The Kinks - Album by Album (song by song)

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

  1. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    Somehow I missed Massive Reductions .. these are all new to me, but it will be included next week
     
  2. DISKOJOE

    DISKOJOE Boredom That You Can Afford!

    Location:
    Salem, MA
    They are all on Disc 5 of the Picture Book box set, which I'm actually listening to right now.
     
  3. Michael Streett

    Michael Streett Senior Member

    Location:
    Florence, SC
    This version is a different earlier recording in NY during the Low Budget sessions in 1979 by that version of the band. It was only released as the B-Side of the UK Better Things single in 1981. It's not on the Picture Book box set or anywhere else officially for that matter.

    You've got the right video I sent right?:righton:
     
  4. donstemple

    donstemple Member of the Club

    Location:
    Maplewood, NJ
    Misery

    Solid, serviceable rocker. But to me, kinda forgettable so far. All the other songs seem to have more memorable hooks. That said, it's still a good fun listen and I like it.

    Yes! I found myself doing the same thing... there is some essence of Life on the Road in Misery. Living the life of misery that you chose, I guess.
     
  5. Wondergirl

    Wondergirl Forum Resident

    Location:
    Massachusetts, USA
    Misery
    This one may be my least favorite on the album. It's a decent song, but a bit bland for all that energy, huh? The best part is Dave's guitar solo and general sound are the stand outs.

    I've seen Ray comment on difficult people and he does it with humor and/or panache. But this is so darned straight forward that i never would have guessed Ray wrote it.

    It's fine, but not blowing my mind.
     
  6. Wondergirl

    Wondergirl Forum Resident

    Location:
    Massachusetts, USA
    I think the whole quote is "that miserable little bleeder with the long face". someone correct me if I'm wrong. I always feel a bit rotten laughing about that description, because he was a kid with a lot of emotional issues. But it is funny.
     
  7. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    Yea mate
     
  8. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    Moving Pictures.

    stereo mix, recorded 20-30 May, 1979 (backing track), early Jun 1979 (vocals) at Power Station, New York (backing track), Blue Rock Studios, New York (vocals)

    Life is only a moving picture
    Nothing in life is a permanent fixture
    Oh no oh oh no

    Black girls, white girls oh what a mixture
    Looking as pretty as a picture
    Oh no oh oh no

    We live, we die no one knows why
    We come, we go we see the show
    And it's always moving, always moving
    Life is only a moving picture

    Oh, life can sometimes not be very nice
    But then you make your choice so you must pay the price
    You take the good and bad 'cos life's all work and play
    And it soon fades away
    Oh no oh oh no

    Life is only what you make of it
    So make the verses rhyme and all the pieces fit
    There isn't any time to make much sense of it
    It soon fades away
    Oh no oh oh no

    Life is only a moving picture
    Nothing in life is a permanent fixture
    Oh no oh oh no

    We live, we die no one knows why
    We come, we go we see the show
    And it's always moving, always moving
    Look at all those moving pictures
    Nothing in life is a permanent fixture
    Oh no oh oh no

    It's only moving, only moving, only moving pictures

    Written by: Ray Davies
    Published by: Davray Music Ltd.

    Ray has put together this album so well... We have virtually a story for the first three quarters of the album, that pretty much sums up someone falling from riches to rags, predominantly because of their attitude, even though each song stands apart on its own, and has messages and stories that fit in the context of the separate songs, and yet still somewhat thematically link surprisingly well. Then we get a punctuation mark with Gallon Of Gas being somewhat a social/environmental kind of message, with a bit of humour and sarcasm. Then we get Misery, which almost ties into the opening of the album with Attitude, and how do you cap that album off....
    With a song about the transient nature of life itself ....

    Life is a moving picture. Nothing in life is a permanent fixture.
    In a way we are referring back to the Village Green... there are a lot of cross references to Village Green on this album ... but we'll get to that.... Picture Book, People Take Pictures Of Each Other ... It is Ray's conceptual continuity again.
    In a picture book, the pictures are static. People take pictures of each other, so that they can capture that static moment in time, for many different reasons... the dress, the date, the event, that smile, that sunset.... it is a way of capturing a moment in time. Stopping it from aging, changing, moving. Locking it away in a safe zone that we feel we have control of.
    This is also kind of a reflection of Celluloid Heroes to some degree...
    I wish my life was a non-stop Hollywood movie show,
    A fantasy world of celluloid villains and heroes,
    Because celluloid heroes never feel any pain
    And celluloid heroes never really die.
    I'm not an expert on cinema, but I believe that the early movies were referred to as Moving pictures, abbreviated to movies, and so this reflects Celluloid Heroes in many ways, but Ray is comparing the idea of Moving Pictures as being real life, a movie without a rerun, where we don't seem to have a script, and ad libbing is the only option.

    Life though.... it never stops, and the more we mess with it the faster it goes.
    When we're young a week seems like an eternity. When we get older and during the process, it gets faster and faster.... It is odd how when we get older, a bad day can seem like a long arduous thing, but the year disappears like a puff of smoke in a wind tunnel.
    We walk the streets, or fields and we take things in, folks like Ray tend to take things in, in pretty reasonable detail.... but we never move faster than the world around us.
    Think how many times you have had something happen.... an accident, or witnessing something bad, and it feels like it is in slow motion.... but it is gone in a split second. This is the moving picture of life. It is fascinating and captivating, exhilarating and devastating ... this is the moving picture of life, and we grapple with it like a young boy trying to undo his first bra.... a little awkwardly, clumsily, but generally with great enthusiasm, until we don't, for one reason or another.
    Nothing in life is a permanent fixture ... two statements that are absolutes, as far as a human perspective goes.
    Everything is in constant flux, and with the constantly moving life comes the constantly changing scenery/environment.... whatever basic philosophy you have on life, there is no avoiding the incredible changes in the world since the late nineteenth century. I have no doubt that in earlier ages they witnessed things in a similar manner, and this constant state of flux seems to be ever accelerating. Look at how much has changed since the turn of the century. I don't think many of us in 1980 could possibly have foreseen the world in 2022... it is like an alien planet, or a virtual reality machine, if I think about it from my 12 year old mind perspective, and the way the general world was at the time.

    Ray changes tack in the second verse, he looks for something he can hang his hat on... As a male he still finds the beauty of women to be a constant?
    Or is this a reference to the photo's that get snapped to celebrate the beauty of women?

    To some degree, I could see some folks finding "We live, we die no one knows why", a bit naff, but contextually he is dotting the I's and crossing the T's.
    Even as a Christian I have no idea why we are here. I know we were supposed to be good stewards of our Earth, but we have failed miserably at that, so far as I can tell. I know we were supposed to love our neighbour as ourself, and these days we are battling to even find that love in a household, never mind a street ... So although it may sound a little obvious in some ways, I think it is still contextually relevant.

    We Come, We Go, We See The Show... for me the emphasis is on that last bit, because the first bit is reiterating the previous line, in a different way. We come into this show, and we exit this show, and it's all about the Show. In one way or another we all witness this greatest show on earth, called life. It impacts us, distracts us and too often drives us along a path that probably isn't quite right, and often downright wrong, but this is the show.
    And It's always moving...

    Life is only a moving picture. A series of visuals. A confusing stream of sensory information.

    The next verse could be seen as being somewhat simplistic I guess, but I think the point is that life is simplistic ... I once wrote a song called Life Is Simple and Deep, Society Is Complex and Shallow, and that's the feeling I am getting from Ray's Moving Pictures song.
    Here we have Life is sometimes not very good, true enough.
    Followed by there are often consequences to our actions, individually and as a society. There seems to be less of a focus in the modern world on consequences, and it is bizarre to me, because most of the problems we have in this world are actually consequences....
    I don't want to go further than that, because I don't want to be deleted, but hopefully that makes sense.

    You take the good with the bad, because life is all work and play, and this is true to varying degrees.
    I had a friend of the family tell me when I was a young pup "Live as if you could die today, but plan as though you'll live forever".... and maybe I'm a nut, but I think that's pretty solid.
    There is no point being all work and no play, though at times it is necessary. There is no use in being all play, because there are obvious consequences to that.
    And in this Moving Picture it soon fades away.

    Life is only what you make of it ... seems directed at perspective, what you can see. Using the painters idea of twenty people in a room painting one thing, they will paint it differently even given an equal amount of painting skill, because they see it differently, because of where they are sitting, but also from their predispositions ...
    Also we have the idea that if we approach life in a certain way, we will get certain results
    So make the verses rhyme and all the pieces fit
    There isn't any time to make much sense of it
    I think the verse's rhyming is like a look at trying to keep things smooth and pleasant, but at the same time try and make all the pieces fit, not just the pleasant things, because you're going to get both anyway. It's all going to happen how it happens, all you can control are your actions and reactions, and there isn't much time to make too much sense of it, because it is all bigger than us.... Like the idea of measuring ourselves against eternity, or the universe, or however you want to interpret that.

    It soon fades away...

    In some ways this is a lyric with a few little flaws in my opinion, but the way it works together it is an example of exactly what the song is about. Life moves too fast to be a spectator, get in the game, in some way or another. Don't be afraid of the good or the bad, because it is going to happen anyway, and worrying about it is just going to spoil what comparatively little time you have....
    So I suppose in some strange way this is a close relative to live life, but it is looking at the bigger picture, and giving more context to the idea of Life Life....

    Again,
    I don't know if that's all bollocks, but that's what is coming to me today while I look at the song, as a set of words... but this is a song, so the music is just as important to the context, so what have we got here in total?

    We open like a slower version of the Superman beat.... which in itself is very interesting.
    We have the smooth groove created by the bass and guitar playing that stuttering riff, and we get these cool synth swells, which again have this kind of squelchy sound to them.

    Although we have this stuttering riff, it's a smooth flowing feel, it is gentle in its attack, it isn't harsh or aggressive. This song does kind of have a sort of new wave feel about it.
    Ray's vocal is smooth and gentle. He is singing in a soothing tone, to accentuate that this isn't something to get worked up about. It ends up being a perfect foil for the ebb and flow of playfulness and aggression throughout the album. Almost like Ray is singing to himself, to reassure himself that getting worked up about things isn't very useful, which doesn't mean don't do anything, it means getting worked up into a frenzy isn't useful.

    We get the change up, and it is more forceful, but still in a sort of relaxed mode, comparatively.
    The delivery is more staccato to match the idea. The synth drops out for the piano to come in, removing the smooth bed of the synth to replace it with the staccato bed of the piano....
    Then we gently roll back into the main section and head straight into a bridge.

    We move into a dreamy halftime feel. a soothing synth bed, with a low mixed guitar gives us this soothing bed for Ray to sing over, and Ray is singing smooth and gentle. This song is meant to be a tonic to the roll and tumble of the album. We look at some harsh realities and some self deprecating humour, and all through the music perfectly matches the mood of the songs, and here we have this predominantly mellow flowing balm.

    We drop into the opening groove again, and head back into a second bridge. I think it is meant to have a feeling of reassurance.

    We drop into the groove, and repeat the opening verse?/chorus?, and Dave starts throwing some really nice little lead licks in. We drop into the change "We live We die", and roll back into the bouncy reassuring groove... Kind of like cruising down the highway or something.... it's breezy and fresh.

    We fade out with Ray in falsetto "always moving, always moving.... picture" it's beautiful.

    This is a song I had never really paid too much attention to really. I didn't dislike it, I think my love for the first 9/10ths of it kind of overrode a need for it, but listening more closely to the album has given Misery a little more respect, and drawn my attention to what a wonderful track this is.

    It seems to wrap up the whole album beautifully... perhaps it isn't the band's best song or anything, but it is the perfect closer for this album, that deals with life as we know it, because even if this is a very 1979 album, most of the themes are still very relevant, even if some of the language may have aged.
    This is a wonderful song

     
  9. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    Low Budget.

    So in the long run, for me personally.... Although I feared my love for the later albums may have become lessened by my new found love for the older albums, and those in between albums that seem to have wildly varying reactions, I find that a closer listen to Low Budget has actually managed to raise it substantially in my opinion.

    I think when I was a young fella, I just liked that this was a very rock album, perhaps the most rock album the band had made, but a deeper dive with an older head shows a much deeper and wider perspective of this album.
    I understand lots of folks don't like "shouty-Ray", but contextually, I love Devin Townsend, have all his albums, and reckon he is among my favourite singers, and anyone who knows him would understand why shouty Ray is really no issue for me. I have always liked hearing someone explode on the mic. Joe Cocker, Jimmy Barnes, old blues and soul singers... it's my basic kit bag. I love a great melody, and with Ray we virtually always get that anyway, but a bit of aggro and angst doesn't rock my boat at all.... so to my ears its a non-issue for me. To me he is just expressing an emotion. It's nothing new here, he has done it before, there is just a little more of it here, but I don't think as much as folks initially seemed to think, or feel, or remember, or whatever.

    I find Ray uses an awful lot of character voices on this album, but he mixes it with just about every other style of singing he has ever done, so for me it has a balance that I enjoy, and a dynamic that I love.

    Dave steps up to the plate and this may be among the most Dave inclusive albums we have had, particularly since he doesn't get a song of his own on here. His guitar though is the lifeblood of this album. Great tones, great playing, thoughtful arrangements, sensible choices.
    Dave's guitar on here is possibly like a complete maturation of the potential and class he has already shown over the years. He does everything he needs to do perfectly, with class. There's no overplaying or self indulgence, just straight down the line great playing, that seems to always be exactly what the song requires, and that can always be a tricky thing for a guitarist to achieve.
    Also Dave's backing vocals play an important part. Dave is totally back in the building and he is firing on all cylinders.

    I still hear a sort of thematic link that draws the album together as a sort of faux concept/theme album, but it actually doesn't matter too much whether it is or not, because each of the songs is a wonderful snapshot in itself, and I suppose for me it's just a bonus that for me, it all fits together perfectly.

    Jim Rodford's bass is solid, and I think for his first album he laid down exactly what the album needed. He is solid, and has some highlights, but the songs are what are important, and he slots into them perfectly.
    Obviously Mick does a good job, and there is talk about him not really being comfortable with the music, which I find most surprising. I can only assume he didn't feel he had it in him, and felt "Pressure" to be someone he wasn't ... I don't really know, but I don't particularly hear anything wrong with his playing. Like the bass it slots in, and does exactly what it needs to do.

    So this ends up being another top ranking album for me.... how popular the album was really has no bearing on me, because being from Australia, most of my favourite Aussie albums are virtually unknown in the US, and I just feel sorry for the folks in the US that missed out lol.

    I guess most will disagree, but for me this is Klassik Kinks. Revisiting the early rock that made them real contenders for the crown in 64/65, before they typically self destructed and were banned from the US for way too long, but that gave us a very precious series of albums that are completely unique to the Kinks and the sixties..... the growth and exploration of the seventies .... and for me it all comes together in this Kinks masterclass. This seems to contain elements of everything the band did, or strived for. Sure it hasn't got obvious music hall, or show tune moments, but the remnants are still in here.

    To me the Kinks here still sound unique. I can hear vague references to other music, other bands, but I have been hearing that since the sixties, and I have never found that it overshadowed the overwhelming larger than life personality of the band, which for me is here in bucketloads.

    Another great album.... and this is GREAT with capitals :)
     
  10. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    The Albums

    5 star albums
    Arthur
    Muswell Hillbillies
    Low Budget
    Village Green Preservation Society
    Something Else
    Lola vs Powerman
    Face To Face

    4.5 star albums
    Sleepwalker
    Misfits
    Kontroversy

    4 star albums
    Preservation Act 2
    Preservations Act 1
    Everybody's In Showbiz
    Soap Opera
    Kinda Kinks
    Schoolboys In Disgrace

    3.5 star albums
    Percy
    The Kinks
    I guess having Low Budget sitting among the Klassics wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea, but I love this album, even moreso now.
    The other thing is, those top 6 or so albums are somewhat interchangeable in order, they aren't set in stone, I don't really work like that.
     
  11. stewedandkeefed

    stewedandkeefed Came Ashore In The Dead Of The Night

    "Moving Pictures" actually sounds ahead of its time - it has more of an Eighties electro-pop feel to it than a 1979 album closer to me. In terms of sound, it seems like the Kinks were shifting ground here. I kind of like it. It certainly is a pretty kwirky song.

    Low Budget - I didn't listen to it when it first came out but became familiar with it soon after its release. To me, it is a decent album with some highlights most notably the title track which I would put in the upper echelon of Kinks songs. The albums after this one, I experienced in real time so I have greater personal bonds with them.
     
  12. croquetlawns

    croquetlawns Forum Resident

    Location:
    Scotland
    Moving Pictures is one of my favourite songs on the album - a great way to finish.

    I started off disliking Low Budget but now I think it's a decent album, although still less enjoyable than Misfits. For me it's lower-middle tier Kinks.
     
  13. Fortuleo

    Fortuleo Used to be a Forum Resident

    I love the organ, this great sound with the wah-wah swirling effect. I’ve often seen this song maligned, neglected and dismissed but to me, it’s by and large the most successful track on the record, the best band performance, the best riff, the best groove, the best tune(s), the best sound, and it has the best dancing quality of any Kinks song ever. I know what you're gonna say, it's not like we're into the Kinks for their dance floor genius but still, I thought I'd mention it anyway. Many different sections come and go, and come again, the “life is just a moving picture” main hook coming back countless times like a delicate piece of existential wisdom. The great thing about it structurally is how it can alternatively be conclusive or the start of a new verse. I love Ray’s singing, his double-tracks, his harmonies, his little piano notes. The riff becomes more and more insistent as the song proceeds, with a second guitar coming its way, then a third doing some high pitched disco rhythmic jangling. Those various Dave guitar tracks are all mesmerizing. A lot of musical stuff is going on, there’s Bowie (Sound and Vision, probably), some Talking Heads, a bit of Bee Gees, some Costello (Living in Paradise has a similar groove), maybe some Squeeze, definitely some ELO (the “wooh noo, oh oh no” chant, the falsetto). This song is hook after hook after hook, with a fascinating structure, no real chorus, a long fatalistic double bridge ("it soon fades away"). To my ears, it's the one song on the record that feels like pure inspiration, whereas most others are very deliberate and self-aware stylistically. The double (or triple) entendre of the title image is wonderful. Life's never still, it’s like a movie and it can be very moving… This recalls the sentiments expressed in a lot of previous Kinks closers. Most of them, really. Speaking of which, it's the first time in the discography that the closing song is my favorite track on a Kinks LP. Though not the last, since better things are yet to come. Yep, I can feel it, better things are on the way…
     
  14. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    For the record the way we will roll these extra tracks out

    Tomorrow - Hidden Quality

    Monday - Massive Reductions
    Tuesday - Duke
    Wednesday - Nuclear Love
    Thursday - Maybe I Love You and Stolen Away Your Heart...

    The first two - because they are actual outtakes. Followed by Duke and Nuclear Love, because they are whole leftovers from the inbetween period, and then Maybe I Love You and Stolen Away Your Heart, because they are essentially somewhat like unfinished demos for a one day spot check kind of thing.
    I hope that works for everybody :righton:
     
  15. Zack

    Zack Senior Member

    Location:
    Easton, MD
    ;)

     
  16. ajsmith

    ajsmith Senior Member

    Location:
    Glasgow
    The sentiment of todays song reminds me of the animation/song 'Life Is Flashing Before Your Eyes' by Vince Collins and Lewis Motisher from a few years later:

     
  17. Vangro

    Vangro Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    This song is quite nice, a pleasant listen, seems a very low key way to end the album though.

    This album seems to be the epitome of a 'you had to be there' release - not only in time and but in geography. Personally, it doesn't do very much for me, in fact it's almost certainly my least favourite Kinks album to date. I don't like shouty Ray, I don't really need two blues rock excursions on a Kinks album, lyrically Ray is either playing it for laughs or doling out platitudes, I just don't think the songwriting is very good on this album. As I said earlier though, the songs sound a lot better on the live album.
     
  18. fspringer

    fspringer Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York City
    Moving Pictures: At the time, I remember feeling let down by this closing track: "Ugh, another disco song." It felt slight, like it was barely there. I would later come to love this track, recognizing what was once slight now felt warm and breezy. Maybe even cinematic! There's that slight melancholic disco sound that I would later embrace fully. I hated disco at the time (while quietly digging certain songs), but before disco became a thing, something like "Nights on Broadway" by The Bee Gees really registered with me, a great pop song from the moment I heard it (and still is now). Barry White had it too, in songs like "Love's Theme." Al Green was a master of that feel, with "Let's Stay Together" and so many more others. There was party-time disco, and then there was disco that felt more wistful. "Moving Pictures" leans in that direction.

    And it would take its place as one of my favorites from Low Budget. So much of that album has fallen away for me. I neglected to chip in on a few tracks simply because I wouldn't have anything valid to offer. Nothing positive, but nothing too negative either. That wasn't the case at the time. I loved the harder-rocking sound of the album and could sense The Kinks were growing into something else, only a few years after I had fully discovered them. My basis in their back catalog was now such that I knew what was going on and could feel that change. Their popularity soared in America. And as I was a kid, I would guess this was mission accomplished. They started bringing in this next generation of fans by gearing their sound towards that harder rocking end of the 70s, which also somehow came full circle with the band they were at the beginning. And I could see their influence on new wave in terms of short, poppy, hard-driving songs with memorable lyrics. That first Knack album ... it's nice that critics hammered home The Beatles comparison, but there was a lot of Kinks in there, too. When I heard cool newer U.K. bands like Squeeze, XTC, even The Fabulous Poodles, among many others, that was the influence of The Kinks and The Who. 1978-80 was such a wonderful time in rock music, with real changes occurring, older artists reconfiguring their sound to match this newer, sleeker way of doing things. The Kinks were right in the thick of it, and I was looking forward to what they would come up with next.
     
  19. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    Moving Pictures:
    I won’t say it doesn’t sound like The Kinks because there’s many places where it’s clearly Ray singing. But this isn’t a song that I’d want to hear the Kinks bopping away to. I like the occasional ditty…but just not this particular ditty as performed by The Kinks.

    7-1-3
     
  20. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    Low Budget album final thoughts: I like it and feel it’s a solid album. While I don’t place it amongst the lofty Klassic Kinks heights, I do have three tracks placed on my Phase III playlist (which is respectable).

    The Kinks Phase III Playlist:
    Life On The Road
    Father Christmas
    Misfits
    A Rock’n’Roll Fantasy
    Live Life
    Out of the Wardrobe
    (Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman
    National Health
    Little Bit Of Emotion

    —39 minutes/3 LP’s and a single—
     
  21. markelis

    markelis Forum Resident

    Location:
    Miami Beach FL
    Moving Pictures: Yet another one that I ignored so completely back when I bought the album that I didn’t even know how the song went. That was pretty dumb of me, because now that I have listened to it over the past five or six weeks, I think it is a great closer and one of the best songs on the album.

    I love the concept: life is just a moving picture, nothing in life is a permanent fixture. I guess that’s another way to express the old adage: the only thing constant in life is change. I guess this is a corollary to Ray’s fascination/dislike of pictures. Pictures freeze the moment in time before everything continues to change moment to moment because nothing is permanent.

    Musically, it’s great. I like the Charlie Watts style drum opening, crisp and clean, followed by the steady pulsating new wave riff. I hear The Bugles “video killed the radio star” style synth squiggles, then Dave pops up with a nifty little riff. Another catchy earworm chorus!

    I think it’s an all around great song.
     
  22. ARL

    ARL Forum Resident

    Location:
    England
    "Moving Pictures"

    I like this one - possibly my favourite on the album. Not so much a song as a collection of three sections, arranged as if by throwing a dice. The middle section (i.e. "life can sometimes not be very nice" etc) is a very nice tune and continues the tradition of great bridges in Kinks songs. I've never really seen it as disco, but it's distinct from most of the album in having no shouting, or Cockney, or even much rock. It has a similar largely optimistic message as "Better Things", which has already been alluded to.

    "Low Budget"

    It's not my favourite post-RCA album, but certainly not my least favourite either. Some of the music hasn't dated particularly well, but it's an album that showed that The Kinks were committed towards creating a sound that could compete in the US charts, even if they were still being ignored in the UK. It's one that I will continue to listen to, and enjoy, on occasion.
     
  23. markelis

    markelis Forum Resident

    Location:
    Miami Beach FL
    Happy then to be in the minority with you. I will do a more complete write up of the album when I get a chance, I’m trying to get out the door to go to my sister’s wedding, but I must say that after the deeper analysis that this thread requires, this album has grown in stature for me and remains one of my favorites.
     
  24. Martyj

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

    Location:
    Maryland, USA
    Moving Pictures— Considering back in the 70’s I was on the “disco sucks” bandwagon, I hypocritically looked the other way when one of my favorite bands dabbled in it. So I never had a problem with the Kinks trying an unapologetic, straight up embrace of the genre. Perhaps the earlier successful merger of disco and rock on “Superman” softened me up for this closer.

    However, where Moving Picture’s music loses me is in its utter predictability. The melody goes exactly where one expects it to go, possibly because it’s not that original. Was there another tune like this one out at the time? Or earlier? I can’t recall off the top of my head, but that “I’ve heard this melody somewhere else before” quality has always haunted me with this one. Performance-wise the band does it well, no doubt, but I have a hard time imaging different results were it performed by any old studio musicians following the cue sheets. It has that kind of generic feel to it.

    Lyric wise I initially didn’t bother getting beyond “life is only a moving picture…” taking it to be a rather obvious, well-trodded analogy, handled much more artfully on something like “Oklahoma USA.” (And, yes Mark, early cinema was indeed called ‘moving pictures,’ with the ‘moving” being the etymology of “movies.” Some people even today, mostly in the industry, still refer to it as ‘the picture business.) It was only in anticipating this discussion that yesterday I took a closer look at where Ray is going with this before realizing it’s not about movies at all. It is a song about change. And while its straight-forwardness doesn’t appeal to me as much as the change-within-a-story approach of something like “Do You Remember Walter,” I appreciate that Ray was of the mindset to not repeat himself. The lyrics on Low Budget as a whole are very direct, so why do it differently here? To do so otherwise would be inconsistent. And if nothing else, Low Budget is a smartly consistent album.

    Over, I don’t find Moving Pictures particularly impactful one way or the other, and place it in the middle of this album’s favorites/least favorites. Perhaps not the strongest closer. Feels more like a side 2, track 3 kind of song. But, honestly, I don’t know what else I’d close the disc with, so I suppose it’s fine.
     
  25. ajsmith

    ajsmith Senior Member

    Location:
    Glasgow
    Is it possible you're thinking of Nick Lowe's 'I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass' from the previous year?

     

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