if you’re overweight, i’ll tax your fat

Sunny Afternoon

The taxman’s taken all my dough
And left me in my stately home
Lazin’ on a sunny afternoon

Well it’s tax time once again, and I wanted to record a song celebrating this most unjoyful time of year. Key, that: record, not write. And so it lands right above the first verse from itself at the top there.

The obvious choice – perhaps the only real choice, Taxman by the Beatles’ George Harrison (who’s fairly frequently my Fab Four fave, and who uttered the title of this post in a live version of his tax song) – was just a little too…erhm, obvious. That didn’t deter me, though, from learning the song and funking glee all over the studio when I nailed the awesome and surprisingly easy bass line (except that part in the 3rd verse/bridge where he does I don’t know the hell what). But you know, the song’s too iconic for my meager skills, and so I left its bony skeleton hanging in the computer for another day and turned my sights to another formidable English songwriter, the Storyteller hisself, Mr. Ray Davies. (Oh yeah…that doesn’t set the barre any higher, now does it.)

Growing up, there were precisely three (3) songs by Davies’ group the Kinks that I was aware of: Lola, You Really Got Me, and All Day and All of the Night. [As a quick aside, if I may, I was playing that third song on acoustic guitar once in high school along the banks of the Tennessee River when one of my classmates came along and started singing, “Hello, I love you won’t you tell me your name….” “No,” I said, “it’s Girl, I want, to be with you in the daytime….”]

On a whim, the summer following that Kinksy/Doorsy confusion, I picked up an album called Kinks Greatest Hits and to my surprise grew swiftly tired of the three (3) songs that had prompted my purchase, falling in love instead with another trio of tunes that I must have heard along the way somehow but that had never soaked into my head as they did now: A Well Respected Man, Tired of Waiting for You, and Set Me Free. This was something else altogether, and something worth treasuring. I still have that album, by the way.

So onward we go and my love affair with the Kinks has run hot and warm, but rarely cold because even when the latest offerings weren’t so great there was always something from their vast catalog seeping into my brain and pressing the “Like” button. And I’ve got a secret to tell: you’d never know it from just listening, but it was Ray I was trying to conjure vocally on what I suppose is the first official Marble Tea song.

There’s miles of evidence to suggest and affirm that Ray Davies is one of the most wonderful and prolific of contemporary songwriters. Fortunately, one of his songs concerns the Taxman (among many other hinted dramas), and so I’ve chosen to try my hand at recording it for you today. I hope you’ll enjoy it (it’s up at the top of this post if you missed it). If you’re not familiar with the song, here’s a video to give you an idea. Now go and get Kinky!