Ray Davies at the Michigan Theater

I've been a Kinks fan ever since the early 80's when they had the song "Come Dancing". I realize they've been around longer than that. A few years ago, they released their catalog in SACD so I went on a Kinks buying spree and I realized that their catalog is much deeper than that song. Then Ray Davies released his first official solo album, "Other People's Lives" and as I listened to the lyrics, I realized that he's alot deeper than people give him credit for. I guess coming up in the shadow of the Beatles, Rolling Stones and the Who probably doesn't help.

Anyways, I saw that Ray Davies was going to be on tour and coming to Ann Arbor so I decided to go. Unfortunately, I wasn't sure about the camera policy so I didn't bring my proper camera and took these pictures with my camera phone, so I apologize for the quality of these pictures as they are a bit on the grainy side.

The sign in front of the theater announcing the show for tonight.

The Michigan Theater is definately a movie palace from the 20's. It's a shame they didn't have the pipe organ going like they do sometimes. It's a really neat experience.

The warmup band was called The 88 out of California. They weren't too bad and the lead singer had a Ray Davies like quality to him.

The warmup band off the stage, the anticipation building.

Ray Davies. Most of the show was like this with Ray playing different accoustic guitars. The show was mostly stuff from the Kinks. He played many of their famous songs and a few of their obscure songs. He only play a couple of his solo songs. He definately knew how to work the crowd.

He also told a few stories between the songs. The really neat part was when he did "Ray's songs in the movies" and explained different movies the songs were in.



Then for the last couple of songs he was accompanied by the warm up band and really electrified the theater. The rendition of Lola was awesome as he encouraged the crowd to sing with him.

I've only been to a few concerts and I'll have to say this was probably one of the better ones I've seen. Ray definately still has it and still has quite a bit of energy.