Davies has said enough traditionally-left things to qualify as a man of the left, I think (and certainly mocked conservatives — albeit gently — in “A Well-Respected Man”), but definitely has a paleo streak — more culturally-declinist than progressive, which may be the key. Perhaps a sort of left-paleo who might say (rightly or wrongly), “There was a time when neighbors helped neighbors instead of profit and welfare checks dominating the world.” Easier in the UK than in the U.S. to accompany such sentiments with a resentment of Tories and aristocrats and thus the right, I think.

He might make a good Chestertonian distributivist — but more about that when I review a Chesterton book in December (you see how much advance planning goes into this blog?).

I’ve always liked the Kinks, but recently they’ve become one of my favorite bands after listening to a few albums I’d never heard (except for the hits) — Arthur, The Village Green Preservation Society, and Muswell Hillbillies.

I’m not exactly sure what political views Ray Davies holds. He often comes across as an almost conservative traditionalist, both in his old-school British musical stylings and his lyrics that nostalgize a romantic past that he never knew — “Victoria,” “Picture Book,” “Village Green.” He even approaches luddism in some songs like “Apeman”.
You definitely get a sense of it in “20th Century Man” from Muswell Hillbillies:

This is the age of machinery,
A mechanical nightmare,
The wonderful world of technology,
Napalm, hydrogen bombs, biological warfare

You keep all your smart modern writers
Give me William Shakespeare
You keep all your smart modern painters
Ill take Rembrandt, Titian, Da Vinci and Gainsborough

But in the same song, he also waxes pretty libertarian:

I was born in a welfare state
Ruled by bureaucracy
Controlled by civil servants
And people dressed in grey
Got no privacy got no liberty
Cos the twentieth century people
Took it all away from me

Anyway, on yet another Brit note, my friend passed this along to me, commenting that you gotta admire Keith Richards’ ingenuity:

http://www.azcentral.com/ent/celeb/articles/2008/04/07/20080407richards-CR.html

I wonder if he snorts his coke through candy straws …

(I don’t like the looks of them!
Can’t eat candy and look so thin!)

Oomp loompa doopity doo
A cosmic messiah you’re going to screw
Birthing a superman new race, too
Like the Oompa Loompas doopity do!

and re: Bowie as oompa loompa - I’d like to thank you for seriously messing up a not-inconsiderable portion of my highschool sex fantasies. and they were already somewhat suspect, as that was Bowie’s labyrinth era. *sigh*

On another Brit note, I successfully identified a song I’d never heard before as a Kinks song last night despite it being filtered through the intermediary device of a karaoke singer (”Autumn Almanac”). Pretty distinctively, uh, Kinky song, though.

Oh my God! Do you mean John McCain is gay?!

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