We're Not Who You Think We Are
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.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #857: The Kinks – “Phenomenal Cat”
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.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #856: The Kinks – “Big Sky”
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.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #855: The Kinks – “The Village Green Preservation Society”
Album: Something Else By The Kinks
Year: 1967
One the short list of Prettiest Songs Ever Recorded, Every Song Ever Division, “Waterloo Sunset” is an absolutely titanic achievement. It’s usually listed as Ray Davies’ greatest song, and it’s really on a par with only “You Really Got Me” in terms of impact and influence.
And there absolutely no disagreement here: when I first got Something Else By The Kinks, I played the entire album — learned to love the entire album, really — in order to get to hear “Waterloo Sunset” another time.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #854: The Kinks – “Waterloo Sunset”
Album: Something Else by The Kinks
Year: 1968
The thing about writing about an album as jam-packed with great songs as Something Else By The Kinks is trying to narrow it down to only a handful of songs, especially since it’s only the first of four utter classics in a row.
So, it’s been difficult to pick which songs to write about. While the opening and closing tracks were always going to be written about, just because I didn’t write entries on the likes of the jaunty “Harry Rag,” the rollicking “Love Me Till The Sun Shines,” the domestic drama of “Situation Vacant” or the psychedelic “Lazy Old Sun” — notice how even the song titles are evocative — doesn’t mean I couldn’t have.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #853: The Kinks – “Afternoon Tea”
Album: Something Else By The Kinks
Year: 1967
It’s weird being in a band with your brother. Especially if you really don’t have all that much in common with said brother. So it’s no wonder that Ray Davies found his relationship with his younger, wilder brother such a fertile subject for songs, from “Dandy” (possibly) to “Rock and Roll Fantasy” (definitely).
But my favorite is the allegorical “Two Sisters,” which, in a great bit of sequencing follows Dave Davies’ allegorical song about giving up (or at least toning down) his rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle with Ray’s allegorical song about being jealous of said rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #852: The Kinks – “Two Sisters”
Album: Something Else By The Kinks
Year: 1967
“Death of a Clown” is a weird bird in Kinks world. Not only was it originally released as a Dave Davies solo single — which reached #3 on the U.K. charts! — it’s one of the very few songs credited to both Davies brothers.
None of which I knew, of course, when I first bought Something Else by The Kinks back in late 1980 during a phase where I dug heavily into the late 1960s Kinks. I’m not even sure if I knew it was Dave singing, which of course seems obvious now, but I was trying to absorb The Kinks without questioning much at that time.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #851: The Kinks – “Death of a Clown”
Album: Something Else By The Kinks
Year: 1967
Studio chatter: “This is the master. Nice and smooth.”
And with a backwards “1,2,3,4!” The Kinks kick off one of the greatest four-album runs in rock history. Four albums that are chock full of songs that are heartbreaking and hilarious, rocking and tender, satiric and sentimental and are unlike anything else that any band had ever produced.
And my favorite album of that period — my favorite Kinks album, and one of my favorite albums of the 1960s — is the one that started the run, the most unassuming of the lot: Something Else By The Kinks.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #850: The Kinks – “David Watts”
Album: Face to Face
Year: 1966
Most of the best songs on Face to Face sketches of people doing whatever it was to fill up their lives, whether it was hanging out on the proto-social media of the party line, taking Hawaiian vacations, or pining for a daughter who has left home.
And in that vein was one of the meanest songs that Ray Davies ever wrote, the scathingly hilarious near-throwaway “Session Man,” which was not only at least partially about zeitgeist pianist Nicky Hopkins, also got Hopkins to play a near-classical harpsichord part at the beginning.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #849: The Kinks – “Session Man”
Album: Face to Face
Year: 1966
1966’s Face to Face was a quantum leap for The Kinks; proof positive that Ray Davies could fill an entire album full of witty, observational songs in the vein of “Dedicated Follower of Fashion” and “Well Respected Man.”
And its lead single, “Sunny Afternoon,” was a microcosm of everything that made Face to Face so great.
Anchored by a descending piano riff battling an almost jaunty guitar riff, “Sunny Afternoon” was a delicious contradiction from start to finish, and it gave The Kinks their first U.K. #1 since “Tired of Waiting For You.” (Which, to be honest, was only 18 months prior, but life came at you fast in the mid-60s pop game.)
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #848: The Kinks – “Sunny Afternoon”