"I remixed all of Kelvin Hall for a Deluxe edition as well, but the crowd noise cannot be mixed out. There are crucial live parts of the performance on some of the crowd tracks. Only the final, edited four-tracks exist for this show currently." Kinks Deluxe editions 2011 (part 3)
It would, yes. There is no valid artistic reason I can think of to add these extraneous effects to this album -- unless, of course, there were underlying technical issues with the original multitrack recording that had to be buried under waves of screams and echo...
No, the post-production double-tracking and overdubbing is causing Dave to sound double-tracked and overdubbed. It's especially noticeable when Dave is singing in two different octaves simultaneously at the end of each chorus. There is a lot of overdubbing on this album. Common on live albums, then and later.
LX200GPS said: "... didn't things get even worse when they played at places like Bately Variety Club?" It was Batley Variety Club actually and it was a place built specifically for music acts to appear. By comparison Kelvin Hall was a place also used for exhibitions and boxing etc., not just music.
Don't worry @Martyj , after 2+ years someone here took pity on me and posted two home made video tutorials and I just scraped over the line even with viewing those numerous times!
I'm On an Island from 17:25 It is really cool that they played this song, and it comes across very well here. Ray manages to get the personality required into the song, and musically it sounds pretty good.
Come On Now from 20:20 It seems odd hearing this track at this stage of the bands career, it really isn't that old, but in comparison with the series of songs we have been hearing it sounds positively ancient. Perhaps I am becoming more attuned to it, but the songs today seem to sound better for some reason.
You Really Got Me from 23:20 I believe to some extent this would remain one of the bands most frequent live tracks. For some reason it doesn't seem as dated as something like Come On Now, but it was somewhat ahead of its time and manages to retain a certain freshness that is rare.
Haha, that's gotta be the understatement of this thread! There can't have been a full length Kinks, Ray or Dave solo concert since 1964 where it hasn't been performed!
Milk Cow Blues/ Batman/ Tired Of Waiting For You from 25:36 The album closes out with a nine minute jam-like medley. The song goes through a couple of verses, and we get a bit of a Batman theme in there, then we get into a bit of a jam, then we move back into the Batman theme, with vocals! We move into the final verse of Milk Cow Blues, and get a bit of a jam section and segue into Tired Of Waiting For You, that starts a little slow, and then gets up to tempo. On the fade out we move into the chugging guitars and a reprise of Milk Cow comes around. Edit: I suppose I should add, that the end is a bit clunky too, with a song seeming to start, and Ray cutting in to say good night
Essentially Kelvin Hall is more of a curio than anything else for me. It seems to me that if this had just been a straight recording without the added reverb and added crowd noise, that I could probably enjoy this as a live album. As the album currently stands it ends up being more of a frustration than anything for me..... I love live albums, but this and the Stones Got Live If You Want It, and a few others from the sixties just show that live rock music was still difficult to capture at the time, and many felt that things needed to be added to lift atmosphere and all that kind of stuff..... But I must say, that even after this period when the technology and recording quirks had been sorted out, many bands, producers etc seemed to feel the need to add things that were/are completely unnecessary. It is rare to get a completely live album, and I personally completely understand the reason for overdubs and tidying up little bits and pieces for posterity .... the difference between being at a show in the moment in the atmosphere, is completely different to listening to an album over and over, but fake audience tracks, unwanted reverbs etc, damage, rather than enhance a live album.
There was also weird audience overdubs on Live Yardbirds from 1968 when it saw the light of day in 1971!
Few notes on 'Kelvin Hall': 1) As a Kinks obsessive who's lived in the greater Glasgow/Scotland central belt area (inc Glasgow itself for a decade) for most of my life, I guess I should take more pride in the fact The Kinks first live album (and the only one to be named after a venue it was recorded in! ) was minted in the Dear Green Place. It's not something you ever see people mention much though, even from fans in the city itself (and I can vouch that there are quite a few). There's certainly not a plaque on the venue today haha. It does get me to wondering if I should seriously try lobbying the council to make more of a thing of it. I mean, ok the album itself is no Live At Leeds but it's still pretty historic. Interesting that the last Kinks live album (To The Bone) also includes a few cuts recorded in Glasgow. 2) I do wonder why this album was made at this point? It certainly wasn't really the done practice for British Invasion bands of the time to release live albums: only the Stones had really done it before (there were Animals and Yardbirds live LPs in the 60s too, but they were more like pre fame recordings issued as cash ins). The weird timing where it came out in the US significantly before it's UK release is interesting too. Again, almost nothing is known about how this album was conceived and marketed. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad it was though: (despite it's well documented technical issues) it's a full length concert by the original band, in a year where we don't have any other bona fide live recordings by the group. Worth noting also that this rough n' ready garage rocking document was taped a matter of days before they laid down 'Waterloo Sunset' in the studio! Mad! 3) It's a pretty interesting set list, what with 'I'm On An Island' sneaking in there, a song they're otherwise not known to have performed live at all. Records of Kinks set lists pre 1969 are very patchy, and what ones are known tend to be hits and covers heavy, but this suggests they may have slipped in more interesting LP tracks on occassion. 4) Also of note it's the only Kinks live album recorded before Ray developed his stage persona. Therefore it's interesting to hear the between song bits of the group interacting with the audience somewhat charmingly tentatively, rather than Ray doing his greatest showman bit. It captures The Kinks as still a group of equals on stage, as opposed to Ray and backing.
I find the second half of Kelvin Hall to be less enjoyable than the first half. "I'm On An Island" is OK, but seems a little sluggish in comparison with the studio version. "Come On Now" was fine for 1965 but has no place being pushed out as Kinks product in 1967, even though it is a decent performance. "You Really Got Me" is the highlight of the second half, but frankly it would be a difficult track to mess up. (The guitar solo section isn't great, though) The closing medley seems to drag on forever (and the sound quality really takes a massive dip on the final reprise), and that leaves me with a generally unfavourable impression of this album. I'm not big on live albums anyway, and this one is not going to change my mind - hence why I forgot I had it for 30 years!
Not a pic of the Kinks, but of the Kelvin Hall's stage space as it appeared around the same time. The second image is of a Billy Graham crusade held inside the hall, which gives a sense of the size of the venue.
Might as well mention that this is the only place you can hear 'em covering Neal Hefti's 'Batman' theme. This was of course covered the previous year by The Who on their Ready Steady EP. Not sure what exactly was going on with these two frontline groups covering this theme: some kind of pop art statement? Or they both just liked the riff?
Given that The Kinks and The Who both had a go at the Batman theme, it's no surprise that The Jam also covered it on their debut album.
An advert for the "Scene '67" series of shows at the Kelvin Hall. The Kinks appeared there on the 1st, according to this roster:
Interesting. Did the Kinks do 2 shows that night, so they could pick the best recording of each song? Or we they just the main act, and then the other bands opened?
I get the impression from this that there were two shows that night, comprised of the three bands. I expect the Kinks were the main attraction, and the other two acts were the openers, at 7:30 and 9:30 (I seem to have read this somewhere else).
The Kinks Live at Kelvin Hall This is the one. There are better Kinks albums, for sure. There are Kinks albums I love more. But this one—it will always have a special place in my collection, memory, and heart. For it was the first Kinks album I ever owned. It was where I fell in love with the band I’ve loved ever since. The backstory: at age 18 I knew the Kinks, but barely. I first encountered the song “You Really Got Me” on a budget-priced ‘British Invasion’ greatest hits type thing, where it was the stand out track. Then I saw the band on TV—Saturday Night Live—where I first heard “Lola” and it stuck to the ribs. Then I heard “All Day and All the Night” on oldies radio, and thought: who are these guys who are doing all these songs I like? These events all took place over a roughly 18-24 month period. So they were mentally added to the list of bands I knew without knowing much about them. Remember those days when you’d hang out at record stores to stare at album covers and flip them over to read the track list and wonder what the content sounded like—because it was before the days of digital music when everything could be sampled somewhere before purchase? Not so in 1978. I was a huge Beatles fan and used go into records stores just to peruse album art and track lists and let my imagination run wild (although, in truth, by 1978 I had acquired almost all the Beatles US LP releases and was then mostly reading the back covers of the smattering of ex-Beatles solo albums I didn’t own.) There was a cramped, independent record store—it doubled as a ‘head’ shop, actually—that was a bit of a drive from my house, but it had some of the most intriguing albums (and posters) to stare at. Much more than the chain record stores one would find at the malls. It was ran by an old hippie couple. It was there where I started staring at Kinks albums for the first time. And it was all the more intriguing because these hippie proprietors were Kinks evangelists who took it upon themselves to discount all Kinks product. “All Kinks, Always On Sale” read a handmade sign attached by tape to the divider designating the “J-K” section in the bin. These old stoners were doing their part to turn the far east side suburbs of Indianapolis, Indiana into a hotbed of Kinks fans, even if it meant knocking a buck and a half off the list price to the detriment of their bottom line. So—yeah—the price was right, and for the first time ever I was in the market for a Kinks album. So what to buy? Now, this was not a used record store. Everything was factory wrapped, which was frustrating if one wanted to investigate a gate-fold sleeve. But these owners made a point to stock all Kinks product available: the U.S. Reprise releases (minus Kinks Size, Face to Face and The Great Lost Kinks Album), RCA (no Muswell or Preservation Act II, I recall), and the only Arista releases up to that point, Sleepwalker and the brand new Misfits. Priced a bit more expensively were a few Pye Kinks imports, although they, too, were priced lower than other imports. In due time, out of loyalty to these Kinks-loving hippies (and their low prices), I bought almost all my Kinks LP’s from this store. But for my first Kinks purchase, I was shopping based on what was in front of my eyes: the album cover and on the flip side the names of songs, 99% of which I’d never heard before. Album art is ingrained in my mind. When someone in this thread mentions Muswell Hillbillies I see that pub, or Kontroversy evokes those four panel portraits above the oversized close up of Dave’s power strum. So imagine for the first time one encounters these iconic visuals in a record bin, flipping through them one at a time, pulling each new discovery out and holding it up to inspection. I wasn’t sure what awaited beyond the quasi-street mime of “Sleepwalker,” the Da Vinci Notebook-esque “Lola Vs. Powerman”, the goofy comic book of “Everybody’s in Showbiz.” No, I gravitated to album covers that I could make sense of. And I was most comfortable with an album with a picture of the band on the cover—especially, being a Beatles fan, where the Davies boys and co. haircuts evoked a Beatles style. The debut LP was a candidate. It seemed like a good intro, but then I already had “You Really Got Me" elsewhere. “Village Green Preservation Society” also was inviting, but the title and track listing seemed like there was an idea behind it that I wasn’t ready to leap into. So, how could I not start with an album titled “Kinks Greatest Hits?” I almost bought it. Requisite haircuts on the cover and it had “All Day and All the Night,” a song I wanted to own. But 10 songs total over two sides weren’t as good as…(drumroll)…..11 songs on “The Kinks Live” (U.S. version minus Kelvin Hall in the title) which also promised “All Day and All the Night.” And haircuts on the cover. It was in perusing the deeper track listings that I made my decision. The live album had—are you kidding me!—the Batman Theme song! That was by the Kinks? I didn’t know the music I had heard on the TV show from my youth were by the same group who did “Lola!” Sold! I anticipated the Kinks-loving hippie who took my money at the cash register would greet me like a new convert into the fold. A nod, at least, acknowledging I had made a great choice. I was a bit disappointed when he evidenced no reaction beyond a standard clerk/customer transaction. None the less, I now owned my very first Kinks record. Here’s what it was like hearing my first Kinks album: There is a girl you’ve seen around. You find her attractive so you ask her out just to get to know her. And on that first date, with each new revelation you are liking everything about her. Her eyes. Her laugh. The stories she tells about herself. You find yourself falling in love, deeper by the minute. You say to yourself: where have you been hiding all my life? By the end of the date you are wishing it never ends, and when you part you can think of nothing other than the next time you can be with her. And you realize with that first date you want her part of your life forever. That was my reaction to finally meeting the Kinks and their songs via Kelvin Hall. Never mind that “All Day and All the Night” had been a misprint; I liked “Till the End of the Day” even better.” “Well Respected Man”…now that sounded familiar. As did “Sunny Afternoon”—maybe it was the first time I heard it, but it felt like I’d known it all my life. And “Dandy?” I remembered that from Herman Hermits. That was a Kinks song? Another plus. The rest…they were all the first time I heard them, and it took a few spins until I completely surrendered to it all. And the fanatic screaming of the audience? Clearly this was a band that excited—and I wanted to be part of that cult. I had found a new love—a group I could now devote myself to the pleasure of re-living that same discovery with every LP I could snap up with breathless anticipation, just as I had once done with the Beatles. Of course, all these years later I can nitpick at its imperfections: the echo; the near-inaudible stage banter; my beloved “Batman” rendered as a throwaway joke. And I can’t tell you how crestfallen I was when I learned from Hinman that the crowd enthusiasm I was so enamored with was manufactured. But I don’t demand perfection to treasure it just the same .You never forget the first time you fall in love, which is why “The Kinks Live at Kelvin Hall” occupies a special category in my music collection. I could go on, but I’ve gone on long enough. I waited to post this on the day for the discussions about the side with Batman on it, because it was that track which specifically lead me to parting with the first of many dollars which have—in varying increments, in some roundabout way—wound up in a Davies’ brother’s bank account. And I haven’t regretted parting with a single penny. A coda: 3 or 4 years later at the second time I saw the Kinks live, I came across the hippie Kinks evangelists from the record store among the audience waiting for the show to start. Although I had bought many Kinks and other LP’s from them by then, we still had never had a conversation. So I said “Hey…I know you guys. You own the store where I buy all my Kinks from!” The stoner gazed back and corrected me that he did not own the store, he just worked there. Nonetheless, I thanked him on behalf of the store for making it easier to discover the Kinks by discounting all their records. He just nodded with vague awareness that the store did such a thing. Perhaps I was wrong all along in assuming the dude and his girl were the ultimate Kinks champions. Still, they were at the show, so they must have been into the band, right? Or maybe, as store employees, they just got free tickets? I later justified my disillusionment with this encounter by assuming the couple were as high as kites. Which is what one might expect from employees of a head shop.
This live album is a curio alright. It will be judged unfavourably against good live albums generally (virtually none of which were actually released in the sixties) and the Kinks other live albums (and their live half-album...). But this was the earliest period for live pop-rock albums and I think a fair effort for that time given the quality of the stage equipment they were dealing with.
“Lord Caesar Sutch.” I’ve never seen Screaming Lord Sutch billed in that manner but, per wiki: “During the 1960s Screaming Lord Sutch was known for his horror-themed stage show, dressing as Jack the Ripper, pre-dating the shock rock antics of Arthur Brown and Alice Cooper. Accompanied by his band, the Savages, he started by coming out of a black coffin (once being trapped inside of it, an incident parodied in the film Slade in Flame). Other props included knives and daggers, skulls and "bodies". Sutch booked themed tours, such as 'Sutch and the Roman Empire', where Sutch and the band members would be dressed up as Roman soldiers.”
