Sorry, I respect the Grateful Dead but have too much Dave Davies, Keith Moon, and everyone else to listen to

I need to go to bed but I have to wait for a video of a friend I took to upload on YouTube and I thought about this driving home from seeing him.

Everyone has their own favorite kind of music. I’m no different, but I can listen to it all, and I always try to praise the artists not myself even if I do so bragging about how I’ve seen and done it all and can now play and sing it all here.

I first heard the Kinks on this around 77

That’s not my copy, but I can find it, and I’ll take a photo of it and post it later after I get some sleep.

It rules. Van Halen used to play half of it. Lola doesn’t fit with the early hits but that’s probably why it was released and my favorite part of it is actually Dave Davies bragging about trying to stay in bed longer than Mick Avory.

I recounted that story to my girlfriend’s parent in 1993 and it made me sound lazy but I was just a bright kid who couldn’t turn his brains off. My brains were best turned off hearing Dave belt this out in Cleveland the same year as this. Live it kicked even more ass, and his voice had so much energy and passion! Add a roaring guitar and I was in love.

I remember the day I bought Glamour how excited I was. It rules. Everything he does rules, but his first is still my favorite, and I try to buy as much of it as I can.

No ego, wryly commenting on how underrated he is. There isn’t a bigger more loyal talent than him, but Ray is older and hugely talented too. It was his band first, I’m pretty sure. Need to double check that in his book Kink when I get it unpacked. I just moved, and there are books everywhere. My two signed copies of X-Ray will be up when I find them from the day I shook Ray’s hand. One had curry on it because I ate that while I read it. I always read, and I always read while I eat. Ray was cool enough to laugh and sign both. Then I saw him sing Waterloo Sunset finally. John Wesley Harding sang A Fan Speaks and pronounced their name correctly. I don’t think either Ray or Dave care whether their name is pronounced Davis or how it looks to Americans, but I’ve always stressed about it.

I said my favorite writer was Ray in a literature class at Northwestern and they looked at me crazy, but VGPS is so much like Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology. Ray is a lot like Edwin Arlington Robinson’s Miniver Cheevy, and so am I. I used the name Miniver on the internet for a while.

Arthur is a masterwork, and I realized that all the houses on the street I grew up on looked the same eventually after hearing Shangri-La, which kicks all kind of ass. Why say anything else about it. The lyrics are amazing. Ray’s voice is gentle, mocking, supportive, taunting, wry, sarcastic basically everything as? He puts down maybe his father or all of the older generation he came from, but shows his love for them.

A while back I listened on headphones and was amazed at everything Dave is doing while that happens on guitar in the song. They are both so ridiculously talented, but Ray gets all the credit and Dave lives with it humbly.

He emailed me after I sent an article I wrote about him, and said I was his hero. He called me Keith because I use a punk name Keith Crime at times. I think John Lennon was the first punk, but Dave was even more punk and hit younger. Dave really was just born about three months too late to take over the world all by himself. Maybe his voice would have held him back, but his voice embodies the noise of punk better than anyone’s.

Van Halen rose to power with their You Really Got Me, but it was just the same as the Kinks with some volume and new technology. Eddie’s sound was fresh, but Dave was doing it all days later whenever he felt like it. That single brought both bands back. Guess what? Van Halen kicked Michael Anthony out. No one can replicate Dave’s voice anymore, and Van Halen bores me, but I’ll die before missing Dave in Cleveland at the Music Box April 18.

The essence of the Van Halen hit isn’t the riff. It’s the Michael Anthony back up vocal, which was Dave and that’s the real reason it was huge, but yeah Dave was the guy with the slashed little green amp, Dave played the first solo my Eddie-like guitar teacher taught me. He is amazing too.

He figured it out in seconds. Dave played it under pressure. Their career was on the line. It’s simple and sloppy and I love it. My teacher said, “He makes mistakes, but it is awesome. Play it as sloppy as possible.”

I sound sloppy on guitar on purpose, but I can now play precise, but not as well as Dave. Dave can do anything he wants. Mostly, he’s just a great guy and kicks ass.

It was 1984 and 1984 had just come out by Van Halen. The music store I learned at was filled with guys doing Eruption badly. They put a sign up saying something like if you play Jump on our keyboards we will disembowel you.

I learned the YRGM solo a week after I learned my first riff. It was ‘Til The End of the Day and I learned what a barre chord is but Dave probably played just the two bass notes on all of those. I have no idea. YRGM was written on piano originally.

Chuck Berry is Louis Jordan on guitar. It doesn’t mean much without Ray and Dave’s passion. John Lennon was arrogant as hell, and Ray loves talking about how he came up and offered the Kinks some songs and they had YRGM.

John and Paul McCartney were outrageously audacious thinking they could take over the world from Liverpool, but they did. Ray and Dave may have anyway had they been born first. Fate is luck. Something happened on that first US tour to derail them, but it made their art even better and Ray and Dave both did whatever they liked whenever they liked.

I think Dave’s been happier and less angst filled. So why not choose that?

He is amazing now having survived a stroke. What a beast he was in his prime, tearing through all the clubs with the longest hair and the coolest guitar.

My latest teacher gave me an old guitar mag because he knew I’d dig it. It featured Joe Bonamassa restoring a Flying V. It’s all cool, and I love it all, but I had to tell him who the punk that made it legendary after it was forgotten and then moved on and played acoustic music and everything else whenever he felt like it.

I love Last of the Steam powered Trains.

The Kinks started out with blues, transformed blues, both mock them and loved them on that song. Ray laughs as someone plays every single major chord down the guitar maybe that’s Dave or both of them. Dave could have played like Clapton had he wanted to. Clapton bores me even though I love Bell Bottom Blues. I prefer Beck and Townshend and Dave. Dave came first. Pete’s whole career was adding aggression to Ray’s work, but only Keith Moon was in Dave’s league energy wise. Keith Moon to me is the top musician ever. Dave’s loyalty and grace were perhaps the only thing holding him back.

I know Ray and Dave love each other and they’d kill anyone who attacked either. Brothers are like that. Look at the Everly’s, the Gallagher’s, the Robinsons, any band with brothers. They always have strife. The Robinson’s I think don’t even speak. The Everly’s didn’t. There’s something about the harmony vocals of brothers and the youngest always take all the shit. Same with me and my brother, but the Davies had tons of sisters and Dave was the youngest. John and Paul somehow sounded like brothers which is amazing.

I think the Davies brothers have the most love inside them when the truth comes to light. Dave has the most.

I watched this with the girl I loved the most the day it aired.

I’m pretty sure Ray told Dave to sing it and then tricked him by making it a duet and Dave got the joke.

The day I saw Ray finally sing Waterloo Sunset was the last time I spent serious time with her. A money thing. The Kinks understand. It’s all in Bernadette and tons of other songs by them both.

It should be about love and sharing not money. Dave shares the most.

Dave had the courage to sing those songs first. I was shocked to see him singing Young and Innocent Days. He loves Ray’s work more than I do. You could tell by the way he sang those songs.

I don’t know whether I like VGPS or Arthur better they are both amazing. Why choose?

I went to a debate camp in 1982 and the head professor was a music fan and let everyone pick two songs for the final party. He was really into Gram Parsons. One of my songs was Dave’s Strangers I think the other was London Calling but I don’t remember.

The professor said he didn’t dig Strangers. He was just flat out wrong, and Muswell Hillbillies combines everything Parsons did in his career, and the Kinks did it once and moved on like they always did, while other people play Wild Horses or whatever 14,000 times.

God I love how he sings “I said goodbye to Rosie Rooke this morning.”

Ray shouldn’t have called him Dave “Death of a Clown” Davies all those years, but whatever.

I love this song hardly anyone has heard.

This is my favorite love song ever and most speaks to me and no one hardly has heard it.

They did whatever they felt like doing whenever they wanted. They weren’t managed well. I don’t think they ever cared much about money and mocked it all most of the time. They mocked each other.

I love self-deprecating vicious loving jokes. John Lennon did it the best, but eventually he was in a bar marveling over this all day.

Dave’s rocked the hardest by far and I mostly got it from the Kinks.

The Grateful Dead inflicted themselves on me in 1987. Some dude turned all the music in my fraternity but mine from Zeppelin to Dead. I was up all night having to endure Terrapin Station and other nonsense.

I’ve heard a ton of Dead. I just don’t like the music. It is too laid back, and I hate Jerry Garcia’s tone. I mostly hate bluegrass unless it’s done like this.

They may be good musicians. I don’t know. I just don’t like it, and I certainly don’t need to hear them turn 3 minute perfect pop songs into 15 minute boring dribble jams 1500 hundred times. Too much music to hear. I can’t even keep up with Dave’s new stuff, but I keep buying it and I will get to it eventually. Still haunted by the amazing simplicity and energy of this.

The Kinks could have redone that 15,000 times, behaved and been bigger than the Stones had they had the inclination.

Tons of Ray’s songs are about Dave, more than Roger Waters wrote about Syd Barrett and almost all of Water’s songs are part him and mostly Barrett’s life.

Some Ray gave to Dave to sing, but that’s Dave’s guitar solo with more energy than anyone but Keith Moon.

This is a master statement, and it was given to Dave to sing!

What took you dudes so long to figure it out.? I knew it before the Sopranos came out and before Rushmore came out. Those guys probably did too. Ray rules. Dave has all the passion and energy.

Dave can write politics with passion when he feels like it too

I saw the Dead live. A chick took off her top. That was cool. A dude who looked like Charles Manson danced weirdly. I was bored to death by the music.  A friend of a friend was drunk and stoned and helped the concession people for 2 hours and got a Pepsi and wasted my other friends’ time. I’d have much rather listened to this 15 times in a row than whatever they played that was similar that day.

I made people listen to this 8 times in a row at the debate National Championships in 1982 because I was in a bad mood with 8 quarters.

I was a hilarious punk threat just like Dave. I became more so because of Dave. We won the state title. I knew we had won, and danced like an idiot as they revealed we had won. The next year they warned people against doing such nonsense. Just like this. This whole album is about Dave. It doesn’t pay to be ahead of your time. It pays to be exactly of your time. The Kinks don’t care about money and either do I but having some is nice if you can be happy and do whatever you want. I do know. Dave always has.

I used to write Kinks lyrics down in my senior journal and my teacher would just write “What is this?” Not knowing what they were or if they were mine. I definitely wrote these down.

I can name 15 songs about being free by the Kinks. Who has been freer of responsibility and had more fun with so little credit than Dave.

I was told that I needed LSD to understand the Dead. I liked LSD. Still didn’t like the Dead and moved on. I tried it at Armadillo Day at Northwestern in 1989 and a Reggae band sounded like they played Stir It Up for 4 hours.

I like my reggae like this. This sounds like Dave.

Eddy Grant wrote it. He’s legit. The Clash are legit. The Kinks rule. Dave rules. The Dead bore me. I ended what was an interesting Match.com relationship when I told a teacher at Old Town School of Music I had no time for their Dead worshipping boredom. I love Dave way more than sex!

The free bootlegging I totally respect and it made the dead a fortune. That was genius. I still laugh about the Doobie Brother’s What’s Happening Re-Run anti-bootlegging episode.

It may be still be on YouTube somewhere, but I can’t find it and this is more fun and takes less time.

Soon the next generation of rappers were defying Reagan taking music out of the schools and messing up intellectual property laws forever.

All art is 1’s and 0’s now. My girlfriend was a great photographer, became an intellectual property attorney, married an intellectual property attorney who was rich. They are now likely really rich.

I was too young and people didn’t get me. Just like Dave. My teacher was shocked how pastoral and English the Kinks could be later when she heard them.

I saw Dave get into a hilarious Twitter thing over whether he was influenced by Link Wray, who may have used distortion first. Distortion maybe was here first.

That was a happy accident when an amp fell and broke. Dave didn’t know about that I think. He was just bored and filled with energy and passion like me.

I love the Who and the Kinks and everything else.

I love the Davies. They changed my life. It’s hard to choose. I stick up more for Dave because too few do and he is ignored and misinterpreted like me.

Dave Davies is a gift. He changed my life, and I treasure every note he has recorded and that I’ve heard and seen him play.

I’m going to move heaven and earth to get the back of my favorite guitar signed by him. If he signs the front someone will steal it and I won’t be able to play it out. It looks like Joe Strummer’s now, but hopefully it will secretly have Dave’s name on the back for inspiration.

I’ve gotten a lot done. I’m going to get a lot more done just like Dave will.

I hope I get that thing signed by him. If I do you will have to kill me to separate me from it.

No need to edit this. You will see below. I’ve written it a 1000 times. I’ll fix anything that is wrong though, which no one else cares about. I told Jim DeRogatis he misquoted Jim Morrison once and he didn’t care.

No one cares about the truth and historical accuracy. Most people only care about themselves. Maybe, I’m the same who knows. The truth is:

I love Dave Davies. He and his brother helped transformed my life and I can die today proud of it all. Send him as much money as you can so he can do whatever he can and grace the earth with his passion, love, and awesome music, which I know he will do until he dies if he can possibly be stopped. I won’t bet against him.

My computer is having trouble keeping up with me and my $400 dollar guitars!