Video: Ray Davies At The Chicago Theatre

Ray Davies has assembled one of the greatest collections of songs in rock history stretching back to the 60s and 70s when he did most of his best work with the Kinks, but there were sporadic bursts of inspiration in the 80s and 90s as well. He also wrote a fascinating book about his life(which he read from during the show) with the “unauthorized autobiography” X-Ray in 1995, essentially providing a fabulation account of his career up till 1973. (We need a sequel.) His most recent effort was a collaboration/tribute of his music with guests like Billy Corgan, Lou Reed and Metallica, with varying degrees of success.

Photos: Ray DaviesRay has always been an unpredictable live performer and that is his weakness as well as his strength. He was in fine voice on Friday night for his XRT show before a good crowd at the Chicago Theatre. He opened with a series of stunning tracks from the early part of his canon with just acoustic guitar accompaniment including “Sunny Afternoon”, “Dedicated Follower of Fashion”, “I’m Not Like Everybody Else” and “Waterloo Sunset” as if to say “Top that Ray!” before bringing on his excellent backing band The 88 to nail “20th Century Man”. From then on, it was a joyous electric romp featuring classic tracks like “David Watts”, “Celluloid Heroes”, “This Is Where I Belong” and of course “Lola” and “You Really Got Me”. There was some milking of the crowd sing-a-long stuff , a few day-os and the inevitable “where’s Dave” question (answered by saying “I hope he’s sleeping, he can’t cause trouble that way”), but everybody went home happy singing God Save the Kinks and Ray Davies, a man who made it through the 20th century and lived to sing about it.

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