Tired of Waiting For You (1964)
So, since when was rock'n'roll a life long career? Wasn't it always a "when are you going to get a proper job", with, now, all these old age pensioners still trying to prove their parents wrong. Yet still I want them to succeed to produce some latter day lodestone of brilliance. Overlook my insouciance, tho', it a product, also, of the beast that begat the issue. I mean, FFS, what am I doing, at damn near 64, still listening to pop music? And searching for truth in doing so?
Days (1968)
It isn't as if I'm not grateful. Most of my memories are coated in a soundtrack of their time. It is easier to evoke those days through song than substance, a short cut to having to wrack the braincells into any accurate reportage. The sepia tints of nostalgia can then cut through the realities best discarded.
The Village Green Preservation Society (1969)
OK, that probably takes it too far, but, thinking a little longer, maybe not: I can remember this list of archaic and rose-tinted list of disappearing/disappeared onetime every day norms. With wry smiles aplenty. Is it asking too much of a songwriter to do other than reflect of their own experience? And maybe why Ray had to look elsewhere, the constrictions of an olde england, resolutely still in black and white, a barrier to progress. Shock, horror, this song, below, defiantly in the style of his classics, came out in 2017, a paean to his new home. (Sure, the Kinks are long gone, any long promised/hinted/awaited as tenuous as ever.)
Americana (2017)
Waterloo Sunset (1967)