The Kinks were at one of their periodic commercial peaks when they released Everybody’s in Show-Biz in 1972. By that time band leader-songwriter Ray Davies was nuts about concept albums and what story line was closer to his experience at the time than the life of a touring rock musician? The existence can warp one’s perspective, as he acknowledged in the jazzy vamp “Unreal Reality.” It can result in too many bad meals along the roadside in the country-rock “Motorway.” The self-explanatory “Sitting in My Hotel” is set to an elegant George Martin-style Beatles arrangement. With the album’s hit, “Celluloid Heroes,” Davies linked his experience to the careers of movie stars from Hollywood’s golden age.
Originally a two-LP set, Everybody’s in Show-Biz also included a dozen numbers, entertainingly loose but energetic, recorded at Carnegie Hall. The Legacy Edition adds a second CD of previously unissued songs from that 1972 Carnegie concert sprinkled with a few outtakes.
