It's hard to pass up any opportunity to feature a Kinks song or two, so a happy belated birthday to Kinks lead guitarist/ singer Dave Davies, who celebrated his 75th yesterday. Brother Ray was the main songwriter for the group, but Dave became celebrated as one of the greatest, most innovative guitarists in rock 'n' roll history. For his birthday, we've got two very different, early Kinks songs, one less- played, the other well- known: 1965's softer "Set Me Free" (that's him at 1:22) and 1964's iconic "You Really Got Me," their first #1 hit. Dave's creativeness came out on the latter, when he popularized (if not invented) the distorted power chord by using a razor blade to slit the speaker cone before running it through a larger Vox amp. It became the band's signature sound, and influenced decades of rock musicians ever since. Hope you enjoy.
