MONDAY nights in October 2002 for me like many others are all about the countdown to TV comedy The Office at 10pm. This, coupled with the fact that it was raining meant any start-of-the-week performance at The Regent would have to go some to win its way into those couple of pre-Office hours.

MONDAY nights in October 2002 for me like many others are all about the countdown to TV comedy The Office at 10pm. This, coupled with the fact that it was raining meant any start-of-the-week performance at The Regent would have to go some to win its way into those couple of pre-Office hours.

And, Ray Davies, I'm afraid you failed to convince me that your tales of

suburban life in London in the early 1960s still have any relevance today.

Most Kinks fans who paid out their £20 probably lapped it up like a cat and a saucer of milk which included such expected songs as Dedicated Follower of Fashion, You Really Got Me and Sunny Afternoon.

But Davies is still fixated with the meaning of these songs he penned almost 40 years ago – these songs that chart life in the suburbs of England.

Sorry Ray, but The Specials in the 1970s, The Pet Shop Boys in the 1980s,

Blur in the 1990s and The Streets in 2002 have also chronicled what it means to live in suburbia since The Kinks prime – making your songs seem so dated.

On one song, Stand Up Comic, Davies comes on like the result of a hideous experiment involving Ian Dury and Mike Read – and tries to sound like he's a football hooligan. Which he clearly isn't.

The one bright moment was Ray's rendition of No Return, a song he told us he had recently performed in New York with Astrid Gilberto. But with the bare yellow light in The Regent it lacked half the feeling it could have had with a purple spotlight and a bit of smoke.

But the rest of his performance, though energetic and passionate, failed to

impress me that he is anything other than valid only to those fans who fell

in love with the Kinks when Muffin the Mule was cutting edge TV.

Nick Richards