Hot Potatoes Nice groove, good vocals, pleasant acoustic guitars, completely insubstantial. I like the song, but it leaves me...hungry.
Yes. I noted this has nothing to do with the ‘rock star on the road’ thing, too. “Shoehorned” is a good way to describe it. (And I’m glad it was shoehorned on to Showbiz. A highlight.)
Have you noticed we've been graced with some of the very best posts in our 500+ pages course in the last few days, despite many songs being (rightfully) called "fluff", "goofy" or "silly"? And I'm not only referring to hot-dog or giant potato pictures! @Martyj's majestic "thank you for the days" post about Unreal Reality was particularly great, as it perfectly summed up the genius of the Kinks' flawless 7 years run and the relationship we have with our very favorite artists, the ones that we'll still cherish even when they stumble, the ones we'll still love and follow even when they (occasionally) venture in mediocreland (as a lifelong McCartney, Beach Boys and Moody Blues fan, I certainly know what I'm talking about!). We're more or less in the middle of our thread's course, I think. And for some, there may be a sense of "the best is behind us". But I'll argue the best is yet to come, because as we'll go on and songs will prove more divisive, we'll get less universal masterpieces (less universal opinions) and more personal appraisals/feelings, like @Luckless Pedestrian's uncanny James Bond reminiscence (side note to @LP : you should run and see the HBO series "Treme" if you haven't already) or @DISKOJOE's endearing admission that the exhilarating Hot Potatoes is one of his favorite tracks by the band that gave us the likes of Waterloo Sunset, Tired of Waiting for You, Two Sisters and Dead End Street. This is where things get really interesting, folks !
Superb observation. The universally beloved and acclaimed songs are of course a joy to discuss, but with so much consensus, the discussion isn't really that interesting. Even a positive echo chamber is still an echo chamber. We're already hitting now what I wasn't actually expecting until the arena rock phase. That is the bulk of the crowd lamenting the loss of the Golden age with someone (thinking myself starting in '77 or maybe even '75) enjoying the opportunity to share my joy in so many songs otherwise overlooked or dismissed. But this section may be even more fun since I entered on the other side, rather lacking in appreciation. I've truly enjoyed the inputs of the Avids who remain avid here, as their descriptions have been not just positive, but also thoughtful and well presented.
"Hot Potatoes" I agree that things are getting exciting around here. For today's song we have almost an equal split of people smashing the "Hot Potatoes" and people buttering them up. I figured there would more smashing, but we have discovered @DISKOJOE and @Zeki find this song to be totally tubular. This is obviously no typical tuber. It's the second song in a row that I feel could be an outtake from Muswell Hillbillies. We are back under the Ronnie Lane/Faces umbrella, and as already pointed out there is even an "Itchycoo Park" piano that adds the Small to the Faces. All of these excellent qualities and it still may be my least favorite tune on the album. That just speaks highly of all the songs we have coming up. "It's all too beautiful".
"Hot Potatoes" – Our hero is back home with the wife in the unglamorous life and trying, pleading to kindle something hot besides food. Maybe this pub singalong would work well in a live setting, with plastered punters* loudly shouting “potatoes!”, but it didn’t make me feel jolly. Then I found myself walking around the house yesterday singing “la la la la la la potatoes.” Of course, a commercial jingle can get stuck in one’s head, but that doesn’t mean it’s a fine piece of music. So, it’s not a favorite, but I admit it’s catchy. And I do appreciate the absurdity of singing about potatoes in a love song! I'd like to second this. On the Kinks appreciation spectrum, I fall closer to the Robert Wace "Ray Davies could have benefitted from an outside opinion/editor more often" side than the "Ray Davies is a great artiste who can do absolutely no wrong" end (though I'm not saying anyone here is that extreme). But I have greatly appreciated and grown from the perceptive and passionate comments by the Avids. Fun fact: There are more than 4000 varieties of potatoes in Peru. *I’m not British, but I’m excited to get to use this word for the first time!
Hot Spuds I'm relieved to see that I'm not the only person who finds this inconsequential song to be a Kinks highlight. It's hard to pinpoint any one reason why that's the case: it's the music, it's the lyrics, it's the la la la's. It's the vibe! I think you're onto something (someone) there. But it reminds me of a rock luminary's (could have been Slash) observations on a Led Zep song Trampled Underfoot: is it about cars or is it about sex? I don't know but I love them both. @Fischman might be right when it comes to ingredients but if you carry some epoisses with you - even unopened - you'll never be mugged or kidnapped.
I shouldn’t really like this, but I do. It’s a very slight bit of fluff, but a fun one and I can totally imagine Ronnie Lane singing this with a twinkle in his eye.
Seven plus months, 540 pages strong and you're not even half way through the catalog. Kudos Mark! Thought I'd pop in to say the studio has two all time Kinks Klassics, but is a little thin. The live album is negligible. Just got the BBC discs. I'll listen to the those for awhile but wake me up when you get to Sleepwalker.
Hot Potatoes I haven't read everyone's thoughts on this, but I do think this is a light song. And obviously there is a double entendre going on here...get your life together, son, or you're not going to get anything beyond potatoes. Am I hearing that Dave has part of the vocals here? Anyway, it's a fun song and it makes me grin. It's not going to set the world on fire, but pleasant.
"Hot Potatoes" This is just really disappointing (again). Maybe "Percy" is better than this album after all. It has a nice groove and Dave's backing vocals again save the day a bit.. but this just sounds like Ray giving up.
The quality improves a lot from here on - two of the next six songs are classics. Why he didn't front-load the best songs onto Side One is a bit of a mystery though.
Count me as another "Hot Potatoes" fan. Loved it since first acquiring EISB when rerelesed in 1998 was it? Dave vocals were getting scarce about now so it's always a thrill to hear him solo, even if it's trading lines with Ray. Been listening to it all week thanks to the mighty thread. Fry 'em up!
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On close analysis i am hearing Ray's voice as the protagonist's mother and Dave's as the wife in various parts, which explains the apple pie question. Also, upthread I referenced the metric catastrophe of "Any way you want to decide" and got thinking why is that so darn familiar. It struck me while driving that Ray uses the same line in Supersonic Rocket Ship, a song which will make for some interesting discussion next week, all over the place and mixed metaphor=wise.
I'm amazed that certain sections of this song wasn't used in the recent campaign by the UK potato industry. UK potato industry launches £100,000 campaign to increase comsumption
I think Wace and Collins had more of an influence than Ray would have us believe. I always considered it a bit of a joke how two posh city gents came to manage this scruffy working class group and Ray even joked about it during his Storyteller performances. But, according to Dave, the departure of Collins seriously affected him. Apparently, he had come to rely on him as an ally and confidant. Dave; "After Robert and Grenville went, I felt very insecure". Here's another bit from Rogan on Wace: "Wace had grown weary of Ray's obduracy, particularly in the aftermath of The Moneygoround which he considered an unwarranted attack. It was difficult to simply laugh it off as an example of Davies' whimsy. The final insult occurred after a delay in payment of outstanding monies, a tactic guaranteed to rile Wace. Indignant, he walked away. The timing was unexpected, given that the Kinks had just signed a new record deal, but Wace stuck to his convictions. "The Kinks as a group never worked as hard as the Who or the Rolling Stones", Wace maintains. "I mean graft. This was part of Ray, I suppose. They were unreliable in those days. There was too much worrying, bickering and infighting. They never wanted to be as big as the Beatles or the Stones. They could have been but they ran away from it." Rogan; "By the end of the Sixties, the duo had been involved with a number of acts, including Marianne Faithfull and the Small Faces, and Wace later put that experience to sterling use by catapulting Stealers Wheel and Sailor into the charts". So not the complete twit after all. He eventually left the music biz and became a civil servant.
This is just it. I wish I had more time to listen to more Kinks at the moment (and more time to listen to everything else as well). But a couple of days ago I played Think Visual (almost certainly the Kinks album I have listened to more times than any other) and just now played again and hugely enjoyed again the absolute insanity that is Soap Opera, and I can only agree that the greatest and most interesting days of this thread are still to come. The Kinks' "golden age" is whatever part of that 24-album discography that you want it to be.
