Ray Davies under the rain

Not quite literally, he performed under the roof. We were under the rain.

We previously anticipated that after TweetCamp we headed towards Hampstead in the late afternoon. Weather forecasts weren’t great and in fact we were greeted by pouring rain as soon as we arrived at Archway Underground station (bear in mind that we left Richmond with the sun warmly shining). For a little while we thoughht about not even going to Kenwood, given the open air concerto n a field and the rain. But, we had no way of actually knowing if they were going to cancel the show or not, so we ran to the bus stop and got to Kenwood House.

Kenwood House (on a sunny day though)

The gig was te first of the English Heritage Picnic Concerts 2009, and saw Ray Davies backed by the Crouch End Festival Chorus. The CEFC backed Davies in 2007 already during the Proms at the Roundhouse (we’ve already talked about the venue), and they recently came out with a record, The Kinks Choral Collection (spotify link), with 15 classic Kinks and Davies’s songs supported by the choir. The record has had mixed reviews so far, most of them not being very enthusiastic about the actual added value provided by the choir. One sure thing is that the live is better than the record itself, but, still, it was not mind-blowing. Davies is in very good form, and the backing band too, but, maybe because of the distance from the stage, maybe because the sound system was not the best ever, I was not impresse by the chorus anyway. A far more accurate review of the gig itself can be found here.

Here’s the video for Waterloo Sunset. You can find a playlist with the videos I took on YouTube.

What we really enjoyed was the whole situation, the whole surroundings. People came very well organised: we saw all sorts of picnic covers, food boxes, wine coolers, flutes, salad (obviously with proper salad bowls and dressings). When the rain started to come down heavy, no one seemed bothered: put the poncho on, open the brolly, and that’s it. In Italy people would have run away within seconds. Even the part of the audience sitting on the deck chairs (getting soaking wet, of course) stayed there.

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We weren’t able to carry much to the picnic concert, mainly ’cause we were at TweetCamp before it (and it was a pretty long journey, Brick Lane to Hampstead via Richmond…), but next time we’ll make sure we get the wine and the food in proper picnic style.

We have few little things coming up in the next months or so, so we’ll keep you updated!

Kenwood House how we would have liked to see it courtesy of _mubblegum_ on Flickr