Mark Nevin Knows Where Ray Davies Lives
Posted on June 7, 2011 Posted by John Scalzi 18 Comments
Some time ago I happened to make the Internet acquaintance of Mark Nevin, genuinely first-rank songwriter who came to prominence as the guitarist and primary songwriter of Fairground Attraction (he wrote most of their fabulous album The First of a Million Kisses) and then went on to write or co-write songs for Morrissey, Kirsty MacColl, Lloyd Cole and others. And when I say “made the Internet acquaintance of,” you should understand it to mean “squeed in an unmanly fashion at him, to which he thankfully did not then run away,” and we’ll leave it at that.
As Mark knows I am a fan of his songwriting, he recently and very kindly sent along a copy of his latest solo album, Stand Beside Me in the Sun, which precipitated another bit of unmanly squee (and a reciprocal gift of Fuzzy Nation from me to him), and pointed me in the direction of this rather winsome and amusing video of the song “I Know Where Ray Davies Lives,” which I now pass along to you.
No doubt some of you will note the prominent display of a ukulele, which I myself have recently picked up. They are everywhere, people.
‘perfect’ by fairground attraction was one of my favorite songs growing up. i’m downright jealous atm. :)
Thank you, Sir, for confessing to be a man of good taste.
Kurt Roithinger:
“Perfect” is indeed fabulous and Mark has written so many other perfectly fabulous songs that it’s almost kind of sickening if you think about it. Not everyone gets born with the “perfect pop songwriting” gene, but he did.
You might also like this:
http://sophiemadeleine.bandcamp.com/track/take-your-love-with-me-the-ukulele-song
Oh man, I love First of a Million Kisses (although Perfect was my least favorite… The Moon is Mine or Hallelujah would probably be tops) … a couple of years ago I downloaded some post-FA Eddi Reader and it didn’t quite do it for me, despite her gorgeous voice. Maybe this is what I was really looking for, thanks!
You’re probably already aware of it, but just in case (and for anyone else stumbling across this) I’ll mention http://thebeatlescompleteonukulele.com , which is an ongoing work of no little wonderfulness.
Yeah, we see a lot of them here in Hawai’i.
The one and only time I went to a karaoke place my “friends” chose “Perfect” for me to sing. The only good thing about the performance is that it was in the days before YouTube and User Generated Content :-)
Fairground Attraction is a group that is close to my heart – my wife and I danced to Hallelujah at our wedding, just a little over 16 years ago. Eddi Reader has a fantastic voice, the songwriting is top-notch, and First of a Million Kisses is really a terrific album in its entirety.
Thanks for passing along the video – that’s a great song (“winsome” captures it pretty well). Well, off to amazon now…
Ukelele. Eddie Vedder’s new album. Meh.
Sweetly creepy.
I assume you have heard of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain…I would suggest a viewing of Prom Night (BBC Proms live performance…with a 1000 ukes in the audience)
Electric Ukuleles are nice, too.
Oops! I’m sorry! I did not know that the link was going to embed. I tried to just put in the URL as a link.
They are indeed everywhere.
Hey, BW@10, I *LIKED* Eddie Vedder’s new album…listened to it the week before it came out over on NPR.
I also second the recommendation of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. I think of them as performance art, though. You want to watch the videos, not so much listen to the music. They
can be flat out hilarious.
When I was living in London in 1992 I discovered Fairground Attraction. I was ecstatic when Eddi Reader released albums under her name. Now I am even happier knowing I can collect Mark’s music!
Anyone who is interesting in the Kinks and Ray Davies might like to be on an old fashioned internet mailing list. You can find out how to subscribe to that at http://kindakinks.net/maillist/
There is loads of Kinks and Ray Davies information at the site http://kindakinks.net
I am a ukulele widow. I’ve seen it happen: you try some simple chords, next you’re trying to play Blue Oyster Cult.
The next step in the addiction is finding others to play with. The Ukulele Underground forums have info on regional meetups, in fact there’s one in Columbus:
http://www.ukuleleunderground.com/forum/showthread.php?9821-Columbus-Ohio-Ukulele-Peeps-%28COUP%29
I give my condolences to your wife.