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Giving life some English

Ray Davies, Monty Python and fair Albion

By Todd Leopold
CNN

Ray Davies' "Other People's Lives" has been in the works for years.

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(CNN) -- One wrote songs about village greens, humble homes with names like "Shangri-La," bickering sisters and night descending on Waterloo Station. Pete Townshend once said he should be poet laureate of England.

The other mocked pompous City stockbrokers, BBC chat shows and a certain kind of British emotional repression. George Harrison was said to believe "whatever that spirit was that animated the Beatles just drifted across to Python," according to the comedy troupe's Terry Jones.

England just wouldn't be England -- and music and comedy would be the poorer -- without the Kinks' Ray Davies and Monty Python. In their work is celebration, thoughtfulness, satire and -- perhaps above all -- a genuine sense of place, which paradoxically makes the work all the more universal.

Davies' best songs are acutely observed sketches, some suggesting an England that perhaps never was. This is, after all, the man who wrote a song (and most of an album) titled "The Village Green Preservation Society."

One critic once said that, to get a sense of Davies' romanticism, you only had to look at the charmless Waterloo Station and compare it with the gentle music of "Waterloo Sunset" (from 1967's "Something Else by the Kinks"): "People so busy, makes me feel dizzy / Taxi light shines so bright / But I don't need no friends / As long as I gaze on Waterloo sunset I am in paradise."

As for Python, who else could have stretched English deference and English silliness to such absurd lengths, creating the Ministry of Silly Walks, the Cheese Shop with No Cheese, the Dead Bishop and an explorer about to leave for the Twin Peaks of Kilimanjaro?

Next week, both Davies and Python are back in the news. Davies' long-awaited solo album, "Other People's Lives," comes out Tuesday, and a six-part PBS series, "Monty Python's Personal Best," premieres Wednesday.

Eye on Entertainment has some tea.

Eye-opener

"Other People's Lives" (V2) presents a different Ray Davies. Gone is the ramshackle production so prominent on many Kinks albums -- and also gone is Davies' wistfulness.

"Other People's Lives" is smoothly produced (by Davies himself) and full of a bitterness only hinted at on songs like "Mr. Pleasant" or "Twentieth Century Man." In fact, Davies sometimes evokes followers such as Mark Knopfler and Paul Weller; age has not mellowed him at all.

The title song slams the news media and public interest in gossip; "Stand Up Comic" is annoyed about a decline in standards. Many of the songs seem very personal.

Davies told Entertainment Weekly that the album was written during difficult times -- times that predated his shooting, by a purse-snatcher, in New Orleans.

"Since I started this record, my personal life went through chaotic times," he said. "I started 'After the Fall' [a song on the album] after my marriage broke up ... it was about retribution and guilt and life changes and how you've got to be responsible for your own actions."

As for Python, the material is nothing you haven't seen before (if you're a Python fan, that is). But the context is different -- particularly in Terry Gilliam's show, which features many of his cartoon favorites linked by live-action segments.

"Other People's Lives" comes out Tuesday. "Monty Python's Personal Best" premieres 9 p.m. Wednesday on PBS, beginning with "Eric Idle's Personal Best."

On screen

"Freedomland" stars Samuel L. Jackson as a detective and Julianne Moore as a woman whose child has been kidnapped -- or so she says. It's based on a Richard Price novel. The film opens Friday.

Paul Walker and a bunch of dogs star in "Eight Below," a Disney tale about an Antarctic researcher and his sled dogs. Opens Friday.

"Date Movie" is trumpeted as being by "two of the six writers of 'Scary Movie.' " If that's a positive for you, the film opens Friday.

On the tube

"Go Kinky" follows writer and country singer Kinky Friedman's run for governor of Texas. It airs 11 p.m. Friday on CMT.

Want to watch the Olympics? They're hard to avoid. Turn on NBC or any one of several affiliated networks and you'll probably stumble into them. However, they do end Sunday, February 26, so there are only a few hundred hours of coverage to go.

Sound waves

The Arctic Monkeys, one of the biggest new bands in Britain in years, finally gets the debut of its album in the United States on Tuesday. The record is called "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not" (Domino).

The M's new album, "Future Women" (Shout! Factory), comes out Tuesday.

There are a number of fine reissues next week, including multiple releases by a number of artists: Billy Bragg's "Brewing Up with," "Life's a Riot with Spy vs. Spy," "Talking with the Taxman About Poetry," "The Internationale"/"Live & Dubious" and "Volume 1" (Yep Roc); Merle Haggard's "Hag"/"Someday We'll Look Back," "I'm a Lonesome Fugitive"/"Branded Man," "Mama Tried"/"Pride in What I Am," "Sing Me Back Home"/"The Legend of Bonnie & Clyde" and "Strangers"/"Swinging Doors and the Bottle Let Me Down" (Capitol Nashville/EMI); Mott the Hoople's "All the Young Dudes" and "Mott" (Columbia/Legacy); and Phil Ochs' "All the News That's Fit to Sing" and "I Ain't Marching Anymore" (Collectors' Choice) are all out Tuesday. The latter brings up the question: When is someone going to re-release Ochs' "Rehearsals for Retirement"? (I'm not counting Collectors' Choice's "Rehearsals"/"Gunfight at Carnegie Hall" two-fer.)

Paging readers

John Lawton's new Inspector Troy novel, "A Little White Death" (Atlantic Monthly Press), comes out Tuesday.

Video center

"Rent" and "North Country" come out on DVD Tuesday.

One of the all-time classics, 1976's "All the President's Men," gets a special two-DVD edition Tuesday. Next week the same edition will be packaged in a box with "Network" and "Dog Day Afternoon." Talk about an afternoon of great film.

Dick Cavett had a talk show when "talk" wasn't a synonym for "tell me a funny story and plug your new movie." "The Dick Cavett Show: Comic Legends" (a 4-DVD set) captures his fascinating interviews with Groucho Marx, Woody Allen, Bob Hope, Jack Benny and Mel Brooks, among others. It comes out Tuesday.

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