Monthly Archives: May 2020

Music

The Kinks’ Autumn Almanac (1967)

Leave a comment

When I look back at this blog’s cov­er­age of influ­en­tial British rock bands of the six­ties, I see that the “big three” of The Bea­t­les, The Rolling Stones and The Who have all had their moment in the spot­light. There’s anoth­er band of the time, though, that arguably deserves to be count­ed in a “big four” and that is the band formed in Muswell Hill in 1964 by Ray and Dave Davies, name­ly The Kinks.

Unlike the afore­men­tioned bands who unar­guably achieved the sta­tus of inter­na­tion­al leg­ends of rock, the Kinks nev­er ful­ly cap­i­talised on their oppor­tu­ni­ties and tal­ents. For exam­ple, although the band emerged dur­ing the great British rhythm and blues and Mersey­beat scenes and joined those bands spear­head­ing the so-called British Inva­sion of the Unit­ed States, the con­stant fight­ing between the Davies broth­ers (a pop-cul­tur­al fore­run­ner of the Gal­lagher broth­ers, if ever there was one) led to a tour­ing ban in 1965.

As well as the volatile rela­tion­ship between the broth­ers, the song-writ­ing style of Ray Davies some­times took the band away from the expect­ed com­mer­cial music their con­tem­po­raries were striv­ing for. He sim­ply had too much wit and intel­li­gence and eclec­ti­cism, draw­ing on British music hall, folk and coun­try music to inform some of his out­put. Take 1968’s The Kinks Are the Vil­lage Green Preser­va­tion Soci­ety album: released the same week as the Bea­t­les’ White album, it con­tained a col­lec­tion of char­ac­ter stud­ies and med­i­ta­tions on a dis­ap­pear­ing Eng­lish way of life, all bril­liant­ly observed. Sad­ly, in a com­mer­cial world dom­i­nat­ed by psy­che­delia and effects ped­als and the Sum­mer of Love, The Kinks had turned down the dis­tor­tion on Dave’s gui­tar, and the album sunk with­out a trace (despite it lat­er becom­ing estab­lished crit­i­cal­ly as an all-time clas­sic).

Despite such occa­sion­al com­mer­cial fail­ures, the band remain one of the most influ­en­tial bands of all time, and you only have to look at the songs to know why. You Real­ly Got Me and All Day and All of the Night basi­cal­ly intro­duced the idea of the three-chord riff; and did much to turn rock ‘n’ roll into rock. Glo­ri­ous­ly melod­ic, sto­ry­telling songs abound: Sun­ny After­noon, Water­loo Sun­set, Ded­i­cat­ed Fol­low­er of Fash­ion, David Watts, Come Danc­ing, Lola. A host of future pop stars cit­ed their influ­ence and held them in high esteem (just ask Damon Albarn or Paul Weller).

A per­son­al favourite of mine is Autumn Almanac, a charm­ing vignette of Baroque pop released in 1967; here’s a Top of the Pops appear­ance to appre­ci­ate, and the lyrics below to remind us of just how Eng­lish-pas­toral-roman­tic Ray Davies could get.

From the dew-soaked hedge creeps a crawly cater­pil­lar
When the dawn begins to crack, it’s all part of my autumn almanac
Breeze blows leaves of a musty-coloured yel­low
So I sweep them in my sack, yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac

Fri­day evenings, peo­ple get togeth­er
Hid­ing from the weath­er, tea and toast­ed
But­tered cur­rant buns, can’t com­pen­sate
For lack of sun because the summer’s all gone

La la la la, oh my poor rheumat­ic back
Yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac
La la la la, oh my autumn almanac
Yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac

I like my foot­ball on a Sat­ur­day
Roast beef on Sun­days, all right
I go to Black­pool for my hol­i­days
Sit in the open sun­light

This is my street and I’m nev­er gonna to leave it
And I’m always gonna to stay here if I live to be nine­ty-nine
‘Cause all the peo­ple I meet, seem to come from my street
And I can’t get away because it’s call­ing me, come on home
Hear it call­ing me, come on home

La la la la, oh my autumn almanac
Yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac
La la la la, oh my autumn almanac
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes
Bop bop bop bop bop, whoa
Bop bop bop bop bop, whoa

The Kinks
Poetry

Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken (1916)

1 Comment

One pos­i­tive con­se­quence of the lock­down has been, for me and sure­ly for many oth­ers, the re-dis­cov­ery of the ben­e­fits of walk­ing the trails near one’s home. Vir­tu­al­ly every day through­out this peri­od I have strode out and delved into the woods, walk­ing wher­ev­er the mood takes me and dis­cov­er­ing that the myr­i­ad of criss-cross­ing trails allow for a near-infi­nite choice of dif­fer­ent routes to take. Cou­pled with the coin­ci­dent good weath­er and the sea­son­al bloom­ing of the blue­bells, these jaunts have been a source of great plea­sure.

Occa­sion­al­ly, I make out a quite faint trail, per­haps once used but for some rea­son now large­ly untrod­den and over­grown, and I take it, putting me in mind of that famous poem The Road Not Tak­en by the Amer­i­can Robert Frost, in which he says:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less trav­eled by

This idea of “The Road Not Tak­en” has tak­en off in the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion and you can find its key lines on mugs, fridge mag­nets and in greet­ing cards, and it has an Eat-Pray-Love-style vibe about it. Of course, the first inter­pre­ta­tion a read­er is like­ly to leap to, read­ing the lines above, is one of indi­vid­u­al­ism and self-asser­tion (“I don’t go with the main­stream, me”), but actu­al­ly, when you read the poem, it’s not quite that sim­ple: the two ways “equal­ly lay / In leaves no step had trod­den black” and “the pass­ing there / Had worn them real­ly about the same”, which is to say, they’re inter­change­able. So it’s not real­ly about well-trod­den ver­sus untrod­den, or going with or against the crowd; it’s a sub­tler com­men­tary about ran­dom choic­es, about freewill ver­sus deter­min­ism. Like in the movie Slid­ing Doors, some split-sec­ond, this-way-or-that-way choic­es are bound to beget marked­ly dif­fer­ent con­se­quences, but you can nev­er know before­hand which is right. Such is life.

What­ev­er its inter­pre­ta­tion, its gen­e­sis actu­al­ly sprung from a sur­pris­ing­ly lit­er­al source. Frost spent the years 1912–1915 in Eng­land, where he befriend­ed Eng­lish-Welsh poet Edward Thomas who, when out walk­ing with Frost, would often regret not hav­ing tak­en a dif­fer­ent path and would sigh over what they might have seen and done. Frost liked to tease Thomas: “No mat­ter which road you take, you always sigh and wish you’d tak­en anoth­er!”.

So it’s iron­ic that Frost ini­tial­ly meant the poem to be some­what light-heart­ed when it turned out to be any­thing but. It’s the hall­mark of the true poet, though, to take an every­day expe­ri­ence and trans­form it into some­thing much more. Frost cer­tain­ly suc­ceeds in imbu­ing his short poem with an enig­mat­ic appeal. Here it is in full, and may the roads you choose in life’s jour­ney be the right ones!

Two roads diverged in a yel­low wood,
And sor­ry I could not trav­el both
And be one trav­el­er, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the under­growth;

Then took the oth­er, as just as fair,
And hav­ing per­haps the bet­ter claim,
Because it was grassy and want­ed wear;
Though as for that the pass­ing there
Had worn them real­ly about the same,

And both that morn­ing equal­ly lay
In leaves no step had trod­den black.
Oh, I kept the first for anoth­er day!
Yet know­ing how way leads on to way,
I doubt­ed if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Some­where ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less trav­eled by,
And that has made all the dif­fer­ence.

Robert Frost
Art

Théophile Steinlen’s Le Chat Noir Poster Art (1896)

Leave a comment

Le Chat Noir (you prob­a­bly don’t need that trans­lat­ing!) was a 19th cen­tu­ry night­club in the bohemi­an dis­trict of Mont­martre in Paris. It opened in 1881 at 84 Boule­vard de Roche­chouart by the impre­sario Rodolphe Salis, and closed, after a six­teen year glo­ry peri­od, in 1897, not long after Salis’ death. It is thought to be the first mod­ern cabaret: a night­club where the patrons sat at tables and drank alco­holic bev­er­ages whilst being enter­tained by a vari­ety show on stage and a mas­ter of cer­e­monies.

Le Chat Noir soon became pop­u­lar with poets, singers and musi­cians, since it offered an ide­al venue and oppor­tu­ni­ty to prac­tice their acts in front of fel­low per­form­ers and guests. Famous men and women of an artis­tic bent began to patro­n­ise the club, includ­ing poet Paul Ver­laine, can-can dancer Jane Avril, com­posers Claude Debussy and Erik Satie, artists Paul Signac and Hen­ri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and many oth­ers from the move­ments of sym­bol­ism and the avant garde.

The cabaret also pub­lished a week­ly mag­a­zine (also called Le Chat Noir), fea­tur­ing lit­er­ary writ­ings, poet­ry, polit­i­cal satire, and news from the cabaret and the local art scene. The icon­ic poster art, which most peo­ple will recog­nise (and a few may even have it in mag­net form on their fridge) was by Swiss Art Nou­veau artist and print­mak­er, Théophile Steinlen.

Yep, my fridge!

Steinlen was in his ear­ly twen­ties and still devel­op­ing his skills as a painter when he was encour­aged by fel­low Swiss artist François Bocion to move to the artis­tic com­mu­ni­ty of Mont­martre. Once there, Steinlen was intro­duced to the crowd at Le Chat Noir, which led to com­mis­sions to do poster art for them and oth­er com­mer­cial enter­pris­es. Here’s a selec­tion of his poster art, start­ing with the famous La Tournée du Chat Noir (pro­duced for when Salis took his cabaret show on tour). All Stein­len’s posters have an endur­ing appeal, and I’d bet that all of them are famil­iar to you.

Théophile Steinlen