I have never been nostalgic. Every year that tendency seems more pronounced. It's a family trait, I think, and probably a flaw, a weakness and sign of severe emotional blockage and a stunted nature.
Still, reminded yesterday that today and tomorrow mark
the 44th
anniversary of The Kinks’ return to US touring at the Fillmore East, I palpably thrilled and got (as Maynard G. Krebs used to say) misty.
Beginning
with You Really Got Me, I loved The Kinks to
distraction (their
only rivals in my mind were The Byrds, who also combined real poetry
moments with individual and group charisma;
since one band was English and one American, they could co-exist in
balance in my mental field) and The Kinks' live performance renewal after the
four-year mysterious bad behavior ban
seemed an unbelievable, almost Biblical, event. The fact
that the great Bonzo
Dog Band were also on the bill was, as blasphemous
people are prone to say, proof of God’s existence.
The
Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society had
been released in the US earlier in the year and the extraordinary Arthur was
just then in the record racks. New York City was
more romantic, more fun, and a lot less expensive in those days and the Fillmore was the very
best place ever.
The
tour poster pictured on top brings back fine memories of the Fillmore East's lobby, where
I first saw it displayed, and the fact
that that Pete Quaife is still featured on a key band marketing tool a year after he had finally
and definitively been replaced by John
Dalton is a signifier from a more spontaneous, amateurish (in the classic sense), Kinky-signified era. The live performance shots above were actually
taken at Toronto shows six weeks after the Fillmore dates, but they depict the band looking exactly
as I saw them in NYC, as I wish I could see them today.
The
exterior photo below of the Fillmore
East marquee, with Ratner’s in the foreground (btw, The Move never fulfilled that NYC date), and
the Fillmore “playbill” above both summon memories I cannot share here, none of which have faded,
because all of this happened when I
was the age my daughter is now during an extended illegal weekend away from
boarding school and home, and I don’t
want Jane to know what I got up to then and with whom.
In those days I spent a lot of time lying while telling myself I was seeking the truth. I lie very rarely now and I speak verily when I tell you that despite what some idiot so-called critics and “historians” (double good grief) have written about The Kinks’ “sloppy performances” in those days and on that weekend in particular, they were the greatest rock and roll shows I have ever seen and they changed my life forever.
In those days I spent a lot of time lying while telling myself I was seeking the truth. I lie very rarely now and I speak verily when I tell you that despite what some idiot so-called critics and “historians” (double good grief) have written about The Kinks’ “sloppy performances” in those days and on that weekend in particular, they were the greatest rock and roll shows I have ever seen and they changed my life forever.
