Given the incredible song writing talent of Ray Davies I've always been
wondering why his
song texts haven't been published together before. Therefor the invitation "Who is going for
the complete KINKS song
book?" in the preface of the book "25 years The Kinks 1963-1988 /
Dutch single discography
with song texts" which was published in October 1988 on
the
occasion of the Kinks days in Groningen just had
to be accepted.
I had always tried to find out the texts of my favorite Kinks-songs, but since
then I've been
very busy with the other song texts as well. In May 1993 I heard that the Kinks
were coming
to Holland again and since that hadn't been the case since 1985 it was a
perfect occasion
to stop improving (and improving...) on the song texts and finally publish the
result of my efforts.
It became a fanproject with the title Down
all the days (till 1992).
For three reasons I thought that was the perfect title: it's the name of a
Kinks-song, it contains
the name of my favourite Kinks-song (Days) and it would cover the period where
the book was
meant to be about: till 1992, including the CD "Phobia". However, the
release of "Phobia" took
that long
that 1992 became 1993, so right from the start the title wasn't that perfect at
all.
With all the changes since the first edition I thought the year in the title of
the book might as well
indicate the last year of the updates, so the 14th edition was the first one
with a new title:
Down all the days (till
1997), while the last one (15th edition) is Down all the days (till 1999).
The first edition was ready on the 30th of June 1993, just in time for
the Kinks-concert in Amsterdam
on the 1st of July. Although I wasn't allowed to hand them over to Ray and Dave
Davies personally,
after the concert I was glad to see that the first 2 copies of that first
edition were in good (their) hands.
Because I didn't have any idea of the possible interest in my booklet, I only
made 30 copies.
Although the first edition was gone within only 2 days (!) I've intentionally
kept the same number of
copies with most of the following editions. Some fans happen to react, and with
only 30 copies
their reactions with comments, additions, improvements etc. can be effected as
soon as possible.
While the first edition had 211 pages, the last has 298! The booklet is made of
double sided
A4-photocopies (size 8.25" x 11.75"), so no printed matter (no book but a booklet)!
Reviews in 60's-magazines like the Dutch "The sound of the sixties" and "Platenblad" and
the
German "Good times"
resulted in a fifth edition in May 1994. A first commercial order by Medium
Musikbücher
made me realise that I couldn't go on with what I was doing without paying for
the
publishing rights, so I contacted some publishers. By October 1994 I had signed
a contract with
all seven Dutch
publishers that are involved. Main publisher Warner
Basart told me the following
'publishing rights'-rules: the editor has to pay 25% of the selling price to
the publishers with the rights
for Holland, who have to pay 60% of their share to the original publisher.
So, assuming that Ray Davies is the 100%-owner of Davray Music and that Davray
Music has the
original rights of 70% of the song texts, Ray shouldn't end up with half of goodness knows
what
(according to the songtext of "The moneygoround") but with DFL 3,67
per book
(100% of 70% of 60% of 25% of DFL 35).
next page: Contents of
the booklet
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