I have been neutral on the album Soap Opera but honestly hadn't given it much attention until now. I've been listening to it constantly for the past couple of weeks and I've completely bought in. I'm in that magical place as an album listener where as you are enjoying one song, you start to anticipate the next song with excitement, and again for the next song, straight through to the end. Soap Opera is the perfect antidote to the bleak Preservation Act 2. Compare how they start: Act 2 gives us a tense news broadcast about an impending war; Soap Opera gives us an exuberant guitar solo, handclaps and cowbell! In Soap Opera the band has bought in completely to what Ray is doing, and play with great rock and roll energy. In Act 2, it feels at times like they are constrained by the complexity of it all, as if they are playing off sheet music like members of an orchestra. Soap Opera flows really well from song to song. Unlike Act 2 there's a consistency and cohesiveness to the sound, even though there is a variety of musical styles. The story is an effective framework to give the album a sense of forward momentum from start to finish without being overbearing - each of the songs can be enjoyed on their own if you aren't paying close attention. Finally, there's serious desperation in the lyrics - but the high energy and joy in the performance results in it being an act of rebellion, which is uplifting. If you are stuck in a dead end job, listening to Soap Opera can be very therapeutic!
One thing that others have mentioned that I should have - Soap Opera is genuinely funny - there are some actual laugh out loud moments in here!
I did see Do It Again when it was on Channel 2 WGBH/Boston & a friend made a DVD copy for me. I also gave $50.00 to the filmmaker Geoff Edgers to help pay for a DVD release, which never happened, but I did receive a copy of this gincy poster:
As for Soap Opera, it was a $1.99 Ann & Hope bargain bin purchase for me back in the late 70s. I did enjoy listening to it back then & it will be interesting to see how my fellow Avids react to this. I have seen both Starmaker & the live show posted on You Tube. It's a shame that the latter only exists in that crappy condition. My friend Jimmy said that he saw it at a downtown Boston movie theater (the live show itself never hit Boston for some reason) & it was in the same condition as shown on YouTube, which was a shame since RCA, a bug media corporation at that time wouldn't put out the money to make a decent visual record of the show. At least the BBC had enough money to splurge on color.
Got to nerd in here and say that the Starmaker teleplay was made for Granada (a regional franchisee of commercial station ITV) and not the BBC.
this , sadly , is where i start to get off the kinks train so to speak. now don't get me wrong they remain my favorite band of them all through the RCA years. i just feel the "soap opera" and "schoolboys in disgrace" were meant to be musicals and would have worked better than in that context than they do as stand alone rock and roll albums. i did see the kinks live during this period and remember digging the shows. curious to see what the arista and beyond years discussion holds.
Soap Opera is another Kinks album and tour that I experienced in real time as they were released. I think at the time, I liked the Preservation show better as it was more ambitious. But have to admit that over the years if I was going to grab a Kinks record from this era to play, it would probably be Soap Opera. I only became aware of the Granada TV production within the last few years. Thank you Internet. The first time I saw it I was disappointed - thinking what happened to the rest of the songs . Reading this thread is the first time I learned that the Granada show came first. If I get the time, I plan on watching the live show posted to refresh my memory of the show I saw at the Beacon theater in 1975.
Soap Opera I've only been listening to this over the last 2 weeks, although I heard of one of the songs last month through a friend. I made the mistake of first playing this album rather loudly, within earshot of my wife, and she said "wtf is this? this is weird". I think that was during the first few spoken parts... Anyway, I've listened to it with headphones or while not in the presence of the family, and have heard less critiques because of that. Regarding the album, what immediately hit me was the real 180 degree turn from the production and feel of the Preservation project. It seems similar to the shift from Muswell Hillbillies to Everybody's in Show Biz. This is obviously lighter, more fun, with the humor being lighter as opposed to darker. Now don't get me wrong, I do love some dark humor, and yes, I thoroughly enjoyed the Preservation period. I haven't watched the Grenada TV production yet, but plan to this weekend. It's really fascinating to read some of the articles that our Headmaster posted this morning, describing how Ray seemed to want to have the Kinks be more than just a band, but almost a performance/entertainment troupe -- really putting on a show/production. He wanted to do this since 1969, and the production/performance aspect never materialized for Arthur and Lola vs Powerman, and that's a real shame. I think having to crank out an album every single year is just too much, and he needed more time on each project before feeling the pressure (either by the record companies, or his own pressure) to move on to the next project. Nowadays bands release albums every 3, 4, or 5 years, so I think with that sort of timeline, Ray could have had these productions fully fleshed out and do a longer tour of each show, with a proper recording so these live experiences could be absorbed for decades to come. Again, it's sad that these were not recorded well and... preserved... for those of us too young (or not born yet) to see them live. Back to Soap Opera, I think it's good fun listen. Definitely start to hear a theme in the song subjects after a couple listens and paying attention to some of the lyrics. The production is solid, and I even already had put one of these songs on my Christmas playlist last month. Looking forward to reading everyone's thoughts on these tracks!
As someone who has spent much of my publishing career in the history field I have observed how history is packaged by the generation, roughly in 20 year increments. During the 1970’s—the point when Rock and Roll as a popular art form turned 20 years old—the first all-compassing histories began proliferating the popular marketplace. Things like “The Encyclopedia of Rock” or something or another. “Best Album Guides” and “Greatest Rock Artists”, things like that. Thus, these first histories left imprints on popular conscious that went unchallenged. We were told Sgt. Pepper was the greatest LP of all time, for example. The New York Underground = good. Prog rock and heavy metal = bad. Etc. It has taken subsequent generational cycles for these kinds of popular conceptions to be objectively reevaluated. These early histories proliferated at the time when the Kinks were enjoying a commercial resurgence under Arista. Equating chart success with merit, it was cast in stone that the Kinks at RCA were a misfire, with the nadir being Soap Opera, with its hokey presentation and goofy performances. This judgement especially proliferated during the early 80’s while The Kinks were attracting big arena rock show success and fans began looking into the back catalog. “Stay away from Soap Opera,” went the common refrain. Such advice came not from people who actually listened to the album, but rather from reading about it and buying into this widespread conception. It has been an uphill struggle ever since for this modest, fun work to be given a fair shake. It still persists. All Music gives this LP the lowest ranking of all Kinks albums. Reader comments on the same site give it high marks. One wonders how much the All Music critic’s perception was clouded going in, as if to search for only its faults (and yes, they are there) rather than sniff out its virtues. This Steve Hoffman forum discussion should change a few open minds, I suspect. That has been the trend for the RCA era so far. True, Soap Opera is no Village Green. But it’s no UK Jive, either. The songs aren’t as daring or imaginative as Preservation. Their basic, no frills RR and pop structures have more in common with the weaker tracks on Everybody’s in Showbiz and the upcoming Schoolboys. But there is a fun energy to the whole thing I find irresistible. It’s part of what the Kinks appeal are all about. One can appreciate this song for song, although Ray’s intent is for us to digest this as a linear story. As far as that goes, it works in the way Preservation doesn’t. It’s not asking us to follow a shifting focus. It stays true to its concept through out. It’s nothing particularly earth shattering but the payoff—Surprise! Norman has been fantasizing this all along!—is at least not asking us to piece together a grand concept to discover some kind of hidden, deep insight. It’s interesting how Soap Opera is Preservation in reverse: Preservation started as an LP and was molded into a stage play; Soap Opera was vice versa. Thus, it’s easy to identify those songs that are essential to the narrative vs. the filler, because here the filler songs (Holiday Romance, Ducks on the Wall (if one is going by Starmaker)) were added to the album, rather than Preservations approach to subtract from the stage play (The Tramp songs). I agree that overall there are fewer deep track hidden gems on this LP than on every Kinks album leading up to it. There are a couple, though. Still, I like this LP a lot. I’ve listened to it probably more often than it deserves when weighing it against their truly great works. And I LOVE Dave’s guitar hero moment spotlight on the later stage reworking of “Ordinary People.” It took me a while to come around on the cover. It still doesn’t feel like the way a Kinks album ought to look, but the art direction is solid if one is lucky enough to own a gatefold version. I’m underwhelmed by the choices in typography, however.
I would have thought the fact that nobody in the Kinks (other than Ray?) has a good word to say about this album has had some bearing on its reputation?
I belong to a professional graphic designers guild. We had a guest speaker once who was going through his slide show, discussing his design works. Then THIS flashed on the screen and I nearly fell out of my chair. I had never heard of this movie. He discussed that he volunteered to do this work simply because he loved the project--he is a bigger Kinks fan than me, apparently. I cornered him after his talk to ask about the movie. He said it was still in production, the filmmaker trying to work out permissions and releases in order to put it out without being sued. He didn't know the details but heard that Ray and his "people" were actively working against its completion. As others have said, it eventually did see the light of the day, but I wonder if the reason it hasn't been available since is because Ray managed to put a stop to it? Of course, I would love to see it, as I'm sure would anyone on this forum.
RS Mendelsohn original review (July 3, 1975): It isn't only because I received this album gratis that I won't take the safe way out and coo something glib like, "To hear Ray Davies intone such lines as 'You'd better come to bed, darling' (in tones so urbane as to cause Bryan Ferry to tremble with envy) is alone sufficient justification for the purchase of Soap Opera." Nor on the other hand will I succumb to the enormous temptation to sniff, "On Soap Opera the Kinks sound pretty well washed up." What I will tell you is that, compared to such earlier splendors of their creation as the utterly marvelous Arthur—of which Soap is in many ways a lame and tepid rehash—this album sounds like the work of a group that's attempting to conceal the evaporation of its genius by inserting spoken dialogue between tracks so they can ask you to believe they're pioneering the concept of the rock-album-as-theater. Musically, there isn't one really striking melody on the album, although there are plenty of tedious, hackneyed, ready-made ones: It may be that I didn't retain sufficiently close rein on my attention, but I still can't recall hearing even one remotely arresting melodic phrase throughout the album. As for the words, we're one to ignore the laxly adhered to, skeletally developed and none-too-innovative plot (a big shot investigates an alternative, less glamorous life-style and discovers too late that he can't return to his own). One might well hear this album as a collection of songs Ray left unrecorded over the years because he knew he could do much better. Surely he's treated every theme represented here infinitely more poignantly elsewhere. Example: Answering phones and dictating letters Making decisions that affect no one Stuck in the office from nine until five Life is so incredibly dull Working from nine to five. To be fair, no album featuring Ray Davies's singing could ever be less than at least intermittently delightful. Why spring for Soap Opera, though, when you could instead add to your collection one of the many Kinks albums that are as amazing for what's being sung as for how it's being sung. (RS 190) JOHN MENDELSOHN
This fits in with your 20 year theory, since it was that many years ago that Sgt Pepper taught the band to play!
Hmmm....I've never considered Norman being mentally ill. More of a Walter Mitty-like delusional. I see him more like an average Joe dreaming of --to quote a later song--living in a Rock and Roll fantasy. More like as if Arthur Morgan from "Arthur" escapes the hum-drum of his daily life not by "going Dri-i-i-i-iving..." but by imagining he's a rock star.
I think the most recent Rolling Stone "greatest LP of all time" had Sgt. Pepper ranked in the twenties or thirties. Of course, it's reasonable that other great LP's could have come along in the decades since, yet it was largely displaced by re-evaluations of albums that were roughly of the same era. I think even Revolver was ranked higher, but I may be wrong about that.
I think the ‘Soap Opera’ cover art/lyrics illos may be the among the most quintessentially pieces of seventies graphic design I’ve ever seen. Quality tackiness.
Basically, Do It Again is about Geoff Edgers' (who worked at the Boston Globe at the time) attempt to get the Kinks back together. What he did was to talk to various music people about the Kinks & then having them sing a Kinks song w/them on acoustic guitar, w/varying results. He also goes to London to look for Ray & just missed him at a Kinks Fan Club convention. He did get a chance to talk w/Dave, which was the climax of the film.
