of the visa process, and i was a bit tempted to ask the serious man behind the desk and saftey glass if he knew the guy I’m going there to play with was banned from their country for four years in the 60:s. But that had prob been a very bad idea.
My first meeting with officials here in Oz could have ended in dishauster, by the way. We got a ride from the Bluesfest in Freemantle back to Perth to meet relatives of Tobes and run in to a road razzia, the so called "Booze Bus" checking every single veichle, including our van, for dunk driving, lamps, safety belts etc. Milt and Dick sitting beside me managed to get the safety belts on in time, but i was reacting a bit late. Growing up in Sweden in the seventies, i never really got used to use the belt in the back seat, even if i know it’s a good idea if going off the road. The officer pulling up the backdoor screaming at me like the officer in the boot camp featured in Stanley Kubricks’ film "Full Metal Jackets" also thought it had been a good idea having it on. Wich he told me in a not very nice way, also threatening me with a $800 fine. "A’right mate, I’m from Sweden, see, and we’ve got different laws there..." was my very lame defence. And a lie since 1982 or something likely. But luckily he let us all slip away with a warning.
Tonight we’re doing the Enmore Theater here in Sydney, wich is gonna be great having a proper soundcheck. Hopefully Ray’s having the confidence to throw in some surprises in the setlist for the Aussies...
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Post by franklima on Mar 17, 2008 9:54:55 GMT -5
This article appeared in today's Australian newspaper - our national broadsheet - he has been catching up with his sister in Adelaide. James sharp ( from today's kps digest ) A well-respected songster Iain Shedden | March 17, 2008 RAY Davies is in the moment. A sprightly 63, the former Kinks front man and acclaimed English songwriter leaps into the air as he and his band crank up one of the Kinks' many hits, Till the End of the Day. The song, performed at the West Coast Blues and Roots Festival in Fremantle, WA, on Saturday, is one of many highlights in Davies's first show in Australia for 12 years and his first band performance here since 1982. Ray Davies performs at the West Coast Roots and Blues Festival. Picture: Bohdan Awrchomij What's striking about the parade of hits - including Lola, Come Dancing and A Well Respected Man - is the multitude of songs that haven't made it into the set. Where, for instance, is Waterloo Sunset, one of the finest bits of Britpop in history? "I forgot to do that one," Davies says matter-of-factly, "and a few others. It's strange how some songs don't feel right to do sometimes." We're sitting in Davies's Perth hotel room. He's relaxed, good-humoured and surprisingly open for someone who admits to being painfully shy. "If it wasn't for my music I'd be a complete recluse," he says. "I wouldn't talk to anybody." Today he's talking a lot, and not just about his music. There's his failed relationship with Pretenders singer Chrissie Hynde, for example; his mission to save the local post office where he lives in north London, not far from where he grew up; the tempestuous relationship with his brother Dave, the Kinks' guitarist. And there's the story behind that iconic song Waterloo Sunset and some of the others that made the Kinks one of the most successful rock bands of the 1960s. This is Davies's fifth trip to Australia. He's been here each decade since the Kinks first toured in February 1965, a significant date in his life. "I had just got married," he recalls. "I was looking for stability. I was 19 years old when we had our first No.1 (You Really Got Me). I was completely in shock. I didn't know I could write songs. I thought You Really Got Me would be the only song I'd ever write. When we left England for Australia, Tired of Waiting had just come out and by the time we got here it had gone to No.1. But I had no chance to enjoy it and I was terrified of flying, still am, and I remember on that trip I was panicking. To think all this time later I'd still be doing this." Since the Kinks split in the mid-1990s Davies has enjoyed solo success with albums such as Other People's Lives and last year's Working Man's Cafe, both stocked with wry, nostalgic and occasionally cynical observations on the minutiae of British life, the very observations that make up much of the Kinks' material. He baulks a little at the word cynical, but doesn't dismiss it. "The secret is to spice it with a bit of wit and irony, to take the cynicism out of it," he says. "I'm not cynical about English culture, I'm concerned about English culture. That's why I wrote Working Man's Cafe. Sometimes I write a song and it's not until a few years afterwards that I fully understand what it's about. "People said I was a cynic when I was 22. It may be cynical if the wit is not apparent. Dedicated Follower of Fashion, for example, was written out of anger. I was a very secretive person then, during my first marriage, and when we were just becoming successful. Everybody wanted to meet me and to know how I did it. They came and they saw this man living in a little suburban house and all these trendies from Chelsea were coming, expecting to smoke dope or whatever, and I was offering them cups of tea. "I had an argument with a very famous designer about the benefits of drainpipe trousers. He left in the huff and I sat down and wrote it out of anger." It's perhaps unsurprising that when pressed for the best lyric of his career, he chooses Waterloo Sunset, but the song also represents a pivotal moment in his life. "Forgive me for saying it," he says, "but I knew it was a good song when I wrote it. It was a landmark song for me because I knew I was moving away from a relationship I was in. And I knew I'd outgrown the little street where I grew up. I was evolving as a person. I was in my early 20s." Back then Davies had a habit of playing some of his new songs to family members, many of whom lived in the same north London street as he did. For Waterloo Sunset, "I got my mum in and my sister and her two kids and I played it to them on the mini grand piano we had in the house and they all said it would be a hit. "But what amazes me when you detach the lyrics from the music is how unimportant the lyric is on its own, written down. That's a magic that music sometimes brings. I produced the song as well, so I got to pitch the idea that I had in my head. For the first time I really got to enjoy being in control of my music." It was a cathartic moment that "closed a lot of chapters for me. It made me think it was time to move on before I'm typecast. But of course people have associated me with that song ever since, so there's no escape." If his career has been mostly successful, Davies's personal life has been less so. He has been married twice and had a child - his third - with Hynde in 1983. The relationship ended a year later. Davies says that even 24 years after that relationship he has trouble forming new ones. He also cites that break-up period as the only time in his life where he felt caught up in the rock'n'roll lifestyle. "It was inevitable being with Chris," he says. "I think she's in a good place with where her life is now." Young songwriters could do worse than study Davies's approach to his craft. It's not widely known that the songwriter has been conducting annual songwriting workshops organised by the British arts council since 1992. He can't tell me how to write a Ray Davies song, he says, but he hopes that those who come along to the sessions can learn something from him. "I used to do four a year but now I'm on tour too much. I get a group of songwriters, not necessarily young... It's a residential thing and it's four days of intensive songwriting. People have come on the courses and modelled degree courses on what they've picked up from me. It's very flattering. I never do any press about it. It's about sharing my experience with them. The only principle I tell them is that there ain't no principles. Because I've done it for so long, though, I've become savvy to certain traits in writers. There is no method but there is a kind of plan to it." His role on the committee to save Highgate Village post office may recall the Kinks' landmark 1968 album, The Village Green Preservation Society, even if the inspiration for that LP was the end of his first marriage. He says living in the same neighbourhood where he was born "keeps me in touch with the world". He has been doing some of that in Australia too. Davies spent last week with his sister and nephews, who live in Adelaide. "I saw some people I really love in Adelaide. Flew here (Perth), got off the plane, did a show, slept in a really nice room and had some breakfast. I shouldn't be unhappy really. I can still wake up in the morning. I'm alive." While he's alive he's not ruling out a Kinks reunion, but it's all down to his brother Dave, he says. "He says he's not ready to spend a lot of time in the studio," says Davies. "I've told him that with modern technology he doesn't have to be there all the time. "There's no escape from me," he adds with a grin. "He knows I'll always get what I want." Ray Davies appears at the Enmore Theatre, Sydney, tonight; Palais Theatre, Melbourne, Wednesday; East Coast Blues and Roots Festival, Byron Bay, Friday; Southern Roots, Hobart, Sunday (March 23).
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Post by franklima on Mar 18, 2008 9:54:20 GMT -5
from Gunnar's blog...
Monday, March 17, 2008
Bring me a toaster, Stu...
Just arrived in Melbourne after a painless short flight from Sydney. Yesterdays gig was def a good one for everyone, maybe except for poor backline tech Doom, who’s hearing not the best after decades on the road. When Ray asked him to bring a poster on stage, Stuart looked like a question mark answering "Toaster...?". So there’s been a few jokes on poor Stu in this morning, just to let him know how much we love him... Finally Ray brought the concert poster himself, wich mentioned his biggest hits, like Waterloo Sunset, Lola, Sunny Afternoon, Come Dancing etc. Rays statement to the audience was: "I’f you’re not nice to us, I maybe won’t play any of ’em...". But no hecklers or bottles thrown, so as far as i remember most of them old goodies was pulled out of the bag during the evening, alongeside with a fresh bunch of songs from the new album.
Before the gig we hooked up with Mark, former axeman in the band nowdays living down under with his family. Great to see him again, whe hung out quite a lot on the road when he was on the ship, going to art museums and shopping for our kids when the other guys went to the nearest bar. I wouldn’t compare Mark to present stringbender Milt, both obviously being excellent musicians and great guys but very different both as persons and musicians. What’s really on Milts plus-side thou, is his way of naturally providing background vocals, me doing my best to catch up. I sang loads of harmonies in old band Psychotic Youth, but that was quite a while ago, so my singing chops aren’t the best. But i for sure have to work on it on this tour, Karin not being around to do some of the highest notes.
Warm and nice here in Oz, but i think temperature will rise even further when flying in to the US next week. In a strict sense.
And I’m really looking forward to see NYC again, for very specific reasons...
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Post by franklima on Mar 18, 2008 10:26:54 GMT -5
New Tradition starts: Bring your old and unwanted Toasters to the show for Stuart!
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Post by rose on Mar 18, 2008 14:50:50 GMT -5
and practice those high notes!!! ;D
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