Dentistry

Apparently, there is a Rigdon Road Elementary School in Muscogee County, GA. My childhood dentist's name was Dr. Rigdon. I later heard he found out he had cancer and, in response, went out to the woods and shot himself with a shotgun. Recently I saw a statistic that Dentists have the highest rate of suicide among medical professionals. I wonder.

These are a few of my favorite things...about the Kinks

I like how I can still remember the first time I really noticed the Kinks: I was waiting in the lobby at the orthodontist's office while my little brother was in for a routine checkup. They started playing All Day and All of the Night on the radio in the room. I had heard the Kinks before, here and there on oldies radio, but this was the first time I really paid attention.  I thought to myself, "I like this. I should look these guys up." This was probably either late middle or very early high school and, providentially, this program called Napster had just been invented. And so, a decade later...I still listen to the Kinks...a lot.

I like how I can no longer put songs like Everybody's Gonna Be Happy into any sort of historical context. Some songs have simply been listened to too much, memorized back and forth, and have too many Proustian recalls attached to them to be able to hear their original context, as if the memories cause the intellect to temporarily shut down.

I like how the middle eight in Look For Me Baby dips into that lovely mersey-style minor chord. Probably the only time the Kinks would ever do that.

I like pretty much everything about Set Me Free. Everything.

I like how, in high school, I was able to bail my English teacher out by having A Well Respected Man on a CD. He wanted to play the song as part of a lesson, but couldn't find his copy, so I lent him mine. I also like how Ray Davies was, by this time, a better lyricist than any of his British counterparts.

I like how the band Sleater-Kinney tried to recreate the cover for The Kink Kontroversy on Dig Me Out. And I like how I can't quite understand, nor express, what memories Till the End of the Day recalls.

I like all those minor key songs the British were doing around 1965/66. Think Paint It Black or Girl and you'll understand what I'm referring to. Some of my favorite Kinks songs are of this genre: Rosie Won't You Please Come Home, Dead End Street, Big Black Smoke, etc.

I like falling asleep in the winter time while listening to Something Else by the Kinks.

I like the ridiculousness of the guitar solo on She's Got Everything.

I like the silly piano/guitar intro to Do You Remember Walter?. And the way the narrator can't quite keep his chin up, falling into a minor chord breakdown halfway through each verse. And the self-assuring bitterness of the final verse. And the mellotron accompaniment echoing the song's melody as Ray sings "Walter, you are just an echo of a world I knew so long ago."

I like playing the chords to Village Green on a cheap synth/keyboard.

I didn't like how my ex-roommate dicked out and left me waiting by myself at Grand Central Station for two hours. But I did like having the 33 1/3 book about the making of The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society to pass the time with.

I like how the Fall covered Victoria on The Frenz Experiment. And I love it when Ray sings "Here is your reward for working so hard/Gone are the lavatories in the back yard."

I like how I found The Great Lost Kinks Album on vinyl for only 17 dollars. I also like how one of my favorite Kinks songs, Lavender Hill, apparently wasn't good enough to ever get an official release.

I like how my girlfriend bought me The Kink Kronikles on vinyl out of the blue.

And I like how my girlfriend loves the Kinks too, as did her father. I like how sometimes, as happens, we would go through a rough patch, have a fight and, during those moments, when emotions take hold and the mind races about, contemplating every scenario, ridiculous as they may be, such as a separation or a breakup, I would think back, remember the good times (which far outweigh any of the bad), remember all the other things which make her special, remember I still love her, and, in the midst of all this, I would also remember that indeed, she too loves the Kinks. And that, as relatively popular as they were and are, it's still damned hard to find someone who loves the Kinks as much as I do.

This is my first post. Everything is a little rough and I don't really know what I'm doing so those three or four people who may eventually follow this blog, please bear with me. As you may or may not know, I named the blog from a line in Finnegan's Wake, a book I've actually read, not to be pretentious (though it is), but simply because I like the phrase. I liked it so much, in fact, that I highlighted it when I read it (something I rarely do) but I've since forgotten exactly why I did this, other than for the aforementioned sounding neat part. So that's sort of why I'm starting this blog. I want to be able to save things that come to my mind that, some day, I might want to remember . If any one else finds it interesting enough to follow then kudos to you.