Review - Dave Davies, March 24, 2004, SOhO Restaurant and Music Club, Santa Barbara, California


From: Rob Peirson
Date: 28 Mar 2004

The SOhO has an upscale restaurant with an adjacent bar/music hall. In the music hall there were seating for about 120 with plenty of standing room. I got there a bit before the showtime of 8:30pm and not that many people were there. But then they released the dinner crowd and the place filled up. Every seat was taken and there was standing room only with some people sitting on the connecting balcony. I would say there were at least 150 people at the show with a heavy mix of local with a few Kinks dedicated follows like myself.

Dave was basically on time, a bit before 9pm. The band sounded good and it was clear that they had refined the show. The last time I saw them was when the played the benefit at Glendale, CA and played most of the songs from his then new album Bug. This time the show was heavy on Kinks tunes. The first 11 were familiar Kinks songs (I Need You, Till the End of the Day, Dead End Street, See My Friends, etc).

He only did 3 post Kinks songs, Rock You Rock Me, Bug and Transformation, all from Bug. He was quite interactive with the audience especially on Your Looking Fine and Death of a Clown. In fact during Death of a Clown he invited anyone who wanted to sing along up on stage. No one took him up on this offer until as they played along, a women named Laura who was sitting on the balcony came on stage. She clearly did not know the lyrics but could really La, La, La.

He ended with what has become a favorite, I'm Not Like Everybody Else and closed with You Really Got Me with an amazing amount of the crowd dancing along.

Overall a really good show but I expected a few more Dave songs.

Rob Peirson