Paolo Nutini and Ray Davies

This was the third evening of the Glastonbury Abbey Extravaganza weekend, a series of outdoor picnic concerts set to counter the June mayhem of the infamous Glastonbury festival.

I was really looking forward to Paolo Nutini whose music has been so overplayed on the radio recently. He was good, if not a little naïve perhaps. Most of the songs he performed were his own, opening with ‘New Shoes’ and following with others such as ‘Last Request’ and ‘These Streets’ plus a new one called ‘55-1’, also covering the Moby tack, the ‘Natural Blues’. His voice is terrific, and I was only disappointed because he finished with ‘Jenny Don’t Be Hasty’ and didn’t do an encore.



Last time I saw the Kinks was at Reading about twenty years ago and I wasn’t impressed then so I wasn’t expecting to be impressed again, but of all the popular artists appearing this year, it was Ray Davies who really captured the audience with his enthusiasm and generous encore.

He is actually one of Britain’s most prolific songwriters, and possibly one of the least credited but his work is equal to that of Lennon and McCartney. Ray Davies projected an enthusiasm which rubbed off onto his audience and he worked hard to encourage these now well-behaved mainly aged forty-plus people into a crowd who would, by the end of the concert, demonstrate energy a bit more akin to that radiated by some of Paolo Nutini’s eager fans.

Ray Davies songs included, amongst others, ‘Hello I love You’, ‘Sunny Afternoon’ and ‘Celluloid Heroes’ (dedicated to Ingmar Bergman and Tony Wilson). His brilliant double encore finished with ‘You Really Got Me’ and a joyous ‘Lola’ which the audience joined in with.



Ray Davies was the only popular musician that weekend who I noticed acknowledged his fellow musicians. He was great and he deserves a lot more credit than I have ever given him before. Definitely worth seeing again.

The fireworks at the end of the show were much better than Friday’s, and seemed like an appropriate finale to a glorious weekend of concerts set in clean, pleasant surroundings with friendly, helpful staff and a wonderful atmosphere.

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