Moby was "taken aback at how unevolved" The Kinks were.

Here's Moby (in The Guardian):

Lola by the Kinks came up on a Spotify playlist, and I thought the lyrics were gross and transphobic. I like their early music, but I was really taken aback at how unevolved the lyrics are.

Here's the Wikipedia article for "Lola" and here are the lyrics. You know them: "Girls will be boys and boys will be girls/It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world/Except for Lola," etc. etc. Video here.

Dave Davies deigned to respond: the X response from Dave Davies: "I am highly insulted that MOBY would accuse my brother of being ‘unevolved’ or transphobic in any way."

Unevolved!

I thought The Kinks wanted to be unevolved! 

That's "Apeman," my favorite track on the 1970 album, "Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One." That's also, obviously, where you'll find the more familiar track, "Lola."

What's so great about evolution?

Too good to check? Were the "Terry and Julie" of "Waterloo Sunset" Terence Stamp and Julie Christie?

I'm reading "Terence Stamp’s Swinging, Smoldering Style/He helped redefine male beauty, ushering in the era of the cinematic bad boy" by the NYT style reporter Guy Trebay. (Stamp died last Sunday at the age of 87.) 

Trebay writes: "In his 20s, when he sought a life beyond the straitened circumstances of his upbringing, he became a favorite of the London tabloids that relentlessly chronicled his relationships with the model Jean Shrimpton and the actress Julie Christie. His romantic life was at one point so well known that he and Ms. Christie inspired the 'Terry and Julie' in the Kinks song 'Waterloo Sunset,' released at the height of the mid-1960s music and fashion scene known as Swinging London."

If we go over to Genius.com to find the lyrics, we see: 

"Yet dandyism is all about refusal — of fixed identities, of mediocrity, of gender conventions, of the boundary between life and art. "

"Dandyism blends literary and artistic creation with the art of personality, the careful cultivation of image and behavior.... Many tend to associate dandyism with white, European aesthetes of earlier centuries — men like Beau Brummell, Lord Byron, Aubrey Beardsley and Oscar Wilde — who often produced art or literature, but also produced themselves: making social waves not by dint of noble birth, but through their carefully constructed personas, ironic wit and impeccable dress. Although less recognized, Black dandyism also dates to the 18th century.... At his Chelsea apartment and studio, Mr. Udé greeted me in one of his signature looks: pale khaki Bermuda shorts; vintage white oxfords; a fitted beige cotton blazer, discreetly striped in black and red; a crisp white shirt; and a silk neckerchief in chartreuse, black and red. As ever, Mr. Udé’s hair rose in two hemispheres of springy curls, parted in the middle, giving the effect of a bifurcated crown...."

Writes Rhonda Garelick, in "America’s Premier Living Dandy Doesn’t Want the Title/The artist Iké Udé understands the power of rejecting labels" (NYT).

Did you know dandyism was a current issue (and a matter of serious historical study)?

My reference point:

BONUS: As long as we're in the mid-60s and the name Beau Brummel has been invoked:

"Both Napoli and Hinman fell in love with the band after seeing them perform on the TV variety show 'Shindig!' in 1965."

"'It was the sound that drew me to them,' Napoli said. 'No one sounded like them, and I wanted to know as much as I could about them.'"

From "They spent years following the Kinks. Was this their final stop? What happens when you build your life — and your friendships — around a band that can’t keep it together forever" (WaPo)(full-access link). 

Here. I found it:

Of course, I watched that at the time. I loved the Kinks. Just turning around from my computer and not rearranging anything, I see this on my windowsill:

And I love the line "It was the sound...." I get the 60s vibration. I remember struggling to convey the meaning of "the sound" to my father when he Socratically questioned me about why the music I was listening to all the time could genuinely be considered good.

"Not every time, but most times, you select Twitter and put the name 'The Kinks' in there, and it warns that it could be quirky stuff, like a porn star or kink porn."

"Of course it isn’t. We’ve been the Kinks. It’s a band name that we’ve had since ’63. We used it perfectly fine all of these years. I think this needs to be cleared up, because it puts people off, having a warning sign on their posts. You think you’re doing something you shouldn’t do. I hope there’s someone out there that can do something.... I’m a big admirer of Elon Musk and his work. Maybe they’ve set a program into motion that they can’t sunset. I don’t know. They must be able to unravel it somehow...."

Said Dave Davies, quoted in "We Are the Viral Tweet Restoration Society/The Kinks’ Dave Davies says Twitter is suppressing his band’s content—and he knows why" (Slate).

"If it’s happening to us, I’m sure it would happen to a lot of people with slightly devious names. The whole idea of being creative, it’s to come up with new things, or different and unusual things. So, it’s going to put a damper on creative ideas.... I can choose what words I want to say—'hello,' 'good day,” and 'how are you'—and it shouldn’t be limited by certain rules or regulations, which might rule that you can only say 'hello' and 'goodbye.'..."

"He introduced a descending bassline... 'a common enough progression in jazz, but unusual among folksingers.'"

"It’s actually something you’d get a fair bit in baroque music as well, and van Ronk introducing this into the song is probably what eventually led to things like Procul Harum’s 'A Whiter Shade of Pale' ripping off Bach doing essentially the same thing. What van Ronk did was a simple trick. You play a descending scale, mostly in semitones, while holding the same chord shape which creates a lot of interesting chords. The bass line he played is basically this...  And he held an A minor shape over that bassline, giving a chord sequence Am, Am over G, Am over F#, F.... This is a trick that’s used in hundreds and hundreds of songs later in the sixties and onward — everything from 'Sunny Afternoon' by the Kinks to 'Go Now' by the Moody Blues to 'Forever' by the Beach Boys — but it was something that at this point belonged in the realms of art music and jazz more than in folk, blues, or rock and roll."

From Episode 115 of "A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs," "'House of the Rising Sun' by the Animals."

I love hearing about influences that surprise me, about songs I've known very well for over half a century. Another example of that from this podcast is from Episode 113: "'Needles and Pins' by The Searchers":

"Fleetwood Mac’s 'Dreams' is number 1 on iTunes this morning. Van Halen’s singles take up a third of the top 100."

Showbiz 411 reports. I was just blogging a few days ago about the reason for the current popularity of "Dreams" — here. Remember — doggface208, cran-raspberry juice, skateboarding? And you know why everyone wants to listen to Van Halen right now.

Ironically, one of the songs selling best is a Van Halen cover of The Kinks’ 'You Really Got Me.'"

I don't know what's ironic about that. The point is simply that the royalties go to the songwriter, so Ray Davies gets the windfall. And Stevie Nicks gets the money for the current "Dreams" craze caused by Mr. Doggface. I don't find it strange at all that old songs are popular and money is made for things written half a century ago. Half a century ago is exactly right in my zone. I love The Kinks. So let me give you this:

"I invented heavy rock because I never even heard of Link Wray til the 80s - his records weren’t hard rock - the Ventures were heavier than Link Wray..."

"... No Trespassing by the Ventures is a heavy record - he wasn’t an influence on me... Link Wray played open chords with a slight distortion i used heavy bar chords with distortion through my green amp which I cut the speaker up with the razor blade to get the sound I wanted and no one was doing that then... I’m surprised you would say this. I’m not going off I’m defending me self."

Tweets The Kinks' Dave Davies, responding to a tweet by Stevie Van Zandt that is deleted now.

Stevie appeases: "You know I love you. No offense intended. Thought it was one of those obvious things everybody agreed on. I didn’t say he influenced you. I’m sorry but the attitude that became Hard Rock was born with Rumble. What other instrumental has ever been banned on the radio?"



Dave: "I disagree and I love you too - I’m glad You Really Got Me wasn’t banned."



Stevie tries to make a deal: "How about we give him inventing the Hard Rock power chord, and you inventing the Hard Rock riff? Townshend won’t mind being 2nd. Or 3rd!"

Dave is not taking it: "No - I liked Link Wray after I heard him in the 80s but he didn’t invent the Hard rock power chord - he used open strings - he didn’t use heavy bar chords - heavy bar chords are the foundation of hard rock guitar playing - surely you know. Link Wray used regular E and D open chords - he didn’t use the heavy bar chording technique that I started and which proved to be the foundation of all hard rock guitar playing."

"'Damsel in Distress' is an homage to Joni Mitchell in some ways, particularly the structure."

"My husband and I now live in Laurel Canyon. I wasn’t that familiar with Joni’s music but Jörn became obsessed and took me on a journey into her music. We ended up hanging out with her and I get now why she’s one of the greats. So it’s part Laurel Canyon, part a song about a personal relationship that I’m trying to come to terms with, but mostly my Mitchell virginity being broken."

Said Rufus Wainwright, quoted in "Rufus Wainwright Announces New Album Unfollow the Rules, Shares New Song: Listen/‘Damsel in Distress’ is an homage to Joni Mitchell in some ways, particularly the structure" (Pitchfork).

Here's the song:



I got there via my son John's Facebook post, where someone brings up this post of mine from 2007 — about the time I sat at a table next to Rufus Wainwright in a restaurant in SoHo — and I reread my own old post, which ends:

I think about whether I'm excited to sit for so long so near a person whose music I have so much feeling for. But no, I feel normal, as usual. I remember the time, more than 30 years ago, when I sat in a restaurant at a table next to John Lennon. The feeling was overwhelming. I am so much older now, but is it that I fell in love with Rufus's music as an older person or that I'm sitting near him as an older person? I could find out if some day I'm sitting in a restaurant and, at the next table, it's Ray Davies. Maybe Bob Dylan. But no. I think it's a theory that can only be tested on Ray Davies.

Then, at Facebook, I say:

I realize I don't understand that last part... Why can't the theory be tested on Bob Dylan? I'm sure I meant that to be enigmatic at the time, but now I've excluded even myself!

Pope slap.

I approve. The Pope — and anyone else who's doing personal, physical contact with a crowd— gets to decide where he stops. He kept going until he got to a child, and, yes, that's disappointing to the last person who would have been touched if the toucher had not stopped exactly where he did.

(That happened to me once. Not with the Pope. With Ray Davies, who I'm sure was more important to me than he was to the last person he touched.)

Now, that woman not only reached out and touched him, she grabbed him. And she not only grabbed him, she yanked him. That was completely wrong, criminally wrong. She got slapped. Lucky her! A quick chastisement, firmly delivered, absolutely justified.

She was still holding on when he slapped. It was a let-go-of-me slap, not a swift-vengeance-punishment sort of slap... which would have been more interesting!

ADDED: When we watched that video yesterday, Meade said, "Thanks, I needed that," which set off a search for the old TV commercial. And here it is (did you know the actor, back in 1979, was John Goodman?):



AND: The Pope responded (after the video went viral): "So many times we lose our patience; me too, and I apologize for yesterday’s bad example."

I like that he apologized because he didn't want to be a bad example. It's because it was seen and others might do it that he apologized.

PLUS: I happen to think he set a good example. If someone has grabbed you and is aggressively pulling on you, you have a right to use force to free yourself. It's interesting that he used the words "me too." I think of the #MeToo movement and the many stories of women who don't have a well developed fight or flee response. Kindness is not free.

The rock stars are in alignment — today, in my Twitter feed, the Daves are tweeting about vegetables.

I know the old saying, "Call any vegetable, and the chances are good that the vegetable will respond to you." But... tweet any vegetable, and what are the chances the vegetable will retweet?

Keeping up with The Kinks.

Me and Ray love each other https://t.co/OdV5m7C32L

— Dave Davies (@davedavieskinks) August 18, 2018

IN THE COMMENTS: Fernandistein said:

Too bad they're not named Ray Davies and Dave Rabies.

"Edwin (Bennett), an innocent and shy young man, is hit by a nude man falling from a high-rise building while carrying a chandelier."

"Edwin's penis is mutilated in the accident and has to be amputated; the falling man is killed. Edwin becomes the recipient of the world's first penis transplant: he receives the very large penis of the womanizer killed in the same accident. With his new bit of anatomy (which he names 'Percy'), Edwin follows the womanizer's footsteps, meeting all his women friends, before settling happily with the donor's mistreated widow."

The plot summary of the 1971 movie "Percy," which I happened upon because I was reading the Wikipedia entry for the singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock — "Hitchcock was born in Paddington, London, England, son of novelist Raymond Hitchcock (writer of Percy)." I was reading about Hitchcock because his is one of the names on the list of upcoming shows at the Stoughton Opera House. I've been there only twice — to see Taj Mahal and then Jim Kweskin with Geoff Muldaur — and I'd like to make a better effort to notice shows I might like to see.

Do you think having the name "Hitchcock" makes it more likely that you'd write a story about having a penis sewn on — hitching a cock?

Friday afternoon thoughts. Do you have any? I feel like watching "Percy." For one thing, it has Elke Sommer and Britt Ekland. I've pretty much always thought they were the same person — Elk/Ekl... For another thing, it has a soundtrack by The Kinks!

But, wait. Here's the trailer. It looks terrible...



But at least I learned — I couldn't tell from Wikipedia — which one of the 2 penis-havers was carrying the chandelier. (Why a chandelier? Did it provide occasions to make jokes on the word "hung"?)

Fortunately, you can listen to the entirety of The Kinks' "Percy" on YouTube.

Some fascinating photography and dance at the Louvre...

... in this new Beyonce and Jay-Z video, which is called "Apeshit":



There's lots of "Mona Lisa" in that video, but there's other Louvre art shown very well. Watch for "The Coronation of Napoleon" (beginning at 1:37 and then at 4:01). And the "Winged Victory of Samothrace" and the museum's beautiful staircase make a stage set for lots of interesting dancing.

I've got nothing to say about the music, because I don't listen to this kind of music enough to be able to hear it, let alone have an opinion, but I'm extremely interested in the use of artwork — the long views, the closeups, the combination with dancers.

I can hear some of the words, and they seem to be just expressing gratitude about having become rich and famous. The title — which had me thinking about Roseanne's recent ape-related screwup — seems to be simply a reference to the enthusiasm of Beyonce and Jay-Z's fans — "Have you ever seen a crowd going apeshit?"

Let me look up the lyrics and read them. Here. I see there's something about pay equity:

Rah, gimme my check
Put some respeck on my check
Or pay me in equity, pay me in equity
Or watch me reverse out the dick (skrrt)

The annotation explains that last line as "a simple threat: she’ll leave projects and especially men that are cutting her a less-than-satisfactory check for her work."

He wanna go with me (go with me)
He like to roll the weed (roll with me)
He wanna be with me (be with me)
He wanna give me that vitamin D (D!)

I did not need to click on the annotation or use Urban Dictionary to understand the term "vitamin D."

When Jay-Z finally gets his closeup, he begins:

I'm a gorilla in the fuckin' coop
Finna pull up in the zoo
I'm like Chief Keef meet Rafiki
Who been Lion King to you
Pocket watch it like kangaroos
Tell these clowns we ain't amused
Banana clips for that monkey business...
Last night was a fuckin' zoo
Stagedivin' in a pool of people
Ran through Liverpool like a fuckin' Beatle
Smoke gorilla glue like it's fuckin' legal....

All that "ape" and "gorilla" business seems like an invitation to white people to Roseanne ourselves. According to the annotation at the lyrics link:

Jay directly quotes rapper, Chief Keef’s “Faneto”, the first of many animal references he makes throughout this verse.

I’m a gorilla in a fuckin' coupe, finna pull up to the zoo...

“Gorilla” is a racial slur directed towards black people who are perceived by some to be primitive or ape-like. Jay embraces this word proudly and uses it as a sense of empowerment.

“Coupe” or “Coop” are interchangeable. The latter continues Jay’s animalistic theme, saying he is a Gorilla among chickens.

ADDED: This is missing all the art, but musically, it's so much more my style (from 1970):



The lyrics are as fresh as ever:

I think I'm so educated and I'm so civilized
'Cause I'm a strict vegetarian
But with the over-population and inflation and starvation
And the crazy politicians
I don't feel safe in this world no more
I don't want to die in a nuclear war
I want to sail away to a distant shore and make like an ape man

We had crazy politicians and a threat of nuclear war back in 1970s. That's not just some new thing cooked up for you kids today.

"Earlier today, Lin-Manuel Miranda fulfilled his ultimate childhood fantasy by releasing 'Weird Al' Yankovic's 'The Hamilton Polka.'"

"The hysterical tune, which manages to cram all of Hamilton into a frenetic five-minute polka, is the latest installment in Miranda's ongoing Hamildrop series, where artists like the Decemberists, Nas, Dave East and Aloe Blacc put their own spin on songs from his Broadway musical," Rolling Stone reports, with an interview of Al and Miranda:

Let's go through the history here. Lin, tell me your first memory of hearing "Weird Al" music when you were younger.

Miranda: Oh, God. My first memory was hearing "Fat," which is a spoof of "Bad," and like most "Weird Al" fans you discover that there is a catalog and this isn't a one-off. "Oh, my God. There's tons of these." I remember asking my parents for "Weird Al" albums for Christmas and I remember the Christmas morning. There were all these cassettes, Dare to Be Stupid, Polka Party, In 3-D. I kinda got the mother lode all at once. And that's the rest of my childhood right here.

At that point, did you know the songs he was spoofing?

Miranda: To this day, I've never heard "Lola" by the Kinks. To this day I've never heard it!

Yankovic: Wow!

Yeah, wow. I agree with Al. How can you never have heard "Lola"? Never listened to the radio? Anyway, here's "The Hamilton Polka":

At the All-Day-and-All-of-the-Night Cafe...

... you can talk all night and all of the day.

"My show is just me, the guitar, the piano and the words and music."

"Some of the show is spoken, some of it is sung. It loosely follows the arc of my life and my work. All of it together is in pursuit of my constant goal to provide an entertaining evening and to communicate something of value."

Said Bruce Springsteen, who's doing that show on Broadway.

It sounds very similar to what Ray Davies did with his show "The Storyteller," which I saw here in Madison years ago. (It's available on line here.) From a 2002 review in the AV Club:

An articulate narrator with a great ear for translating his music into smaller-scale arrangements, Davies is engaging as both a singer and a storyteller. Beginning with the story of his birth in working-class London, Davies concludes by detailing the recording session that produced "You Really Got Me," the song that made [The Kinks] careers and changed music history in the process. He stops along the way to recount his early experiences with music—first as an admirer and then as a performer—that are always linked to his busy, vibrant family....

I love the part where he talks about his mother's opinion that the song "That Old Black Magic" was too sexual for young children to hear and then proves his mother's point by singing the song (beautifully, with emphasis on its sexuality).

Anyway, I have no idea how well Bruce will do in this format. He's starting big — on a Broadway stage — and selling some very expensive tickets. But the idea for the show is all about intimacy. The statement quoted above is devoid of human warmth and individuality: "in pursuit of my constant goal to provide an entertaining evening and to communicate something of value." As if what matters is his striving rather than what the audience actually receives.

But don't listen to me if you like Bruce. I have never been a Bruce Springsteen fan, largely because the idea seems to be to enact striving. Straining.

"The tax man's taken all my dough/And left me in my stately home/Lazing on a sunny afternoon..."

I feel like I've shared this before, but I'm sharing it today because I just saw this at Facebook: "The cast of Sunny Afternoon cover this classic tune to celebrate 50 years since its release."

Full lyrics here. Love this song — one of my favorites from one of my all-time favorite bands.

Did Chris Christie react to the charge that he was using his power as chair of the Republican Governors Association to undercut Scott Walker's reelection bid?

"The RGA, chaired by Gov. Christie (R-N.J.), has been under pressure in recent days to do more to help Walker, a tea party favorite who rocketed to political stardom after he curbed bargaining rights for most public workers in his state. The Weekly Standard reported Thursday that there were brewing suspicions on the right that Christie, as RGA chairman, has been “undercutting” Walker, his potential rival for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination."

That's from a Washington Post article noting that the Republican Governors Association has just put another $1 million into ads for Scott Walker's reelection. The headline of the article puts the emphasis on Walker's state of mind — "RGA puts additional $1 million into Wisconsin ad buys as Walker frets" — but I think Christie's is the more interesting mind about which to speculate.

Walker is trying to get reelected and the polls show a close race. That's a mundane objective reality. The subjective matter of how that feels to him — whether he "frets" — is dumb in the same way that it's dumb for reporters to ask, say, a person whose house is burning down "How do you feel?" The answer is already known: How do you think I feel? There's nothing about the subjective aspect of the story that isn't inherent in the objective aspect of the story.

But what's going on in The Mind of Chris Christie? That's where the subjective part of the story is complex and speculation-ripe.

Here's the above-referenced Weekly Standard article: "Does Chris Christie Have Scott Walker's Back?"

"The Center for Public Integrity reported Thursday that Walker and his backers spent nearly $6.1 million on ads through Monday, while Burke and her supporters ran nearly $6.6 million," the AP reported on Thursday. On Sunday, Walker told the Washington Post's Robert Costa: "We are always looking for more help. Our main help has to be the RGA." But according to the Center for Public Integrity, the Republican Governors Association has spent $5.9 million on TV ads in Michigan, where Governor Rick Snyder is up for reelection, and just $801,000 on TV ads in Wisconsin.

Why would the RGA spend more on Rick Snyder than Scott Walker?...

ADDED: Writing this post made me want to look the word "fret" up in the OED. The original meaning is to eat, to devour, referring to the behavior of nonhuman animals. It still has that meaning in the sense of a small animal — like a worm or a moth — consuming or wearing away something by gnawing at it. The figurative usage is very old, the passions and various irritants consume or wear away at a person's mind. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote: "So many curiosities drive one crazy, and fret one's heart to death." The intransitive use — "To distress oneself with constant thoughts of regret or discontent; to vex oneself, chafe, worry" — is also very old, going back to 1551, first in a translation of Thomas More's "Utopia": "He..so fret so fumed & chafed at it."

I like the verb "fret," and use it a lot, probably mostly to make a person seem fussy and overly inward. But searching this blog to find how I've used "fret," I see the first thing that comes up is a fond tribute to an old Kinks song: "Don't You Fret." And there's a reference to the famous line from "MacBeth": "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/And then is heard no more: it is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/Signifying nothing." And, remember, MacBeth was already king when he said that. Chris Christie, on the other hand, is only the Thane of New Jersey.

"Politically Incorrect was an American late-night, half-hour political talk show hosted by Bill Maher that ran from 1993 to 2002..."

"... first on Comedy Central and then on ABC. Four guests (usually including at least one comedian) would debate topics across the political spectrum in what Maher once described as 'The McLaughlin Group on acid.' Of the 1300+ episodes produced, 190 can be viewed on YouTube."

At the link (to Metafilter) there are links to those 190 videos, with the date of the show and the names of the guests. What a great resource! What did Bryan Cranston and Little Richard talk about on June 14, 2002? Don't you want to know what Phil Hartman brought to the table on March 14, 1997? Ray Davies (with Suzanne Somers!) on April 29, 1998. Way too many crazy match-ups to mention them all in this little post, so I'll leave you with this:

Politically Incorrect was cancelled by ABC in 2002, thanks to an incident that happened six days after 9/11. Maher and political conservative Dinesh D'Souza had this conversation on the show: