Ray Davies
"Dad And The Green Amp (Dialogue)"


Dad was a real party animal. He loved to go at the pub and have a
singsong with his mates and drink as much stout as possible. All of his
cronies used to go with him. And at closing time they'd come back home.
Back to the front room where Dave and I would be practising.
And dad would walk in and he'd say "Shut that rubbish up. Get out.
We're gonna have a party and I'm gonna perform".
You see, dad was a real performer. He'd clear the floor, had more
to drink, started dancing around, balancing beer on the top his head,
singing at top of his voice until he fell arse over tip on the floor.
But the girls would come home, the boyfriends would arrive,
and everybody had a great party. That's everybody except Dave and I.
And we thought to ourselves "How can we make some sort of impact
on this very strange family?". So we decided to put away our plastic
skiffle guitars and turn electric. Yes, make more noice!
There was an electrical appliance shop up the road, that's where we
thought we'd turn electric. It was in the window, it was this long,
and this high, and it was 8 Watts in volume. But it was covered in this
really horrible green formica. But Dave and I thought "That's for us".
We bought it and we christened it "the green amplifier".
But does anyone know what 8 Watts sound like? 8 Watts? Crap!
But never mind. We thought it was brilliant then, because we took it
home, both plugged in the back and practised day and night.
Yeah, Dave, come on man, yeah, come on, Dave.
The girls thought it was great, young musicians in the family.
But Dave and I noticed that one of our sisters was going out with a guy
who was a bouncer in the local ball room. And our observations through
the keyhole into the front room told us that this guy wasn't going down
to well with my sister. And we rephrace it over there for this lady.
Sorry, madam, I'm sorry. The relationship was not flourishing as it should,
how's that? But Dave, he was only 8 years old, but he was already
corrupt, and he says to this guy "Excuse me, mister, if you get me and
my brother a gig at your ball room this weekend, we'll have a word with
our sister. Will that be alright?".
And this guy says "Oh, thanks very much, son, that 'd be nice".
But lo and behold, the following saturday Dave, myself and a friend from
Coldfall estate with the name of Pete Quaife, we all found ourselves on
stage, playing in front of a thousand cynical teddy boys.
And all three of us were plugged in to the little green amp.
And we didn't have a drummer, we didn't need a drummer, we had
the movements, coordinated movements. But the teddy boys were
unimpressed. Somebody threw a bottle of beer at us and eventually
the management were forced to drag us off the stage.
We were still plugged in and still playing, but they dragged us off.
But the green amp stayed on stage, still plugged in, still giving everything.
You know, the green amp came to service very very well in our career.
These things often have a way of working out.