Just discovered this great forum with the exciting discussing thread on the Kinks. Will go back to page 1 and start reading. God Save The Kinks!
YRGM: not much to add on this one except, i think Ray's fantastic snide vocals make the song, well that and the killer riff. also Dave did the solo 5/5
Here's the YRGM cover by one of the finest bands ever - Mott The Hoople with Mick on vocals. Would have been interesting to see how Ian would have handled them.
Thanks for the welcome, Mark Winstanley. So how does this thread work? Are we also supposed to be addressing the b-sides along with a-sides, or wait until (and if) the particular track shows up on an LP? I have some thoughts on "It's All Right," but want to make sure they are brought up at the appropriate time.
Generally I will do singles a and b-side on the same day. Although You Really Got Me isn't the Kinks best or most important song, it is a very big song in the overall music world, and I felt that it needed special attention due to that. It hobbled us a little doing that, but we'll survive... So tomorrow we'll look at the b-side. Saturday morning we'll put the debut album up, and have a general discussion about the album. Sunday's are a day off, for folks to catch up, and just catch a rest. Monday we'll start going through the debut album tracks.... so on and so forth. Monday - Saturday at approximately 4:30 - 5:30 am US central time, I'll put up something for the days discussion, until we run out of stuff to look at... could be a year or eighteen months or something I reckon...
I'm late to this thread but certainly looking forward to learning so much more about them and the music I should seek out. My middle brother is a big Kinks fan and he had Sleepwalker to start. Our oldest brother is several years older and he made sure we heard the Something Else, Village Green and the Muswell Hillbillies albums. I really didn't "get" most of those albums until years later. My first buy was Low Budget. I still love this album although it is certainly in a time capsule. I saw the Kinks love in the early 80's. I was on the floor, a few aisles back. It was a pretty rocking show and a great memory for me was when another fan threw his Harley Davidson cap up on stage. Ray put it on and did kind of a jig and then threw it back out - I caught it. Years later I gave it to a buddy who has a couple of Harleys. He still says he'll get Ray to sign it one day!
This made me think... Ray may not have been the greatest singer in many ways, but the delivery of his vocals (particularly on his songs) is unique and brilliant. He managed to infuse so much personality into his vocals.
I fell behind a day. "You Still Want Me"/"You Do Something To Me" I like both of these songs and think they are a step forward from the debut single. We get two early Ray Davies compositions that are better than most other band originals during this time. These may not be top tier Kinks yet, but I like this kind of music! It's hard not get caught in the groove with either of these songs. "You Really Got Me" Hard to say much about this song that hasn't been said. It's been heard 1,000 times and is pretty much The Kinks song that everyone immediately thinks of. How can anyone not love this? Now that is a ripping guitar solo! Look out! Here come The Kinks!
Larry Page described Ray's vocal choice as using few notes and being "clipped" and was very complimentary of Ray's realisation of this method of delivery really feeding into his strengths.
Part of what makes "You Really Got Me" an amazing composition is the way the vocal melody is brilliantly OUT of sync with the riff. The vocals stress "really" while the riff stresses "got me". The vocal starts a beat earlier than the riff, three eight notes before the riff's stress. This creates an amazing tension through the whole song. (Marriot's cover blows this entirely.) The Kinks' various released followups that continue the formula (I have two in mind, especially, an A-side and a classic B-side) have their own merits. But they all miss this particular strength.
Wow, spend a day on the road and I have to play 3 pages worth of catch up! My You Really Got Me observation: The way Ray stretches out the words on "You got me so I don't know what I'm doin..nahhhh Oh yeaaaaahhhh" makes the song for me. It's almost like a proto version of vocal fry.
Yes! The space in between the riff’s starts and stops, the elasticity of the tension and release is tremendous. And as has been pointed out the ascending key changes of the riff, the first being a tentative whole step and then the next being an emphatic fourth to drive the point home is fantastic.
Where to begin? I'll start off by pointing out that variations of this iconic riff kept popping up in various different other hits over the next few years: Roy Head / Treat Her Right The Temptations / Get Ready Ike & Tina Turner / River Deep Mountain High Cream / Sunshine Of Your Love The Rolling Stones / Bitch There's so much more attention to detail than meets the ear here. Having the piano come in a couple of measures into the 2nd verse was a stroke of genius. To this day, I can't stand to hear any cover of this tune. It doesn't sound right to me unless the word "Going" is pronounced Goewinaaaa and "Really" and "Me" have a short "E" (rhymes with "eh"). This was one of three of British records that kept The Beatles on their toes in late 1964, the others being "She's Not There" and "House Of The Rising Sun." They alerted them to the fact that there were acts out there that were capable of putting out records that were easily as innovative as anything they were doing, and it's what egged them on to produce that massive sound on "Ticket To Ride" early the following year. As Leonard Bernstein points out, it's in the Mixolydian mode:
I'm not sure what you are getting at here... I think the solo on the Shindig version sounds very similar to the record: There's also two BBC live versions where he plays the same solo as on the record... I'll post one of them below. For some reason Dave's guitar can barely be heard on the Kelvin Hall recording of YRGM. You can faintly hear him soloing but it's buried in the mix. Who knows why? Maybe Ray was pissed off that day and did it to sabotage him. But there is certainly enough recorded evidence that Dave could play exactly like the solo on the record.
I don't think Ray would even lie about it to make Dave look good... if anything, whatever fraternal bias he has would more likely go in the opposite direction (ie, lying to discredit Dave). My favorite Ray comment about the solo was along the lines of "Dave doesn't have very much going for him, but at least give him credit for playing that solo."
The origins of this track are still pretty mysterious, but it sounds a lot like something submitted by/solicited from an outside writer composed in a nonsense chorus ‘Do Wah Diddy/Da Doo Ron Ron’ vein, except much weaker. In fact, it’s pretty bad. I think it says a lot that even after the many extensive Kinks reissue programmes of available 60s material of the last decade, 1) this is still only available on bootleg and 2) you never hear anyone demanding it’s official release!