On This Date: July 3, 1977 — My First Time Seeing The Kinks

On this date 49 years ago, I found myself at Convention Hall in Asbury Park, New Jersey, seeing The Kinks in concert for the very first time. They’re my favorite band. I’ve seen them six times. But this was the one that started it all.

Getting there required a truly painful decision. I already had tickets to see Pink Floyd at Madison Square Garden that same night, on the Animals tour. These weren’t casual tickets, either. A few weeks earlier, a New York radio station—probably WPLJ or WNEW—had staged a wonderfully absurd Central Park event involving a giant inflatable pig and a limited number of mail-order slips for early Floyd tickets. I fought my way through the crowd, snagged a slip, filled it out, and sprinted with dozens of other obsessives to the main post office across the street from the Garden to mail it on the spot. Miraculously, it worked.

And then… The Kinks entered the picture. Same night. Different city. Impossible choice.

I chose The Kinks.

In retrospect, that choice still stings a little. I’d go on to see The Kinks five more times. I never did get another chance to see Pink Floyd. But at the time, seeing Ray Davies and company for the first time felt non-negotiable.

Taken (not by me) at the Asbury Park concert

They were touring in support of Sleepwalker. It’s not a top-five Kinks album for me, but records that arrive during your high school years tend to get a lifetime pass. And Dave Davies’s guitar work on that album? Absolutely stellar.

The setlist—reconstructed online, since my memory is… let’s say selective—was heavy on Sleepwalker tracks, including the title song, “Life on the Road,” “Stormy Sky,” “Full Moon,” “Life Goes On,” and “Juke Box Music,” alongside classics like “Waterloo Sunset,” “Sunny Afternoon,” “All Day and All of the Night,” “Lola,” and a rousing “You Really Got Me” to close things out.

I wish I could find the photo we took earlier that day—me, Ellen, Jamie, and Eric Weinberg, all high-school friends, pre-concert and probably buzzing with anticipation. It seems to have vanished into the same place as my clearer memories of the show.

A review of the show, in a local paper

But the important thing remains: July 3, 1977 was the night I first saw my favorite band. And once was never going to be enough.