The Judge
RAVES!
Date: 20/04/25
See, My Friends
When my brother died in 2022, I offered to take possession of his collections of vinyl and CDs. This idea had two purposes: firstly, to find anything there which we didn't have on the catalogues at 45cat and 45worlds and upload the information; and secondly to provide a list for Brian's (grown-up) children and grand-children so that they could take any of it that they chose.
It was August of last year before I took delivery, and I have been very slowly going through it all. 'Very slowly' because of "events, dear boy, events". but I'm getting there (although my niece and nephews shouldn't expect a conclusion until well into the second half of the year).
I was sitting here on Friday night, doing some work which is of little or no consequence, when I decided to pick the next CD to have on in the background. So I chose a collection of hits by The Kinks. Now, however big they may have been in the 1960s, I'd only been really familiar with the songs which were still getting a lot of airplay in the seventies; You Really Got Me, All Day And All Of The Night, Waterloo Sunset, you know the sort of thing.
Then the track you are about to hear came on, and I stopped what I was doing and paid intent attention.
See My Friends was, I see from my reference books, a Top Ten hit for the band in the autumn of 1965, but I don't remember it at the time (I would have been three years old), nor do I recall it ever being played on the radio since. Months before the Beatles were to fire their Revolver and before the Byrds flew Eight Miles High, this was an Indian-tinged song with the sort of lyrics which prefigured Tomorrow Never Knows. More than that, it captivated me so much that it has become one of those most unusual phenomena, a welcome earworm. The combination of song (by, as ever, Ray Davies), arrangement and production (Shel Talmy) create a most affecting and beguiling song. See if you agree:
