Ray Davies, The Sage Gateshead

THE voice of Ray Davies, king of The Kinks and one of the founding fathers of British rock, may not be what it once was.

Perhaps it was never all that much in the first place.

Either way (and surely "The K word", as Ray calls them, were more about the songs than the voice), the great man's performance at The Sage Gateshead contained Waterloo Sunset - among the finest, most evocative pieces of pop music ever written - so I cared not.

The first half of the show was an acoustic affair, just two guitars to accompany that occasionally faltering vocal but boasting a hat full of bona fide classics, with Where Have All The Good Times Gone and Sunny Afternoon among the early crowd-pleasers.

Just when it was all getting a bit Sing-a-long-a-Ray (magic songs that shouldn't really be tackled by the out-of-tune masses) he trots out a thumping Autumn Almanac - a "bit of a silly song", he says - and it's sharp and clever and spot on.

This is the first of a number of tunes that remind you that, like them or not, Blur pretty much owe their career to this man.

There's plenty of chat and lots of him imploring the crowd to sing, and when he surrenders a superb, rasping Dedicated Follower of Fashion to us, I remember he's earned the right to perform these songs how he chooses. If Bob Dylan can deliver scarcely-recognisable versions, we'll let Ray have a cockney knees-up if he wants.

And then, from nowhere, comes a swirling, psychedelic, captivating See My Friends. Two acoustic guitars like sitars taking us back to the Sixties.

There also follows I'm Not Like Everybody Else, still impressive and angry, a piece of writing that in many ways epitomises the pop rebellion Ray helped to conceive. It comes amid a wonderful section he dubs Songs That Were Written By Ray That Were Used In Movies, that features a thoroughly modern Well Respected Man About Town (Juno, if you were wondering).

Then we get the band, with cracking renditions of All Day And All of the Night, Tired of Waiting For You, Set Me Free and, finally, Lola. Ray can still rock.

Before this comes Waterloo Sunset and it's wistful and wonderful. I've wanted to hear this tune played live for years and the audience is rapt. Suddenly, I don't really care if it's a little croaky-voiced, because I am in paradise.