The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society

Certain Songs #858: The Kinks – “All of My Friends Were There”

April 23, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society
Year: 1968

One of the things about The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society is that it’s one of those albums that is so loaded with weird, disparate songs that — outside of the title track and probably “Big Sky,” — there isn’t a whole lot of consensus as to what the best songs are.

So I’m guessing that people those who were scandalized, or at least puzzled, by me picking “Phenomenal Cat” yesterday are probably utterly gobsmacked by “All Of My Friends Were There,” which might be the weirdest song on the whole record.

Certain Songs #857: The Kinks – “Phenomenal Cat”

April 22, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society
Year: 1968

Right. While other bands could emulate The Kinks riff-rocking and social commentary songs ::coughs:: The Who ::coughs:: there were songs on The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society that were totally and utterly unemulatable, that really could really have come from Raymond Douglas Davies.

“Phenomenal Cat” is one of those songs.

Certain Songs #856: The Kinks – “Big Sky”

April 21, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society
Year: 1968

And how about that lovely album cover? Framing the four Kinks outdoors, none of them smiling, situated somehow simultaneously in front of and behind a glowing, swirling canopy, it represented the music within much better than the garish, overthought covers of Face to Face, Arthur, Lola or even Something Else by The Kinks.

That cover — like the music on the album — is mysterious and eternal, capturing a moment that was somehow out of time. Pete Quaife left The Kinks for good just after The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, so among other things, that cover photo is one of the last ones taken of the original quartet.

Certain Songs #855: The Kinks – “The Village Green Preservation Society”

April 20, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society
Year: 1968

Two years in the making, with multiple configurations — there was a scrapped U.S. album that featured about half of these tracks called Four More Respected Gentlemen — and the entire Something Else By The Kinks album recorded after the Ray Davies had the original concept, there is absolutely no reason The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society should hold together as well as it does.

But it does, of course, and that goes to the incredibly high quality of the songs that Ray Davies wrote, the singularity of his worldview — especially for the late 1960s — and the quantum leap in musicianship in his band. Not to mention the trust he’d earned. In 1964, Dave Davies would have laughed at songs like “Animal Farm” or “Phenomenal Cat,” but just a few years later, he provided the voice of the cat.