AN IMAGINARY COMPILATION ALBUM : #350: THE KINKS

FIRST UP…….

I have no idea why, all of a sudden, all comments are being recorded as ‘anonymous’.  I am trying to find a solution.  In the meantime, if you do make a comment, could I suggest that you add your name at the end (if you want to!!!).

LUNCHTIME UPDATE

Still no long-term solution, but in the meantime, I’m going to go back and ‘amend’ all the anonymous comments, so that names and contact addresses are added. Who knows, it might turn out to be a solution (oh, and I’ve been alerted by flimflamfan that he was unable to post a comment at all and he’s sent me it by text!  – I’ll sort that out too.

Now that’s out of the way, let’s get on with today’s business……..

I thought, given I’ve been relying heavily on very welcome and diverse guest contributions for ICAs in recent times, that I should do #350 in the series myself.  And turn my attention to a band whose recognition on this blog is way overdue.

This one will be very single-heavy, as that’s really the medium by which I know today’s long-overdue recipients of an ICA.  I’m turning to the words of Stephen Erlewine, over at allmusic, for the bio.

“One of the great bands of the rock & roll era, the Kinks pioneered hard rock with such wild early ravers as “You Really Got Me” and “All Day and All of the Night,” singles that inspired such peers as the Who and David Bowie while also pointing the way forward for punk and metal.

“That turned out to be the first act in a career that ran into the 1990s, making them the only British Invasion band outside of the Rolling Stones to last that long. Where the Stones always occupied centre stage, the Kinks operated on the margins, both by accident and design.

“Lead singer/songwriter Ray Davies fashioned himself as an observer of human behaviour, developing a gift for character and commentary that flourished on such mid-’60s singles as “Dedicated Follower of Fashion” and “Sunny Afternoon.” As their peers indulged themselves in trippy psychedelia, the band embraced the idiosyncrasies of British culture on The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, a record that helped shape the sound and aesthetic of indie rock in the decades to come.

“The Kinks may have been outsiders, especially during a stretch in the ’70s when Davies pushed the band to record elaborate rock operas, yet they always belonged to the mainstream, managing to bring “Lola” into the Top Ten in 1970 before settling into a long decade on the road where they cultivated a fervent fan base in America. This hard work paid off in the early ’80s when the exuberant nostalgia of “Come Dancing” rode an MTV endorsement into the Top Ten, giving the group another decade of work. Over those ten years, the Kinks were eventually whittled down to the core of Ray Davies and his brother Dave, siblings who battled but usually found common ground in the band. The pair split in the mid-’90s, just as Brit-pop pushed their influence to the forefront, but rumours of a reunion continued to circulate as late as the 2020s, when both brothers said they were collaborating on new music. ”

So, without any further ado:-

SIDE A

1. You Really Got Me

The band’s third 45, released in August 1964, and their first #1.   It’s opening three seconds have always been among the instantly recognisable in all music, no matter the genre.    Seemingly, it was originally intended to be recorded as a laid-back number, with it originally written on an upright piano.  It was Dave Davies who decided it sounded better as a guitar number…..a loud and bluesy guitar number.

2. Sunny Afternoon

This was just two years after You Really Got Me, but the fact it was the band’s 13th single only demonstrates just how prolific they were.  Between 1964 and 1968, there were 5 studio albums, 23 singles and, 1 live album, not forgetting 6 compilations as well as 8 EPs that were released specifically for the American market.   No wonder the Davies brothers got rich quick, and it’s no real surprise that, as with a number of their contemporaries, they were soon writing about their taxation woes (although it is hard to feel any sympathy, even at almost 50 years removal).  This was their third #1 single in the UK.

3. David Watts

The opening track from the 1967 album, Something Else By The Kinks.  And yes, its inclusion on the ICA is inspired by the later cover by The Jam, a take on things that first got me really interested in finding out about The Kinks as up to now, I just knew of them as an old band whose songs often got played on Golden Hours or as requests from listeners on Radio 1.

4. Lola

Talking about hearing songs on the radio, this was the one I reckon I heard the most.  Possibly it’s down to the fact that it was released in 1970, around about the time I turned 7 years old, and that it has a nursery-rhyme ‘spellathon’ chorus that tends to stick in the minds of kids that age.  I, of course, had no idea what the hell the song was about.  This reached #2 in August 1970, kept off the top spot by Elvis Presley crooning about The Wonder Of You.

Fun fact : The BBC banned the track, but not because it was worried about gender issues.  The original version of the song had the words ‘Coca-Cola’ in the lyrics, and so was banned, as you couldn’t do product placement.  Ray Davies had to fly back from New York to London to change the lyric to ‘cherry cola’ to allow a single version to be cut.

5. Dead End Street

The sound of Britpop some 30 years before it became ‘a thing’.    A #5 single in late 1966.

SIDE B

1. Waterloo Sunset

I reckon most folk will suggest this as the greatest of all the songs written and recorded by The Kinks.  It’s a beautiful and timeless love song, despite being very much a product of the 60s in sound and texture. It’s an evoking number, quite possibly the unofficial anthem of the city of London, although there have been so many changes to the skyline over the decades that it must be nigh on impossible to recreate the scenes imagined by Ray Davies. a #2 hit in May 1967, kept off the top by Silence Is Golden by The Tremeloes, which seems to have been a huge miscarriage of justice.

2. All Day and All Of The Night

The follow-up to You Really Got Me didn’t stray too far from the template of 1964.  Another huge and catchy guitar-riff, one that subsequently has been mimicked on countless occasions – not least by The Doors when they penned Hello, I Love You just a few years later.   It’s worth mentioning at this juncture that Dave Davies is rarely recalled as a teenage prodigy in musical histories, but he was just 17 years old when he came up with these hot licks.  This stalled at #2 in November 1964…..kept off the top by the poptastic Baby Love by The Supremes.

3. Tired Of Waiting For You

This one must have come as a shock to fans back in January 1965.   The two huge hits in 1964 of ‘Got Me’ and ‘All Day’ had been blues-based rockers and as the new year dawned, most would have expected more of the same.  Instead, they released a mid-tempo ballad in which the guitar riff, although not totally absent, is very much in the background.  It must have been unexpected, but the fact it went all the way to #1 gave them the confidence to go down a different road than had perhaps been envisaged.  If this had flopped, there’s every chance that The Kinks, or at least their record label, would have seen their future in classic rock terms.

4. Days

One that I first became aware of thanks to Kirsty MacColl‘s excellent cover version in 1989.   The original is every bit as lovely….one that took on an entirely new meaning for me when it was chosen by a good friend of mine to play at the funeral of his late wife, who had died very suddenly.  49 years they had been together since their first date as teenagers, going back to around the time this went into the charts at #12 in 1968.  It was a wonderful way to get across the love they had for one another and, as often happens with music at funerals, it choked me up.

5. The Village Green Preservation Society

The final track of any ICA is always a tough one to choose.   I always try and have it as a song that would, if on the imaginary two sides of vinyl, make the listener very keen to flip the vinyl over and play it again.   There were so many hit songs still left from the longlist and not going to make the cut, such as the 80s ‘comeback’ hit, Come Dancing, and the satirical, Dedicated Follower of Fashion.  But, maybe unusually, I’ve gone for the lead-off and title track from a 1968 LP that was an absolute flop back in the day, failing to trouble the charts at all……but has since, thanks to continual reappraisals and further anniversary-type re-releases, become the best-selling of all studio albums released by The Kinks.  It’s the answer I’d give if I’m to ever be posed the question ‘What’s the quintessentially English pop song of them all?’.

So there you have it. An ICA that has as much missing as it has included.  Hope it gets greeted with at least a modicum of approval.

JC