good morning! Welcome to Day 2 of Micky World, where we at Hoddle Headquarters celebrate our hoddle hero, Micky van de Ven. Just look at those smouldering eyes.
We are all winners today.
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I wasn’t planning on going to the record store on Friday, especially Byrdland. I had vowed to not step foot in there again, because it isn’t a good store at all.
But it was, what, 7pm on a Friday and I had nothing going on. So I figured, what the hell.
I have long claimed Waterloo Sunset by The Kinks to be either my favourite or near-favourite song ever. It’s a gorgeous pop song written by Ray Davies during a period when he was feeling a little agoraphobic or depressed (at least that is how I interpreted the version when I saw the West End musical Sunny Afternoon back in 2016).
For years I searched and avoided buying this record. I wanted the perfect one. A first or second pressing of this. There were a couple times when I saw a version that initially hung in a record shop (you could tell by the hole in the upper-left corner), but I always avoided it.
But tonight I figured my mood kinda fits this record. So I bought it with the intention I’ll buy a better one down the road.
It’s been a long time since I’ve listened to this album front to back. But man, what a record. From the rioutous opener of David Watts to Dave Davies’ contributions with Death of a Clown and Love Me Till The Sun Shines, this record is perfect.
It’s downright Kinky.
Few lyricists wrote with such sharpness as Ray Davies did, and none captured Great Britannica like he did.
I adore this record. I adore The Kinks. For years I avoided buying their records because I streamed them far too much when I was in college. Streaming is so lame, man.
Fitzie’s track of the day, part one: Harry Rag, by The Kinks
I can’t finish this without speaking of Waterloo Sunset, whose lyrics once hung on my wall when I lived in Jamaica, New York.
Call it the introvert’s manifesto if you want, I don’t care.
What a gorgeous song. Perhaps less of a song, more of a storyboard.
Different characters bobbing and weaving through some dramatic canvas. A Jimmy Stewart examining the other side of Thames with his binoculars. Two lovers floating through the respectable men in Waterloo Station. The London Eye and aquarium muddled in the foreground.
A few days before I moved back from the UK to the US (what is now almost seven years ago), I took this picture before meeting my family at the Imperial War Museum.
I didn’t want to leave the UK. I fought. I lost. And even though I knew I would lose, I resisted.
This picture is one of the very last I took when I lived in London. I snapped it mournfully, wantingly. That green light of mine, crashing down into the Thames before my own eyes.
When I hear this song, I like to think I’m back there, seeing the sun set past Vauxhall, Waterloo and Southwark stations. Imagining the busy bodies shuffle onto the Southwest trains, back to their trivia nights at the pub in London surburbia.
For a moment, it brings me comfort.
And then I realise I’m not there anymore.
As long as I gaze on Waterloo Sunset, I am in paradise ...
Fitzie’s track of the day, part two: Waterloo Sunset, by The Kinks
And now for your links:
Alasdair Gold on how Radu Dragusin performed during Romania’s win versus Ukraine