Wednesday, August 11, 2004

God save the Kinks!

Holy crap! I log onto the internet and what horrible headline greets me? Dave Davies laid low by a stroke!
The 57-year-old cofounder of the influential British rock band the Kinks collapsed in an elevator June 30 after giving a round of interviews promoting his latest record, Bug, at the London offices of the BBC.

The guitarist's spokesman, Alan Robinson, says Davies remains in good spirits despite the fact that Davies "is paralyzed on the right hand side of his body." Robinson reassures fans that Davies still retains some feeling and can "still hold a guitar pick."

Strangely enough, E! Online seems to have the most accurate reportage of the incident. Other news sites are saying he collapsed during a concert. To have Dave bedridden in a hospital in the same year brother Ray was shot by a mugger in New Orleans is disturbing to say the least.

To say I'm a Kinks fan is just about the biggest understatement in history. I own every Kinks album ever produced on CD--multiple copies of some--and some bootlegs as well. I own both of Ray's books, X-Ray: The Unauthorized Autobiography and Waterloo Sunset, and Dave's book, Kink. I also have the strange, bleak and surreal Return to Waterloo, which is something akin to a movie version of Vertigo Comics produced more than a decade before Vertigo even existed. I saw Ray perform at La Zona Rosa in Austin about five years back, and utterly screwed up and managed to miss a Dave solo show in Austin a few years later. I've never gotten to see the Kinks. The closest I came was Easter Sunday 1986, driving home from seeing Billy Joel in Houston on his Bridge tour. The radio station began talking about the Kinks performing Tuesday at the old Sam Houston Coliseum. I'd just blown every cent I had on the Billy Joel show, so I didn't go to see the Kinks. As far as I can tell, the band never played in Texas again.

I really, really hope the brothers can patch up their differences now that they've had near-death experiences and tour with the whole band at least one more time. They're getting old. One of these days, the experience won't be so near.

Now Playing: Dave Davies Bug

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