RAY DAVIES DOES PAGANINI

    You know Ray Davies? BOTH of them? 

    For some reason, the idiotic music world allows more than one person to use a famous name. There are two or three singers named “Bobby Cole” and a pair of “Andy Pratt”s and it can be confusing and annoying when a fan accidentally buys something that just ain’t the right person.

        Of course some dunces get confused even if the spelling is DIFFERENT. I recall a pudgy jerk at a record show avidly grabbing up a bunch of  Jean Shepard singles. The happy record dealer took the $20 bill and complimented the geek: “You’re a big fan of good country music!” The geek was shocked. He wanted his money back! HE thought he was buying Jean Shepherd, the cult radio host/comedian. You mean “If Teardrops Were Silver,” “Seven Lonely Days,” “Poor Sweet Baby” and “I’ll Do Anything it Takes to Stay With You” aren’t comedy routines??? 

    In the film world, similar names aren’t allowed. That’s why an actor named James Stewart changed his name to Stewart Granger. There already was a James Stewart, and even though it was the man’s real name, too bad. Either use a middle initial or name, or something else entirely.  

    I wonder how often some Kinks fan was momentarily excited, and then irritated, to discover a “Ray Davies” item he had never heard of was…NOT the REAL Ray Davies. Band leader Ray Davies often released albums under the name “The Ray Davies Orchestra,” but there’s been some confusion. 

    Ray Davies did not usually stick his mug on the cover of his albums, so it was possible for a drunk Kinks fan (so many of those) to throw down a fiver and then throw up. One of the few albums with Ray on the cover is pictured above, though it's NOT the same album as the download below. For any Kinks fan wondering what “Ray Davies” the band leader is like, this is your chance.

    He’s one of those “easy listening” guys, similar to James Last and Mantovani, that appeal to cheese-eared Europeans who hear “Moon River,” and start to wet their adult diapers. I do understand that there are people out there who drink Coca Cola like it’s vintage wine, and insist Cotswold is not nearly as good as Cheez Whiz. But…”easy listening?” WHAT the FUCK is so difficult about LISTENING? You sit your big fat body in a chair, that’s all. Is that HARD?

    In the old days, the term was synonymous with “relaxing” or “mellow” Muzak. You heard it in elevators and the dentist’s office…anywhere that required an aural tranquilizer for mind control. People actually bought Melachrino and Liberace and the rest, because some forlorn Willy Loman wanted to hear something soothing and numbing, after a hard day of work…and to drown out the sound of wifey’s telephone calls, the kids chattering, and the washing machine vibrating. I get it. But it gets ridiculous when this stuff is rapturously collected as if it’s worth anything. It’s a bit much to find people sobbing as they give away “soft jazz” from Klemmer or Klugh, or the mindlessly cheerful crap from Claude Bolling, or the squishy sludge from Windham Hill.  As Woody Allen once noted, “I don’t like to be MELLOW, because then I’ll RIPEN AND ROT.” 

    A big thing with senile Eurotrash morons is for their “easy listening” music to have a BEAT to it, so they can tap their canes against the linoleum. You’ve seen the embarrassing spectacle of old people the leaden feet “dancing” on a cruise to nowhere? You can bet that if it isn’t to a Les Elgart “Hooked on Swing” or James Last album, it’s to something ripe from the Ray Davies Orchestra.  

    Below, an example of making classical music “easy listening” for some, but, oddly enough, uneasy listening for anyone who knows the difference between paintings and wallpaper, copyright and theft, Italian food and Olive Garden, Croatia and America, Hitler and Roosevelt or shit and shinola.  

    Ray Davies’ “easy listening” version of Paganini’s Caprice #24 does NOT use violins, even though Paganini wrote for his instrument and was a virtuoso. The melody is given to the brass section. How…snazzy! 

Ray Davies - instant download or listen on line. No arrogant "Gimme Paypal Tips or I stop giving you goodies" shit, no ego passwords, no dodgy malware from Putin-smelling servers