Customer Reviews

Everybody's in Showbiz

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This release by Mobile Fidelity on gold SACD offers the ultimate in digital sound for this 1972 Kinks disc, the second of the band's RCA releases once they changed record labels. Originally a double vinyl, this has all been captured on one disc with two bonus tracks already available on previous reissues. To my ears, this M.F. mastering is slightly superior to the previous Koch/Velvel SACD reissue but not dramatically. The excellent Peter Doggett essay from that reissue has been replaced by an equally excellent one from Fred Schruers with Kinks sage Doug Hinman getting special thanks as well. The same two bonus tracks, "Till the End of the Day" and "She Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina" are included from the aforementioned reissue and are welcome additions.

Performance wise? This double l.p. was one of the most ironic of all Kinks albums because of its musical schizophrenia. Ray Davies' sardonic view of life on the road over the studio tracks followed by the 'real thing' on the concert side. I remember being disappointed by the concert selections when this album first came out. "Baby Face" and "Banana Boat Song"? A 1:40 version of "Lola"?? The self-indulgence of these selections keeps it from being 5 stars for me. Not the best of the Live Kinks but certainly the most revealing. Around this time, Ray actually quit the band, in the midst of turning the Kinks into a Music Hall showband with horns after the "Muswell Hillbillies" studio album. Acute Schizophrenia Blues indeed! Ray's downward slide is mentioned in the essays included with each release. That is one of the reasons that in hindsight, "Showbiz" is such a fascinating document historically. That helps me to view it in a different light than when it was first released. Not the coolest of records back in the day but now it reveals something very authentic and vulnerable about life in a Rock band during these times that remains a rare perspective.

The beautiful "Celluloid Heroes" is not only the best song on the disc, it is its thematic heart. In "My Generation", Pete Townshend wrote "Hope I die before I get old." That became true for Keith Moon (R.I.P.). In "Celluloid Heroes", Davies writes:

"You can see all the stars as you walk along Hollywood Boulevard

Some that you recognize, some that you've hardly even heard of

People who worked and suffered and struggled for fame

Some who succeeded and some who suffered in vain."

Nearly 40 years on, "Showbiz" is in many ways as relevant as ever. How many Rock musicians could relate to the sentiment from this quote above in their own lives? Heroes back in the day but where are they now? "Success walks hand in hand with failure" - all too true. The consolation may be that "Celluloid Heroes never really die". The same is true for musicians. Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Elvis, Janis Joplin, the list goes on of early casualties in Rock. Their music has endured. The Kinks lost one of their own in 2010 when their founding bassist Peter Quaife passed on. However, his work will "never really die" because of Kinks' classics like "You Really Got Me" and "Waterloo Sunset". "Showbiz" as a whole deals with much of the suffering and struggling of a rock band as experienced by the Kinks. Maybe it could have been called "Vinyl Heroes"? No, Ray prefers a bit more distance than this - but only a bit :-)

Other studio highlights include the sad but lovely "Sitting In My Hotel" and brother Dave's "You Don't Even Know My Name". The latter is a wonderfully succinct expression of life in the shadow of a famous, composing brother. Liam Gallagher, can you relate to this?

On the concert side, "Top of the Pops" rocks hard to open with promise for the show but then gives way to the Music Hall flavors of the "Muswell Hillbillies" selections of which there are 5. Of these, the best is this live version of "Alcohol". It is so effective that it is scary, in part because of its namesake being the juice of Ray's performance! Interspersed along the way are tid bits of songs like "Mr. Wonderful". Revealing but also kind of annoying. This is where the aforementioned historical viewpoint of this record can be forgiving.

"Everybody's in Showbiz" is the most authentic of the many Kinks concept albums and is special for this reason. Instead of the fictional metaphors in "Preservation Acts 1 and 2", "Showbiz" is a warts and all documentation of the non-fiction that Ray Davies was living at this time. In fact, it has held up very well over the years because of this - you can't get a Time Capsule like this of any other British Invasion era band. Where "Lola vs. Powerman" focused on the band's songwriting struggles and disillusion of the music business in general, "Showbiz" shows the 'unreal reality' that was about to take the band down, and almost out altogether. Worthy to be placed near, and just behind the "Village Green Preservation Society" and "Lola vs. Powerman" in the Kinks Canon, "Showbiz" is the real deal.

Now, it is fittingly immortalized by Mobile Fidelity. Very good deal indeed! As Mobile Fidelity discs aren't produced forever, I grabbed mine from Amazon immediately. Highly recommended.

The studio side of Everybody's in Showbiz is really good, however I will be the first to admit the majority of the album feels a little TOO showtune-y for my liking, if you get my drift.

Ray Davies apparently really wanted to take off with his theatrical, rock opera experiments and must have believed this change in style would help his career, instead of hurt it. Apparently he really thought it was a fantastic idea, despite many of his fans believing otherwise.

I wonder if anyone back in the early 70's could have possibly guessed just how far and how LONG he would have kept his rock opera theme going? Concept album after concept album... and Everybody's in Showbiz is probably the very first one (at least, the first one to signify a drastic change in sound and style).

Anyway, despite all of that, the songs themselves are *still* pretty good.

"Here Comes Another Day" opens the album with a decent vocal melody and some funny lyrics about underwear, haha. The lyrics in this song are cleverly written, and hilarious. "Maximum Consumption" is a great song about food, and what it's like to feel bloated after holiday meals, haha. Actually that last part is just a personal note from me!

"Unreal Reality" takes the showtune style WAY too far! This song is jazzed up enough to make dirt shine. I still like the melody itself however. "Hot Potatoes" is forgettable, dated filler.

"Sitting in my Hotel" is a wonderful ballad. It really captures the feeling of being in a hotel by yourself and contemplating your thoughts alone. "Motorway" is a brilliant slice of pop melody, along with the next track, "You Don't Know My Name". Two underrated songs these ones are.

"Supersonic Rocket Ship" contains a nice vocal melody, the kind of which fall under the category of being cute and fun similar to "Apeman" or other late 60's Kinks numbers.

"Look a Little on the Sunnyside" is a forgettable novelty tune. The Kinks apparently liked putting these kind of songs on their albums, but I *really* wish they'd have changed their mind because it's hard to take these kind of songs seriously in this day and age, and think of them as something other than throwaway songs.

"Celluloid Heroes" is the best song on the album by FAR. I love this song quite a bit. It's a perfectly written pop song with *just* the right amount of showtune implementation.

This album is definitely a lot better than the severely overrated Muswell Hillbillies because on this album there's actual singing instead of needless talking that's supposed to qualify as verse melodies, which is what hurts Muswell Hillbillies so much. Seriously, listen to tracks such as "Alcohol" and "20th Century Man"- these songs have awful verse melodies.

First off, anyone who has ever experienced day to day life in Hollywood will be brought to tears by the sweet, but not sacharine sentimentality evoked by "Celluloid Heroes". Then there is the live set - raucous, campy, ALIVE. . . The WHO, THE STONES, THE KINKS! The ORIGINAL MASTER RECORDING company did a great job with this one & I'm glad to see them back in the game they themselves invented.