Stoakes’ Song of the Week

Saturday, June 22nd 2019 – London is celebrating all things Musical Theatre with its annual ‘West End Live’ event at Trafalgar Square. As such, I thought Stoakes’ song of the week this week had to be something related to, or involved in the theatre.

I didn’t want to go ‘obvious’ and do a song from one of the so called rock musicals, ie ‘We Will Rock You’ or ‘Bat Out Of Hell’. Likewise, I didn’t want to do a Musical Theatre anthem either, the likes of ‘Memory’ or ‘I dreamed a Dream’. Then I thought, what about Kerry Ellis singing ‘Defying Gravity’ with Queen guitarist, Brian May, but I thought, nah… Still too obvious.

And then it came to me…. The Kinks and Come Dancing!

Now, you may ask, what on earth has this got to do with Musical Theatre and West End Live? Well, everyone is familiar with The Kinks Musical ‘Sunny Afternoon’, but what a lot of people don’t know, is that before ‘Sunny Afternoon’ came along in 2014, in 2008, Ray Davies wrote another musical, ‘Come Dancing’.

It was a show about the Ilford Palais, a famous East London night club that his sisters used to go to. The Palais is the subject of the song and the show was an extended story, following his sisters journey, told from Ray Davies’ point of view, with his memories and some of the early days of the Kinks thrown in for good measure.

Come Dancing was released in 1982 and was on the ‘State of Confusion’ album. Despite failing to chart in the UK, it became the highest charting Kinks record in the USA, reaching No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100! After achieving huge success in the US, the song was re released in the UK and then charted at No. 12

Such a lovely song and a fitting song to also celebrate ‘West End Live’. Despite the show ‘Come Dancing’ only running for 6 weeks at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, I personally think it was a great show and I enjoyed it even more than ‘Sunny Afternoon’!