The Kinks - Album by Album (song by song)

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

  1. ARL

    ARL Forum Resident

    Location:
    England
    "You're Lookin' Fine"

    This is fantastic. What a difference this would have made to the original disc. The band is absolutely rocking on all cylinders here.

    "'Til The End Of The Day"

    Again, this would have made a real difference to the original set, maybe at the expense of a Muswell track and a couple of snippets. There clearly was a great live album to be released here.
     
  2. croquetlawns

    croquetlawns Forum Resident

    Location:
    Scotland
    It is odd that the Legacy edition didn't just present one complete concert - even with all of the tracks now available I'm not sure that you can properly assemble a complete concert.
     
  3. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    I get the feeling the bonus disc, as much as I like it, was in itself a bit of a compromise.
    Ideally, to me at least, we would have got the Biz studio album, and a complete show... or a hybrid of the 2 nights that constituted a whole show, but of course that would annoy the purists that would want the original live release.... just because....
    I guess the compromise was to not double up too much. We do get about 4 doubles, but they appear to be from the alternate night.
    But yea, ideally for me, original live album or not, a complete show would have been great document of the 72 band, and the Carnegie concerts
     
  4. The late man

    The late man Forum Resident

    Location:
    France
    Yes, I totally agree with that. Of course, we can put the existing tracks in the right order, but some are missing. As for Ray strapping his guitar, I guess he must have done it on both nights with Get Back In Line (too warbly for my taste, I love screamy Ray but warbly Ray doesn't work for me), and then through Have a Cuppa Tea, Sunny Afternoon and Muswell Hillbilly on night 1, and through Muswell Hillbilly, Apeman, Sunny Afternoon and maybe 20th Century Man on night 2.

    I heard a bootleg recording of Lola live in 1972 (different venue, I think), and it was sloppy as hell. I'm certain the Carnegie version must have been pretty unusable. Generally speaking, I don't feel all the songs are similarly well-rehearsed. The recent songs and the staple tunes are well mastered, but Sunny afternoon, for instance, doesn't feel as if they had spent enough time on it recently. Ray starts alone and the others join in no particular order, Dave fills the gaps in between his descending riff with aimless noodling, and even gets the last chord of the verse wrong, in my opinion (switching to major too soon), and Gosling sounds as if he knew the chords but hadn't really thought the arrangement out (I miss the descent on the 7th on the G chord after "from this squeeze" in the chorus, it's part of the song for me !).

    Sorry, I jumped ahead again.
     
  5. markelis

    markelis Forum Resident

    Location:
    Miami Beach FL
    I don’t have much to add to this discussion about the live disc or the additional live bonus tracks, other than to say I am a huge fan of One from the Road, as I have probably mentioned several times now. I felt pretty ambivalent to almost all of the songs released on the original live portion of EISB. The two songs from today, till the end of the day and you’re looking fine, both sound like they would have fit in beautifully on one from the road and are songs that I would happily mix into a live Kinks playlist.
     
  6. Tim 2

    Tim 2 MORE MUSIC PLEASE

    Location:
    Alberta Canada
    Yup :righton:
     
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  7. The late man

    The late man Forum Resident

    Location:
    France
    (It's not a descent on the 7th but from the 7th on to the dominant, that"s F - E- D on a G chord, I just checked)
     
  8. ajsmith

    ajsmith Senior Member

    Location:
    Glasgow
    'You're Looking Fine' live mutates and espands into some massive jammed up 70s rock wall of sound monster, barely recognizable from the relatively contained sketch of the 1960s album version. I still maintain it's not a great song and the weakest spot by some distance on Face To Face, but they obviously enjoyed playing it and it must have connected on a powerful lizard brain rockin' level with audiences (though I wonder how many would have actually recognised it from disc). Still I do find it a bit of a shame that they played this one night after night from 1966 to 1974 while nearly everything else from Face To Face save the the hit and for a few years 'Dandy' got left on the shelf.
     
  9. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    Today’s two tracks: very nice. It took me a while to get myself to click ‘play’ but am glad I did. And I immediately searched out the studio version of You’re Looking Fine; proof that a live album can drum up interest in a back catalog.
     
  10. DISKOJOE

    DISKOJOE Boredom That You Can Afford!

    Location:
    Salem, MA
    he wasFirst off, props to Avid Ajsmith for mentioning The Beach Boys In Concert, which is a great album & showed that they could rock without Brian & before the fossilzation of nostalgia set in.

    As for the first two songs in the bonus disc, to me "Till the End of the Day" has always been a natural opener, while "She's Looking Fine" has been a perennial favorite of Dave's up to the present day. It's another one two punch, equal to the live disc of Show Biz.

    Speaking of "Till the End of the Day", I would like to have everyone, especially Our Headmaster, take a look at the version on The Kinks Live at the Rainbow, which was made around this time, especially the way Ray looks & his gestures. It looks like he was watching Elvis perform (which he did around this time) & took some things from it.
     
  11. Smiler

    Smiler Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston TX
    “You’re Looking Fine” – I think of this song, along with “She’s Got Everything,” as throwaways – I mean, it probably took Ray a total of 5 minutes to write the lyrics for both of them. And yet, whenever I hear them, I’m reminded how much I love ‘em. “You’re Looking Fine” has a groove that always draws me in, and this live version rocks nicely in an early 70s way. “Till the End of the Day” is also good to hear beside all the then-recent material; another winner.
     
    Last edited: Dec 2, 2021
  12. Martyj

    Martyj Who dares to wake me from my slumber? -- Mr. Flash

    Location:
    Maryland, USA
    It seems to me the live LP half of Everybody’s in Showbiz has been historically marginalized among critics and is running about 50/50 here. However it is my favorite Kinks live LP, and overall one of my favorite things the Kinks ever did. I love it. I was looking for some free time to air out my feelings here before the thread moved on to another LP. Fortuleo saved me a lot of explaining when he beat me to it a few days back:



    That’s the heart of it: my admiration for this kind of artistic daring, which I compare to the band shaking up the pop charts in 1965 with both the Indian drone-inspired “See My Friends” and the left turn into English Music Hall-as-social-commentary of “A Well Respected Man.” It’s these kinds of offerings—including this live LP—that live up to the Kink’s boast that “(they) are not like everybody else”…and, in my mind, put them in the conversation as one of the most relevant bands of this period.

    Or course, this “relevancy” did not translate into a rush of other bands following their lead with these same kinds of fun, sloppy, free-spirited rock and roll shows with a horn section supplement (Well…there is NRBQ and the Whole Wheat Horns, who were independently on a parallel path). What I mean is at the time this album was released—some 15 years or so after the mid-50’s emergence of R&R as a popular art form—rock and roll had come to this: the relevant artists were those separating themselves from the lesser acts by making statements that were essentially “Here is how I (or we) define rock and roll.” Paul Simon was doing it one way, Bowie another, Zappa another, Sly Stone another, etc. With the Kinks on Everybody’s in Showbiz, it was THIS WAY. Don’t care for it? Fair enough…but respect it as a relevant statement of what rock and roll can be as opposed to a collection of songs our record company hopes you’ll buy.

    Now, my championing of this live half of Everybody’s in Showbiz is not an argument for ascribing track-by-track greatness to the disc (I’m talking the original 1972 release, not the expanded reissue.) Indeed, I think only Top of the Pops, Brainwashed and Alcohol achieve it. Those who have a problem with the heavy reliance on Muswell cuts and truncated thowaways have points. (By the way, if the truncated “Lola” bugs you, you are going to hate the first 7 hours of Peter Jackson’s 8 hour “Get Back.”)

    But I simply enjoy the hell out of listening to it, flaws and all. I 'm not sure another Kinks disc make me smile as much as these tracks. And, as a whole I much prefer this to the otherwise cut-for-cut superior “One for the Road.” We’ll get to that one later, of course, but just to make my point of the contrast: One for the Road’s arena rock, fist-pumping machismo postering is something I can’t tell if Ray is embracing or mocking. I don’t think even he is sure as it seems he is being pulled in both directions. With the Live Everything’s in Showbiz there is no ambiguity: he’s ALL IN as Rock Star as the vaudevillian. It’s a more honest record, not least of which is evident in the recording of the audience. It comes across as genuine here as opposed to One For the Road’s industry standard post-production “audience sweetening” overdubs.

    By the way, I’ve alway’s seen Baby Face as tossing a bone to the Mike Cotton Sound just to give them a little bit of the spotlight. Kind of like the way Elvis might let the Imperials have a complete verse to themselves during one of his 70’s concerts.

    And, you can add me to the list of consumers back in the day suckered in by the inclusion of “Lola.”
     
    Last edited: Dec 2, 2021
  13. Martyj

    Martyj Who dares to wake me from my slumber? -- Mr. Flash

    Location:
    Maryland, USA
    I can't help but noticing the the first four notes Gosling plays on the studio opener, "Here Comes Yet Another Day", loosely mirror the first three notes of "Till the End of the Day," which was the Kinks contemporary live show opener. I have to think Ray was channeling his earlier song in mind as he was conceiving the grander concept of combining the studio and live albums, and designating Another Day as the natural opener to the concept. Even the use of "Day" in the title suggests his mind was going in that direction. (Then, of course, he winds up NOT using End of the Day on the release. That's sooooo typically Kinks.)
     
  14. The late man

    The late man Forum Resident

    Location:
    France
    Great post!
     
  15. palisantrancho

    palisantrancho Forum Resident

    I wasn't sure If I would be interested in these older songs played live at this time. They had so much excellent recent material that they could play instead. Then "Til The End Of The Day" comes blasting out of the speaker and I quickly change my mind. They blow this one apart and it's a marvelous performance. I would have loved for them to be this raw in their late 70s rock period.

    "You're Looking Fine" sounds like a completely different band. They are really giving this the heavy 70s treatment. Dave is screaming like a heavy metal banshee and his guitar playing here is sweet. This is pretty fierce for a Kinks tune. They suddenly become Led Zeppelin for 4 minutes. This doesn't really fit with the rest of the material, but it also shows that they could bring the rawk! Well done, lads!

    Is there no live footage of these songs? That would be spectacular.
     
  16. croquetlawns

    croquetlawns Forum Resident

    Location:
    Scotland
    My random 6 am thought - I hear that a lot of people lost interest in The Kinks with the Showbiz album, but I wonder if that would have been the case if just the studio album was released, or if the live album used better tracks like those currently being discussed? I'm starting to think that it's the head-scratching live album that made many fans give up on The Kinks.
     
  17. palisantrancho

    palisantrancho Forum Resident

    I say when you try new things you are gonna win some new fans and lose some old fans. The Kinks took risks and did what they (Ray) wanted. The theatrical period coming up was already sort of on display on the live Showbiz album, and it's just not everyone's cuppa tea. They were becoming too challenging for the mainstream, in my opinion. But then again they have always been a band that pushed boundaries. Many fans that gave up probably went back and realized they were wrong for doing so.
     
  18. donstemple

    donstemple Member of the Club

    Location:
    Maplewood, NJ
    Till the End of the Day / You're Looking Fine

    I think I agree completely with @ajsmith here:

    This is what I wished they would have done. A live set that covers their early 70s songs combined with some of their 60s songs done by them in the 70s. Some different arrangements like how the Beach Boys turned Marcella and Funky Pretty into great live numbers for that In Concert set.

    These two songs today are killer live. Till the End of the Day is pretty true to the intensity of the original album track. You're Looking Fine is transformed into an early 70s rocker with Mick going crazy on drums and some great different guitar licks and a nice solo by Dave. The adding of the organ is great too. It's a simple, you could almost say, throwaway easy/basic song, but it has such an infectious riff to it that allows the band to really open up a bit and jam during a live show.
     
  19. Adam9

    Adam9 Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй.

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    That was after the Americans put the torch to Toronto or as it was then known, York.:)
     
  20. zipp

    zipp Forum Resident

    Yet more 'friendly rivalry' I presume.

    Let's just say that I think that the so-called 'special relationship' between the UK and the US is a myth.
     
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  21. Wondergirl

    Wondergirl Forum Resident

    Location:
    Massachusetts, USA
    Cheers!:uhhuh:
     
  22. Wondergirl

    Wondergirl Forum Resident

    Location:
    Massachusetts, USA
    I was just about to say that.

    No I wasn't.
    :D
     
  23. Wondergirl

    Wondergirl Forum Resident

    Location:
    Massachusetts, USA
    Til the End of the Day
    Oh my goodness, YES, this should have been the live album opener. So good to hear this song after not hearing it for many months. This is in my wheelhouse of what I want to listen to when I just want to bang my head. Geez, another missed opportunity, boys!

    You're Looking Fine.
    I adore this song...the original and any live version I've heard. I think this is Dave singing at his very best. Right in his rawest, rockingest range. and I said it when we covered the album version - it's a damned sexy song. Dave with his "whoop"s and such. I do blush!
     
  24. side3

    side3 Younger Than Yesterday

    Location:
    Tulsa, OK
    Till the End of the Day

    Great song, of course. Well done, but I dont think it touches the original, or even comes close to the original foursome's live versions. I guess was unable to get his early grungy tone on more modern gear. I also think the backing/harmony vocals are lacking. Maybe Pete had more to do with those harmonies that I had suspected?
     
  25. The late man

    The late man Forum Resident

    Location:
    France
    I know nobody cares, but I already was indirectly corrected on harmonic rubbish I said about Celluloid Heroes, so I'm taking extra care ! :)
     
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