Ray Davies - Sold on Song, BBC Studios, London, Britain, 4-1-2006

I love Ray Davies of the Kinks, and I love acoustic music, so it's kind of a mystery to me why I haven't posted this concert already. If you like the Kinks at all, you should listen to this.

In 2005 and 2006, the BBC had a series much like VH1's "Storytellers." Famous musicians were invited to tell stories about their songs as well as playing them, usually in an acoustic format. I've already posted Paul McCartney's appearance on the show (I actually combined it with another similarly formatted show he did one day apart). You can get that here:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/07/paul-mccartney-chaos-and-creation-at.html

Anyway, Davies decided to go the full acoustic route, playing with just his acoustic guitar plus another acoustic guitarist. He talked a lot between songs, telling interesting stories with a focus on the songwriting process. But best of all, he played an interesting set of songs, mixing songs from the 1960s and early 1970s with songs from his 2006 solo album "Other People's Lives." Happily, he avoided overplayed hits like "You Really Got Me" and "Lola."

The concert is 56 minutes long, with about ten minutes of those talking. I put the talking on separate tracks.

One really great thing about this is the sound quality. Although he played in front of a small audience and there is clapping, the BBC professionally recorded the show for TV and it sounds fantastic. (Davies played live as an acoustic duo for about ten years, but unfortunately virtually none of the bootlegs of him were recorded with soundboard quality.)

I've added a bonus track of sorts. When he played the song "All She Wrote," he stopped twice in mid-song to make some interesting comments about the song's lyrics. While interesting, those comments broke up the flow of the song. So the bonus track is the exact same performance of the song, but I edited out the talking parts.

01 Intro (Ray Davies)
02 Dead End Street (Ray Davies)
03 talk (Ray Davies)
04 20th Century Man (Ray Davies)
05 talk (Ray Davies)
06 The Village Green Preservation Society (Ray Davies)
07 Picture Book (Ray Davies)
08 Big Sky (Ray Davies)
09 Do You Remember Walter (Ray Davies)
10 talk (Ray Davies)
11 Sunny Afternoon (Ray Davies)
12 talk (Ray Davies)
13 I Go to Sleep (Ray Davies)
14 talk (Ray Davies)
15 All She Wrote (Ray Davies)
16 talk (Ray Davies)
17 Other Peoples' Lives (Ray Davies)
18 Muswell Hillbilly (Ray Davies)
19 talk (Ray Davies)
20 Oklahoma U.S.A. (Ray Davies)
21 talk (Ray Davies)
22 The Getaway [Lonesome Train] (Ray Davies)
23 After the Fall (Ray Davies)
24 Harry Rag (Ray Davies)
25 Outro (Ray Davies)

All She Wrote [Dialogue Free Version] (Ray Davies)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15288965/RayDvs_2006b_SoldonSngBBStudiosLondnBritain__4-1-2006_atse.zip.html

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any good photos of Davies at the actual "Sold On Song" performance. However, this is his playing an acoustic guitar from the same year.