Kast off Kinks – a review

Posted on 17th May 2015

A curious hybrid of heritage and tribute acts has emerged over the last few years – bands made up of departed personnel from groups no longer with us. Bruce Foxton still plays music From the Jam, Nik Turner’s Space Ritual is Hawkwind in all but name, while the Campbell brothers each have their own UB40.

Granddaddies of them all are the Kast off Kinks – essentially the real thing without the Davies brothers.
They have been performing their considerable back catalogue for the last twenty years. Mick Avory, Jim Rodford and Ian Gibbons clearly have a fine old time working their way through a seemingly endless checklist of hits, and are ably assisted by the guitar and vocals of Dave Clarke from the Noel Redding band. Together they performed a well-balanced set, and while they focused on the huge hits of sixties, there was still space for the quirkier numbers that made the Kinks such a unique band, not least a special performance of Big Sky, dedicated to the good folk running the Corn Hall.

While Ray Davies is a fine songwriter it was somehow refreshing to hear the Kinks music without the faux gravitas of an audience with his majesty. The band rattled through Sunny Afternoon, Dead End Street, David Watts, Lola, Waterloo Sunset, You Really Got Me, and so much more. A reminder that the Kinks, for all Davies’s undoubted genius, were fundamentally masters of the three minute single in all its catchy, disposal splendour.
By David Vass