We saw Ray Davies at the Beacon Theater on Tuesday night. Certainly a different crowd than most shows we go to, a function of the ticket prices as much as the performer, I expect. Worth the money for an upper balcony seat, in my opinion.

I thought it was a well designed show, with an intermission. The first set was mostly Kinks, followed by some of the newest stuff done acoustically and then more Kinks. Including the intermissions, the show was over 2 hours--it was great, although the Kinks catalog is such that there were many other songs I would have been thrilled to hear.

RD was energetic and had quite a few hops and jumps throughout. Parts of the stage patter and treatment of songs (call and response, singalongs, extended codas) reminded me of the way that the Simpsons sort of molds every rock music guest appearance into a very similar thing, but I didn't mind.

In looking at the tour dates, it seems like this was a fairly brief tour with spread out dates (I don't think anything was back to back nights) and I think that helped RD's voice. I looked at some of the reviews of other shows and it seems like people have mostly been kind about the vocals, which unsurprisingly are not at the same strength as from various recordings from the past.

Here's a reuters review of the show.

Setlist at some kind of Rolling Stone blog.