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Victoria

Certain Songs #1172: The Miss Alans – “Victoria”

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Album: Blusher
Year: 1994

Oh yeah, “Victoria.” While it’s only my second favorite song on Blusher, it’s probably a contender for the greatest song The Miss Alans ever did. How in the hell “Victoria” didn’t totally and completely take over alternative rock playlists in 1994 is still beyond me.

Except, of course, for all of its charms, it really was’t a radio-friendly single: there was no chorus, and of course the entire last minute of the song was an instrumental rave-up and rave-down, featuring no vocals whatsoever. Hell, even “Marquee Moon” featured one last verse at the end.

That said, the version of “Victoria” that ended up on Blusher remains an marvelous gem of a psychedelic rock song: half Television and half the Velvet Underground, while remaining entirely The Miss Alans. Not to mention an absolute crowd-pleaser live, where the rave-up part went a full minute longer, because why the hell not?

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Certain Songs #859: The Kinks – “Victoria”

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Album: Arthur (Or The Fall And Decline of The British Empire)
Year: 1969

And then everything changed again. After the relatively intimate songs of Something Else By The Kinks and The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation, Ray Davies took up Granada TV’s offer to write a concept album that was based upon, um, the history of Great Britain in the 20th century.

But Ray Davies being Ray Davies, it was really about his brother-in-law, Arthur, who had recently emigrated to Australia with his favorite older sister, Rose.

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