I've put the first post - Bardolator - in even though it's not 'on topic',
because it's mentioned in my first post here.
And because I think it's very funny.

Date: 31 Mar 1999
From: Erin Campbell
Subject: RDD, Bardolator
In a couple of songs that I can think of, Ray pays homage to the Immortal Bard. There's Mr. Flash with his version of Shylock's, "if you prick me, do I not bleed?"; and on the Storyteller CD, you can detect Hamlet's "more things in heaven and earth" showing up on the X-Ray. This got me thinking, and after considerable research, I discovered to my amazement that Ray has borrowed heavily from the Stratford Streak over the years. Here are just some of the lines he has lifted from Shakespeare, and the plays in which they first appeared:
As You Like It: All the world's a stage/ And everybody's a star: so let's hear it for the Baptiste:
Twelfth Night: If music be the food of love, play on/ For you can't stop the musique playing on
Hamlet: Never a lender or borrower be/ But looke a little on the sunnye side
MacBeth: Is this a dagger I see before me/ Or is that a piano?
Tempest: Oh brave new world, that has such creatures in it/ Jacque, Jaque the idiot dunce
Richard III: Now is the winter of our discontent/ I've got agues, cats are freezin',they're annoyin' too
Merry Wives of Windsor: The world's mine oyster/ Followed by some clamme chowder and corned beefe on Wrye
Richard II: This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, this other Eden, demi-paradise/ This Hollywoode Boulevarde
Henry IV: He hath eaten me out of house and home/ So don't thinke that I'm tyght if I don't buye a round
Romeo and Juliet: He jests at scars that never felt a wound/ They're assize twenty eight but I take thirtee fore, by my troth
King Lear: And now my poor fool is dead/So let's all drinke to the death of a clowne
Macbeth: It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing/ (Fugoff)
(there's another one from Erin later which is signed off "Duncan" so maybe this is his too)

3 Apr 1999
In keeping with the raised literary tone introduced by that immensely enjoyable survey of Shakespeare's influence on RDD, a brief note about Salman Rushdie's new novel "The ground beneath her feet" (UK: Cape, 1999), which looks to be a lot of fun.
Much reviewed here, there was a preview in today's Guardian (Saturday April 3). Our hero, Ormus Cama, arrives in Swinging London, becomes a rock god in the '70s. Being Rushdie, of course, this is only part of it, but it's one of those parallel universes where : "At a brilliant moment in British music, British radio is deadly dull. Restrictions on 'needle time' means that when you want the latest hit records - John Lennon singing Satisfaction, the Kinks' Pretty Woman, or My Generation, by the new supergroup High Numbers, who changed their name from The Who and immediately made the big time - all you get is Joe Loss or Victor Sylvester, music for dead people." And the Simon in Simon & Garfunkel is Carly.
I look forward to it with little trepidation, all 500 plus pages of it. What was lost in all the fuss about Satanic Verses and the heaviness that followed was what a great writer the man is, and that that book was amongst other things a very funny look at multicultural Britain in the '80s.
So, KPSers … how about fiction? And indeed Kinkspotting in literature (the way Springsteen figured in Bobbie Ann Mason's 'Up country')? Is it possible to invent Mick Jagger?
I've still not managed to read it …

Of course, what I'd forgotten then was that Bobbie Ann Mason's 'In country' (UK: Chatto, 1986), a book I'd read and liked a lot - a moving road trip to the big Vietnam memorial wall - when it first came out, actually had Kinks references of its own. This was pointed out on the KPS Digest so I checked it out again. This is what I find in my reading diary dated 7 June 1999: "Skimmed for the Kinks references (more than the two I'll use) but still its power comes through, this tale of Vietnam aftermath for those who fought and their compadres. Is there another novel so effectively full of pop cultural references - MASH episodes, Springsteen, the radio thread of a new Beatles song? Outstanding people stuff.
Probably the most obscure reference mentioned on this page starts Chapter 30 :
"The footsteps on the boardwalk grew louder … She intended to leave the path and creep through the jungle back to the car. But it seemed a cheat to have a car for escape. She should have had a foxhole, with broken branches over it, to hide in. But the V.C. would know the jungle, and they would see where she had been. They would see the picnic cooler. The V.C. rapist-terrorist was still at the boardwalk. A bird flew over but she didn't dare glance at it. Its shadow fell on the bushes.
"Here she was in a swamp where an old outlaw had died, and someone was stalking her. In her head the Kinks were singing, "There's a little green man in my head," their song about paranoia. But this was real. A curious pleasure stole over her. This terror was what the soldiers had felt every minute."
Earlier, towards the end of Chapter 22:
"Emmett switched on the TV and punched through the buttons. On MTV, Chrissie Hynde, with the Pretenders, was singing "Back on the chain gang." She was standing with her legs apart, looking tough. Men were swinging pickaxes.
""Do you know this song?" Sam asked her mother apprehensively.
""No." Irene glanced at the TV, then busied herself with the baby.
"Chrissie Hynde had a baby, and the father was in the Kinks, one of the old British groups Irene used to love. But Sam realised her mother would probably not be interested in this information.
"When the song finished, Emmett began playing Pac-Man … "

From: "Kevin Walsh"
Subject: Other (obscure) literary references to The Kinks ...
Date: 6 Apr 1999
.. would include at least the title of the pop pulp novel "All Night Stand" by Thom Keyes, published in the US by Ballantine in 1967, though "Copyright (C) 1966 Shel Talmey (sic) Productions Ltd." As konoisseurs know, Ray's song "All Night Stand" by The Thoughts was produced by Talmy for his Planet label in 1966. The protagonists are Dave Entwistle (lead guitar), Roy Oates (singer), Nick O'Sullivan (bass), Mick Ingle (drums), and Gerry Malloy (rhythm). Notice the names Dave, Roy, and Mick ...

As it happens I actually own a tatty paperback of this. It's a good sharply written social document of the time and was not without social and cultural significance, the money Keyes got for the movie rights going towards financing an acid hippy pad in London where, if my memory serves me well, a lot of the damage was done to Syd Barrett. The cover is a classic of its kind and time, with the Kirkus Review saying "It's Henry Miller's version of what 'A hard day's night' should really be like."

 

02/06/99
And there's another Paul Charles novel featuring Christy Kennedy - Fountain of sorrow, 1998 - still firmly situated in Chalk Farm & Camden Town. As a piece of crime writing I think it's his best yet, with a neat twist at the end. Kinks references still there in passing, but the Beatles are his main men, with lots of respect for Jackson Browne too.

Charles' first novel came out before I went online and signed up to the KPS digest. 'I love the sound of breaking glass: an Inspector Christy Kennedy mystery' (The Do-Not press, 1997) also drew heavily on his music biz background and featured a murder in a locked recording studio. Kennedy is a tea-man, by the way. This from an interrogation of a musician(p110):
""When you record your albums, sir, have you ever used a studio in Primrose Hill called" - Kennedy checked his notes - "Mayfair Mews Studios."
""No, I always use a studio called Konk. It's owned by Ray Davies of the Kinks. It's only two streets away and I always hope I'm going to be influenced by England's finest living songwriter when I go there. But I've never even come close to 'Waterloo sunset.'
"As Kennedy drove away from the Farrelly's home, he found himself overcome by an overwhelming urge to listen to the Kinks' classic Farrelly had mentioned."
The opening couplet of WS heads the next chapter:
"The melody was engulfing Kennedy's brain. The cheeky guitar line from Dave, the other Davies brother, hooked its way into his mind as effectively as the times-table had at school. Dave Davies proved to be a perfect foil for his older brother's cynical but endearing outlook on English suburban life. His guitar solo on 'Waterloo sunset' was as sweet as ant strawberry milkshake.
"Kennedy had PC Gaul drop him off at the Salt and Pepper Café in Parkway. He was to meet ann rea there and she was already at their favourite corner table. Kennedy immediately ordered tea (naturally) and brought ann rea up to date with his interview with the Farrelly's, 'Waterloo sunset' and all.
"ann rea interrupted his commentary on London's most elegant folk song.
""I worry, you know," she began.
""What?" A startled Kennedy departed the melody."

05/07/99
Music has been a subplot in some of the more interesting British crime writing of the last decade or so. In response to Colin Dexter's opera and more particularly Wagner loving Inspector Morse, alternative strands have emerged. John Harvey's sequence of tough police procedurals featuring Nottingham detective Charlie Resnick openly celebrated jazz; even his cats were named after jazzmen - Dizzy et al. One memorable short story has the criminal trapped because of his love of obscure Duke Ellingtonia, and the record collections of his women are blatantly used as signifiers.

I think I may have mentioned Ian Rankin's wonderful John Rebus novels before in passing- the current pick of the crop in my opinion. Edinburgh police procedurals with a strong sense of place and morality, of the possibilities of decent behaviour, the novels have increasingly looked at the personal and social roots of criminal behaviour, examining motives derived from childhood experiences and choices almost made for a person before they had a chance to know a decision was being taken. But it's not all joyless, and the establishment certainly don't get off lightly - money and corruption are indeed ruining the land.
Rankin's latest novel is full of musical references. Whereas *Let it bleed* (1996) paid homage to the Stones, Rebus' (and presumably Rankin's) first love, in *Dead Souls* (1999) he seems determined to drop as many obscure music names and tracks as he can into the gloom. Is he playing some outrageous game with Harvey? Thus as early as page 8 (the UK Orion edition) we have Greenslade's *Sunkissed you're not* segueing into Jefferson Airplane's *If you feel like china breaking*. Not long after we get Leaf Hound's *Drowned my life in fear*. Later he puts *Goat's head soup* on his hifi, followed by Peter Hammill's *Two or three spectres*. We get Can's *TangoWhiskyman*, Manfred Mann's *Cubist town* and on p220 we find him "Thinking of an old Gravy Train song: *Won't talk about it*. Two pages on the Pretty Things' *Cries from the midnight circus*. I must have missed some others too. So, while I've heard of most of the artists, save GHS I know none of the tracks. I even suspect he's made at least one of 'em up. This then is the company our lads keep. Can you guess which Kinks track he chooses to place in with this lot?
I'll give you the whole paragraph or so, from p258:
"Boys and girls went into the wild areas behind the park and found secret places, flattened areas of fields which they could call their own. And that had been Janice and Johnny, too, once upon a time ... "The Kinks: 'Young and innocent days'.
"Now, the place had changed."
Interesting, eh? Are the other pieces mentioned even half as good?

03/08/99
Another good stab at recreating '60s London (Indica Bookshop, Middle Earth, LSE sit-ins et al) is Robert Irwin's curious mix of sociology, swinging London and satanism *Satan wants you* (UK: Dedalus, 1999). It's a novel, though Talcott Parsons gets a mention ... now there's real sociological nostalgia for you - or me at least. This quote could well preface one of those examination questions such as : "Why do you think the author got it wrong?" One of the answers could be that it's from a fake diary in the context of the story, but even KPSers have been known to confuse Waterloo Station with Waterloo Bridge - a very different kettle of engineering and poetry. Anyway, from p228 :
"I was not really paying much attention to Sally's fantasy. I was getting cold feet about Waterloo Station. It's the subject of a song by the Kinks, is it not? 'Waterloo Station, you're bringing me down.' If the Lodge operated like the police do when they're hunting a murderer, then its minions would be watching all mainline stations. Waterloo is definitely ill-omened. It is described in Aleister Crowley's novel, Moonchild' as 'the funereal antechamber to Woking' ...
I leave that last bit in as a gratuitous mention of Paul Weller's origins.
Elsewhere in the novel our MA Sociology aspirant and magickal heirophant buys a copy of Jeff Beck's single "Hi ho silver lining" because his girl friend Sally wears a hippy hat.

Which links it with the second entry here, Ian Rankin's superb *Black and blue* (UK: Orion, 1997) - the title of course, another Stones reference. From p271 of the paperback :
" 'How can the truth be bad? But Rebus knew Ancram was right. He didn't want to agree with Ancram about anything - that would be to fall into the interrogator's trap: empathy - but he couldn't make himself disagree on this one point. This was bad. His life was turning into a Kinks song: 'Dead End Street'.
" 'You're up to your oxters, pal,' Ancram said. "
A good example not only of the way Rankin slips in popular or obscure song references (mentioned in a previous posting), but also uses Scottish dialect to confuse us all for the fun of it. Fifty pages or so earlier Rebus - one of the great creations of British crime writing - goes into a club in Aberdeen :
"The music was a mixture of kitsch disco and regressive rock : Chic, Donna Summer, Mud, Showaddywaddy, Rubettes, interspersed with Rod Stewart, the Stones, Status Quo, a blast of Hawkwind and bloody 'Hi-Ho Silver Lining'.
"Jeff Beck : up against the wall now!"
And so say all of us (a bit unkind on Chic, though).

21/05/00
Those of you who have entered "Waterloo sunset" into online bookshop search engines, may have, like me, lingered over the book by one Judith Saxton. Anyone hoping for a pleasant game of spot-the-other-Kinks-references-hidden-in-the-text will be disappointed. Such is the fascinating life I lead that I have shoveled mightily on your behalf to establish this. The book first came out in the early '80s with the title 'Follow the drum', when the pseudonymous author traded under the name of Judy Turner. In the UK it came out with the Mills & Boon imprint - genre romance. It was recycled as 'Waterloo sunset' under the writer's real name in 1998 by Severn House, something this 'library fiction' specialist publisher does a lot of. It was there that someone with what I suppose could be said to be a postmodern sense of humour gave this romance of the Napoloenic wars a Kinks spin. The main action involves events proceeding and the conduct of the actual battle of Waterloo, from which the London station got its name; there isn't much of a sunset - just "sunshine falling, dappled, through the branches overhead". (Lovely word, that, by the way - dappled). The book has subsequently appeared in a large print edition.
I immediately warmed to the author for her acknowledgements at the start of the book, thanking "the staff of the Wrexham Branch Library, who obtained for me such an abundance of memoirs and journals written by the soldiers who fought at Waterloo". As a librarian I have to say that one appreciates this sort of thing, and the use she makes of these sources was enough to make me think a read of a couple of Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe novels might brighten an idle winter day. The scene describing the bringing of the horses ashore after the passage across the Channel had a certain something, although some of the vernacular was a little baffling. Our heroine, Barbara (the unlikely 'Babs' in the early narrative, but I checked out the Mormon genealogical indexes and Barbara was indeed a name in circulation at this time) suffers a romantic and domestic misunderstanding and runs away to join the army as a boy. So - a saga of military crossdressing. This did happen, apparently, but hardly I'm sure in the fashion occurring here - from ballroom to minding the horses in a flash and vice versa; as the late great Ian Dury might have put it - a load of old bollo. One is pleased for her, though, when she gets her man.

30/07/00
First in a long time and it's only the new Paul Charles novel featuring Inspector Christy Kennedy. I say only because the first three all mentioned the lads too, and this time it's not joy on hearing 'Waterloo sunset' on the car radio but Ray's appearance in a list sandwiched between Bob Dylan and Van Morrison with Paul Simon. Respect! Anyway, the book is called 'The ballad of Sean and Wilko', published by The Do Not Press. Not without some rock'n'roll business suss and a coupla nice one liners, it's great on the magic of Primrose Hill (Loudon Wainwright did a song, too) and the pleasures of Camden Town and more particularly Chalk Farm. There's drinking in a couple of pubs I used to frequent when I lived in London too. The plot creaks ... and it is just about the worst edited book I can recall reading. Sloppy doesn't enter into it - spelling, grammar, punctuation, missing words practically every chapter. Given that we encounter Otis Reading at one stage I guess we should feel lucky they got Davies right. Clearly in some departments The Do Not Press does not care.
I know it's already been mentioned on the list, but it will do no harm to repeat the advice to those of you suffering from new Kinks song starvation could do worse than investigate XTC's 'Apple Venus'. It come in two volumes, both very good indeed, the first mainly orchestral, the second ('Wasp star') electric guitar based. Andy Partridge is a man who can offer, "I'll be your Albert, if you'll be my Victoria" and can rhyme 'festival' with 'best of all' on the first and actually deliver on the second with a song called 'Stupidly happy'
Enough. I raise a glass of whisky and coke to you all.
Dave Q
(whose aol spell checker just offered him moron for Van Morrison).

7 Sep 2000
'Driving' was one of the songs that made me realise just how special the Kinks were. Glorious music, of course, but this wasn't just rock and roll, this was also literature. It was a song that got you inside the Ford
Popular, told you how it felt to be there. I was deep into my George Orwell period at the time and I still identify the song with my favourite of his social novels - 'Coming up for air', in which the protagonist goes in
pursuit, in the looming shadow of the forthcoming World War, of his own young and innocent days, of village greens and in his particular case a pond of fond fishing memory. His car journey is a solo one, not the Davies family jaunts that 'Driving' draws on, but the magic of driving through the countryside at a time when popular motoring was in its infancy is just as much there. "The idea came to me the day I got my new false teeth," is how the novel opens. Familiar territory, no?
I was also reading a lot of F.Scott Fitzgerald at the time; I saw Ray Davies as being the missing link - with hindsight a silly notion, but one I remember not without affection. I do wonder how much Ray has read of Orwell. Everyone his age will have been introduced to, if not force fed, 'Animal Farm' and '1984' at school, and in all probability been told they were anti-socialist texts (something that would have pained Orwell - they were anti-Communist). Certainly "Big Brother" made a big impact on Ray's social thinking, and that Orwell along with Aldous Huxley ('Brave New World') are the main social theorists at work in Preservation Act. Those sometimes puzzled by the idea of England can do worse than explore Orwell's essays - on seaside postcards, on the perfect pub, on the correct way of making tea, on music hall, his delineating of a civilised patriotism - to discover some of where Ray has been coming from.
So take a drive with me

From: "Erin Campbell"
Subject: ANOTHER LITERARY REFERENCE
Date: 4 Jan 2001
I've just discovered yet another reference to the Kinks in the context of a novel. This time it's "Armadillo" by the British writer William Boyd, published in '98 by Viking/Penguin. Early on in the book we meet a minor character called David Watts, who it turns out, is a famous rock star. Later, on page 196, we encounter the following (slightly edited)exchange:
-Know why he calls himself David Watt?
-No, why?
-It's that song by the Kinks.
-Never heard of them.
-Jesus Christ, you must have, one of the legendary bands of the 1960s.
-Rings a bell, I said, now you mention it.
Torquil stood up as if he was performing and sang in a throaty tenor and cod-cockney accent: Fah, fuh, fuh,fah, fah,fah,fahFah .....He sang the whole song, word-perfect...It was a song about someone who could do no wrong, someone who was revered and worshipped by his peers....
So add the name of William Boyd, along with Ian Rankin, Bobbie Ann Mason, Salman Rushdie and David Gilmour, to the list of recent authors who have made references to the Kinks in their novels.
Happy new year, tout le monde!
Duncan

08/07/01: Kinks in and out of literature & the fifth Beatle
1. Jake Arnott's 'The long firm', originally published UK 1999, has a throwaway "dedicated follower of fashion" used to describe a character and add a bit of zeitgeist. Excellent novel which grips from the outset and is of no little interest to Kinks fans, firmly located as it is in '60's London, its criminal underworld (the Krays' House of Lords connection included), mod clubs, Joe Meek and all (or was Joe Meek in the sequel? - sorry). Great narrative drive, taken on by 5 different players in turn, with a late '70s coda coming right out of left field. I'm being lazy here, but did Ray actually invent the 'dedicated follower' phrase? Does he get the credit in modern dictionaries of quotations?
2. Arsenal fan Nick Hornby, who should be no stranger to this list, author of the very fine 'Fever pitch' (the function of the football supporter - indeed all sports fans by extension - is to suffer) and 'High fidelity' (Chicago painlessly becoming North London in the movie, certainly to my surprise) has a new book out. In 'How to be good' he adopts a female persona but that's beside the point. It's a very funny and painful comedy of contemporary manners set, for a change, in North London. Half-way through it there is a list, a very funny list a page long, which it would be unfair to quote in full. However:
"Here is a list of the people that Andrew and David have hitherto regarded as talentless, overrated, or simply wankers: Oasis, the Stones, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Robbie Williams, Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis ..." the list is relentless, taking in Virginia Woolf, Ben and Jerry and Pete Samprass among many many others along the way ... "Maurice Greene ('How can a sprinter who's faster than anyone else be overrated?' I asked once, despairingly ... ) ... It is easier, in fact, to write down the people in world history that they both like: Bob Dylan (although not recently), Graham Greene, Quentin Tarantino and Tony Hancock."
This latter is of course he of 'Hancock's half hour' as quoted in Dave's 'Fortis Green.' But the point of the mention here is that neither Ray alone or the Kinks collectively appear in either category in the list. I have to admit to both relief and angst but ultimately disappointment that our heroes are absent. I find it something of a mystery given the Arsenal, North London and music connections that the lads appear nowhere in his oeuvre.
3. And so on to Tobias Hill's 'The love of stones', a literary novel published by Faber earlier this year. This is not about another London r&b band but follows the lives of various people connected over the years with a richly encrusted brooch (Elizabeth I wore it). The Kinks reference was pointed out to me by my boss who also said I probably wouldn't enjoy the book as a whole and she's usually a good judge (it works the other way too). So it doesn't look like I'll read it in full and can make no comment overall, but the passage is interesting and worth quoting extensively from, starting page 113, and don't take anything for granted:
"We don't talk on the way from the airport. The radio is turned up loud, fading between local stations. Turkish pop, US Airforce FM. The driver sings along in a small absent voice. We don't talk ... I have had enough of taxi drivers.
"The music shifts from Turkish to English, East to West. The driver offers me a cigarette and I take it. The smoke wakes me up. I lean against the window and look out at Asia while the Kinks play in the trapped air.
'I was born, lucky me, in a land that I love. Though I'm poor I am free,'
"I am looking for the woman who loves pearls ... The sound of the dawn muezzin begins. Beyond it, through it, comes the thunder of a Turkish fighter plane. I crane back to see.
'When I'm grown I shall fight. For this land I shall die, where the sun never sets.'
"We come to a junction crowded with trucks and ranked taxis ... over them all loom the buttressed walls ...
'From the East to the West, from the rich to the poor, Victoria fucked them all.'
"The driver clicks off his radio and pulls up ..."

05/08/01 Kinks not in literature (a near miss)
It starts promisingly: "I'm doing sixty down Highgate Hill and the Laughy Woman is doing my head in." Highgate Hill is an actual London street name - mentioned in 'London Song' - as well as the hill and sixty is not easy; the Laughy Woman is co-presenter on a breakfast radio show whose daily quiz competition provides a neat sub-plot throughout - she laughs too much.
The book is called 'Hitman' but it is assassination we're talking here rather than Waterloo Sunset. The author is one Max Kinnings (well I said it was close). Published by Flame in the UK last year, and an anglophile's delight I would hazard to imagine (being English myself). The fine detail wherein lies one big strand of the humour (there really is a car called a Vauxhall Viva, say) may not be entirely lost on KPS members not of these islands.
It's a contemporary North London comic crime caper with an added touch of the Carlos Castenedas, although the black dog featured here is a Jack Russell terrier. Striving for Kinks content we note the best buddy of our 'hero' lives in Muswell Hill, and that he's the A&R man who discovered the bestselling Manchester rock band Gobshite (any suggestions?). Great narrative pace and seriously funny. At one stage I thought I was going to injure myself laughing at the hero's account of the death of his mother - without giving too much away it involves an ex-World War Two fighter pilot disastrously misreading a scene of crime reconstruction.

21/10/2001
While John Harvey's accomplished sequence of Nottingham based crime novels featuring detective Charlie Resnick never quite hit the UK bestseller lists with the impact of Ian Rankin's Rebus novels (previously mentioned in dispatches) it deservedly picked up critical awards. Harvey regularly uses music as a reference point - Resnick even had cats named after bebop musicians - and his website ( a modest model for authors' self run websites at www.mellotone.co.uk ) has a section devoted to the (mostly) jazz music he called on as background and inspiration. There's a fascinating Resnick short story that hinges on a con man using the names of obscure Duke Ellington sidemen as aliases being caught at a gig featuring survivors from the Ellington band at Ronnie Scott's.
Harvey's first post-Resnick novel, "In a true light", has just been published in the UK. It's not a cop novel but it does feature lawmen and women in London's Kentish Town and New York against a plot background of the '50s NY art scene - Abstract Impressionist and all that - and features among others a jazz singer. Truth to tell, I didn't like it as much as the Resnick stuff, though the lead character Sloane - an art forger from the ninth Resnick book - is interesting enough, and it has been well received by reviewers. But it does practically kick off with our boys and it does say something about the North-South London divide that crops up in Kinks tales occasionally and may have puzzled some non-Brits on the list. From page the first:
"They let Sloane out of prison three days short of his sixtieth birthday [ ... ]
"Now he stood at the centre of Waterloo Bridge, the river running broad and free beneath him. To his left, St Paul's and the City; to his right, the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben [ ... ]
"That morning he had walked along the Embankment from London Bridge, Blackfriars to Waterloo Station, words and music to an old song by the Kinks accompanying him. Walked slowly talking it all in [ ... ]
"Sloane breathed deeply, stretched both arms wide and, the beginnings of a smile bright in his eyes, set off for the north side of the Thames."
"Crossing the river: Sloane had friends way back in his early thirties who, when he'd told them he was selling up, moving south, had looked at him askance. South. South of the river. Camberwell. Peckham. Shooters Hill. You can't be serious [ ... ] And yet, when he looked back, it was true that few of those so-called friends had found their way south to pay their respects to Sloane in Deptford [ ... ] True, too, that when he himself made the journey in reverse, back to then familiar watering holes in Camden or Wood Green, all eyes would widen with amazement, as if some long-departed spirit had just walked through the door. Christ, Sloane, what you doin' here? Thought you'd gone for good."

11 Feb 2002
Another year, another Inspector Christy Kennedy novel from Paul Charles - 'The hissing of the silent lonely room', The DoNot Press, 2001. Set in Camden Town & Chalk Farm in North London again with a music industry background. Esther Bluewood, the missing link between Joni Mitchell and Suzanne Vega (it says here), whose first album was an epic of 'Astral weeks' proportions artistically, is found dead - suicide, or is it? There's some interesting stuff about songwriting, suicide and fans, and a recipe for psychedielic omelet (colourful vegetables and sugar). As ever the working through sometimes lumbers but it has its moments. Kinks content comes from an entry in Esther's notebook (p112):
"I've just put down my guitar. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Today I've been trying to make it work. I've put on someone else's music, my favourite song in fact: Emile Ford singing 'What do you want to make those eyes at me for.' Should there be a question mark there? It is a question ... Emile sang it sweetly. My mum used to play this record all the time. That's where I first heard it. It's such a simple song, but it gets me close to sobbing every time. I don't know why but it does. so there.
"I've just checked the label and there is no question mark, just 'What do you want to make those eyes at me for' by Emile Ford and the Checkmates, Pye Records. I recognise the label because it's the same one all the classic Kinks hits were on ..."
Quite how that gels with her, an American, rather than the older Kinks loving 'tec is one of the problems of Charles' writing - he needs an editor - but for what it's worth, I dare say that it's a song that featured in the
after-the-pubs were closed singalongs in the front room in Fortis Green all those years ago.

30 Jul 2002: The Kinks in literature if that's what you can call it
Another book from Paul Charles but not a Christie Kennedy mystery. No, a change of location and period - Liverpool, late '50s and '60s. 'First of the true believers : the autobiography of Theodore Hennessy'. London:The Do-Not Press, 2002. Further from the title page : 'a novel concerning The Beatles'. It's a strange construction, working best as a look at the Liverpool musical milieu, although The Searchers are strangely absent. But it's also a fairly hackneyed love story which progresses somewhat laboriously as well as a meditation (and reportage along with trainspotting lists of weeks at no. 1 et al) on The Fabs' history. These last two elements of the book never really mix. The group's tale is not a metaphor for the relationship or anything else for that matter, so you end up wondering what the point was. There's a strong defence of Brian Epstein and an anti-Yoko tirade at the end (so it's not all bad - no, I didn't really say that); he has little time for the Stones. He's not bad on what made the Beatles magic - as a group - the sharing of microphones, the enthusiasm, the harmonies, the songs. It didn't, though - always the test of music books - so much make me reach for the albums as Ian MacDonald's masterful Beatles book 'Revolution in the head'. Anoraks will note he has McCartney doing the vocals on 'Do you want to know a secret' and there's a namecheck for a bunch of regulars on the tour circuit called 'Sounds Incorporate'; it should be Incorporated - a possible instance of the spellchecker as (non)-functioning editor.
This from the last chapter gives a flavour of what he was maybe trying to do: "For the first time in my life, I was happy that I had not nearly met up with George Harrison in the Les Stewart Quartet. you know what we were talking about, that when they were replacing Pete Best he may have suggested me to John and Paul? I was happy because, if things had turned out that way, i would never have met and loved, and lost, and met and lost again, and met and married one .... [blah blah blah]"
"Equally importantly, should I have (via the Les Stewart Quartet) met George Harrison and consequently met and joined The Beatles, then perhaps they would never have enjoyed the success they eventually did ... "
Enough. The Kinks get mentioned in a couple of lists of other groups, but more specifically we have, this respectful nod from the chapter concerning the release of Sergeant Pepper (p.240):
"Just as I was starting to become a wee bit proud of my songwriting, The Beatles were starting to work on a project that would make me and every other songwriter in England, with the possible exception of Ray Davies, want to pack up writing songs forever."
And a bit later on (p249) listing the top ten singles the week Pepper was released:
"Equally interesting to note is that the number two single was written by Ray Davies who, with his consistently insightful songs, was proving to be the best English songwriter who didn't come from Liverpool and wasn't a member of The Beatles."
I'm afraid that's about as witty as it gets. Other annoyances ... always, but always, calling sex or even making love "doing the wild thing". No. I'll stop there. I should be writing novels of my own.

03 Feb 2003
"When Arthur took Ida out for a drink, as he did on Fridays, They went to the Duck and Drake or the Duke of Wellington, where Ida Banks caught up on the local gossip and they took part in trivia quizzes and laughed at people making feels of themselves in the karaoke sessions.
"But there was none of that at The Coach and Horses, and the piped sixties' pop music was turned down low enough so that old men could hear each other talk. At the moment the Kinks were singing 'Waterloo sunset', one of Banks's favourites. After Banks and his father had settled themselves at the table, pints in front of them and introductions made, Arthur Banks first lamented Jock McFall's absence due to hospitalization for a prostate operation ... " (p107)
- from Peter Robinson : The summer that never was. UK: Macmillan, 2003.
Another music loving British cop in the quality tradition of Ian Rankin's John Rebus and John Harvey's Charlie Resnick, who had cats named after jazzers and even though he's never mentioned the Kinks has a beautiful short story concerning a crook snared because of his Duke Ellington obsession.
Robinson, who has been writing Inspector Banks mysteries for a decade or more is at the top of his game right now, with great plotting and some really interesting characters - Banks's son plays in an Indie band, an ex-lover policewoman was a child in a St Ives artist hippy commune, and his own working class father has never accepted his career choice, sees him as bit of a class traitor.
Banks is stationed in the Yorkshire Dales (though this is no 'Heartbeat' thank goodness) but one of the crimes in 'The summer that never was' harks back to 1965 Peterborough (Cambridgeshire), where a teenage friend disappeared in mysterious circumstances. So among an awful lot of other things we have a contemplation of boyhood in the '60s with a significant offstage appearance from the Kray brothers and in the present a tragic Tim & Jeff Buckley situation and much else.
Highly recommended. I would have been disappointed indeed not to have been able to introduce it here.

22 Apr 2003 Lewis Shiner : Glimpses (US: St Martin's Press, 1993. Griffin edition, 2001).
Particularly interesting given the debates we've had over the years concerning the another gentleman (for it is indeed he):
" 'We don't have to do this,' I said. 'We could go back to the studio and you could do some work.'
'It's too cloudy to work. Maybe tonight.'
'It's all so fragile,' I said. 'The littlest thing can just ... '
'Relax,' Brian said. 'Smile.'
The DJ said, 'Here's something from last year by the Kinks.' I recognised the opening chords of 'Something better beginning.'
Brian turned the radio up. 'Just listen,' he said.
Ray Davies sang about dancing the last dance with some girl he'd just met, wondering what lay ahead. Heartbreak, or the start of something big. The song was about more than just a boy and a girl. Sitting there in the mist and drizzle, the dusty, comforting smell of the heater filling the back seat, it seemed to tell me everything I could ever need to know.
Brian said, 'It's the whole world, see? It's like we're just waking up. New music, new ideas. It's only the start of something, something incredible.' He looked over at me. 'But you've seen it, right? You know where it's all headed.'
'It's going to be big,' I said. 'The next three or four years are going to be so intense some people will never get over them. They'll be talking about them for the rest of their lives.' Like me, I thought.
Brian wrote 'HELP ME' in backward letters in the mist on his window. "
The narrator knows where it's all headed because he's from 1989 and on a mission to try and change things enough to enable Brian Wilson to finish 'Smile'. His time traveling ability develops from thinking an un-Spectored 'Long and winding road' as George Martin might have recorded it at Abbey Road straight onto tape. He physically manifests in LA to pull Jim Morrison back from the ravages of alcohol long enough to complete a proper third Doors album ('Celebration of the lizard') and then makes the 'Smile' album his mission. It's an incredible piece of writing which has made me fascinated with that project like never before. The poignancy of Brian's situation and the politics of the band (Mike Love demanding to know of Van Dyke Parks what some of his lyrics actually mean) are beautifully presented. The time traveler succeeds - the album gets finished - but it turns out it doesn't actually make that much difference as Brian tells the narrator later on when they meet in 'heaven'; the band split (musical differences) and it hardly sells at all, The world is not saved.
Next up, to London to rescue Jimi Hendrix and allow him at least enough time to produce 'First rays of the new rising sun', the prospective merging of the musical traditions and the consequent healing. He tries this more than once, but Jimi still dies. It all gets too much for the time traveler who nearly dies (hence the 'heaven' sequence - Jimi jamming with allsorts) and has a major breakdown back in 1989.
It's a wonderful piece of brilliantly sustained writing and invention. Apart from the music - the time traveler was in a band late '60s (they let him go), his 1989 record industry buddy, a wheelchair bound Vietnam vet who's built up a successful enough record label around Nuggets type compilations - we're in roughly Dave Eggers territory here without the self consciousness though always the right side of psychobabble. There's the small matter of the narrator's relationship with a recently dead father, who probably committed suicide on an undersea dive (he replicates the dive), a disintegrating marriage between decent people, drink problems and the whole legacy of coming of age in the '60s and ... just, what happened? And a whole lot more; as far as the personal narrative goes I've not mentioned the other love story at the book's heart. And it does have a very big heart.

2 Jun 2003
" The voice was quite soft though firm enough; the accent typically, and to Don's ear delightfully, north London. All south Londoners sounded like thugs, he reckoned, even if they were vicars. But north Londoners - well, a lot of them sounded like south Londoners these days, as did half the nation, from Cornwell to Edinburgh. Those who still sounded like north Londoners, though, they had an accent Don had taken to immediately, back when he'd first moved to the capital. Unpretentious, but always holding something back; a plain working man's voice, carrying a hint that mischief was available at a moment's notice, should it be required, but only at the management's discretion. Erudition, unashamed yet not paraded, filtered through home rolled cigarettes and pints of light-and-bitter. It was the accent in which The Kinks had written and sung their songs. "
Yay! Actually I have to take some of the credit for this, I think. Mat Coward is an old mate from Kentish Town Library days - just a mile or less down the road from The Boston, venue of last year's OKFC bash with the Kast Off Kinks. Even now he's the only person I know who has a good word to say for punk band Jimmy Pursey and Sham 69 (sorry Mat, the best thing about them was their name). The quote is from his second Don Packham & Frank Mitchell mystery novel called 'In and out' (US: Five Star, 2001), set in the world of a Hampstead pub darts team, a milieu with which the author was familiar; the first was set in some north London allotments. I sent Mat a tape of something a few years back (might have been Jackie Leven) and put some Kinks stuff on the B side for him. About which comment was there none, at the time.
As I say, it's his second crime novel in what Americans call the cozy sub-genre. Not exactly essential, but he also maintains a nice suspenseful sub-plot around the theme of the five best albums of all time (regrettably 'Muswell Hillbillies' is not included) - never let it be said that Don Packham's interrogation techniques are orthodox. Shall I give them away? Can't resist. Lou Reed's 'Transformer' (I'm shocked!), 'The Clash' by The Clash, 'Never mind the bollocks', Sinatra's 'Songs for swinging lovers' and ...
"Also, 'Slade alive' by The Slade. Bit of a controversial choice that last one, I realise. But I think if you give it a fair listen -
" 'Are you here to discuss music, Inspector?'
"Don beamed. 'I very much hope we're here to arrest you for murder, matey."
Though he lives back in the West Country these days neither of Mat's novels have been published in the UK - you lucky Americans. His forte is the short story and he's appeared in a wide variety of anthologies. A collection of his work has just been published in the States with the title 'Do the World a Favour and other stories' and boasts an intro from Ian Rankin, who has also been previously mentioned in these despatches. Literate, colloquial, quirky, inventive and fun, with a good old fashioned socialism bubbling away never far from the surface, if you see the name give it a try. Worth particular mention is a story called 'You can jump' in an anthology called 'Death dance' edited by Trevanian. (US: Cumberland House, 2002), a fantastic look back, with feeling, at punky London c1977.
Please excuse the extended plug, but I think the quote at the top of this post deserves something ...
Cheers
Dave Q
(born south of the river but not to be blamed for that; moved before the accent took hold)

6 Sep 2003
From: Julie Bell
Subject: Message in a Book
Hi, Kinky ones,
I've caught up to August in the Digest now, and people were telling what they were reading back then. I mostly like murder mysteries (without talking or mystery-solving animals, recipes, or anything built around hobbies), and we all know there are several mystery-writing Kinks fans out there, Ian Rankin having been mentioned. Timothy Hallinan hasn't been mentioned that I know of, but, boy, was he good, although he's quit writing fiction and he's out of print. He once had a character punish a young punk who broke into his house by tying the kid up and forcing him to listen to the Kinks. He opened another novel with his character in an exotic-dance club, remarking that he thought it was a little bit
post-ironic for the dancer to be using "A Little Bit of Emotion" for her music, since her whole job was mechanically faking sexual ecstasy.
Anyway, I was reading along in a new (in paperback) book by Owen Parry, called "Honor's Kingdom," in which his main character, who works as an intelligence officer for the Union Army during the American Civil War, is posted to London in 1862, to check out some possible Confederate sympathizers. All of a sudden, I came up on this:
"The police rig took us back over Waterloo Bridge, where a handsome young man...turn(ed)about to cry to a girl, "Julie, will you meet us at sunset, then? Just where you're standing now?" And the girl nodded and called, "At sunset, Terry, but not before, for I've got to see Davies off." ...But here is...why the trivial incident struck me so... The
bright boldness of this Terry and his Julie seemed to capture the spirit of our age, the turbulent sixties, with their progress, hope, immodesty and danger."
The rest of the quote is also appropriate, but just too long, especially his description of Julie, who is Julie Christie to a T. There's no relevance to the plot at all; he's just saying Hi! to fellow Kinks fans, I'll bet. Hi, Owen!
Truly Julie Bell

From: "Julie Bell" To: "Dave Quayle"
Subject: Re: Message in a book Date: 12 September 2003
Dave Quayle wrote:
> Hi Julie
> What a brilliant post! I love the idea of Owen Oarry saying 'hi' like that. Can you remember the titles of the Timothy Hallinan books? I've been meaning to put all my 'Kinks in literature' posts onto my web site for a while now. Would like to give chapter and verse to your findings too. Can I just quote you verbatim when I get around to doing it?
> Cheers, Dave Quayle
Hi, Dave. That's quite a compliment, from you! I tried to find Owen Parry on the Web, in case I could e-mail him, but all I could find was people selling his books, except for a couple of people chatting about his real name being Ralph Peters, and his having written some books under that name. And that he's a retired Army officer. In the postscript from "Honor's Kingdom" he says he first visited London as a "young, aspiring and very bad musician" in 1970; so bad, in fact, that he had to quit and join the Army. I'll bet he was there Kinks-chasing; if I could have done anything I wanted to in 1970, that's exactly where I'd have been!!!
Timothy Hallinan's book in which he ties up the punk and makes him listen to the Kinks is "The Man With No Time." Unfortunately, I took that one back to the used-paperback store, and when I went back for it later, it was gone.
"Skin Deep" says: "It took me a few bars to recognize the song, even though the Kinks had been my favorite band for years. I was too preoccupied. Then Ray Davies began to sing, and I placed it.
Look at that lady dancing round with no clothes
She'll show you all her body, that's if you got the dough.
She'll let you see most anything, but there's one thing that she'll
never show.
And that's a little bit of real emotion... (a little bit of unrelated dialogue, and then) ... "A little bit of real emotion," Ray Davies sang. "In case a bit of real emotion should give her away."
"Nana's first song," Toby said. "She always uses it. She thinks no one gets it."
"Maybe nobody does," I said.
Hey, Dave, quote me verbatim all you want; I'm not copyrighted. I'm sure the authors don't mind; it's just more promotion for those who are in print. After all, if they like the Kinks, we'd /have/ to like their books, wouldn't we?
Julie

9 Nov 2003
Jessica Adams's 'Cool for cats' (Black Swan, 2003) has been mentioned in despatches in this parish newsletter before. For which thanks, because it's a very good read, and the more I think about it the better I like it. Cover citations of Nick Hornby and Helen Fielding (Bridget Jones) give a flavour but it's got a better soundtrack (has anyone got beyond the contents page of '31 songs' or however many it was?) and there's more social substance than in most chick-lit. It gives a decent and funny if sanitised (for which we should probably be thankful) picture of 1979 - the emergence of the Pretenders among others - and rock journalism in the UK in the immediate post-punk era and it is often very funny on what is described in terms of a Venn diagram - the shared (common denominators, not necessarily the lowest) musical and other tastes by which a relationship can survive.

For instance, anyone recognise these? "So you're absolutely right about music, and I'm absolutely wrong ... Linda, you're a blood music Nazi." Or, "It's so depressing, David. I can't believe you think Billy Joel's music has changed your life." This writer cares. And I have her to thank for introducing me to The Damned's wonderful 'Smash it up (parts 1 & 2)' and finally getting me to admit to the brilliance of Plastic Bertrand's 'Ca plane pour moi' - he's actually Belgian, you know.
Anyway, you may recall from the original post that 'Waterloo Sunset' features in a list of 'The ten records that changed my life' that is the CV requested in an ad that lands our heroine her dream job as a music journalist. Mention was also made of Rolf Harris's 'Two little boys.' The thing is, it's a lot more than a list with notes. It's 20 pages of sustained high calibre writing which also effectively tells her life story up to that point. So Rolf has a context, and rubs shoulders with Ian Dury's glorious 'What a waste' (a song, as it happens, also covered by Barb Jungr on her great 'Bare' album, the one with the best cover of WS this side of ... her new album actually called WS that I haven't heard yet).

But I digress. What follows is the full text of the WS entry that starts on page 26 of the UK edition. It's long but I hope you'll agree that it's worth it and that rather than violating copyright it's a great advert. There are at least two other Kinks mentions and WS also figures in an interesting plot development near the end. Go out and buy it. It's not Shakespeare but I doubt you'll regret it one rainy afternoon. Enjoy:

" Depression had to get me sooner or later, according to the psychiatrist. My mother had died of cancer, slowly, and I hadn't really reacted. And there were other things: knowing I was clever and not being able to do anything about it; hating the world for not giving someone like me a job to be brilliant in. All of that.
" When the psychiatrist interviewed me, he asked me if I had trouble sleeping or eating.
" 'Yes.'
" 'Which?'
" 'Both.'
" And did I take pleasure in things that used to give me pleasure? Tennis, for example, or my friends, or the TV? I've never played tennis in my life. Something clicked when he ran through his boring list though - picnics, nature walks, holidays, theatre - and finally got to music. Music. Yes. Something was definitely ringing a bell there.
" 'I can't be bothered listening to the Kinks any more,' I told him.
" 'And you used to like listening to them?'
" I barely had the energy to nod.
" Which was an insult to Ray Davies, because if I hadn't been so, well, depressed, I would have clambered up on top of the psychiatrist's desk to deliver some kind of ode to the Kinks. Did I used to like listening to them? There were times when I was so happy listening to their records, I would not only forget where I was, I would also forget what species I was supposed to be.
" In the end it was the Kinks who brought me back to the real world - or at least they were playing my song on the day I realised I was better. And it was 'Waterloo Sunset,' which was fitting again, because I'd deliberately avoided it when it first came out. 'Waterloo Sunset' had appeared in the shops when Mum was dying, and it had all those guitar chords that make you cry, no matter what the song is actually about. And the minute I heard it, on the radio driving back from the hospital, I knew two things, both about the song, and about myself. Firstly I knew I would fall passionately in love with it. Secondly, I knew bloody well it would make me sob for a week. So I banned it. Never listened to it.
" After my first session with him, the psychiatrist medicated me. I slept a lot. I stared out of the window a lot. I ironed a lot. And then eventually I started eating a bit more - I think one of Mr Kipling's cakes broke the drought - and then one day I caught myself singing along to 'Waterloo Sunset' on a radio in a boutique in Soho, hearing it properly for the first time. I was still singing it to myself when I got home to Withingdean, which was such a shock it made my father put down his toast and forget to pick it up again. The depression had caught me unawares, like someone grabbing my foot. When I was released from it, it happened in much the same way - quickly, easily, when 'Waterloo Sunset' came onto someone's transistor radio in a smelly little Soho boutique. And before I knew what had happened, I was even enjoying tennis again. Ha. "

22 Aug 2004
It's been a long time since the last sighting but this one was worth waiting for. It's only a mention in passing but that is still an artistic decision and I'd put its appearance here up there with the musical saucepan in The Simpsons - that good - because this novel is a class act. Audrey Niffenegger's 'The time travellers's wife' was published New Year's Day this year in the UK and last year, I believe, in the US. There is some discussion of the usual paradoxes but this is no Science Fiction, rather time travel as unstable medical condition.

When librarian Henry, son of classical musicians, marries sculptor Clare in 'real' time in 1993 he is 30 and she is 22, but the first time he sees her she is 6 and he is 42. Don't worry, you slip into it easily enough. It's a compelling and moving - and beautifully written - turn of the century love story set in Chicago. Love, desire, loss, absence, destiny, chance, fate - all human life is grandly here; but it isn't just a question of Literature with a capital L. There's the nitty gritty of urban survival (when he timeshifts there's no control and he arrives without clothes) but there's also the little things of a life together and their chums and family with their own little soap and psycho-dramas. It's a bit of a heartbreaker but it can be a lot of fun..

So you also get almost in passing Henry explaining the history of punk music to a young neo-punk. And Clare getting used to his sudden absences, using them as a chance to play Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles (no comment!) for herself in peace without his commentary spoken or unspoken. Lots of little cultural references like that. So I'm kinda disappointed our lads haven't made it - this is one of the best books I've read in a while and it's in the territory - but there it is, suddenly slipped in after the main action has gone, in a quiet little coda.

Here tis:
"Saturday, July 26, 2008 (Clare is 37)
"CLARE: Alba's reward for being patient at the galleries while Charisse and I look at art is to go to Ed Debevic's, a faux diner that does a brisk tourist trade. As soon as we walk in the door it's sensory overload circa 1964. The Kinks are playing at top volume and there's signage everywhere:"
... the details of which you don't need to know. But a page on, Charisse does say, "I hate Bob Seger. Do you think it took him more than thirty seconds to write that song?"

That song is 'I love that old time rock and roll' and it deserves the putdown. ('Fire down below' can only count for so much).

Hey Dave, Hey Ray. You made 'The time traveller's wife'. This is good.

Christopher R. Coolidge put me right on 'Fire down below' - it is actually written by the Frankie Miller, the esteemed Scottish blue eyed soul singer cum rocker. And it seems the author was wrong about 'Old time rock and roll' too:
From: "Steve Swain" <essaness27@hotmail.com>
Subject: Bob Seger
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 11:38:51 -0700

i promised myself i wouldn't make a comment on the seger song because
everyone is entitled to dislike whatever song they want and i don't care if
he spent thirty minutes or thirty days writing the song, but my copy gives a
different story on the author of the song. seger rewrote the lyrics and
didn't take a writing credit. the title is "old time rock and roll" by
george jackson and thomas earl jones III, according to the liner notes.
seger's notes say it was sent to him as a demo and he modestly says he was
sorry he didn't take a writing credit because "next to patsy cline's 'crazy'
it's the most popular juke box single of all time." well, i always
preferred "i fall to pieces" anyway.

30 August 2004
I ended up liking Ian Marchant's book 'Parallel lines' (UK: Bloomsbury, 2003; pbk 2004) a lot. Let me give you the full title: 'Parallel lines, or, Journeys on the railway of dreams, or, Every girl's big book of trains', which gives a flavour and for me immediately raises doubts somewhat - clever sod - but he gets away with it. The Kinks reference is perfunctory but absolutely to the point, while the subject matter of the book as a whole is germaine to much of the Ray Davies ouevre and the Village Green project in particular, not least the meaning of nostalgia.

So, without further ado, early on in the second chapter:
"I moved to Newhaven when I was ten (cue sound-track : 'Last of the steam-powered trains', by the Kinks, from 'The Village Green preservation Society', 1968) and moved away when I was eighteen, but it will always be my home town, if only because my parents still live there."

And there we have it. Early on Marchant establishes that though this is very much a book about trains - the parallel lines being the romantic notion a lot of us Brits have about railways as opposed to the often sordid day to day reality of them - he is no great steam buff, but that '1968', a discoographical nicetude not over-displayed elsewhere in the book, is an unelaborated acknowledgment, I suspect, of a fact which gives a certain added critical resonance to 'Last of the steam-powered trains' - still for me, with the wind in the right direction and certain planetary aspects in place, one of the absolute acmes of the Kinks work. For what it's worth, the last steam locomotives to work in normal revenue earning service on British Railways as it then was - the proper national railway - did so in 1968. A Stanier 'Black 5' out of Carnforth, which was also, Marchant tells us, as it happens, the railway station featured in 'Brief encounter' 20 years earlier.

Anyway, lovely book. Anglophiles will like it a lot - and you need to be an anglophile or much of it will be meaningless, but hey, we're all Kinks fans. Part mild-gonzo travelogue ("I really shouldn't drink in the day. It just makes me maudlin"), part biography, part historical erudition and advocacy on railways and more, past and present, with a lot of humour - gentle, savage and slapstick - I enjoyed it. Additional Kinks synchronicity : according to his website, the author is currently co-centre director for The Arvon Foundation - who Ray does his songwriting courses with - in North Devon.

Date: Fri, 17 Sep 2004
From: JerzykB@aol.com
Subject: Kinks in Literature

My daughter is reading a book called "White Teeth", by Zadie Smith. A novel published in 2000, the story takes place in part in 1970s London. It has 2 references to The Kinks, both in chapter 2:

"Ryan [one of the main characters] fancied himself as a bit of a mod. He wore ill-fitting gray suits with black turtlenecks. While the rest of the world discovered the joys of the electronic synthesizer, Ryan swore allegiance to the little men with big guitars: to the Kinks, the Small Faces, the Who. Ryan
Topps rode a green Vespa GS scooter......."

Later, another character, Clara, who has the hots for Ryan, imagines Ryan being injured on his scooter:

"She imagined herself holding the bleeding Ryan in her arms, hearing him finally declare his undying love; she saw herself as a Mod Widow, wearing black turtlenecks for a year and demanding "Waterloo Sunset" be played at his funeral."

BTW, we all know how crucial that first day of school is, and how important it is to look just right. So what did my daughter wear on her first day of school this year? A Ray Davies t-shirt -- from many many years ago. Warms my heart!

Jerry

I can't believe I missed this one. I read it and loved it - great fun and deeply serious. I even, I suspect, posted something to the KPS about the TV adaption. This is England at the millennium - multi-racial, multi-cultural, messed up, mixed up and hopeful. Thanks Jerry.

And we both missed this one, posted by Paul Boisvenue in February 2008, who says, "In the last reference to our guys (p.509) the author becomes somewhat philosophical":
"There were always the difficult questions of whether one should dilute one's appreciation of the Kinks with a little Small Faces..."
To which the only answer can be, "Of course."

Though maybe I should give Jill Brand a mention too - besides, Jill is always worth a mention - given Paul's post above elicited this soon after:
I remember writing this to the list when I first read the book (it was still in hardcover - it's got to be 6 or 7 years ago).  I was so very excited.  It's a fabulous book, really.  The TV adaptation didn't do it one bit of justice; however, it was one of James McAvoy's first appearances (he plays Robbie in Atonement; I have a cradle-robbing crush on him).
You should check him out in Jeremy Wooding & Neil Spencer's splendid but seemingly forgotten 'Bollywood Queen' (2002).

19 January 2005
Jessica Adams has already been mentioned in despatches for the wonderful enconium to the healing powers of 'Waterloo sunset' in her rather good novel of 2003, 'Cool for cats'. She's also at it in her earlier novel from the the previous year, 'I'm a believer' (Black Swan, 2002). Yup, another music reference in the title; she's also written the wonderfully named 'Tom, Dick and Debbie Harry'. Anyway, 'I'm a believer', at heart a love story, is good on twenty first century London and very funny in the school staff room inhabited by arch-sceptic science teacher Mark. His partner dies suddenly in a car accident and things start happening, like the dear departed Catherine making the microwave display say 'hello' and the INXS song 'Never tear us apart' burst out of speakers all over the place against seemingly reasonable odds. There's some good stuff on grief and an entertaining running set of episodes involving a group of evangelical Christians, another on the peripheries of the gay scene. The belief of the title is the conversion of rationalist cynic Mark to accepting the possibility of miracles, life after death, the spirit world. If I wasn't convinced, I didn't mind the ride. And even if I wasn't convinced either about the male narration - not enough detail (if there's a famous old time footballer appears in a dream to magically impart total knowledge of the offside law to a footballing ingenu, then I want to know who!) - Jessica has a nice touch. Of course; she's a Kinks fan. This from p300:

"I hire a car straight after school on Friday and drive up. Gloucestershire isn't exactly on my list of best-known bits of England but at least I manage to get through the worst of rush-hour traffic on the way, even enjoying the long-forgotten sensation of driving along with the radio blaring. There's a Kinks special on the radio, with songs I haven't heard for years, and I even find myself singing along to 'Autumn almanac' as I join the traffic jam past Heathrow."

He contemplates his dilemma and the state he's in, what he's going to do when he gets there:

"By the time I finally reach Dunstan , as the village is called, I have eaten the whole packet of barley sugar and feel fairly car-sick. It's one of those hire cars in which exhaust fumes leak into the front seat, which hasn't helped. And after the Kinks special, they moved on to random programming of endless funk music, which made the nausea worse."

1 November 2005
This from Duncan Smith, long standing resident of much repute in the KPS front room. For the moment this sets up a nice symmetry here seeing as his is the very first entry at the top of this page, no less:
Hi Dave,
Here's another reference to add to your impressive list. "Lost Between Houses" by David Gilmour, Toronto: Vintage Canada (Random House), 1999. On page 117, the young protagonist walks into a bar across the street from the Mynah Bird, in mid-sixties Yorkville (the trendy Toronto district that first exposed the talents of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell among others), and encounters a local band playing "Tired of waiting":

"....pretty cool-looking, with their long straight hair cut like the Kinks and those Edwardian jackets.
It's your life, they sang. And you can do what you want.
The drummer doing a slow roll around his drums, ending up on the floor tom and giving the high hat a whack wityh his stick. Then they all came in.
It's your life. And you can do what you want. But please don't kepp me waiting. Please don't keep me waiting.

Very cool. An unimaginably cool life."

Gilmour, a journalist as well as novelist, has based this incident on his own life, as he mentions to Ray in an interview. It was his first trip to a bar, at the tender age of fifteen, and it was a Kinks song that welcomed him in, a fine accompaniment to that particular rite of passage.

All the best, Duncan Smith( aka "Erin"--I used my wife's email for those earlier posts) - justified!

20 March 2006
James Patterson's 'London Bridges' (Headline, 2004) is probably the biggest seller of all the books mentioned in 'The Kinks in literature'. Attention span, what attention span? This is a shocking book (as in just plain bad), as absurd, as silly, as any Bond movie made after 'From Russia with love'. 124 chapters in 307 globe hopping pages. It's the tenth of his Alex Cross sequence. There's a fair number of music refeferences, some of which mean nothing to me, though I do recognise Erika Badhu, who, along with literary references to DBC St Pierre and James Joyce would lead you to expect a better piece of writing. You can throw in some sentimental corn about his grandmother et al and a bid for the Bad Sex Award too, as well as all the ludicrous mayhem and action. However, we do get (on p244), "We did some more exploring, and checked out the sculpture garden and 'the Fremont troll', a large sculpture that reminded me of the singer Joe Cocker, clutching a Volkswagen Bug in one hand." And when the henchman of the Russian mobster terrorist blows up the 59th St Bridge in New York he's humming Paul Simon's '59th St Bridge song (Feelin' groovy)' to himself. But no, Kinksfans, it is not Waterloo Bridge that goes up in London. We are spared that. What we do get (p254) is one of the more stylish pieces of writing in the whole book. It's a joint FBI/CIA briefing, after they've been hanging around doing not a lot for a while:
" 'That's about it. Except that we know Hancock is connected to the Wolf, and that he's been paid a lot of money for his services. So at 1200 hours, we're going in to take a look for ourselves inside the house. So tired,' Agent Koch said in a sing-song. 'Tired of waiting.'
" There were smiles around the room, even from those who didn't get the reference to the Kinks song."
Thanks to FranK aka KrankieKat for bringing 'London Bridges' (Headline, 2004) to my notice.

20 April 2006
This from Joel Swift:, for which thanks
Here's another (newer, 2005) reference to the Kinks in Literature. The work is titled Ten Dog Fog, by HG Almaden, and includes lyrics from Lola in the novel. The author obtained approval from Ray Davies for use of the lyrics, which are used in the context of a dog named Lola, the heroine of the work.

21 April 2006
I know it's not literature but it's too good not to be here. This is from Series 2, Episode 2 of 'Green wing', am often surreal hospital based UK television, um, sitcom. Two young doctors are discussing, "What would you say are the 5 most important qualities in a woman?":
Guy: Number One - bendy.
Mac: Unpredictable.
Guy: Number Two - shaved.
Mac: Must appreciate the genius of the Kinks.
Guy: Number Three - slightly anorexic.
Mac: Thoughtful eyes.
Guy: Number Four - about sort of 5% lesbian.
Mac: Should be in touch with her masculine side.
Guy: And finally - mustn't be too smelly in the cellar.
Mac: Compassionate.
Guy: So what you've come up with is an unpredictable yet compassionate, slightly masculine, Kinks fan with eyes.
Mac: I know, it's an impossible dream.
Soon after a woman doctor walks down the corridor singing 'You really got me'. In the previous episode, Mac, in a coma, has a brief fantasy in which he is the curly headed one in Sparks, but we won't hold that against him.

27 November 2006
It's been a while since the last mention I found of the Kinks in the annals of crime fiction or indeed in any other literary offering. But this one, though only a brief appearance in a list, has a certain poignancy and is from a quality act. It's not the first time Ian Rankin has been mentioned here for his acclaimed sequence of novels featuring maverick (what else?) Scottish detective John Rebus. The latest, 'The naming of the dead' (Orion, 2006) is well up to his standard - bestselling and simply the best. Eight days in Edinburgh last year, taking in the Gleneagles summit of world leaders, the major anti-poverty protests and the July 7 London bombings, with Rebus also investigating a puzzle maker of a serial killer and the suicide of a politician. It's a broad ranging compassionate tale very well told, by turns cynical (take a bow Bono and Sir Bob) and idealistic. Recommended.

The book opens with the playing of the Who's 'Love reign o'er me' (from 'Quadrophenia') at the funeral of Rebus's brother, Frank. As you'd expect now from Rankin - he did a series of radio programmes about music in crime fiction, three of his book titles are taken from Rolling Stones albums - there are various other musical references, with the group Elbow (and their to me fairly ordinary 'Leaders of the free world' album) getting more than a nod. Then in the last chapter, or rather, the 'Epilogue', we get:

" On Sunday, Kenny, Mickey's son, had arrived at the flat in his BMW, telling Rebus there was something for him on the back seat. Rebus had gone to look - albums, tapes and CDs, 45s ... Mickey's entire collection.
" 'They were in the will,' Kenny had explained. 'Dad wanted you to have them.'

" After they'd hauled the whole lot up two flights of stairs, and Kenny had rested long enough for a glass of water, Rebus had waved him goodbye and stared at the gift. Then he'd eased himself down on to the floor beside the boxes and started going through them: a mono ‘Sergeant Pepper’, ‘Let It Bleed’ with the Ned Kelly poster, a lot of Kinks and Taste and Free ... some Van Der Graaf and Steve Hillage. There were even a couple of eight-track cartridges – ‘Killer’ by Alice Cooper; a Beach Boys album. A treasure trove of memories. Rebus placed the sleeves beneath his nose - the very smell of them took him back in time. Warped Hollies singles, left too long on the turntable after a party ... a copy of 'Silver Machine' with Mickey's writing on it -'This Belongs to Michael Rebus - Paws Off!

" And ‘Quadrophenia’, of course, its corners creased, the vinyl scarred but still playable. "

That's quite a time capsule, n'est-ce pas? A lovely touch or three. Glad for our lads to be in there.

Rene Delleman, from Holland, has told me (30 Nov 2006) about a book by Barrie Keeffe, who Ray Davies collaborated with on his first musical. The book is 'No excuses' (Methuen, 1983) which he says boasts at least a quote from Ray Davies' song 'You can't stop the music' as its intro. It's a tale of the rock business, based on a tv drama series, which I shall try to find a copy of.

And Dag Balsvik wrote from Norway:
hello,
saw your note about the new book by Ian Rankin in the Kinks digest, and i have an addition for your collection of Kinks in litterature. In 1981 there were issued a novel by Åsmund Forfang called Max on the publisher Gyldendal. I suppose this is his only book. Its about growing up in the countryside of western Norway. The main person is a big Kinks fan, and he is starting a band , playing a lot of Kinks songs. Of course, the book is mainly about the boy growing up, so that the Kinks is only a sideline in the story, but anyway, quite a lot of mention. Since this autor probably wrote just this book, and it didn't sell much (bought mine from the bargain bin), you have to read norwegian to read it. And, as some english journalist once wrote concerning a norwegian entry in the eurovision song contest :" when I hear norwegian spoken, its as someone say dustbin-dustbin", not many europeans speak norwegian, and have read it. hope this is of some interest to you.
To which I replied:
"As far as Eurovision goes, more power to you. "Nil points" sounds good to me, unless of course it was that UK entry that really deserved many minus points. Which, come to think of it, is the vast majority of 'em since Katrina & the Waves, who weren't actually Brits."

9 October 2007
Or rather a Kink in literature. First heartening mention of a solo Ray comes very early on in Peter Robinson’s compelling ‘Friend of the devil’ (Hodder & Stoughton, 2007). In the opening chapter we find:

"Once snug in the car, he started the engine and set off through Gratly, down the hill to Helmthorpe and onto the Eastvale Road. He plugged his iPod into the adaptor, on shuffle, and Ray Davies’s ‘All she wrote’ came on, a song he particularly liked, especially the line about the big Australian barmaid. That would do for a Sunday morning drive to a crime scene, he thought. It would do just fine."

Chief Inspector Alan Banks has had a pretty harrowing time of it over the years and this one gets pretty dark, but there’s a neat twist at the end.

Over the years it has seemed like there was some sort of unofficial competition between the top three UK crime writers as to who could drop the most music references into their novels, though Ian Rankin (a Stones man, though his cop John Rebus is still commendably plugging Jackie Leven in his latest, ‘Exit music’) and John Harvey (his main ‘tec Charlie Resnick was more of a jazz man) seem to have retreated on this front of late. Robinson is still really going for it, though one wonders just how many of his readers will have a clue as to who, say, Josh Ritter is.

The later Alan Banks novels have had titles drawn from rock - ‘Playing with fire’, ‘Strange affair’ (complete with Richard Thompson quote) and ‘Piece of my heart’, which if memory serves correctly, is the one that concerns events at an outdoor rock festival in the seventies and a Syd Barrett type figure. The devil in the title of ‘Friend of the devil’ is the partner of a serial killer from one of Robinson’s previous books. On p123 we hear from a colleague and ex-lover of Banks:

" ‘It always struck me that you had a complicated relationship with her,’ said Annie. ‘That’s partly why I’ve come to you.’

" ‘Complicated? With the "Friend of the devil"? Ruined a perfectly good Grateful Dead song for me, that’s all. Now whenever I hear it I see her face and those bodies in the cellar.’ "

22 January 2008
This one, rather wittily, had 'The Kinks in literature (No Kinks content)' as its email subject:

Close, but no cigar ...
From Mark Billingham's 'Death message', Little Brown, 2007. On page 11 we find:

" ' I'm always amazed at the way men can barely spare five minutes to talk about a relationship, but can happily spend all day putting a CD collection into alphabetical order ...'
" Thorne certainly knew that Krauss came before Kristofferson. But he also knew that he felt good about everything, as happy, as he had since his father had died two and a half years before.
" As Waylon Jennings – filed between The Jayhawks and George Jones – began to sing 'The taker', Thorne returned to the computer and sat down to play a few more hands. He could feel Elvis mooching around beneath the table, nosing into his shins in the hope of a late snack, or a ridiculously early breakfast."

But he's a country fan - Johnny Cash features elsewhere - and Thorne lives in Kentish Town (north London), so we must be in with a chance. Elvis, in case you haven't guessed, is a cat. Detective Tom Thorne's best mate is a gay pathologist with piercingsand he's a generation on from Ian Rankin's Rebus and his peers, but he stands firmly in the music loving maverick cop tradition - well worthy of investigation, nicely paced plots and some witty observations about living in the capital.

I forwarded this to the author and he replied:
Thanks for that. Much appreciated. Thorne may prefer country stuff, but I am a big Kinks fan. I was at the
Novello awards a year ago and was privileged to watch Ray Davies make an inspiring speech.

 

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