Saturday, May 16, 2015

40 Year Itch: Boring Occupations, Dull Conversations


The Kinks : When Work is Over


Soap Opera was wonderful. I was a man who was imagining I was an accountant imagining that he was me 
-Ray Davies

   After ten years as a rock star, and the last few fumbling through crisis after crisis, Ray Davies must have been intrigued by the anonymous lives of ordinary 9 to 5 working men. The concept album Soap Opera is about a rock star named Starmaker who exchanges lives with an ordinary accountant. He has a wife ( voiced by actress June Ritchie), a 9 to 5 job making decisions that will affect no one, and the need of a good stiff drink or two before he heads home for Shepherd's Pie.

    It all began as a teleplay for Granada TV. Apparently the concept worked better onstage that in the album which was blasted by critics. Unfairly in retrospect. 





2 comments:

  1. Soap Opera was brilliant 40 years ago and it only sounds better now! The Kinks will never be to everybody's taste, 'twas ever thus. I still have stains on the cover of my vinyl album from a very big 1975 party. Yes, I fell for Lavinia, and Norman.

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  2. Still got the ducks on the wall.

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