Very nice. Ray is in good voice, and the choir fits in with faux splendor of the song. I must admit, I miss the driving harpsichord, and I can't imagine why they left it out.

Btw the new album Working Man's Cafe is really good.

The Kinks are one of my favorite rock bands (maybe no. 1) and Shangri La is an amazing song. That being said, I much prefer the album version. The song works best when narrated by a young outsider mocking the hapless middle class guy's "Shangi La." I think some of that young-outsider-mocking attitude is lost when performed by an older performer, backed by a large choir, in front of an adoring audience.

I like it as well despite my general aversion towards choirs (a few songs, most notably "You Can't Always Get What You Want", excepted) and esp. to choreographed audience sing-a-longs. In fact, when the choir first kicked in, I was like "why" but gradually it grew on me throughout the performance.

Ray's voice and playing are as fine as ever, though, but yeah it also makes me wanna play the album version.

I'm bugged by it (surprise of the year?): I don't know what bums me out more, Rock Choirs, Rock Orchestras, the filming of Rock Choirs, the filming of Rock Orchestras, or Ray's receding hairline. At least he seems to have given up on the Hair Architecture that had only been highlighting his hair loss over the last decade. That said, it's not a bad performance, but I'd rather hear it done kind of straight up, with Ray standing up.

I feel like going home and listening to that great song and my other favorite from Arthur, "Australia"!

It’s pretty neat, I like it for what it is, but it doesn’t touch the album version, which is only natural. As I figured when I saw the choir, the part that works least for me (in a relative sense) is the “all the houses in the street have got a name” section, although that’s partly due to Davies not using whatever that voice is that he uses on the original, which he also breaks out for a few other songs on Arthur.

The horns on that section in the original “Shangri-La” might be my favorite horns on any pop/rock record, so there’s really no chance for the choir here to fill those shoes for me.

Having just seen the Mod’s comments above this – I think “Australia” might actually be my least favorite song on the album as it exists in CD form, since it ends up being right next to “Shangri-La” without a side one/side two break between them.

Ugh -- I had to put an end to the misery 2/3 of the way through. Who the hell arranged/orchestrated this mess? They devoted all that stage real estate to THREE acoustic guitars that all sounded alike, and, as far as I could tell, were banging away on the same chords, TWO keyboards that were doing nothing of importance, and 492 voices who were very precisely clipping their syllables for as little rock effect as humanly possible. For fuck's sake, if you're going to spend a buttload of money presenting Ray's masterpieces to a symphony hall audience... give the guy a freaking symphony! Even the original 8- or 16-track album cut had a mighty, mighty brass section in there. Again I ask: what was this arranger thinking?! The trombones in the original are the make-or-break element in the piece, and here we get... 128-string acoustic madness. Boo!

Oh, and the drummer is playing with those ridiculous "bundled" sticks -- again, presumably in an attempt to rock out as little as possible. With a 492-voice choir behind you? Why?

I don't like the choir or more to the point, seeing the choir. This doesn't even come close the album version.

That said, I still got goosebumps up the back of my neck and dizzy euphoria listening to it. That's how great that song is.

Will he EVER stop with the decades-late-dollar-short reminders that he *got there before* his competitors?

So it would've been the "first rock opera", just like the kinks used a sitar before George Harrison.

That shtick is almost as tired as this performance.

Well, let me stand alone and say that I like it. Good as the album version, no and for many of the reasons enumerated. But that doesn't mean it's not good. No one should take this as a challenge to prove me wrong, but the song is so good I don't know that it could be performed badly.

That said, if anyone could, it's probably Ray. As much as I've loved the Kinks and for as long as I've loved the Kinks (and I bought Arthur at the time of its release so we are talking more years than I really want to put a number on) I've always thought they were crap live. Ray has been doing the same tired shtick forever and he seems determined to ruin as many songs as he can with medleys, letting the song die out, and most egregiously, the damn sing-a-longs. Check out the video of Dedicated Follower Of Fashion from the same concert as Shangri-La for an example of that.

Actually, don't waste your time. Spend it watching Waterloo Sunset from the same concert. If you think you hate choirs you might think otherwise after this one.

But then nothing can ruin Waterloo Sunset (not even Ray straining and missing a lot of the high notes)...

Ray may claim to be "The Godfather of the Rock Opera" (whatta accolade: "...without me there would be no THE ELDER...") but he is decades behind Foreigner and their choir-laden performance of "I Want To Know What Love Is". Could his one-off appearance with The Polyphonic Spree be far behind?

Thank you all for playing. For the record, I am A-OK with this performance. My ears settled with the choir eventually (hey, someone's gotta do the high harmonies if Dave isn't around). Al really hit the nail on the head, describing the palpable relief any Kinks fan feels when Ray decides to perform a song in its entirety, rather than abandon it halfway through to instead engage in a chorus of "Way-Oh!"
I see the points of the nay-sayers, to a degree. Although at one point, I thought HVB's lab coat was about to don a lab coat.

Underwhelmed. I was just getting used to the choir when that one guy in the chorus gets his own spotlight and looks like a stentorian blowhard. They could have used a few more welshmen in there. Some of the counterpoint stuff gets buried when the choir could have REALLY accented it. I'm with Fritz about a full orchestra treatment and arrangment possiblilites that were lost. I really miss the brass and boomy drums in the middle, it just sounded deflated to me when it should have brought the forte. While I'm glad Ray sang pretty much all of it, his weaker voice tells me a lot about why those damned way-o's happen nowadays.

Mr. Mod, were you thinking of "Australia" because of it's holiday references? Sunny Christmas day?

Not really. Whenever I think of Arthur I think about how much I love that long, loopy solo at the end of "Australia".

The end of Australia is the closest the Kinks ever came to 'jamming' on record, isn't it?

"You ... get ... what ... you ... work ... for ...."

At least he seems to have given up on the Hair Architecture that had only been highlighting his hair loss over the last decade.

What a great post, Mr. Mod. I was laughing when I read that. I will now attempt to incorporate the phrase "hair architecture" into conversations on the subject.

Will he EVER stop with the decades-late-dollar-short reminders that he *got there before* his competitors?

So it would've been the "first rock opera", just like the kinks used a sitar before George Harrison.

That shtick is almost as tired as this performance.

Indeed. Besides, didn't The Pretty Things' SF Sorrow beat both of them anyway?

And it's nice that I'm not the only one averse to choirs and esp. sing-a-longs. I just can't stand them. With that said, I think my point of view as well as other naysayers has more to do with the fact that I'm not a hardcore enough fan to know that Ray and The Kinks play medleys and not the full songs. This is another big no-no for me!

I'm not a hardcore enough fan to know that Ray and The Kinks play medleys and not the full songs. This is another big no-no for me!

The problem wasn't medleys, as I see it. It was truncated versions of songs. "Victoria" without the bridge; "Apeman" without the second verse. And on and one. While this was going on, in the '80s, their albums suffered from a distinct lack of editing. Songs that went on and on; choruses that repeated ad infinitum; pointless codas. Etc.
As for Ray's receding hairline, anything is better than the mullet he used to rock.

mockcarr wrote, "it just sounded deflated to me".

i write: me too. "tired".

berlyant, thanks for the agreement on Ray's "rock op" comment.

Donning lab coat....

i think it's typical of the particular brand of self-conscious, revisionism he's been cranking out since the autobiography. it's as if he's constantly arguing from a standpoint that can be paraphrased, "see? see? i won the competition but you weren't smart enough to notice! Now give me my accolades! And the money I should've gotten!".

And to top it all off, his self-congratulations is at cross purposes with itself in this particular instance: He wrote the first rock opera, according to his own accounting. But rock operas are a bad thing.

It would be nice to think that he's being humble here. However, given Ray's penchant for pointing out his own innovations, and his unawareness of how bitter he looks in these moments, his choice to include the song in the set, and his willingness to introduce it this way, humility isn't likely.

Rather, it's probably a tacit shot at the Who, one that once again reveals his blind spot to his own bitterness.

The worst part of it all is that I've heard Ray introduce material from Arthur this way on a number of occasions. So even though it's a *heavily scripted*, and therefore rather deliberate shtick, he still hasn't really thought through its full implications.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, I like the "architecture" metaphor for more than just his hair!

Lab coat doffed.

Ray is definitely into his own legacy. Btw my friend Tom Kitts' book about him -- Ray Davies: Not Like Everybody Else -- just came out. On Routledge no less. I haven't gotten my copy yet, but it's a 'critical biography,' and I think it may shed some light on these issues.

BigSteve, I bet I'm not the only Townsperson curious to know if you could conduct an interview with your friend on this book! Let me know - offlist - if the two of you would be game. Also, remind me to add this book to our RTH Booooowks link. I'll have to check this out. Thanks.

The problem wasn't medleys, as I see it. It was truncated versions of songs. "Victoria" without the bridge; "Apeman" without the second verse. And on and one.

To me this is one and the same and emblematic of the same problem. This is exactly why I had such a hard time enjoying Prince perform the one time I saw him despite my love for a fair share of his music and my general appreciation for his talent. Those medleys and snippets were fine for a Super Bowl halftime show, but not for a concert I paid $60 to see!