Thanks to The Kinks for one of my favorite Christmas songs - one that did not get much airplay back when it came out. Probably due to the depressing subject matter of the song, but damn if the tune isn't a killer knock-off of Pete Townshend circa "Tommy".
Without further ado, from 1977 here is "Father Christmas":
But the last time I played Father Christmas
I stood outside a department store
A gang of kids came over and mugged me
And knocked my reindeer to the floor
When I was eleven years old, I had little understanding of the dramatic changes that were taking place in pop music. As a diehard Beatle fan I was of course on board with their 1966 single "Paperback Writer/Rain". That b-side though was a sign post that things were changing. Droning guitar, stop/start drumming, a vocal melody that moves at a glacial pace at odds with the instruments.
Looking back it seems clear that 1966 was a watershed year for a lot of bands, not just the Fab Four. And in fact one of my all time favorite Kinks albums was released that year. With "Face to Face" Ray Davies took a big step forward with his songwriting, beginning his investigation of the minutia of modern life and those who live it. There is of course the great three song arc (though not occurring consecutively on the LP) that traces the rise and fall of a man who once rode the wave of capitalism to its heights, only to lose everything and find himself with only a "Sunny Afternoon" to enjoy. That album is chock full of great tunes and arrangements. And for some reason the closing song - which tells no tawdry story but more than makes up for it with a joyful guitar lick, jaunty rhythm, and a lyrical precursor to Mr. Davies' songs which deal with memories - has always been a personal favorite just because it makes me happy. Really happy. So if you wish to get happy with me, give a listen to "I'll Remember".
With the release of Kinkdom in November 1965 the Kinks - or rather Reprise Records - had managed four LPs in the span of twelve months. There is no UK counterpart to this release, as it was cobbled together from singles A and B sides, the British EP Kwyet Kinks, and a leftover track from an early UK EP. That track - Louie Louie - makes its second US LP appearance as Reprise was desperate to fill up side two. By this point they had nearly emptied the vaults of Kinks material.
In terms of music this is an awesome album. All but two tracks were written by one of the Davies' brothers. But I would have ordered the tracks differently. For instance, why bury I Need You in the middle of side 2 when it cries out for either the lead-off track or the LP closer. But enough nitpicking. Reprise was right on to include A Well Respected Man, and even more so to release it as a single A side the previous month. Why it was relegated to an EP track in the UK by Pye is one of the great mysteries of Kinkdom. This would be the first of many character sketches to come in which Ray would explore the pompous and the pure. The amount of bile generated towards the "man" of this song is astonishing for a 1965 hit. Such a Shame is that rare early Kink's track to dwell in minor keys. Never Met A Girl Like You Before starts off with the opening riff from Tired Of Waiting For You, then completely switches gears into a perky R&B number. In the previously mentioned I Need You Ray Davies perfected the proto-metal genre he created with You Really Got Me. The sound is vastly improved over that earlier hit, as is the production which uses feedback to propel the song forward into the pile driving riff that carries through to the end. The Kinks would not return to this sort of raw rock until the late 70's, and even then they would never surpass it.
Today's bonus embedded video contains one of the oddest Kinks performances, this one of See My Friends, a single A side released the previous summer and also the closing track on side 1. The song's novel use of an Indian drone accompaniment (using western instruments) was no doubt ahead of its time. Ray produced one of his most touching lyrics in which he deals with the departure of his girl. We learn that she left by crossing the river, but why she left is never discussed. All we know is that she left him and he feels abandoned, but at least he does have his friends, who he watches playing across the river. The vocals on this performance are live, though I suspect the basic instrumental track may be canned. Ray uses a much more nasal voice for the "see my friends" lines, while Dave's harmony vocals during the "she is gone" are louder and fuller than Ray's lead. It is a very affected and affecting performance.
Kinda Kinks hit the US record shelves in August 1965, five months after the UK release with the same name. Many of the same tracks appeared, augmented by two 45 single A-sides, Ev'rybody's Gonna Be Happy (UK March 1965) and Set Me Free (from May 1965). Ev'rybody failed to make the top ten in Britain so the A and B sides were switched for the US market with Who'll Be The Next In Line getting the A honors when it was released in July 1965. Meanwhile a new single was out in the UK . Confusing? Reprise and Pye were each attempting to keep the masses buying Kinks' product, unsure just how long the British Invasion was going to last. Neither Set Me Free nor WBTNIL would come close to the top ten in the US, a steep drop-off from their first three hits.
The US LP kicks off with Look For Me Baby, a Motown influenced number in which Ray chides his lover "In your desperation you're going to look for someone else". There is a clumsiness to Ray's lead vocal that endears it to me, and the background vocals are a dead-on swipe from the Motown girl's group of that period. On Nothin' In This World Can Stop Me Worryin' About That Girl Ray opens up a new sound for the Kinks with a bluesy acoustic opening, then midway through the electric guitar and bass play a unison riff underneath his gentle lead vocal and propel the song to a most satisfactory end. Of the two previously mentioned singles Set Me Free is far superior, containing one of Ray's first falsetto attempts and a middle eight of impeccable beauty.
On the LP's final track The Kinks offer up a brilliant combination of Merseybeat songwriting and a chiming guitar riff that sounds as if the boys had been transplanted from sunny Southern California. Given that Something Better Beginning was recorded in December 1964, months before the Byrds would make their big splash, one wonders where Dave came up with this unique sound. Ray plays out this story of young love on the dance floor, one of the first of many Kinks songs to do so. And for once Ray is feeling positive, believing that this time it might just work out.
"Is this the start of another heart breaker Or something better beginning"
Kinks-Size was the Kinks' second Reprise LP, released about the same time as the UK Kinda Kinks in March 1965. You know the drill - the contents were not same, although there are a few tracks in common. The US release contains All Day And All Of The Night, the hit single from fall of 1964. Two tracks from Kinks (UK) also made their first US appearance.
Because I grew up with them I really love these early US releases. The UK versions are generally longer but not necessarily better, even if they were what the band intended. For the Kinks were being rushed to put out product, so I do not believe they put in much effort to create a cohesive collection. That would come with their landmark post-1966 albums down the road.
Today I shall take the easy route for my song of the day. Tired Of Waiting For You was the third Kinks hit single in a row, and the first to slow down the tempo and offer more than a wall of guitar noise. The real kicker here is the gorgeous middle eight in which Ray grants his girl the freedom to make her own way, yet pleads with her to make a decision.
It's your life And you can do what you want Do what you like But please don't keep-a me waiting
There are even some simple sweet harmony vocals to accompany his plea. The Kinks were growing and some real changes are just around the corner. Normally I prefer a live rather than lip-synced performance, but the Kinks have a priceless, purposely lame outdoor video with a surprise ending.
The folks at Reprise Records in the USA were a crafty bunch. They figured out how to multiply two 12" LPs into four. By shuffling a few tracks across LPs, reducing the track count by two or three, and adding non-LP single A and B sides, they succeeded in creating twice as much Kinks product as their counterpart Pye in the UK.
In the US that meant the first LP - known as You Really Got Me - would have only 11 tracks compared to 14 on Kinks. I Took My Baby Home had already been released on the B-Side of The Kinks initial Long Tall Sally single on the Cameo label. I'm A Lover Not A Fighter and the instrumental Revenge would be moved to the next LP. Given the high percentage of covers already on the record, it does not take away from the overall feel to miss these tracks. In fact it makes the listening time just about right.
Of course the real deals here are that harbinger of metal You Really Got Me, and Stop Your Sobbing which would be covered by the Pretenders early in their career. The remaining songs are rough around the edges and yet there is a real joy in the performances. Mr. Quaife lays out some awesome bass lines. Dave's solos on the two Chuck Berry covers are wild and wooly in the best possible way. I will go out on a limb here and state that for me the early Kinks were a much more fun R&B band than the Rolling Stones at this stage of their careers. Yeah I know - the accepted opinion is that the Stones were hands down the best at covering American R&B - but the fact is I never listen to anything they released before Satisfaction. I will take Ray Davies' more natural attempt at blues vocals over Mick Jagger's exagerated cotton-balls-in-mouth slurry any day of the week. If you think I speak blasphemy - well, sue me.
Case in point - dig Ray's performance on this clip of The Kinks covering Got Love If You Want It. No need for any further words from me. It speaks for itself.
Over two years had passed since The Kinks released Low Budget in 1979. Other than the One For the Road live double LP, there would be no new Kinks product until early 1982 with the release of Give The People What They Want. During that span I lost track of the band that had been such an important part of my life during the 60's and 70's. Fresh out of college I started a couple of synchronous but separate careers, one of those being a part time symphony musician. The duality of my professional life spilled over into my personal life, for as often as I listened to a Mahler symphony I was just as likely to put the latest Elvis Costello LP on my turntable. The pop side of my brain was voraciously consuming the great "new" music being produced on both sides of the Atlantic. In the span of a year I completely abandoned the latest output of the ex-Beatles, The Kinks, The Who, and all the other bands of my youth. In their stead came the Talking Heads, Pretenders, The Clash, Devo, B-52s, Madness, and a couple of dozen other bands of that period.
I was very aware of the Kinks' new found success with State of Confusion in 1983, as Come Dancing was all over MTV and the radio. And I was happy for them, but at the same time saddened that it just did not connect for me. I had become like a caffeine junky needing the latest fix of new wave outlandishness to keep my interest. There would be no more Kinks vinyl added to my collection after Low Budget. And in terms of my current Kinks blog project I have also come to the chronological end, although I will eventually go back to cover the first four US LPs that I skipped at the beginning of the month.
Years after the release of SOC I discovered a song that - believe it or not - had escaped my notice. This song had sneaked under my radar but once I heard it I was instantly addicted. Don't Forget to Dance may be the most touching song in the Ray Davies songbook. Who else would write a song about an lonely aging woman, the story told from Ray's vantage point, encouraging her to dance so that she can forget her loneliness and remember a time when she felt vital?
"But that's no reason to just stop living. That's no excuse to just give in to a sad and lonely heart."
And the line that just sends a quiver through my heart, as a retort to the younger apemen who taunt her for her age:
"And when they ask me how you dance, I say that you dance real close."
There is nothing in the synth-addled background that would identify this as a Kinks' song, but dammit the synths and the background vocals and Ray's lilting lead vocal and the percussion 101 drumming coalesce into a sum much greater than its parts.
Holy cow, Batman! I just finished my first listen to The Kinks Low Budget since the early eighties and it hit me that this is the killer follow-up to Some Girls that the Stones should have recorded. Scattered amidst the Keith Richard's riffs and driving drums are some juicy new wave nuggets too. At this point the Kinks had cast off most of their otherness that made them so special, but in return they were playing real honest-to-goodness rock'n'roll. And doing it as well as any band out there. There is no looking back.
Ray had his ear to the track and was picking up all sorts of interesting sounds from the burgeoning new wave and punk movements. Pressure pumps it up with a driving Ramone's fury. National Health takes the Stone's Shattered and adds a veneer of ska/reggae ala the Clash. Check out Holly Hughes bang-up posting on this LP's new wave influences over at the Ray Davies Forum. And there are some juicy Ray Davies' nuggets in the lyrics throughout. Misery has a couplet that really slays me:
"Until you learn to laugh you'll never come to any parties at my house/And if you go on like this the only house you'll ever visit is the nut house"
My only complaint about this LP is that a few of the songs go on too long, wearing out their welcome after they have had their say. In 1979 I bought the 12" single of (Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman which is the extended 6:01 edit on the LP. But I really wish I had bought the 7" 45rpm edit because it is a real corker. It lays out all the juicy parts and then is done in 3:26.
It has been a busy weekend in the Mister Pleasant household so I had to delay the next Kinks' LP posts until things settle down a bit. In the meantime here is a non-LP single from October 1967, the exquisite Autumn Almanac. No bullsh*t from me this time, just one of the finest 45 rpm singles ever cut.
The Kinks second LP release on Arista was Misfits, released in mid-1978. Cut from the same cloth as the previous year's Sleepwalker, the band takes a further step into the guitar rock of the pre-punk period. Of course the punk movement itself was already underway in the UK while in the USA the C.B.G.B.'s bands were beginning to make some noise. By this point the Kinks were a product of a different generation and yet somehow managed to tap into a market that had been so indifferent to them in their 60's heyday.
There are some good songs here, including Misfits, A Rock and Roll Fantasy, Black Messiah, Out of the Wardrobe, and Live Life. The band had developed into a very cohesive live unit at this point. I would rank it a few steps down from the previous effort but there is certainly nothing to be ashamed of here.
The Kinks pull out all the stops for the extremely Stones-ish Live Life. Ray takes a very pragmatic view about political causes and the extreme views of both ends of the social spectrum.
Trendy intellectuals always take action, For every cause that's ever been in fashion Weekend revolutionaries protest and sing Because they're dedicated followers of any old thing
With a hilarious two word fragment from his 1966 single he puts a whole movement in its place.
Putting the concept albums behind, The Kinks moved forward with an album that became a blueprint for what would follow until the end of their career. Sleepwalker paved a path into the rock mainstream for a band that had never been a follower. The glove did not quite fit - and for me that's why it works. Little bits of the real Ray Davies keeps popping up in both the lyrics and the music. Years later I read a quote from Dave about Ray's habit of sleepwalking. Coupled with Ray's insomnia, suddenly the song made sense to me. The sentiment reflected in Brother is carried aloft by a slow lilting melody in a gorgeous middle period Beach Boys style, with Ray sounding exactly like Carl Wilson on the high chorus parts.
The album produced a couple of entries into the pop charts in the USA. Sleepwalker kicks off with a great jangly guitar, a perky verse melody and a classic rock construction, ending with a repeated harmonic line over which the band plays with a real gusto and Ray and band literally bellow the chorus. It is a cathartic moment. Juke Box Music offers a glimpse at how great the Davies Brothers could be when sharing the vocal lines, and Dave lets loose with some very fine guitar playing. Listening to the radio in 1977 was wonderful for me because there was new Kinks music being heard by the masses.
If Ray had taken a further step down the path he had started with Preservation, The Kinks would likely have come to an end. I wonder what he might have produced on his own at the point, but the fact is he didn't, and the band moved ahead to reach their highest levels of success on this side of the Atlantic. This is the starting point for that next journey.
The last of The Kinks musical theater albums hit the record bins in January 1976. Schoolboys In Disgrace is a prequel of sorts to the Preservation albums, as it covers the last of the school days of the character Flash. On the non-musical level, I think the LP cover is the best of The Kinks RCA years. The front comic drawing of a school boy smarting from corporal punishment has to be seen to be believed, and the back shows the now five Kinks in schoolboy attire, and Ray Davies' expression is worth the price of the LP.
The music is a move back towards the rock'n'roll world. The spoken sections and theatrical interludes of the previous concept albums are gone. The musical styles run the gamut from 50s doo wop to contemporary rock. Its a fun romp but I wish it were better. Dave's guitar is front and center on several tunes, and he certainly proves that he has the chops. A further move towards a more mainstream 70s rock sound is just around the corner.
Here is one of the real rock'n'roll cuts - No More Looking Back. Thanks to Vivalabeat for providing a live video on Youtube:
Coming out of the three album Preservation series, The Kinks were still an eight man band plus additional backup singers. At the time Ray Davies stated that after the intensity of the previous albums he wanted something lighter and less serious. The rest of the band - well, at least Dave for certain - were growing tired of the concept albums. But Ray persevered to complete and release A Soap Opera one year after Preservation Act 2.
This album tells its tale in a single LP with dialogue interspersed to assist with the story telling. It is cute and listenable but I rarely find myself pulling out the vinyl. There are not any songs that I would list as a favorite, although the first song opens the record with a wall of sound. Ray has been accused of "borrowing" from himself and other bands, though I do not hear it so much. But in this case the opening riff on Everybody's a Star (Starmaker) owes a heavy debt to The Move's awesome Do Ya. It loses some steam after the opening salvo but is one of the perkiest tunes on the album.
Sunday is a day off for the official Kinks Chronological Album Listen. But I am so far into this thing now that I cannot let go, so let's take a look at an album that is not a part of the official canon. The Great Lost Kinks Album came out as a USA-only release in 1973 when Reprise decided to recover some of their investment after the Kinks bailed for RCA a few years earlier. It was a hodgepodge of unreleased tracks and singles B-sides mostly from 1968-69.
I bought the LP when it was released, as it came out soon after I became a Kinks fanatic. Little did I know that I have been sitting on one of the rarest Kinks' recordings around. Only recently has it come to my attention that it was pulled from distribution in 1975 as a result of a lawsuit filed by Ray Davies. The expanded CD releases include the B-sides as extra tracks but I don't know if the unreleased tracks are available elsewhere.
Maybe it is because I just cannot extricate myself from the Kinks "second" period music - Face to Face up through Lola - but the music on TGLKA seems so darned intimate and touching. Employing the classic four man Kinks sound, you will immediately feel at home here if you like The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society.
For a change of pace I am going to write just a little about each song. The first two rank fairly low on the Mister Pleasant-o-meter but the remaining dozen are charming and then some.
Plastic Man - unfortunately this was released as a single A-side. Other than the cleverly Monkee-ish "ba-oom bah bah bah" section, this song is the one Kinks failure in their otherwise stellar 66-70 singles releases.
Groovie Movies - ostensibly from Dave's never released first solo album. He wrote some great songs over the years but this is not one of them
Pictures In The Sand - apparently an outtake from TVGPS, a slight country tune which points the way towards where the band would be heading in the 1970s.
Lavender Hill - great drumming, bassoon!, one of the verses is instrumental with a wah wah guitar solo line, ethereal vocal harmonies, and a rare Beach Boys type vocal section at the end. Also a few hard-to-hear mellotron licks.
The Way Love Used To Be - from the Percy soundtrack. As far as I can determine, Reprise included it on TGLKA because Percy was never released in the USA. A lovely contemplative song with acoustic guitar accompaniment. Ray sings as if his heart is in his throat. Touching.
Mr. Songbird (yes another Kinks "Mr." song) - That rare truly happy Kinks song with a mellotron sounding like a duo of flutes and a very jazzy contrapuntal vocalized section sounding a bit like the Swingles Singers
This Man He Weeps Tonight - Dave's best effort here. It opens with an awesome guitar riff doubled on bass. The guitar work throughout is gorgeous but way too much in the back of the mix. Mr. Avory gets in some really good hits.
Till Death Us Do Part - Ray's great theme song for a 1969 film based on Britain's long running sitcom (and basis for the USA's All In The Family). Like Dead End Street, a trombone plays a major role here and its use is spot-on spectacular. The vocal harmonies in the chorus are a harbringer of that la-la-la-iest Kinks' tune - Wonderboy. This song is a little lost treasure.
There Is No Life Without Love - credited to both Davies' brothers, a sweet little tune with simple accompaniment of mandolin bass and drums. I would guess that there are no more than twenty distinct words total in the lyrics, but you know it just doesn't matter when the melody is so wonderful and these two sometimes warring brothers are singing octave harmonies so peacefully.
Misty Water - It starts with succinct piano chords beneath Ray's delicately delivered opening verse, but things really get rolling on the second verse when the guitar kicks in. But wait there is even more fun - the chorus transmogrifies this into a garage rock sing-a-long. There is even a cheesy 60's farfisa organ buried deep in the mix. Then a short ethereal vocalized section appears as if we suddenly dropped into Gogi Grant's The Wayward Wind only to be knocked off our feet with Dave's ferocious guitar chords to bring us back for another pass.
When I Turn Off The Living Room Light - The opening line seems to get some people really angry but I think Ray is totally innocent of any sort of ethnic or racial slur. The lyrics may seem thoughtless at the beginning but by the final verse it is clear that the singer puts himself in the same boat as his less than lovely partner - "We don't feel so ugly, we don't feel so draggy, we don't feel so twisted up tight/and we don't feel as ugly as we really are, when we turn off the living room light."
I'm Not Like Everybody Else - The B-side to Sunny Afternoon. It seems to me as if Ray is singing with his best Dave vocal immitation. Or maybe it is Dave - I am never sure. A true classic, this one bridges the gap between The Kinks and The Who, with a few dollops of garage rock thrown in for good measure. Dave's guitar is thunderous here.
Where Did My Spring Go? - Opens with a piano and guitar intro, with Dave's guitar work sounding vaguely like something off of a Jefferson Airplane album. This contains some of Ray's most angry and bleak lyrics. "Remember all those sleepless nights, making love by candlelight, and every time you took my love, you were shortening my life."
Rosemary Rose - Luckily Ray just cannot stop singing about his sister. Starting off like an early Del Shannon rocker with a mandolin standing in for the musitron, the song adds a harpsichord for the middle eight. And the priceless lyrics are scolding yet tender - "You look nothing like a child, yet you're such a little baby/Chewing on your liquorish gum, and cigarettes."
I love this album dearly and cannot for the life of me choose only one song for your listening pleasure. So here are two - first Rosemary Rose:
And the tale of Anne Maria and her daughters in Misty Water:
Preservation Act 2 really gets down to the nitty gritty of the story of the two principal characters Flash and Mr. Black in Ray Davies epic saga. Act 1 is stronger in terms of the tunes, but the drama really hits hard in this follow-up. Overall I find the first two sides of this double LP very strong, and side four really pulls out all the stops. There is a definite Weill/Brecht feeling throughout, with the magnificent horn oompahs and woodwind runs in the verse parts of Second-Hand Car Spiv sounding as if they came from a lost manuscript for A Threepenny Opera.
Reviewers back in the day considered the live road show version to be superior to the recordings. Having seen it then, I would agree that the combination of the expanded forces on the stage, projected images and a reduced, concise song lineup made for excellent theater. But the records really do hold their own, even with the spoken "announcements" in Act 2 which help to flesh out the story with a news announcer censoring the proceedings according to the wishes of Mr. Black's dictatorship.
It is weird and wonderful to hear female voices on a Kinks record, and especially the ladies-only Scrapheap City. I also picked up a 70s glam vibe on parts of Artificial Man and Salvation Road that I don't believe I ever noticed before - shades of Mott the Hoople! Some of the most heart-rending moments for me include the final lines in Nothing Lasts Forever - "Your love will fade but mine will last forever". This song would be a great companion to The Party's Over and the arrangement reminds me of a broken-heart love song in a big 50's musical. And Flash's plea for acceptance in Scum Of The Earth - "Before you condemn me my friends, I suggest that you look deep inside you" - he's not about to apologize for being human.
It may be the oddest combination of rock, musical theater, and political commentary ever produced. It is a very long way from Face to Face. Those Kinks no longer exist by this juncture. At the time I fought with myself on whether I would continue to follow them into their new world. I would like to think that as I grew older, I became wiser and more open to something different. Listening again after so many years I find Preservation to be refreshing and extremely current to today's world.
Who else was this musically adventurous in the mid 1970s? Preservation is one of Ray Davies' crowning moments.
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.
Neither trend setters nor trend followers, the Kinks marched to their own drummer, at least up until the late 70s. As is the case with bands that have lengthy careers, changes in musical styles and structure affect fans differently. Beginning in 1972 the Kinks entered a period that would soon evolve into a series of musical theater pieces. The album that fills the gap between that future and what came before is Everybody's In Show-Biz. At the time of its release I was very fond of this record and the song from it that became a staple of progressive FM radio - Celluloid Heroes.
Over the years my initial feelings began to wane as I found myself pulled back to their 1960s output. After listening to this album today for the first time in a long spell I wish I could say that it stirred those good old memories. It pains me to say that it just does not pull me in. It is not the "poor me, being a rock star is so hard" sentiments expressed in the lyrics. I would easily grant Ray Davies his right to wail and moan if only the songs themselves carried the melodic invention that he so amply demonstrated heretofore. Muswell was a bit shy on the melody front but more than made up for it with its crisp country arrangements and biting lyrics. For the two songs here that actually have wonderful melodies, one has lyrics so clumsy that I find myself cringing.
On the other hand the second disk is quite a fun listen. A chance for the boys to bring their boozy on-stage persona to vinyl for some wonderfully sloppy live performances of tunes taken mostly from the previous year's Muswell Hillbillies.
Luckily for today's post there is one studio song here that is more than worthy of repeated listening. Sitting in My Hotel finds Ray in a reflective mood, musing about what his friends might think of his present situation. He is in a funk, treading water. One gets the feeling that he knows he has to find a way to move forward, but he is unsure of himself. When assuming the viewpoint of his friends he cast doubts over everything from his haute couture to feeding his insomnia by watching old movies on TV all night long. His self deprecating humor here is really quite touching, and the tune is one of his lovliest creations.
In 1971 the Kinks jumped ship from Pye/Reprise records to RCA. And the first product from that move was Muswell Hillbillies, possibly the most surprising change of pace by any major long term rock band. The production is pared down to bare bones. Musically there are big changes too - the harpsichord is out, the electronic organ is in. Complex harmonies are replaced by sing-along choruses. But this is not a simple record by any means. The Kinks as a band had never played together so well before. There is a relaxed yet intense vibe, and the entire album holds together as a single piece. Perhaps the prospect of finally being paid some decent money for their troubles brought this about, but regardless of the genesis, the band delivers in spades.
The lyrics are also tighter and focused like a laser on the ills of modern society. Ray's singing takes on a whole new dimension. For each song he has devised a sound specific to the content therein. It works beautifully for me, but it does require shedding all my conceptions and expectations from what came before. This is a new Kinks.
20th Century Man is the lead off track, and serves as a blueprint for what is to follow. Listen to the chugging acoustic guitar lick after a brief intro, then kick into high gear when the drums enter. Midway through the electric guitar enters and a middle section begins. It is unearthly in its beauty. The melody has the clarity of an old English folksong. And Ray gets down to the dirty details of the cause of his melancholy:
I was born in a welfare state Ruled by bureaucracy Controlled by civil servants And people dressed in grey Got no privacy, got no liberty Cos the twentieth century people Took it all away from me.
I was thrilled when I noticed that the Kinks Chronological album listen at the Ray Davies Forum had reserved a day for Percy. You are probably asking yourself "why on earth" I would care about a soundtrack album that was never released on LP in the US and is half full of mediocre instrumentals. Well let me tell you - I consider the non-instrumentals on Percy to be every bit as wonderful as the songs from the Kinks 1966-69 glory years.
Check out Holly Hughes' assessment of The Way Love Used To Be. Or Animals In The Zoo to hear the next installment after Apeman of Ray Davies' Jamaican voice. Or the lovely Moments in which Dave turns in a short guitar solo in the style of Abbey Road period George Harrison.
But the real deal here is God's Children. Considering that it was the theme song for a forgotten film about the first penis transplant (really I kid you not), it is quite amazing that the studio actually placed the song in the movie. As it takes a diametrically opposed view to any sort of organ transplant. Regardless of one's religious beliefs, there is no denying that the melody is of the first order of loveliness. And Ray's singing is so emotive and impassioned that I have no doubt that he meant every word.
"'Cause we are all God's children And he got no right to change us Oh, we gotta go back the way the good lord made us all"
Even when his is pissed off, Ray Davies can be hilarious. And he was very po'd when he wrote many of the songs on Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One. Mostly ticked at big business, especially the record biz (more on that in a minute). Granted there are some warm and lovely songs here, including a beauty written by Dave - Strangers - and Ray's touching but subtle warning to his brother - A Long Way From Home. And of course there is Lola, which resurrected The Kinks career and proved without a doubt that Ray is the king of the 45 rpm single. Too bad that the glory days of top 40 radio were already on the wane.
The success of Ray's little ode to a transvestite resulted in his pithy recount of its effects in Top Of the Pops. His anger reaches even deeper in The Moneygoround, which includes his astute observation:
"Everyone take a little bit here and a little bit there Do they all deserve money from a song that they've never heard They don't know the tune and they don't know the words But they don't give a damn"
The song could have been an ultimate downer if not for the cheery musical hall treatment that turns the anger into one of the funniest songs in the Kinks career.
