40 Year Itch: Everybody's A Dreamer

[Purchase]

By the time Everybody's in Showbiz came out in August of 1972, The Kinks had earned a reputation for boozy, often sloppy live performances that sometimes ended in arguments between Ray Davies and his brother Dave.



Here you get two albums in one. A live collection on one disc ( featuring an interesting, theatrical version of "'Til The End Of The Day", seen above ,as well as sloppy versions of some of 1971's Muswell Hillbilly tunes) and a more interesting disc of studio recordings about life on the road.




A surprising number of songs seem to be about food: "Hot Potatoes" ( my son's favorite food), "Maximum Consumption", and "Motorway" ("Motorway food is the worst in the world") but there are also a few gems here: "Celluloid Heroes" remembers Hollywood's biggest stars. "Supersonic Rocket Ship" was their last Top 20 UK hit for more than a decade.





And there's our fave deep cut "Sitting In My Hotel" which is full of Davies's humor and self pity: ("Sitting in the hotel room/ Thinking about the countryside and sunny days of June/ Trying to hide the gloom...").
Historically,  Showbiz can be seen as an album of transition, marking the end of the band's glory years and a period of unsuccessful concept albums ( Preservation Acts 1 and 2, Soap Opera, Schoolboys in Disgrace), broken marriages and drug problems.