Well I was just joking, but if we were getting serious we'd probably be studying Latin for a while lol
I do love this live album. I just don't listen to many live albums. I would have loved to see the band on this tour. Ray is at his most playful and drunken best. It goes perfectly with the studio album. It could have been called Having A Party With The Kinks. They are all in good form. "Top Of The Pops"- This is one of the tunes I think is better live. I love the break down and the energy is great. Mick and Dave are rocking it. Great choice for an opener. "Brainwashed"- Another high energy tune to get the crowd on their feet. Nothing to complain about here. It's excellent. "Mr. Wonderful"- A brief and fun little number. Everyone pour a drink and let's get the party going. Ray doing his best Dean Martin. "Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues"- Now they are really rolling. It's gonna be a boozy night out! "Holiday"- This is one of my favorites from Muswell Hillbillies. They do a pretty close and faithful presentation. They were on to something with this sound. It's a shame that people thought they lost it. You can really hear the beginnings of the theatrical albums coming up. Where else was Ray gonna go after this? Vaudeville Ray is just getting started! "Muswell Hillbilly" - It sounds like this song had Johnny Cash come and join them on stage. "Alcohol"- "My little Chickadee"- Ha ha. Ray is now giving a performance that would be greatly enhanced if you were loaded in the front row of the concert. I don't think any of the songs can replace the studio versions, but it's a damn good concert. Is it one of the underrated live albums because it's somewhat buried on a double album? I would say it is. Even a major fan like myself never bothered much with it. Maybe The Kinks wouldn't have been so misunderstood and under appreciated in the 70s if they weren't so brilliant in the 60s!
I have always loved the live album. I saw the Kinks for the first time at the Hollywood Palladium close to this time, and Ray was a fantastic frontman (one of the handful of best I’ve ever seen) and the band rocked. The real issue with the live album is that it was difficult in two sides to balance the band’s material with the sing-alongs and old show-biz stuff Ray was referencing. They did a great Baby Face! Of course it’s true that the Legacy issue has filled things out, and we also have all the soundboards Dinky Dawson recorded available on Wolfgang’s Vault so we can hear all the lovely tracks that were left off the official album. But back to the live album, to employ an incredibly overused term, Ray’s performance from this era of Alcohol was so iconic, he was stuck with repeating it for years. The man committed! (Then he was committed). Christgau gave a B+ decent review to Everybody’s in Showbiz, noting that it added for the price of one more dollar, a live souvenir worth more than that, featuring a reborn showman who had learned to overcome his stage fright. Of course, he didn’t know how much it was taking out of Ray to do that. The Lola sing-along at the end is indefensible. RCA presumably on having the title on the album . The live versions were pretty sloppy. This was no solution. I keep coming back to a story Ray tells, I believe it’s also in that one-man show The Moneygoround. Ray is musing in 1969 that the Kinks can only continue if they become a road band, and his dad points out that the only way they can do that is if he writes a hit record. This may be real or 20-20 hindsight, but it’s exactly what happened. Ray wrote Lola, and they hit the road.
OK, I caught up with my homework this morning. Muswell Hillbilly The Johnny Cash thing is fun, and the song is lively. The other version is a little less focused, I think. Ray is playing acoustic guitar on this one ; I'm not sure he plays it on any other song on the official release. (Maybe Lola ? I forgot to pay attention). Alcohol Now this is really great. The 1972-released version is very pleasant, but I like the 2016-released one even more. I would understand people might find it annoying, though. But this song about alcohol sung by a conspicuously drunk singer (not faking it, I think) really works for me. There is an extra bit of music at the beginning (Gosling and Cotton, I guess ?). The first verse drags on for so long that when the chorus arrives, it's a burst of desperate slow energy. When I come to think of it, Ray sings suspiciously in tune for a drunken person. But then maybe he's used to it. I would agree in advance that maybe the inclusion of Banana Boat was not quite necessary. It would be nice within the frame of a longer album, probably. I think one more song on either side would have benefitted the whole. With a whole Lola as the extra song on side 2, maybe. Probably the version recorded that night was not usable. Actually, on the snippet included here, Dave seems to be playing a different song ! Great Skin and Bone with brass, and great Baby face. I'm all for keeping this one.
Live album From the opening one-two of Top of the Pops and Brainwashed I'm hearing a band that's loud, energetic, abrasive and relaxed. I really like it. But I have a problem with Ray's song selection, which I speculate was settled when Ray was totally pis*ed. How else can Mr. Wonderful, Banana Boat Song and Baby Face be explained? If not alcohol, maybe Ray took his line in Sitting in My Hotel about "writing songs for old time vaudeville revues" literally. And butchering Lola for the purpose of this album is unfathomable. I really enjoy the fast, fast, slow, slow, fast, slow tempo of the first six songs on the album (discounting Mr. Wonderful which just isn't). If I was in the audience for a show that started like that I'd be very happy. But the show/album slides badly from Banana Boat Song onwards. In 1972 the Rolling Stones were taking over the world with live shows that culminated with a barrage of fast, catchy songs. The Kinks had plenty such songs in their repertoire in 1972 (such as YRGM, ADAAOTN, Victoria, Rats, 20th Century Man) which, along with a proper Lola (not this Lola impersonator ) would in my mind have made this a more satisfying live testament.
Banana Boat Song. I have no problem with the guys playing this at a show for a bit of fun..... It's appearance on the album is somewhat bewildering. It's sort of neither a song, nor a comedic interlude, it is just a series of disjointed bits of a song that I'm not really a big fan of anyway lol It's sort of interesting the way Ray does the funny vocal at about the 43 second mark, that kind of reminds me of Zappa..... but this one should have been left on the cutting floor
Yes, but languages don't work that way. It's a question of the usage in each country. Incidentally, do you pronouce conquest as 'conkest'? And do you pronounce all French words the French way? Of course not.
Skin And Bone. Another goofy intro from Ray. This comes across pretty well, Dave seems to come in and out a bit early on. I'm not sure if that reflects his interest level, or if that's just how he played it live..... or perhaps there was stuff happening on stage. No problem with this, but not a live highlight. vI do like the In The Mood motif at the end from the horns though.
Baby Face. Another fun little interlude type song...... I have to be honest though, I have never liked this song, even Little Richard singing this couldn't rescue it for me. Someone seems to be missing a chord somewhere too. The horns swing it pretty well, but they are really loose.
Lola. and then there's this .... the audience participation section of Lola .... I don't understand this inclusion..... It is almost like "see people do know our songs" or something like that..... If I had bought this as a new Kinks album in '72, I would have been terribly disappointed, particularly after the snippets and bits and bobs of songs we were just delivered.
With all these campy little snippets, Ray is fashioning a new Kinks aesthetic, one that didn't exist on record before. It may work for the artist, but not so much for the listener.
I don’t know, this is baffling and underwhelming to say the least. Frustrating. Out of four tracks today, three are nothing more than snippets and interludes, almost no proper songs at all. Skin & Bones is a nice, fast and fun exception, with louder guitars in the intro, and I do enjoy it. But a “meatier” version of Skin & Bones, really ?? Dave must've realized it, as his guitar all but disappears after the first verse.
The Banana Boat song, an old (ish) Jamaican folk number most famously recorded by Harry Belafonte in 1956, is the ship that launched a million ‘Day-Os’ (to badly mangle an popular classical metaphor) emanating onstage from Ray Davies from this point to the end of their career. Later on he seemed to use it as a bit of punctuation to gain an immediate rapport with a stadium audience, but even so it’s a somewhat odd affectation he adopted and stuck doggedly with from here on in, and one that has not always been received by fans with total comprehension or appreciation by fans. I noted when I saw them live that Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day seems to use the exact same shtick.
So the live album was recorded at Carnegie Hall, March 2 and 3 1972 ... what were the setlists? March 2 Till the End of the Day You're Looking Fine Get Back in Line Have a Cuppa Tea Sunny Afternoon Muswell Hillbilly Brainwashed Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues Holiday Alcohol Complicated Life She’s Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina Long Tall shorty You Really Got Me March 3 Top of the Pops You're Looking Fine Mr. Wonderful Get Back in Line Muswell Hillbilly Apeman Sunny Afternoon 20th Century Man Day-O (The Banana Boat Song) Brainwashed Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues Holiday Complicate Life You Are My Sunshine Skin And Bone My Mammy Alcohol Have A Cuppa Tea Baby Face Lola You Really Got Me All Day And All Of The Night Victoria I'm not sure why the March 2nd set list is so short.... perhaps that is all that the folks at the setlist website could remember? I don't know, but based on the bonus live at Carnegie Hall disc on the Deluxe, and based on the setlist, I really don't understand why they picked the tracks they did..... unless somebody felt that the "fun" element of those songs would get people to come to shows? I have no idea, but this is the first well recorded live gig released by the band, and I think it was a terrible mistake at the time to shortchange themselves so badly on this live album. There's not too much wrong with the playing or recording, but half the songs just don't really belong on there. I know the guys had wanted to release an album and a double live album, and perhaps the record company making them compromise to a single live album brought some mischief out of them, I don't know, but I think it was an error in judgement. What we get is ok, but quite disappointing. If I had been holding the reins we would have gotten a double live album of the real songs they played..... If it had to have been a single album, I may have gone with what was eventually released on the Deluxe set, but that raises the question of what went wrong with Apeman, 20th Century Man, Have A Cuppa Tea, A full Lola, You Really Got Me, All Day And All Of The Night and Victoria? Anyway, although I certainly don't hate this live section of the release, it is disappointing.
Yea it's a shame, it starts off really well, but fades to be a parody of itself. Thankfully the Deluxe is very good..... I'm one of those folks that likes a good live album...... Although I must say, particularly the Muswell stuff, is all way better on the studio album for me.
Baby Face: not since ‘Long Tall Sally’ have we had roughly contemporaneous recordings of Ray Davies and Paul McCartney singing the same song. Paul definitely won round one, but who wins the Baby Face round?
You do get rhotic speakers in *England and, of course, Scotland and Northern Ireland are totally rhotic. (*Go down to Bristol or up to Burrrrnley).
