Taking Sides: Ray Davies vs. Dave Davies

It's a monster caveman riff, I think it would have sounded amazing played through any guitar amp.

Oh Dave, Give it up and just tour with the boy. We get it you were there you contributed.

The innocent choice would be George Davis

Dickie

Dave's archival album 'Decade' came out Friday, collecting unreleased stuff from the 1970s. Pretty damn good imo.

Having just ploughed my way through Johnny Rogan's Ray Davies biography, I'd like to change my vote to neither. I already knew Ray was a dickhead but Dave comes across much of the time as a dangerously unhinged fuck up. You wouldn't want to meet either of them down a dark alley. Lots of gruesome laughs to be had though.

Might give that another go at some point. It was just too exhaustive for my general level of interest.

It's a bit much, I skimmed a lot of it.

Perhaps there is a Richie Unterberger book to read instead. Oh wait.

There are several Ray biographies of different lengths, the Rogan one is the most thorough. He wrote a very short paperback on the Kinks in the 80s if you just want the highlights.

Richie Unterberger doesn't really write biographies, but he is good at what he does, so I don't understand the put-down?

Ray's miserliness is absolutely hilarious... unless you're married to him. He basically got shot in the leg in New Orleans because his girlfriend's bag contained his cash and his credit cards and his first thought was to chase after a gunman and get them back. Then when he was told they'd have to cut his trousers to treat his wound he protested, "But these are new trousers!"

Think I may have met that girlfriend.

More of a dig at Dave and Ray not at Unterberger, think he is very good at what he does, just sort of shaking my head imagining how wearying a full-on Unterberger Kinks day-by-day might be to read.

I believe someone did do a Kinks day-by-day book, though!

Re Ray's tight-fistedness: in one of the biographies, his first wife pleads with him in vain for money to buy a winter coat.

I think it's even worse than that, I believe she wasn't asking for money to buy a winter coat but to take it out of the dry cleaners.

Larry Page said you always had to remember to take a heavy coat when visiting Ray because he never turned the heating on.

Wait, Larry Page?

A Kinks manager, not once but twice. There's another Larry Page?

Um, yeah.

No-one as important as Larry Page though.

Larry Page said you always had to remember to take a heavy coat when visiting Ray because he never turned the heating on.

LMAO, just like my parents, especially my Dad. Bet Ray doesn't even keep the boiler pilot lit.

I'm sure I've always read that Ray & Dave Davies had Welsh ancestry - as the name Davies suggests. However, it turns out that the name Davies came from their father's stepfather and that his real father's name was Kelly (so maybe they had Irish ancestry!) I don't think any of this was in the Johnny Rogan biography despite him stuffing the book full of every possible fact imaginable about the Davies family.

Unrelated…

Apparently Ray pronounces it Day-viz or Davis and Dave pronounces it Day-veez…?

The second is the correct pronunciation. Which Ray would know if he was actually Welsh.

Ah. Dave recently tweeted out that when people call him Davis he thinks they’re talking about someone else .

Ray pronounces it so as to rhyme with Maurice Gibb.

Some years ago I figured out the actual Maurice pronunciation but with Davies I grew up assuming Day-veez bc every American says it that way. But then I heard an interview with Ray where he insisted it was pronounced the other way, so I thought just like with Maurice I've been a rube all this time saying Day-veez... and then that tweet from Dave appeared.

Somebody on X just asked Dave what he thought of the Raincoats Lola cover and he said he wasn't familiar. He checked it out and declared it the best version.

Ray tricked me too. He had me misprouncing Terence Davies last name last weekend at MoMi.