On this Day - The Kinks at SUNY Binghamton, 1979

On this day forty-seven years ago, I saw The Kinks in concert at SUNY Binghamton, the university I’d transferred to after a year at NYU.

My ticket stub. Not a stub, technically, since it isn't ripped.

Like every music-obsessed high school kid, I loved a lot of bands, but my two favorites were Jethro Tull and The Kinks. (Yes, wildly different bands—don’t ask.) By the time I landed in Binghamton, I had converted all my new friends into fellow Kinks devotees. So when we found out the band was actually coming to our campus, we lost our minds.

Evidence of my fanaticism: I hand painted the cover of their album Lola vs. Powerman and the MoneyGoRound on the back of my jeans jacket.

Sleepwalker (1977) had already been released two years before, Misfits had just dropped, and Low Budget was a few months away. We decided to go all out for this show. We liberated eight trays from the cafeteria, painted letters on them to spell out VICTORIA, and planned to hold them up mid-show. We also bought a stack of paper plates, each labeled with a Kinks song title—tossing plates on stage is part of a long-running, very New York tradition whose origin is probably lost to time (or beer).

Plumeau, Dweezle, Me, and Chris (Plumeau's brother) with our trays.

Tickets were general admission, so we rushed in early and claimed a prime spot near the stage. The opening act was supposed to be Boyzz, but I’m pretty sure it was a (very shitty) band called  TKO who showed up instead. We endured them.

A poster for the show that I ripped off the wall and still have, almost a half century later.

Then The Kinks hit the stage, and the whole place detonated. Paper plates flew everywhere. Ray Davies stepped up to the mic, surveyed the chaos, and said, “Plates—I love ’em.” Then they launched into “Sleepwalker,” and the crowd went berserk.

We held up our VICTORIA trays at one point. Ray squinted at them and pretended to sound out the letters phonetically, but alas, they didn’t play it. At another moment he spotted a plate labeled “Daylight” at his feet and strummed a few bars—pretty great, considering it’s not a song they usually perform. Before the show, I’d seen a stagehand tape a giant note to the floor reading YOU ARE IN BINGHAMTON. Mid-set, Ray read it, looked up, and cheerfully announced, “It’s so lovely to be here in Bing-HAM-ton”, emphasizing the ham and not the bing. We forgave him.

They played nineteen songs, heavy on Sleepwalker and Misfits, plus the soon-to-be-released song “Low Budget,” which Ray turned into a rowdy call-and-response. Of course the classics were there: “You Really Got Me,” “Lola,” “All Day and All of the Night,” “Celluloid Heroes.” Great surprises included “The Hard Way,” the most rockin’ track from Schoolboys in Disgrace, and “Get Back in Line,” one of their gems from Lola vs. Powerman. They also pulled out “Slum Kids,” an unreleased Preservation-era track that has somehow never gotten a proper studio version. And “Alcohol,” performed with a Heineken bottle balanced theatrically on Ray’s head, absolutely brought down the house. Perfect song for a drunk college crowd.

After the show, I spotted that same Heineken bottle sitting on the stage and begged a stagehand for it. He handed it over—still with beer inside. I capped it, sealed it with wax, and proudly displayed it for years before finally admitting that keeping an old beer bottle didn’t exactly scream “adulthood.”

The backstage pass gifted to me by... I have no idea, actually.

I did, however, keep my ticket stub, and a backstage pass gifted to me by a friend who worked on the Binghamton Concert Commission—souvenirs from one of the great nights of my college years, and from seeing one of my all-time favorite bands at peak stage power.

Here’s the full set list:

Sleepwalker

Life on the Road

Permanent Waves

Lola

Sleepless Night

Misfits

Low Budget

(Wish I Could Fly Like Superman)

Where Have All the Good Times Gone

The Hard Way

Get Back in Line

Celluloid Heroes

Trust Your Heart

You Really Got Me / Batman Theme

Slum Kids

Alcohol

A Rock ’n’ Roll Fantasy

All Day and All of the Night

David Watts