The Kinks - Album by Album (song by song)

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

  1. Wondergirl

    Wondergirl Forum Resident

    Location:
    Massachusetts, USA
    ^^this. Yeah, I don't hear full-on punk at all. Closer to new wave especially with a few of the songs on this album. And anyway, the Kinks were punk before it was a thing.
     
  2. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    Either the Kinks were making commercial music because Clive Davis told them to, or they were making non-commercial music, ie punk. You can't have it both ways.
    I don't agree with either angle personally, the Kinks made yet another eclectic album, just like they had been doing for 15 years.
    There is some shouty Ray and some Cockney accents, both of which Ray was doing before punk was even recognized as a thing.
    There is very little about this album that is punk at all.... Davies as he always did, was doing exactly what he wanted to do, the way he wanted to do it.
     
  3. Vangro

    Vangro Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    Give the people what they want? Call it punk, call it new wave, call it whatever. We won't agree but Ray was definitely clambering on a bandwagon on this album, fairly inexpertly but nonetheless. My main issue isn't that he's doing it, it's that he isn't doing it very well.
     
  4. All Down The Line

    All Down The Line The Under Asst East Coast White Label Promo Man

    Location:
    Australia
    She may be shook up but still have a gallon of sass.
     
  5. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    From the Creem piece, 1980:
    “No need to prop up the Kinks, though. Low Budget’s sold between 600,000-700,000 copies, and that’s a pretty good crutch for any band with the Kink’s track record.”

    I’m guessing these numbers are US. Just checked RIAA and the album remains at gold, certified in January, 1980.

    Other sales numbers given in the Creem piece:
    Misfits: 400,000
    Sleepwalker: 400,000
    Kinks Kronikles: 120,000
    Lola vs. Poweman…: 135,000
    Arthur…: 100,000
    Village Green..: 38,000
    Something Else: 39,000
    Live Kinks: 53,000

    assuming all the above is US and applicable at time of 1980 publication of article.

    In the US it seems pretty clear that the Clive and Co. brought commercial success…and that Low Budget brought about a huge spike in sales (over 70% above 400,000).

    Note: since I just looked at RIAA. Give the People (‘82) and One For the Road (‘80) also have gold. The only other is Greatest Hits ‘68).
     
  6. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    Oh, and just because I think it’s funny (Creem guy, last sentence of Low Budget commentary): “Stick around, you might be playing bass for the Kinks next season.” (Referencing high turnover in band).
     
  7. All Down The Line

    All Down The Line The Under Asst East Coast White Label Promo Man

    Location:
    Australia
    Interesting comment as I have a memorable and fun Creem issue from 1981 that reviews all of The Rolling Stones albums with Brian Jones.
    N.b. Reviewing Their Satanic Majesties Request they said; "The flopperoo that made Flowers look like Aftermath!"
     
  8. chickendinna

    chickendinna Homegrown’s All Right With Me

    Low Budget is excellent, although it’s not very Kinksian. Hey, but it was the end of the Seventies and the beginning of the Eighties, what can I tell you. All of the Sixties artists whether it be McCartney, Dylan, the Stones, the Who were all very much aware of the sounds and trends that were happening. I thought the Kinks adapted pretty well and for the most part pulled it off. I can’t say the same for some of the others.
     
  9. pantofis

    pantofis Senior Member

    Location:
    Berlin, Germany
    I mean they became their own style again by creating idiosyncratic songs only the way the Kinks could come up with. Instead of adapting the latest Ray Davies ideas to the latest flavor of the month.
    Or that they were ahead of the trends instead of following them. I may be wrong though, but to me Low Budget doesn’t sound like a band desperately trying to catch up. They sound refreshed and on a roll.
     
  10. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    :D In terms of sales, every one of those entities did just fine during that time period (at least in terms of US). And so did The Kinks.
     
  11. donstemple

    donstemple Member of the Club

    Location:
    Maplewood, NJ
    Low Budget

    Coming into this year, I had pretty much never heard of any song from Low Budget. All I knew was from this thread that *this* is where the sound changed, and it seems to either be loved or derided because of that. The other night I was listening to Preservation Act I and my god, it does sound like a completely different band. (by the way, Preservation Act 1, just surprassing Soap Opera, is the previously unknown RCA album I go back to most right now. It's fantastic.) Anyway, it is incredible how their song styles and sounds had changed between 1973 and 1979.

    That also made me realize this...

    The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society --> Preservation Act 1 = 5 years
    Preservation Act 2 --> Low Budget = 5 years

    I'm not sure really what that means, but I think it is interesting how time works.

    Back to Low Budget, the only song I had heard was (Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman last summer. I was talking to a friend about how good the Kinks are, and he said he was a fan of Superman.... and said that he never realized just how influential the Kinks were to the bands he loved in college. He pointed me this 2002 song Rock n Roll by the Sounds and noted the similarity to Superman. So I listened to both songs then, and back at that time, we were still in 1968-ish on this thread I think, so I had NO idea what the Arista years were like. ...interesting...

    Now that I've listened to Low Budget for a couple weeks now, it does sound pretty different. More shouty (or throaty?) in spots. Louder drums. More straight drum beats (to my ears). But it's still very Kinkian. A Kinkian way of doing rock disco. The lyrics are topically Kinks. I have a few early favorites. Perhaps a couple duds. But a great sounding album that is a lot of fun.

    I will go on the record and say that I don't think Catch Me Now I'm Falling is the only quasi-Stones ripoff on the album. I hear another, and wonder if others hear it too, when we get to that day. But I'm putting down my marker here on that.

    As for the album cover, I love it. I think it perfectly gets across the grittiness of the sound and the kind of party you would attend to rock out to this album.

    The cigarette butts absolutely implies that she's been there a while! That is a great observation, and makes me laugh a bit too.
     
    Last edited: Mar 27, 2022
  12. LX200GPS

    LX200GPS Forum Resident

    Location:
    Somewhere Else
    Something that always puzzled me was why the long version of Low Budget has only surfaced as a B side to the Superman single. I have the HDCD DSD SACD released a few years back and, although there are three bonus tracks included, it is also omitted from this re-issue. Ideally, it would have gone on the original Come Dancing cd as that release did have different edits of some of the Arista tracks.

    The SACD mentioned above is yet another clean and wonderful sounding Kinks album. Love to hear that in 5.1.
     
  13. TeddyB

    TeddyB Senior Member

    Location:
    Hollywoodland
    With the Beach Boys fans on this thread, they are probably aware that “Shouty Brian” is a venerable online usage for Mr. Wilson’s seventies voice. The voice change likely for very different reasons than Ray’s.
     
  14. The late man

    The late man Forum Resident

    Location:
    France
    Right now I don't hear the second Stones rip-off (Catch me now is not a "quasi" rip-off, but a full one, IMO), but I spotted two full bars of Beatles.
     
  15. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    I'm not sure I would say one riff three times is a complete RIP-off personally
     
  16. ThereOnceWasANote

    ThereOnceWasANote Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cape May, NJ
    I had that. It was a promotional for Tattoo You. A bunch of Stones articles from Creem through the years. The section reviews of past Stones albums released before Creem began publishing was great that section was titled Through The Past Tense. I remember they savaged Satanic Majesties in it.
     
  17. stewedandkeefed

    stewedandkeefed Came Ashore In The Dead Of The Night

    Some may take issue with Ray's dabbling in the current trends (punk etc) and adopting a fake voice for it but the absolute nadir of the approach really came with the Stones "Where The Boys Go" in 1980. Mick's silly voice is supposed to be a Jimmy Pursey (Sham 69) parody I suppose but it is extremely hard to take in my view.
     
  18. markelis

    markelis Forum Resident

    Location:
    Miami Beach FL
    I think Misery is very stonesy sounding. I can’t think of a Stones song in particular that it’s ripping off, just has the general bluesy feel in the guitars and the chorus sounds very Rolling Stones.
     
  19. palisantrancho

    palisantrancho Forum Resident

    Sounds like Mick Jagger to me. Maybe a few moments he is a bit over the top, but I think it's great. I like this album and this one of my favorites on it.
     
  20. palisantrancho

    palisantrancho Forum Resident

    It has that Chuck Berry style Stones rock n roll. What's strange is I couldn't think of what this song sounded like. I have mostly been listening to Low Budget on my iPod over the last few weeks and for some reason this song isn't on it! I'm not sure how that happened.
     
  21. The late man

    The late man Forum Resident

    Location:
    France
    It's a riff-off then.
     
  22. Brian x

    Brian x the beautiful ones are not yet born

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    One of my favorite things to do for a number of years was to get the latest copy of Creem and go out for a meal somewhere by myself & read it cover to cover.

    Oh, and how about "barky Ray."
     
  23. All Down The Line

    All Down The Line The Under Asst East Coast White Label Promo Man

    Location:
    Australia
    Hilarious @DISKOJOE sir and many thanks, here are my highlights!

    Bronze: The Live Kinks is better than the Reprise Greatest Hits! (Never mind the Live At Leeds comparison.)

    Silver: Dave's solo singing voice is said to make "Heart Of Glass" sound like "Boris The Spider!"

    Gold: The entire Soap Opera review that states how bad it is and closes by saying; "You can't buy it, you don't want to buy it!"
     
  24. All Down The Line

    All Down The Line The Under Asst East Coast White Label Promo Man

    Location:
    Australia
    Please upload his picture and career stats!
     
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  25. All Down The Line

    All Down The Line The Under Asst East Coast White Label Promo Man

    Location:
    Australia
    N.b. I was at a record fair 2 weeks ago and came across Pickwick pressings of Muswell Hillbillies & Preservation Act 1, who (at least Down Under) knew?
     
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