Strandlektüre für Rantum im März
Geradezu „entdeckt“ habe ich einen „Professor of History at Middle Tennessee State University“! Ein fundiertes, alle Sinne ansprechendes Büchlein über John Cales „Paris 1919“. Auch wenn er zuweilen in munterem Galopp durch die Histore jagt (mit pointierten Pausen des Verweilens), von Versailles 1919, über Dada und Surrealismus und Dylan Thomas bis hin zu Andy Warhol und Fluxus, nimmt er all diese Hürden en passant, ohne oberflächlich zu werden. Alles kreist, bereichert mit spannenden Tangenten, um diesen gespensterreichen Songzyklus, voller Hintergründe und „sidesteps“.
Mir gehen reihenweise Lichter auf. Ich schätze zum Beispiel, wie Mr. Doyle die Unergründlichkeit dieser Lieder herausarbeitet. „Mark Doyle runs down the ghosts haunting Cale‘s most enduring solo album.“ ich begab mich ratzfatz auf seine Spur. Es gibt natürlich etliche Mark Doyles, aber genau dieser veröffentlichte 2020 auch ein Buch über die Kinks, Untertitel: „Songs Of The Semi-Detached“.
Die Helden meiner Kindheit und ihre „Psychogeographie“: die Kinks rangierten damals in meiner Welt knapp vor den Beatles. Und 1976 weigerte sich ein breites Honigkuchengrinsen , eine runde Woche lang in Würzburg mein Gesicht zu verlassen, als dank des bayerischen Zündfunks die Langspielplatte „801 Live“ meine Studentenbude flutete, Phil Manzaneras Super Group mit meinem damals brandneuen „Helden“ Brian Eno als Sänger und Synthesizerspieler, und seine „hot takes“ von „You Really Got Me“ und „Tomorrow Never Knows“ mich im Sturme nahmen, wie im gleichen Zeitenraum auch „Miss Shapiro“, und überhaupt das pure very britische Seventies-Opus „Diamond Head“.
Tja, und obwohl ich BRAVO-sozialisiertes „human being“ viel über die die Kinks wusste und weiss, mit all ihren Umwegen über „5 o’clock tea“, Carnaby Street, The Village Green Preservation Society und USA (und auch über Ray Davies’ innere Distanziertheit zu überschwappendem Flower Power), freue ich mich wie Bolle auf Boyles 213 Seiten am Meer, sowie einen historischen Kriminalroman, der in den holländischen Bergen spielt anno 1961, sowie auf Martina W.‘s Anthologie „Und man hört sie doch“, die tatsächlich schmökertauglich ist, sowie, bald oder etwas später, Jan R.s jüngsten Streich über einen mir weitgehend unbekannten Künstler. (Der hervorragende, 1975 und früher spielende Gesellschaftsroman „Der Gott des Waldes“ von Liz Moore, Krimi, Survivalkurs und tiefenpsychologische Finnesse in einem, ist soeben erschienen, und wurde leider schon von mir in atemraubendem Tempo verschlungen.)
Der Koffer ist gepackt, das Haus am Meer wartet auf mich, es hat einen Cd-Spieler, und ich wieder mal nur Ausgesuchtes dabei, sowie „Paris 1919“, dann die neuen Werke von Alabaster DePlume, Vijay Iyer & Wadada, zudem und sowiesoso „Grosses Wasser“ von Cluster (das lange Stück!) als auch Philip Jecks Vermächtnis „rpm“ (was gibt es Rauschenderes und Knisternderes als Jecks Vermächtnis nachts in „Klein-Afrika“ zu hören, auf Kopfhörern, die dem Sound der Wellen natürlich Einlass bieten!?)…
3 Kommentare
Olaf Westfeld
Ich würde mich auch freuen, die Lektüre von „Gott des Waldes“ noch vor mir zu haben.
Nur: wo sind die holländischen Berge, dachte immer da ist alles flach – bis auf die Dünen.
Michael Engelbrecht
Das ist eine Anspielung an den Nits Song IN THE DUTCH MOUNTAINS.
Der Roman dazu: siehe Foto.
Um einen blogtext tiefer zu rutschen: vier der letzten fünf von Helsinki und K7 geschickten Vinyls von wejazz records waren / sind toll!
Zu diesem Joona Toivanen Trio würde ich meilenweit fahren, um es live zu erleben. Genauso zu dem Trio von Tyran Sowney, ich muss den Namen noch üben: due waren gerade in der elbphilharmonie und in London, und, hach, wenn ich Richars Williams Bericht in The Blue Monent darüber lese, wäre icb gerne nach Hamburg gefahren….. aber bald.
Mallory Smart
Oh, my gosh, is that a fantastic book!
The Kinks: Songs of the Semi-Detached by Mark Doyle is a book and a class apart. That is honestly the best way I can describe it and anything else would be a disservice to the kind of band The Kinks were. They were hot and muddled and full of the kind of British blood that makes one think of Arthurian days meshed with unbridled sex. They could be seen as one of the British Invasion bands but to place them into that bubble would be far too easy for a band as complex as The Kinks. Besides, unlike their rock counterparts they came, they saw, made of mess of things, and were kicked out indefinitely. Invaded but not quite conquered.
In the first drafts of this review, I toyed with different titles to give it: “Echoes of the Working Class,” “British people and all that damn lament,” and even “Fuck Capitalism and God Save The Kinks.” But it was “Face to Face” that stuck out most. Yeah, it can be seen as a cheap move to take one of their own song titles but what better way to really confront a novel so uniquely written as this one? As an author, Mark Doyle does not play coy and his study of this band is like a historical autopsy. He sees The Kinks for who they were and it can’t be overstated that the reader needs to know what this book is.
On the onset, one might make the mistake that its another one of the countless biographies written about the band, but Doyle spells it out very clearly in the beginning that its “an exercise in historically informed rock criticism.”
It’s more sociological than biographical in nature. What we are studying here is not The Kinks as a band, but the world that they inhabited and how that world in turn influenced their lyrics.
The world most important to this study is the one that the Davies brothers were born into. One can’t think of The Kinks without immediately shouting the names: Ray Davies and his kid brother Dave. They are the heart of the band and post-war London is the blood that runs through their veins. Born into a working-class family, they knew a far different world than some of their rock counterparts. They deeply appreciated it too. One can hear it stamped all over their concept albums: The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society and Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire).
Village Green can very well be seen as their masterpiece and Mark Doyle makes sure we understand the historical significance that influenced the lyrics. The album itself can be described as sounding like just pure sadness which is not an uncommon thing when it came to concept albums made by Ray Davies. The central theme here is the English landscape filled with Ray’s working class, fictional characters from a simpler time. But there is a duality at work in his words. He is sardonic, wistful, and as Doyle makes sure we know: semi-detached. Hiding from the noisy atmosphere of the time to give in to a fantasy nostalgia. Ray wasn’t afraid to critique London and its unique national habit of romanticizing their history too much. After all, nothing is perfect in any era in history. In the greatest moments of British history, the people were filled with immense conflict and intense national pride.
Because of this Ray Davies lyrics always seem to be attached to less an idea but to a place. The land more than anything. Through his works, you can trace the history of a neighborhood. A working-class sector of London. The past is a thing that can’t be taken back but a feeling is something that can last forever. He is the Dickens of the 1960s.
Giving context to where The Kinks actually were at that time gives us a far better sense of how their songs were able to pay homage to a British working-class when The Beatles and The Rolling Stones could not. They were in England. Being temporarily banned from the United States unshackled them from having to appeal to an American audience that was going through a counterculture that wouldn’t have allowed The Kinks to go where they went lyrically. This was quite honestly the greatest thing that could have happened to them.
In London, there was a vain endeavor to break the class system and The Kinks were there to experience it. Where other bands were outsiders looking across the ocean, Ray Davies was an observer explaining what was happening to the rest of the world. The working class and posh British society were attempting to intermingle in a way it hadn’t before. If one truly wants to explore this history in an easier way, I recommend checking out The Crown on Netflix. In season 3 it shows a very interesting mix of high society getting into rock music and rock stars who came from lower classes suddenly being seen as legends compared to royalty. In this book, though, Mark Doyle digs deeper.
Ray Davies and the rest of The Kinks were given this treatment. They’d indulge and be accepted into social circles that they could not have imagined when growing up. While the others reveled in it, Ray felt a tinge of self-loathing. He’d indulge in the things that were meant to show social clout only to hate himself after. He was in constant conflict of who he really was and whether he could ever move beyond his working-class background which he valued far more than materialistic things around him. For this reason, Doyle describes Davies as a kind of interloper.
In his songs, we can get the sense that he himself does not want to exist as a person in this system but as a perspective. He’s real and what’s not real. One can take him in the same way one could take the idea of Utopia. A perfect place but a place that cannot be. His soul is tied to a location that is both idealized but no longer exists. A classic outsider who could never truly commit to one identity.
It’s that semi-detachment that runs as the main theme throughout the book and in the songs that made The Kinks so well known. Their nostalgic lyrics in songs could be seen as either praising their lower-class background or mocking it. As a listener, we can see them as both. As an author, Mark Doyle was able to see it them as one symbiotic thing. As a writer and historian, Doyle takes us to a higher level of appreciation and understanding of The Kinks. They were a band lost in history, both now and then. Thankfully Mark Doyle did a deep dive for all of us, so we can now better understand one of the most underrated, yet influential bands to exist in this modern era. If you love history, this book is will not disappoint. If you love music, this book is a gem. If you love The Kinks, this book simply cannot be ignored.
Michael, i wish you and everybody who reads this book, wonderful hours! Of course, use my review as a comment your beach book recommendations!
Mallory 🌈