Post VH-1 Storytellers! RAY DAVIES Westbury NY 1997 | Albums That Should Exist

Ray Davies - Westbury Music Fair, Westbury, NY, 10-20-1997

Paul Says : The posting of this album is another side effect of posting a flood of "VH-1 Storytellers" albums. Ray Davies of the Kinks was the performer for the very first Storytellers episode in 1996, and the show was basically modeled after his solo concerts at the time, which mixed songs with lots of banter, including readings from his autobiography, "X-Ray."

Hearing the Davies episode made me want to hear a full-length concert by him from this time period. In 1998, he released the album "Storyteller." It was basically a live album of these solo concerts he was doing at the time. (It had one new studio track at the end.) He did acoustic concerts from 1995 to 1999, backed only by a second guitar player. "Storyteller" is a great album, but it's only 70 minutes long (not including that studio track). I wanted a full, long concert.

Unfortunately, all of the bootlegs of his solo concerts from the late 1990s are audience boots, with poor to middling sound... with one exception. That exception is this concert from Westbury, New York, which is a true soundboard. Not only is the sound quality great, but it seems Davies performed an extra long concert with some rarely performed songs. For instance, according to the setlist.fm website, he only performed "My Diary" three times in his entire music career, and this was the only solo acoustic version.

That said, there were some issues with this recording. For example, the volume of the banter between song was way lower than the songs. There also was hiss, especially with the banter. I managed to fix the volume imbalances and get rid of most of the hiss. I also fixed other problems, like occasional dropouts. This sounds noticeably better than the bootleg version floating around the Internet, in my opinion. Basically, it sounds just as good as his "Storytellers" album, only it's twice as long, with lots more songs and more banter. I think this is a "must have" for any Kinks/ Ray Davies fan, especially since it's the only known soundboard recording from this time period.

This concert is two hours and 16 minutes long. 

01 talk
02 Lola 
03 talk 
04 A Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy
05 Shangri-La 
06 talk 
07 My Diary 
08 Animal Farm
09 Dead End Street
10 Celluloid Heroes
11 talk 
12 Victoria 
13 talk 
14 20th Century Man 
15 talk
16 London Song
17 talk 
18 That Old Black Magic 
19 talk 
20 That Old Black Magic [Reprise] 
21 Tired of Waiting for You 
22 talk
23 Set Me Free 
24 talk
25 See My Friends 
26 Autumn Almanac 
27 talk 
28 X-Ray 
29 Minnie the Moocher 
30 talk 
31 Art School Babe 
32 talk 
33 A Well Respected Man 
34 talk
35 The Ballad of Julie Finkle 
36 talk 
37 Back in the Front Room
38 talk 
39 You Really Got Me 
40 talk
41 Waterloo Sunset 
42 talk 
43 You Really Got Me [Reprise]
44 Come Dancing