Home / Concert Reviews / Ray Davies w/ The 88 @ The Pabst
Theater Thursday, Nov. 10, 2011  Ray Davies w/ The 88 @ The
Pabst Theater  Nov. 9, 2011  Google+ Pinterest Print If it was
Bob Dylan who legitimatized rock lyrics as poetry, then Ray
Davies deserves credit for elevating them to the level of
literate prose. After breaking through big with British Invasion
beat classics like "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of
the Night," Davies and his band mates in The Kinks matured at an
astonishing rate, becoming one of the most sophisticated pop
acts of the 1960s, thanks mostly to Davies' sharply observed
sketches of modern English society, which took on class,
relationships and politics with subtly and an eye for telling
detail, like short stories delivered in two to three minutes.
But while it's these '60s and early '70s sides that remain his
crowning achievements, The Kinks endured a long, slow decline
before breaking up in the mid-'90s, at which point Davies
embarked on a healthy solo career. All of thes