I drove a mini Moke many years ago on a tropical island. The Moke is making a come back but it won't be cheap. So start saving those pennies.
Ha ha. Yes. Mostly if I see the Lotto is 4.4 million or something similar to that I will occasionally play. I still haven’t won. Maybe I should play today! If I win, I’ll buy everyone a ticket to England and we can all have a pint, or a Pepsi at The Clissold Arms.
An absolutely gorgeous song, whatever our thoughts about its meaning. There is a stereo remix that I know is at minimum available in the 2018 HD and iTunes digital releases of Percy that bring the voices forward.
Lovely, shimmering song. Jumped out of the grooves when I first heard it on Kronikles, "He's got no right to turn us into machines...." I think about that when I log onto the forum.
Despite having owned Percy for close to four decades, this is the only song I remember off it. I do think it is one Ray’s most beautiful.
God's Children Hadn't heard this song until this year. I think the violins are beautiful especially as the song tails off at the end. Very moving. It's a pretty song, but not my favorite of the non-instrumentals. I do have a bias about the lyrics and that colors my thoughts a bit, but that's all I'll say in that regard. I do think it's hilarious that Ray came up with this song when told what the subject matter of the film is. Typical Ray. Always the rebel.
I don’t have anything to add about God’s Children that hasn’t been better said up thread, but just thought I’d drop this here. I was just turned on to an album by a Canadian singer songwriter that I had never heard of before, Daniel Romano, via a new album with his band Daniel Romano’s Outfit called “Cobra Poems,” (pop/indie rock I guess) which I was really digging. Anyhow - in checking him out on Spotify to see what else he had done, I found that he was a real musical chameleon - starting out as a Country artist - when I came across the band’s cover of God’s Children. Not the greatest version, but sure shows good that they have good taste in music.
As has been mentioned before, this movie came out at around the same time as "Friends" and "Melody," and strangely enough, this song would not have sounded the least bit out of place in either of those films. As a matter of fact, those movies both also include a tune that is pastoral and diatonic like this one ("Michelle's Song" and "In The Morning Of My Life" respectively). I don't think either of those would've worked quite as well over the opening credits of "Percy" however. Ray Davies had not composed a whole lot of diatonic melodies up until this point, so this one really draws attention to itself for that fact alone. I rank it right up there with the best of others in this genre, including "Circle Game," "Both Sides Now," "My Back Pages" and Phil Ochs' "Changes." However, I do wonder why he didn't call it "Big Sky's Children."
There's Jake Thackray: "You can drive around in me motor car" ('Last Testament of Jake Thackray'): just one of many examples - but he always delighted in using old-fashioned language.
Lola (Instrumental). instrumental, stereo mix (4:42), recorded 2 Oct 1970, mixed Nov 16-18, 1970 and Jan 1971 at Morgan Studios (1), Willesden, London I am guessing in general this track isn’t going to get much love, but I actually like it. We open with a two chord grind and a steady beat. We get a nice little lead guitar come in over the top and for me that is an excellent intro. Essentially until the keyboard comes in, it could be a completely different song. I somewhat imagine that the sound of the keys here may well be the problem for many. They have a sort of Muzak sound to them, but they aren’t bad at all. Dave lays down a really nice lead after the second round of keyboards and the contrast between the granddad with a Lowrey sound of the keys and the blistering lead from Dave is rather large. The whole arrangement is sort of unusual. We have Mick smashing the drums, Dave ripping up the guitar and that early keyboard sound…. But…. Just passed halfway the organ moves more into Deep Purple kind of thing, with a bit more grind in it, and we get John jamming it on some chords, and it has a fuller more natural sound to it. The bridge makes a brief appearance, and we move back into the original organ sound. We get horn accents, some more lead from Dave, and a sort of grind it up build up to a speed king kind of finish. It is so unusual to hear the Kinks in this zone. I’m glad they didn’t occupy this territory too much, but on the whole, this is pretty cool. This really does sound like it was a jam of some description that they added a couple of elements to and said that’ll do. In spite of the track’s shortcomings, I don’t feel a need to skip it, because there are a couple of spots in here that I really like, because the band really sounds like it is just blasting for a bit of fun. Far from a Kinks highlight, and more like a sort of “the other side of the wall” thing, this track does enough to keep me in, but I’m not really looking for seconds. It's intriguing that this was put forward as some incidental music for the movie, and I kind of wonder how it was used in the movie, but I can't find a clip.
It sounds like "Lola" repurposed as the backing music for a striptease scene in a saucy seventies sex comedy. Which is just as well. It is "Lola", so you can't go wrong with it musically, but like much of this album, it's not something that I'd choose to play regularly.
That's exactly what it is! It's used in the film for a scene early on in which a nurse performs a strip tease for Bennett's character.. I think the justification storywise for this is that the doctors behind the transplant have sent her in to make sure that 'Percy' is in working order.. (very professional) ...surprisingly it's actually the only scene in the whole film to feature female nudity, and kind of gives the wrong impression of a movie that ends up being more low key and dour than it begins and was advertised.. I can picture many raincoat wearing Uncle Ernie type dirty old man stereotypes ending up being disappointed that the film 'peaks' that early so to speak. The full thing isn't online but you can see an excerpt around 2.40 in the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJTMNjtnR-w
Hey didn't Bill Oddie write & sing a song with the Goodies where the main vocal line was: "Iyyy....Want To Drive In My Mo-tor-Car?"
The only things I can certain about is that I won't play this often and that the film producer had no trouble whatsoever accommodating any version of this mega hit into their delivered soundtrack!