The Kinks "Picture Book"

I knew the look on his face.  That weird, uncomfortable, “the tables have been turned!” feeling.

Jess has been telling me for ages that I should meet her friends Ben and Erica.  That we had a lot in common and would enjoy each other.  They had an interest in art and music and culture.  Erica did design, and Ben loved photography, both of which are passions of my wife.

We were in a burrito place in Falmouth, and I noticed a “Benshotme” display.

Periodically, Ben will publish a collection of his photographs, and make them available at stores around the Cape.  This particular issue had a load of pictures featuring Ryan Montbleau and his band.

My wife and I were thumbing through the pages, when the weirdest thing happened.

The guy in one of the pictures walked into the burrito place.

I looked at the collection.  I looked at the guy.

“Excuse me, are you Ben?”

He made the kind of face that I’m sure celebrities make when someone approaches them, and there is that split second when they are not sure if they are supposed to know the approacher, or if it is a fan.

I also know what it’s like to be on the other side of the equation.  As a guy who has interviewed hundreds of people over the course of my career, I do get a bit awkward on those rare occasions when I am the interviewee.

So too, for Ben, I’m sure it’s awkward to be on the other end of the lens.  He loves to take pictures, but I bet it’s weird for him to be recognized for being in a picture.

Or maybe he thought he owed me money.


Photography is not Ben’s first job; he has a job that pays the bills.  A great way to support his work, and to allow this artist to continue to capture the world we live in, is buy something from the BenShotMe site.  Get something for yourself.  Or give a photo as a gift.  The part I love the best?  Ben doesn't actually list prices for anything.  He simply says to tell him what you're interested in, and he'll "work with you."

Before you do any Christmas shopping online with big companies, consider supporting individual artists and small entrepreneurs.  Amazon isn’t going to miss your 50 bucks, but a purchase from an artisan will help them enormously. I’m posting links to a few of my talented friends and family.

Take a look at the other posts on my page this week, and please "Share" the links with you think might be interested in these artists.  Thanks!


Hear the song on Youtube.

The Kinks "Come Dancing"

When I first envisioned this blog, and settled on the theme of writing about single songs and the things they remind me of, the absolute first thing that came to mind was . . .

David's Fish Market and my sister Julie.

I feel like there are large parts of my childhood that involve being in the car with my mother and my siblings, and my mother pulling into the parking lot of a store and saying, "Can you guys just stay in the car, while I do this quick errand?"

Being a parent now, I totally get it---taking your kids into a store it is a total hassle, when you're just trying to get something done.

So when we were old enough, Mom would just leave us in the car.  And when we were old enough to be trusted, Mom would leave us in the car and let us keep the keys so we could listen to the radio.

It was on one such occasion, when Mom wanted fish for dinner, that she left me and my sister Julie in the Dodge Caravan while she went into David's Fish Market in Salisbury. 

The Kinks "Come Dancing" came on the radio and we sang along.

Honestly, I can't recall that there was anything too special about the moment.  We just sang along and enjoyed the tune, and the parent-free 5 minutes.

But for years after that, whenever we'd be someplace and "Come Dancing" would come on, Julie and I would look at each other and say, "David's Fish Market!"

Every Day, I write about what a song reminds me of, and usually it has some deeper meaning or context or metaphor.  But sometimes, the song is just a simple reminder of the pleasure of singing a song with your sister, on an otherwise mundane trip to pick up some fish.


It's Julie's birthday today.  Happy Birthday, Sister!


Hear the song on Youtube.

Ray Davies "Postcards From London"

Kind of the flip-side from last week . . . sometimes you need an old girlfriend to finish a song.

Take this Ray Davies track.

Davies and Chrissie Hynde were a couple 30 years back.

What a neat idea to have her come in and be a part of this Davies song, about looking back at his old town.

You know, I never fully understood how you could be with someone so completely, like them so much, decide that it wasn't really going to work out, and then never speak again.

Sure, they may not have been "The One" but that should negate whatever positive attributes they had in the first place. If you started as friends, well, it doesn't seem so impossible that you could end as friends, even if you were lousy lovers.

That being said, full disclosure about this "reunion": apparently, Davies and Hynde were never in the same room together. They recorded their tracks, and filmed their parts, separately.


See the video on Youtube.

Sting "If You Love Someone Set Them Free"

Let me ask you a question . . . when you were in that final English class in college (or High School), and you had that big paper to write . . . what did you write about?

Can you remember the subject?

Could you quote a line?

Could you recite any of it from memory?

I think about this when I think about artists who've been around for a long, long time. The Rolling Stones, Lucinda Williams and R.E.M. have been sufficiently mocked for not remembering the lyrics to their songs, mocked for using lyric sheets on stage.

But shit, can you do your monologue from that play you were in 20 years ago?

It is maybe too tall an expectation to have from an artist, who, believe it or not, is only human.

Then again, it is kind of fun to pick on them, and be a little shocked at how they could lose touch with the art that made them famous.

I saw this documentary a couple of weeks back, and in one scene, Sting has been convinced to sing a Kinks song on camera, with the interviewer.

The song is "Set Me Free" and when they have finished, after repeating the songs refrain a number of times, Sting gets a kind of foggy look on his face and says something like, "I think I stole some of that tune for my song, uh . . ."

He then struggles to name the song, his song, "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free."

He free associates the words he half-remembers, "Set You Free, Someone Set Them Free, If You Set Someone Free . . ." before finally pulling the title out.

So feel free to mock him. And just be glad that you aren't being asked to recite that poem you wrote for English Lit.

The Kinks "Do It Again"

I had a great night out on the town on Friday, when I went to The Woods Hole Film Festival's "Dinner And A Movie" series to see "Do It Again."

It's an off-Season, get-out-of-your-house-on-a-cold-night Deal. You pay a pre-fix price, you get a nice meal, and after dinner you can kick back with a beer and watch a movie in a local restaurant.

I hadn't heard of the evening's showing, the documentary "Do It Again," which is a little surprising, since it brings a bunch of favorite things to an intersection. But I sure did love it.

Geoff Edgers is a writer for the Boston Globe Arts section. And in this documentary, as he approaches 40 years old he decides he must achieve something great: He must reunite The Kinks.

On the way to trying to get a sit down with Ray Davies, he talks to many of the members of The Kinks, and many relevant non-Kinks, including artists who played with their brothers (Warren Zanes of the Del Fuegos), artists who's bands broke up but reunited (Sting) and artists who's bands broke up but refuse to reunite (Paul Weller of The Jam), as well as a few Kinks worshipers (Robyn Hitchcock, Zooey Deschanel). And hilariously, he concludes each interview by trying to get the interviewee to sing and play a Kinks song with him, to varying degrees of success.

It was a fun flick about fandom, reconciliation, musical passion, reckoning, aging and joyous obsession.

After the movie, I ran into a friend who asked our group the question, "What band would you do that for?"

Is there a band that you'd obsessively stalk, if you thought there was a chance to get them to reunite?

I didn't have the answer at the moment, but upon thinking about it, I know. And I start tonight.

I'm headed to the House Of Blues in Boston this evening to see Robert Plant.

If Led Zeppelin announces on Wednesday that they are reforming, just know that you'll have me to thank.