New West has a Ray Davies page
http://raydavies.newwestrecords.com/
with wallpaper; plus ringtone download codes for Cingular/AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon subscribers; plus links for ordering various versions of WMC

Also,
"Davies plans to visit the US and Canada in January to do advance promotion for the album and will return for extensive touring beginning in the spring throughout North America."

Neil

fantastic news on the road again

No. 37 at Amazon top 100 Cd's!

Got my copy w/DVD from Amazon today! Time to go listen.... and watch.

Here's the Review from "Entertainment Weekly" - they give it a B+




Music Review
Working Man's Cafe (2008)
Ray Davies
--
RAY DAVIES Despite a few lyrical kinks, Working Man's Cafe serves up its share of fresh-sounding melodies

Credits
Release Date: Feb 19, 2008; Lead Performance: Ray Davies; Genre: Rock

By Rob Brunner
If, say, ''Waterloo Sunset'' contained silly lines like ''Corporations get the tax breaks/While the city gets the crime,'' would Ray Davies still be considered one of his generation's best songwriters? Based on this la-*test*-('") release, Working Man's Cafe, the answer might just be ''yes.'' The above mouthful from ''One More Time'' and other clunky social commentary can't mask a cache of Kinks-worthy melodies, including the aforementioned track, the gorgeous ''The Real World,'' and ''You're Asking Me,'' which could almost be a lost tune from the late '60s. B+

DOWNLOAD THIS: ''You're Asking Me''

Posted Feb 15, 2008

've just come in at Number 25
I'm oh so happy, so glad to be alive
And everybody says it's going to get to the top
Life is so easy when your record's hot.
Go tell my mamma and my sister too
To press my trousers and polish my shoes
I might even end up a rock-and-roll god
It might turn into a steady job.
And my agent said to me: "Son, I always told you so."
Now my record's number 11 on the BBC
But number seven on the N.M.E.
Not the Melody Maker want to interview me
And ask my view on politics and theories on religion.
Now my record's up to number 3
And a woman recognized me and started to scream
This all seems like a crazy dream
I've been invited to a dinner with a prominent queen
And now I've got friends that I never knew I had before.
It's strange how people want you when you record's high
'Cos when it drops down they just pass you by
Now my agent just called me and said it me:
"Son your record's just got to Number One."

#############28 at Amazon top 100 bestsellers! Movin' up!

... AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?

Here's the review from NYC's Village Voice...


Ray Davies' Working Man’s Café
Wherein Ray finally figures America out
by Edd Hurt
February 19th, 2008 12:00 AM
Ray Davies Working Man’s Café New West/Ammal


The strangled guitar chord that opens Working Man's Café recalls the intro to the Kinks' "I'm Not Like Everybody Else," one of Davies's most brilliantly trapped songs. But that was 1966, and this is now (or something like it), which means his la-*test*-('") set of songs washes up against America in a roots-rock bottle stuffed to bursting by Nashville producer Ray Kennedy. As usual, Davies inveighs against the death of culture and the inability of a songwriter to fit in "among the retail outlets," as he sings on the title track. Kennedy's Music City session cats construct a dense sound that's half British Invasion daydream and half hard-assed Texas shuffle, with Hammond organ and plenty of chiming guitars. It could have come across as professional formalism enhancing a half-assed satirist's la-*test*-('") free-market nightmare, but Working Man's Café adds lyricism to the reportage and makes itself useful enough.

"Morphine Song" finds Davies in New Orleans's Charity Hospital, where he ended up for real in 2004 after a mugger shot him through the leg as he strolled near the French Quarter. Down for the count, he observes "Brenda the alkie" and a citizen who sports a mullet and "grooves around intensive care strutting his stuff." It's one of his best songs in ages. Davies sounds genuinely pained on the chorus of "Working Man's Café," but it's hard to figure out exactly who he's talking about when he sings, "Don't you know, we were all working men"—it's a conceit whose truth is questionable, in London or in Tennessee. Still, he displays his enormous gift for the lazy hook on "In a Moment," where the arrangement ingeniously contrasts sections that go from minor to major, dark to light. "Everything around me's so transitional," Davies sings, which means he might understand America after all.

Thank you, Sir Life.

You can sample and buy bonus tracks on itunes now available. No "I Victim" as far as I can tell.

Another review of WMC - from the weekly Long Island Press...

Ray Davies 7/10

Working Man's Cafe (New West)

While the Kinks may never have enjoyed the larger-than-life status of peers like The Beatles, Rolling Stones or The Who, none of those groups possessed a lyricist whose eye for social commentary was as sharp as Ray Davies. And while Davies' group has been on semi-permanent hiatus going on 15 years, the head Kink has forged ahead with his second solo album in as many years after having been compositionally dormant since 1993. Teaming with Nashville producer Ray Kennedy, the 63-year-old Englishman has come up with a collection of current-event observations that have a loose and rootsy feel to them. There's the nod to globalization framed around a loping rockabilly-like beat ("Vietnam Cowboys"), gentrification dealing a death knoll to local business (the "Hollywood Boulevard"-ish title cut) and how nostalgic times end up ground under the boot heel of progress (a wistful "One More Time"). Not surprisingly, Davies' brush with death via getting shot in his adopted hometown of New Orleans back in 2004 still looms large. "Morphine" uses mid-tempo piano runs, a light guitar strum and slight horn arrangements to frame a hospital ward of quirky characters ranging from Nelson, the old guy with 10 grandkids, to "Brenda the alkie." With this second recent solo effort, it's clear that Davies is still capable of penning some very Kinksian songs, be it the jaunty "You're Asking Me," with its chiming guitars and forceful harmonies, to "In a Moment," all hooks and clever ways of describing the mundane with lines like, "'Cause you can't tell if its day or night/ Do we see the moon or the sunlight/ Everything around is so transitional/ Momentary lapse of rational." That's not to say there aren't some clunkers in the mix, whether it's the admirable yet average anti-war anthem "Peace in Our Time" or the head-scratching swamp-pop of "The Voodoo Walk." Much more effective is "Hymn for a New Age," where the guitars are cranked up and Davies sings with much more conviction in questioning organized religion in a manner not unlike producer Kennedy's work with Steve Earle. While Davies has hinted at wanting to reunite the Kinks, he seems to have had no trouble finding his voice without the benefit of his old band. -DGdR

At the Hampton gig I'm pretty sure Ray said that Working Man's Cafe is going to be re-released "real soon with proper promotion". I'm assuming he means the UK release because I can't think he can any compaints about the US release. Let's hope he adds another couple of bonus tracks

Well, dunno about the album, just know that I went to the cafe in question (opposite Konk) some weeks ago and yup, a typical working man's cafe, selling curry, lasagne, eh???......

Whatever happened to the greasy fry-up?