“No one can penetrate me. They only see what’s in their own fancy, always.”
– Ray Davies

Raymond Douglas “Ray” Davies, CBE  was born 21 June 1944. He is  best known as lead singer and songwriter for The Kinks, which he led with his younger brother, Dave. He has also acted, directed and produced shows for theatre and television.

Ray Davies is one of my favorite british songwriters, he really is up there with lennon/mccartney and jagger/richards. He is that good!

Ray Davies’ influence on british music is large and important. It really bacame vissible during the britpop period, but I can hear his way of talking about the english way of live in today’s pop and rap/hip-hop also. They might not know why they do it the way the do, but we do, it is the way Ray Davies thaught them through his songs .

While almost every other songwriter working in a rock band at the time was talking about altered states or sticking it to squares, Ray Davies developed a vocabulary of traditional English life, and even mocked Carnaby Street fashion on “Dedicated Follower of Fashion”. The Kinks were culture without the “counter” prefix, a rock band that anomalously acknowledged the dignity in the middle-aged woman who went out and bought a hat like the one Princess Marina wore, the one that adopted the mannerisms of music hall without pastiche or irony, the one that sang about tea and gooseberry tarts and favoring neighborhood life over new patterns of development.

– Pitchfork (Joe Tangari)

20 Century Man (Storytellers, vh1):

Awards

• On 17 March 2004, Davies received the CBE from Queen Elizabeth II for “Services to Music.”
• On 22 June 2004, Davies won the Mojo Songwriter Award, which recognises “an artist whose career has been defined by his ability to pen classic material on a consistent basis.”
• Davies was also a judge for the third annual Independent Music Awards. His contributions helped assist upcoming independent artists’ careers.
• Davies and the Kinks were the third British band (along with The Who) to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, at which Davies was called “almost indisputably rock’s most literate, witty and insightful songwriter.” They were inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005.
• On 3 October 2006, Davies was awarded the BMI Icon Award for his “enduring influence on generations of music makers” at the 2006 annual BMI London Awards.
• On 15 February 2009, The Mobius Best Off-West End Production in the UK for the musical Come Dancing.
• On 7 September 2010, Davies was awarded the Outstanding Achievement Award at the GQ Men of the Year Awards.
• On 26 October 2010, Davies was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award at his AVO Session concert in Basel; the concert was televised internationally.

My fav Kinks song – Waterloo Sunset (live):

Here’s a great documentary about Ray Davies, The World From My Window (2003): 

 

Album of the day:

Other June-21:

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