Where are all the angry young men now?

I sincerely hope that I did not chase away any hard-core Kinks fans with yesterday's post. There are no worries today. The demons of 1972 were thankfully gone by 1973. Ray Davies recovered his talent for composing stellar melodies on Preservation Act I. In fact this album is so tuneful that it really deserves a dozen listens just to let it all soak in.

The storyline of the Preservation LPs is fairly dense, and since this is Part 1 it serves as an introduction with more of the details to come with Part 2. My first live Kinks experience was about this time, though my rusty memory does not recall if Part 2 had been released yet. But I can tell you that it was like no other concert I have experienced. The stage was filled with a horn section, floozies, and the (at this point) five Kinks. There has always been a lot of conjecture about the alcohol level in the Kinks during their live shows from this period. If they were not tipsy they certainly put on a good act. But it fit perfectly in to the proceedings. For a detailed description of one of the live Preservation shows check out 10th December, 1974, Santa Monica. The end of the show was one encore after another of their well known hits. But the Preservation music already had the audience on its feet. So the encores were just gravy. (and delicious gravy too!)

This album is very even, in that every song is great in its own way. So it was a coin toss to pick a song for today's post. First is a short segment of a video for Sitting In the Midday Sun, followed by a the entire song without video. If anyone knows where the first video originated, and if it the full song is available I would love to know about it.