The Kinks - Album by Album (song by song)

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

  1. Fischman

    Fischman RockMonster, ClassicalMaster, and JazzMeister

    Location:
    New Mexico
    [​IMG]
     
  2. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    Interestingly again, I don't hear Stevie at all. If there is Fleetwood Mac in this song, and here I can kind of hear it ... it would be the "oooo ooo Sleepless Night" and that's Christine McVie 101
     
  3. ThereOnceWasANote

    ThereOnceWasANote Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cape May, NJ
    I hear some Santana or Mick Taylor in the fluid guitar lines but I'd have to agree on not hearing any Fleetwood Mac. Speaking of the Mac wasn't Rumors and Sleepwalker released the same day or around the same time, like weeks apart?
     
  4. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    Now that's funny :)
     
  5. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    Rumours
    [​IMG]
    Studio album by
    Fleetwood Mac
    Released
    4 February 1977
    Recorded February–August 1976

    Sleepwalker
    [​IMG]
    Studio album by
    the Kinks
    Released
    12 February 1977 (US)[1]
    26 February 1977 (UK)
    Recorded 1 July – 20 December 1976

    Eight days is pretty close :)
    Interesting that the UK had to wait a couple more weeks
     
  6. Fortuleo

    Fortuleo Used to be a Forum Resident

    This morning, as I was pondering the fact Dave still hadn’t contributed any new Kinks songs since You Don’t Know My Name, I thought about @Smiler's excellent catch about the Brother lyrics, the “You're my brother/ though I don’t even know your name line alluding to the Everybody's in Show-biz tune. We all interpreted this as a “treat your neighbor as yourself” kind of message but I really felt there was indeed more to it. We all got stuck with that song's lyrics the other day, weren’t we? Its tentative universality, its baffling un-Ray&Dave subject… Well, I think I may’ve found my way through them and that they might be about Ray and Dave after all, and their special bound in the Kinks.

    Just listen. « Nobody gives a damn anymore / Some (labels? members?) are breakin' off relationships, leavin' on sailin' ships for far and distant shores / For them it's all over, but I'm gonna stay / I wouldn't leave (the band) anyway. »

    Maybe Ray already knew that Dalton (and maybe even Gosling) was planning to leave when he wrote this. In that case, every single line in the song would make perfect sense as Ray's brotherly pledge of loyalty towards Dave, his promise to remain faithful to their bound, to their band. The two of them against all winds, against the world, no matter who, no matter what. Our friends are leavin'? Well, whatever the other Kinks members will do and everybody else, the horns players, the singers, the actresses, the previous label, maybe people in the management and any other “big men” around, never mind them, « you’re my brother / deep down inside you feel the same » and nothing will ever break that. From that perspective, every line now clicks and the song becomes much much more than a lesser Bridge over Troubled Water, an all-important Kinks song : the renewal of the original pact, the promise to stay together all down the line (this for you, my green Brian Jones friend). The old world's fadin' ? « Well, I'm not goin' anywhere / there's so much that we can share (…) Together we can find a way. » It's Ray reassuring his brother, saying "don't you worry, I may be obnoxious and controlling, I may even live in New York, I won’t leave the band, I won’t let you down, I won’t go solo, we’ll carry the torch together". And they did.
     
    Last edited: Feb 26, 2022
  7. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    I have to look at that again now.... really interesting observations
     
    All Down The Line and DISKOJOE like this.
  8. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    Hmm, except Ray, himself, says that Davis asked him to write this big-theme song. I do see what you’re saying but am skeptical.
     
  9. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    It's a broad draw, but there are certainly several passages that could be seen as codified messages... and they sort of make more sense that way also
    "I didn't know you yesterday", could (again drawing a long bow) be a reference to Dave being on the back burner for the showtune albums, and today he knows him, and is giving him the guitar and vocal inclusion on this album that he should have....

    I would still prefer something a little more precise.... or open, or at least less confused sounding..... but there is certainly lyrical possibilities that, for some reason, Ray wrote this as a codified apology for the last few years, or something like that.

    Using the same idea, but being open in the lyrics, it really could have been a masterpiece. The somewhat convoluted lyrics are the only issue I have with it really.... I wonder if Ray was concerned about opening himself up to the public too much in that instance. He will always say they are just songs, and nothing to do with me personally, but we have seen many times across the thread, lyrics that, at the very least, seem to be a look inside him.
     
  10. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    The interesting thing is Davis asked for this commercial album, and Ray is writing songs about - people paying too much attention to the lyrics in music - being stuck in a room next to your ex having loud sex - an insomniac who may well be a predator - attacking the idea of the Mr Big Man personality in the music industry - Living in the gutter and dealing with its consequences ..... I wonder if these themes were his way of flipping off Davis?
    When I look more deeply at the album it comes across like Whizzo chocolates (python reference alert) something that initially looks and seems sweet, until you get to the bones in the crunchy frog?
     
  11. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    I’ll leave this to you!
     
  12. ThereOnceWasANote

    ThereOnceWasANote Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cape May, NJ
    Yeah I was thinking of that possibility too. I doubt Ray would call a song Brother without there being subtext of some kind. Great catch and observation.
     
  13. DISKOJOE

    DISKOJOE Boredom That You Can Afford!

    Location:
    Salem, MA
    "Sleepless Night", a Dave sung Ray song about somebody whose unrequited love lives in the same building and gets it on with someone else while he seethes. It's kinda like Tony Orlando & Dawn's "Knock Three Times" but in this case the woman knocked twice on the pipe (she ain't gonna show). Another pleasant enough song in the context of the album, but not anything to consider for a Best Of.

    As as said before, today (2/26) marks the 45th Anniversary of the Kinks' first appearance on SNL in support of this album. The host was Steve Martin w/a special appearance by Lily Tomlin. If you have Peacock, you can actually see this episode, Kinks and all, in its entirety, since the musical clearances were done when the DVD editions of the first five seasons came out.
     
  14. markelis

    markelis Forum Resident

    Location:
    Miami Beach FL
    Sleepless Nights:

    Welcome back Dave!!! You have been missed (other than your wonderful contributions to Juke Box Music immediately prior). Great guitar, great vocals, funny song until you realize the girl shakin’ the walls next door is the protagonist’s ex, then its both funny and sad simultaneously.

    I don’t hear yacht rock, I do hear a bit of the Santana thing (and I’m surprised at the dislike for Santana, but I guess that’s a different thread), and I’m definitely not hearing generic rock. In fact, I guess what I’m hearing is a song that reminds me a lot of Wicked Annabella, which it seemed pretty much everyone on here raved about.

    I find the use of the term “ball” pretty funny actually. My dad got divorced around the time I was 12 (1977) and he was still pretty young, good looking, and in shape guy with quite a bit of “pocket charisma“ to boot. He and his buddy, Dave, used to cruise around in their matching red and yellow Corvettes (my dad‘s was the red one) and I had to listen to all their stories about all the “chicks” they were “ballin’”. I have no doubt that my stunted maturity levels are probably tied in someways to all of that!

    As someone said earlier, maybe it’s just easier to work backwards. Clearly I am a guy that, other than the early singles that caught on in the US, got involved with the kinks music with the Arista era. I was surprised at how easy it was for me to go back through the RCA era and accept it, quirks and all. I feel sympathy for those of you that came on board the Kinks Express earlier and are having trouble transitioning into the Arista albums, because I do think there’s a lot to like here, and Sleepless Nights one such song. To me, it all sounds like the kinks!
     
  15. Brian x

    Brian x the beautiful ones are not yet born

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    Sleepless Night

    It's one thing to have a song you played at a certain period that takes you back; it's another to hear a song that evokes a certain time, even though you never listened to it then.

    Yes, like @mark winstanley, I too experienced the Sleepless Night situation. The girl upstairs wasn't my girlfriend, but I was heartbroken over a girl, and the couple above seemed to be mocking my loneliness with their vigorous, athletic, near-constant ****ing. And yeah it's not a great lyric or anything, except one line that really hits: "nothing hurts people more than other people do."

    When I got Sleepwalker, when for a brief moment it was my favorite Kinks album, I would play the first three songs on side 1, skip Brother, play Juke Box Music, and throw on another album (at the time, usually Desire or Talking Heads '77). I must've listened to this song once or twice, but effectively the last few days have been my introduction to it and to the rest of side 2. And, aside from taking me back to my three month romantic exile in Sete 20 years ago, I really like it. I do recognize that the sound is "generic" and very "un-Kinks" (particularly if one is listening to their albums chronologically), but I take it as "mastering a form," like vaudeville or '50s pastiche, as mentioned above. It's well-executed genre -- no, brilliantly-executed genre -- & though the organ/guitar/oooo-oooo stuff isn't the least bit innovative, it is moving and, to my ear, an excellent if slightly structurally quirky gloss on '70s Fleetwood Mac/FM rock. The guitar work in particular may be far from original -- may even have an anonymous session-man sound -- but it's an effective, emotionally engaging version of that sound.

    Side notes (lazy weekend rambling):

    Last night, my wife, who was always able to pick out Dave songs when I was turning her onto the Kinks -- and who's from the internet, post-AOR generation -- said "woah, Eagles" after hearing this song for the first time, and immediately added it to her playlist.

    Now that's as evocative of the period as any song.

    And @Steve62 nailed the BOC element.

    Re @Fortuleo's take on Brother -- almost there with you, but how do you fit "though I didn't know you yesterday" into your analysis?
     
  16. Brian x

    Brian x the beautiful ones are not yet born

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    Yes it's a collection of real down-and-out characters, & a lot of it seems to take place in the dark of various sleepless nights.
     
  17. Paul Mazz

    Paul Mazz Senior Member

    I almost posted yesterday that in spite of everyone saying the song was not about Dave, it still felt that way to me - but I had trouble fitting the line "though I don't even know your name" into that interpretation. Thanks to @Fortuleo for pointing out the call back to the Showbiz track "You Don't Know My Name," a Dave penned track.

    The above line did not bother me at all. People say "I didn't really know him" about people they know all the time.

    I'm sticking to the song being about Ray's actual brother from now on, whether Ray intended it that way or not. I've heard some songwriters say that once a song is out there, a listener's interpretation is valid in spite of what the songwriter intended at the time. I just finished reading McCartney's The Lyrics, and Paul tells stories about people bringing interpretations to one of his songs that he never thought about, with him later realizing that there may have been things going on in his subconscious that gave validity to the listener's interpretation. I don't have the time to dig through the McCartney book right now to find the exact passage.
     
  18. pantofis

    pantofis Senior Member

    Location:
    Berlin, Germany
    „Sleepless Night“ sounds more like Coverdale/Hughes era Deep Purple than the Kinks to me. Very forgettable tune, and one that still makes me skip. Something very tired and inconsequential about it.
     
  19. Vangro

    Vangro Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    Leonard Cohen handled this subject matter much more interestingly in his song, 'Paper-Thin Hotel"!
     
  20. palisantrancho

    palisantrancho Forum Resident

    Hs anyone mentioned that it sounds like Ray on lead vocals from 1:08-1:30? That's the best part of the song. Maybe I would be more open to it if Ray sang the entire song. I find the "Ooo OOoo" vocal by Dave very irritating.
     
  21. palisantrancho

    palisantrancho Forum Resident

    :edthumbs:
     
  22. Wondergirl

    Wondergirl Forum Resident

    Location:
    Massachusetts, USA
    Juke Box Music

    I've known this one since it came out as it was a radio hit. So the familiarity makes me comfortable going in. But as I listen, I so want to feel happy hearing it but I'm finding it a little...generic. Like it's definitely a single. But maybe I feel like any other band at the time could have produced this. Doesn't feel special enough to me.

    and as Mark pointed out...where are the drums? There's no snap or anything other than a padded down drumming.

    Of course there are some good bits...Dave is definitely present and accounted for. and I love when Dave's vocals come in. The best part! Ray kind of sounds like he has "hay fever" - sounding more nasal than usual.

    I think I delayed giving my thoughts on this by a day as I wanted to get in the right head space. I so wanted to be like "Yay! This is so freakin' great!" but I'm not feeling it. I wouldn't skip it, but it's not do much for me. :(
     
  23. Wondergirl

    Wondergirl Forum Resident

    Location:
    Massachusetts, USA
    Sleepless Night

    This one is newer to my ears. I think it's growing on me. I don't think it's a Kinks Klassic or nothing even close. But I enjoy Dave's vocals especially his raspy "ooooh"s.

    Mark mentioned that he hears a bit of Santana and I did too. Also, and I haven't read anyone's thoughts yet...I hear Lynyrd Skynyrd's "That Smell" esp with the oooohs.

    It's not very Kinky to me but a decent song.
     
  24. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    No problem there, I am one of like... what? 3 people that like it lol
    I actually love it... and I'm guessing Monday's song is going to be disliked as well, but for me it is among my favourites on here
     
  25. Wondergirl

    Wondergirl Forum Resident

    Location:
    Massachusetts, USA
    Not that I had this exact circumstance, but similar. I had fallen for someone and he lived next door to me. He rode a motorcycle. He broke up with me. After that, I could hear him coming and going at all hours on that bike. And I knew from others he was dating other people. It bothered me so much I ended up going away to college to complete my degree. So something very good came out of it.

    anyway, I can see where the dude was caught living where he's living and what are you going to do about it? Write a song!
     

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