The Kinks - Album by Album (song by song)

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by mark winstanley, Apr 4, 2021.

  1. seanw

    seanw Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto
    I've always remembered this contemporary Rolling Stone review since reading it a few years ago. It shows what high regard the commercially ignored Kinks were held in by critics and by people who were still listening to them.

    "Arthur is by all odds the best British album of 1969". Quite a statement, given the company at the time included classic records from The Beatles and The Who. "It shows that Pete Townshend still has worlds to conquer, and that the Beatles have a lot of catching up to do."

    And, "The music’s like a verbal and instrumental jam session with divine inspiration as a rhythm section."
     
  2. markelis

    markelis Forum Resident

    Location:
    Miami Beach FL
    I’m King Kong, got a hydrogen bomb!!! Holy cowbells, Batman, this song just frickin’ rocks! Yeah, the production is kind of shoddy, and yeah, Dave could’ve done something more with the guitar solo, but I have loved this one from the moment I first heard it back in the day on Kink Kronikles. …and yes, I think it should’ve been the A- side and Plastic Man should’ve been the B-side. Do I think it would have changed the career trajectory of the Kinks? Probably not. Even if it had been hit, and I think it would’ve had a much better chance at being a hit than Plastic Man, it seems like Ray would have easily found some other way to sabotage the band’s success at that point in time.

    I don’t understand quite what Ray was doing or thinking at this point in the band’s career, it sounds to me like he was a bit of a petulant mess who just wanted to get his way. i know it’s art, but it’s a business too. I would have given the label the singles they wanted so in exchange I could have the artistic control to make the albums the way I wanted. I guess I am more of a merchant than a tortured artiste ‍. Anyhow, no point in complaining at my end, A side, B side, album track or unreleased gem which showed up as a bonus track 40 years later, as long as I get to hear the tunes at my leisure, which modern technology permits me to do with ease, I am a pretty happy camper with most of their output.
     
  3. jethrotoe

    jethrotoe Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    Mick’s drumming is great. But listen to some of the bass playing on this album too! John Dalton is ridiculously underrated amongst Kinks fans. I listened to “Yes Sir, No Sir” this morning for the millionth time, but really focused on Dalton’s bass playing on the track for the first time. It adds so much.

    Combine the bass and drums with Dave going back to play rock n’ roll lead guitar (with some distortion even!) and you have The Kinks quickly ascending back to the status as a top tier hard rock band, something we will see more on Lola too, instead of a sort of quasi-achronological neo-Vaudevillian music hall act that they fell into from 1966 to “Plastic Man” (not that I don’t love that stuff too, and not that “Princess Marina” and even “Drivin” don’t have those music hall aspects). But the band rocks on this album in a way they hadn’t in a few years (with the exception of “Wicked Annabella” and “Love Me Till the Sunshines”).

    I’m surprised by the sort of muted response here too. I’m also surprised by the comparisons to The Wall and not to Tommy.
     
  4. Smiler

    Smiler Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston TX
    I first heard Arthur during my Kinks exploration in 1977. It didn’t grab me and I sold it at some point. The only thing I remembered over the years, aside from “Victoria” and “Shangri-La” from Kronikles, was the “nothing to say, OK” line. It wasn’t my favorite bit, even borderline annoying, but it’s the one that got stuck! I didn’t like the inside cover art and still don’t. Like Steve E., I thought the creature depicted inside looked like a fat giant rat!

    Revisiting the album for this thread, I don’t know why tunes like “Brainwashed” and “Australia” didn’t grab me then. I probably didn't spend a lot of time with the album. The notes in the 2011 deluxe edition explaining the plot and characters, and that some of the songs were long because they were intended as background music, were enlightening. That explained some of the musical decisions, like the (over-)extended length of the title track and “Australia” jam, and the different voices Ray adopts for different characters. In fact, it’s turned into a little puzzle for me, guessing which character is singing each song!

    As ARL said, the album very much sounds like 1969, and I miss the stylistic variety we’ve heard in the previous two albums. But I am liking the album a lot more than I did 44 years ago, and expect I will appreciate it more as we dig into it.

    One ongoing conflict I have with Ray’s writing is his broad stereotyping of large numbers of individual human beings who have a wide range of emotions, dreams, interests, and values, whom he judges from his nonconformist throne to all be "conditioned" plastic or tin soldier men. I much more related to this broad-brush type of thinking in my late teens and 20s (basically his age when he was writing these songs). But now this attitude seems more like intellectual and emotional immaturity or laziness, short on compassion. Yet, he does make valid critiques of modern society and the smothering effect of conformity and power structures. So I am still sorting through my feelings about his writing.
     
    Last edited: Aug 27, 2021
  5. Geoff738

    Geoff738 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto
    My favourite album by my favourite band. Not sure when I first heard it but gut got into the Kinks ont early 80s so somewhere in there.
     
  6. jethrotoe

    jethrotoe Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    This is an aside, but what is the deal with The Kinks' album artwork?

    As great of a band they were, they had some awful album artwork, which is kind of a headscratcher, considering that Ray went to art school and Pete was a graphic artist (granted, he's not on this album, but you get my point).

    They don't even have a single iconic album sleeve. All their contemporaries had iconic artwork that almost stands apart from the music and albums and have become cultural zeitgeists in their own right. Not The Kinks though. Odd.
     
  7. Smiler

    Smiler Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston TX
    That IS a good point! For the earlier albums at least, they were probably overruled by the record company.
     
  8. jethrotoe

    jethrotoe Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    Ray painted the album artwork for Face to Face, so make of that what you will.
     
  9. Wondergirl

    Wondergirl Forum Resident

    Location:
    Massachusetts, USA
    Where did you find this info? I don't think I've ever read this before. thanks.
     
    jethrotoe and mark winstanley like this.
  10. FJFP

    FJFP Host for the 'Mixology' Mix Differences Podcast

    He did a cover, but likely not the final cover.
     
  11. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    I think a lot of it comes down to budget.
    Pye being almost totally singles focused, I doubt they wanted to shell out much for album covers.
    As for art school? ..... it depends what his mindset towards it was really.
    Did they think they were being edgy?
    Was it last minute decisions?

    I know personally, and i am no art school fellow, the art/cover is likely the last thing on my mind.... I'm thinking songs, lyrics, mixes, levels, arrangements, track order etc etc before art even comes into the picture
     
  12. seanw

    seanw Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto
    I disagree somewhat with this. If by 'iconic' you mean instantly recognizable by the public at large (a fair definition), then OK--but I'd say that's as much to do with not selling many albums as it is to do with some of the artwork.

    If you're talking about great-looking, 'cool' covers (subjective, but hey ho) then I'd offer up Kink Kontroversy and TKATVGPS as two fantastic examples.

    But I also think the Schoolboys cover is brilliant, so what do I know? :)
     
  13. jethrotoe

    jethrotoe Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    I think he says it in X-Ray.

    But in the liner notes to the 1998 Sanctuary re-issue of Face to Face he says he didn’t like the cover, he wanted it to be “black and strong like the album” but was starting to “let things go and accepting of things I shouldn’t have.”

    I guess that insinuates the label chose the cover.
     
  14. jethrotoe

    jethrotoe Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    I think the Lola cover is one of the cooler ones.
     
  15. jethrotoe

    jethrotoe Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    But I also think they were sort of lazy as far as album covers go. Like the cover concept for State of Confusion is basically the same as the album cover for Give the People What They Want, the preceding album, except one has the full band running from a graffitti'd wall, and one just has Ray running from a graffitti'd wall. And on State of Confusion, the album title is written twice to add to the redundancy.

    I think TKATVGPS is an all right sleeve, but as others pointed out, it doesn't really fit the music on the album.
     
  16. palisantrancho

    palisantrancho Forum Resident

    Some of the later album covers make all the ones so far look like masterpieces. I personally like all the album covers up until now, starting with Kontroversy, which I think is somewhat iconic.

    The covers were very subtle. Nothing mind blowing, but I wouldn’t call any of them horrible yet.
     
  17. A well respected man

    A well respected man Some Mother's Son

    Location:
    Madrid, Spain
    Late to the party, so I'm still reading my way thruough the first pages of the thread, but I can't resist commenting on Arthur!

    To me, Arthur is the most successful attempt by Ray/ The Kinks at the concept album. VGPS is a slightly better album musically, but the concept is slight. In Arthur we have a story, characters, themes, development... and all that through wonderful songs, one of the top 5 Kinks albums for me.
    Of course, this consistency in the concept may have to do with the work Julian Mitchell for the TV show. Whatever the case, I find it more satisfying than any other concept album (Kinks or no Kinks, I'm looking at you, Tommy).

    Musically, first of all there is a leap forward in sound. This album is much better recorded than the previous 6 in the band's catalog. For the first time, the stereo mix is definitive and vastly superior to the mono.

    For an album which is considered primarily a satire, it contains some of the most emotional moments in the Kinks discography. It's hard for me not to be moved everytime I listen to Young and Innocent Days and specially Some Mother's Son. As I've said before, to me it's a better anti-war song than Imagine. Lennon's song is all about abstract concepts and good intentions. With Some Mother's Son I can empathise with the common people that suffer in the wars (either by dying or by losing someone). Davies takes you to the trenches and back home with the families, in an incredibly cinematic fashion. This stanza is striking that way:

    Two soldiers fighting in a trench
    One soldier glances up to see the sun
    And dreams of games he played when he was young
    And then his friend calls out his name
    It stops his dream and as he turns his head
    A second later he is dead

    I can almost watch the scene with the brief flash-back image a-la-Nolan.

    Then of course there's a lot of satire, not only for the stablishment but for the "commoners" too. Ray never heard about not biting the hand that feeds you, maybe that's why The Kinks were never immensely popular. People don't like to hear about their flaws.

    And then the other trade mark I love in this album: the two epics that close side A and open side B, Australia and Shangri-La. It's one of the reasons I much prefer this album on vinyl, the sense of closing one chapter and opening another is key to the experience. The first chapter ends with the dream of the promised land. The second opens with the character already settled and satisfied with his new burgeois life. These two tracks have few parallels in the history of rock, let alone two on the same album... and sequenced one after the other!
    Musically they are nothing short of amazing. Ray manages to keep the interest throughout their long duration, he proves the 2 minute pop song was becoming a too restricting format for his narrative ambition.

    More highlights: Victoria has grounds to compete for best opening song in the Kinks catalog. Very uplifting rocker, impossible not to move while you're listening.
    Driving is one of those songs that make you feel nostalgic for something you haven't lived. It's one of those Ray Davies' gems that you can't decide if they make you sad or happy. He is so great at moving between the lines...

    I just wrote that off the top of my head. Sorry if I digressed a little or if I made some mistake with my English. I hope to keep commenting while I keep reading the whole thread :)
     
  18. jethrotoe

    jethrotoe Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    Are you me? Totally agree with the points you made here. I was thinking how cinematic this album is, especially “Some Mother’s Son,” and was thinking of Nolan too.
     
  19. zipp

    zipp Forum Resident

    THE MUG

    I can't post a picture.

    But if you follow this link you can see the mug on the album cover was based on a real mug celebrating King George V's coronation in 1911.

    1911 King George V & Queen Mary Coronation Mug.

    The description reads :

    "A 1911 coronation mug by Booths printed in brown with profile portraits of King George V and Queen Mary. The back reads 'Long Life and Happiness to King George V and his Beloved Consort Queen Mary Crowned June 22nd 1911'. In good condition with minor wear to the rim."

    Here's a photo of a medal struck with a similar image of the crowned king and queen side by side.

    [​IMG]
     
  20. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    Kontroversy is the best album cover to date. I think all the others have been okay with the exception of Something Else. That cover didn’t generate sales. Well, at least I bet it didn’t. I don’t like it at all.
     
  21. A well respected man

    A well respected man Some Mother's Son

    Location:
    Madrid, Spain
    You know, great minds... ;)
     
    jethrotoe and mark winstanley like this.
  22. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    Ray says
    "I started Arthir before the end of Village Green. The albums piggybacked one another, because they are joined.
    I'd already written the song Arthur, Arthur was a friend of Walter (from Village Green).
    I think I write Australia when I was still living at 87 Fortis Green, so it was quite early on. I remember taking it over to Dave, he lived in Cockfosters at the time, and playing it to him. We were laughing at the irony of the line "nobody's got a chip on their shoulder. "
     
  23. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    Ray said
    "On a personal level the record was a healing experience. When Arthur left for Australia I didn't understand the motive.
    Eventually I understood his feelings and I regret that I couldn't handle my own frustrations a he did. I think it's a generational thing.
    We had no idea at the time, but looking back Arthur was like a mentor or life coach inspiring us Boys to strive for something better.
    Now that Arthur's generation has almost vanished, I miss him. Arthur is a lasting testament to that great breed of people who cam out of the second world war and wanted to build a new Britain."
     
  24. Wondergirl

    Wondergirl Forum Resident

    Location:
    Massachusetts, USA
    I just read X Ray in the past month. I don't recall that fact. But I was skipping around.

    but yes, I do remember the quote above which made it sound like it wasn't his art.
     
  25. jethrotoe

    jethrotoe Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    It’s been a very long time since I read it. I could be misremembering or have misunderstood what he was saying.
     
    mark winstanley and Wondergirl like this.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine