The Kinks - Album by Album (song by song)

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

  1. ajsmith

    ajsmith Senior Member

    Location:
    Glasgow
    The 'I Get Around' esque 'Roundandroundandroundandround' isn't the only moment in this track that brings to mind a number from The Beach Boys classic 1964 LP 'All Summer Long', as the line

    'While the critics kept on knocking you,
    You just kept on rocking around the dial'

    can't help but remind me of the Brian-sung bridge in the BBs corny-as-get-out 'early rock n roll' tribute song 'Do You Remember?' with it's lines:

    'Yeah the critics kept a-knocking
    But the stars kept a-rocking'

    I'm 99 per cent certain this wasn't an intentional reference though, it's a pretty obvious line/rhyme!

     
  2. Steve62

    Steve62 Vinyl hunter

    Location:
    Murrumbateman
    I waited in the hotel lobby and hoped for the best. He'd namechecked the hotel during the concert so I knew I was in the right place. I waited from 7am until about 11am when he emerged. I feel like an idiot for not getting Dave and the rest of the band to sign but I guess was just starstruck for Ray at that time.
    For the record, these are the album covers Ray signed: Give the People, One for the Road, Low Budget, Sleepwalker, Misfits, Showbiz, Muswell Hillbillies, Lola, Arthur, Village Green, Something Else, Kontroversy, and Kinda Kinks. I keep them stored upright in a wide leather briefcase - possibly to be discovered years after my death and given away to a charity shop. :sigh:
     
    Last edited: May 9, 2022
  3. All Down The Line

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

    Location:
    Australia
    "Well you sure are a funny boy Mark, but I like you!"
     
    Last edited: May 9, 2022
  4. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    Lol
     
  5. Vangro

    Vangro Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    Annie Nightingale!
     
  6. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    Interesting. Obviously I had never heard of her...
    For the interested.... interesting career

    Annie Nightingale - Wikipedia
     
  7. Martyj

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

    Location:
    Maryland, USA
    In reading these comments I thought....EUREKA!....could the longer radio dial intro version of Around the Dial actually foreshadow the entire album? I never considered that.

    I just went back and listened to it, aaaaannnnd....no. Not really. Maybe a loose allusion to "Yo-Yo's" protagonist sitting in "an armchair, watching channel four" but nothing specific. In fact, in the original acetate submission it doesn't even have the "hero in the Muslim world" part. It does have a news snippet to rising gas prices, so ironically it ties in better with the previous album (gallon of gas).

    I don't believe the acetate bootleg is online to post, so for those who haven't heard it, the 3 minute Around the Dial into are 'around the dial' snippets of news reports similar to the album proper, but laid on top of a bed of throbbing synthesizer, a bit like that thing that ties together the concert intro tape the Kinks used for the last part of their career. You aren't missing much. The real revelations are with tomorrows song. It is 1:15 longer with an extra verse about the French revolution. I can see why it was cut. It doesn't add much to the song beyond length. Still, its worthwhile if you can hunt the bootleg down. It has noticeable alternate lyrics and instrumentation on a few tracks, like Art Lover without that Caribbean xylophone-like thing.
     
  8. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    Around The Dial: a terrific opening song (and a slam dunk for the ‘ol playlist). I immediately thought of Radio K.A.O.S., for obvious reasons, though realize that The Kinks’ tune precedes the Waters song.

    This song is quite cleverly constructed with a lot of twists and turns…and a couple of Ray voices as a bonus. I will say I don’t tag this as ‘arena rock’ at all; just basic rock’n’roll with a bit of this (Ramones) and a bit of that.

    A great start.
     
  9. ARL

    ARL Forum Resident

    Location:
    England
    Tommy Vance on the Friday Rock Show probably qualifies as well. David "Kid" Jensen and Janice Long were also legendary in the pre-Peel slot.

    There would have been plenty of credible DJs on local radio as well - Roger Scott and Nicky Horne on Capital Radio were my favourites.
     
  10. stewedandkeefed

    stewedandkeefed Came Ashore In The Dead Of The Night

    As a Canadian, if I was going to mention anyone other than Peel, it would have to be Kid Jensen.
     
  11. ARL

    ARL Forum Resident

    Location:
    England
    Dave Lee Travis probably thinks this song is about him.
     
  12. All Down The Line

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

    Location:
    Australia
    Mark iam right with you on the dial at 107.7 JJJ as they were for many a breath of fresh air from commerciality and rigidity of stale formatting!
    Not sure if you remember that on Thursday night's Richard Kingsmill would host the "J-Files" from 10pm to 1am and have in depth special shows on band's
    On August 1st, 2002 it was the Kinks and not only had Richard done a fresh interview with Ray Davies but also snagged one with Larry Page that very afternoon IIRC!
    A year ago a friendly forum member copied my 2 C-90's to 4 CD-r's to help "Preserve" a fantastic program!

    [​IMG]
     
  13. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    I certainly remember Richard Kingsmill, but I was never able to catch that show.
    Working full time, and playing in a band full time, and being married, left me with little time for much else lol
     
    All Down The Line and DISKOJOE like this.
  14. ajsmith

    ajsmith Senior Member

    Location:
    Glasgow
    LOL!

    Well after that 3 minutes hard graft he put in miming the trombone for them back in 1967, I guess a DLT tribute song is the least Ray could offer in return..

     
  15. DISKOJOE

    DISKOJOE Boredom That You Can Afford!

    Location:
    Salem, MA
    "Around the Dial": the twirling of a radio dial, then a heavy beat while Ray does a concert like intro about looking for his favorite DJ before the song kicks off. This song was played a lot on WBCN, whose staff successfully went on strike two years earlier when it's new corporate owners fired several of its DJs, w/the help of the listeners:

    A 3‐Week Strike At FM Station In Boston Ends (Published 1979)

    It's a great, rousing start to the album, although I have to say that despite the above, I knew that commercial rock radio was slowly being ossified into the Classic Rock Aural Wallpaper that we now have. Perhaps, as several of our Avids had alluded to, Ray should have looked "Left of the Dial" to find the independent DJs he was looking for. The US had no John Peel (actually it did have him in TX and CA in the mid 60s, but .that's another story), but it did have hundreds of John Peel wannabes at college stations nationwide, sometimes bumbling and stumbling, but playing the UK and US bands that didn't get the mainstream airplay like a bunch of avant guard Johnnie Appleseeds. Speaking of which, a question to our British Commonwealth Avids, did Australia and/or the UK have any university/collage radio stations that play rock music or is this just an American thing?

    Finally, to wrap things up somewhat neatly, my local AM oldies station blared out "You Really Got Me" at the top of the pops, erm 8 AM hour this morning.
     
  16. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    I can't speak for the UK, but in Perth we had a Uni radio station.
    It was an interesting melange of different music. They sort of had days and timeslots for different genres.
     
  17. Fischman

    Fischman RockMonster, ClassicalMaster, and JazzMeister

    Location:
    New Mexico
    Around the Dial...

    .... was my first new Kinks song heard upon release. One For the Road was my first Kinks album and I loved it, so I had to run out and get their latest studio release. So other than the live album and the few hits I'd heard on the radio, this was my introduction to the band. And a fine introduction it was! The sort of rebellious antihero theme sat well with my 17 year old self and I could really imagine the story in real life. It was so plausible! And of course, delivered with that Kinksian uniqueness. Yeah, I was very pleased that that band with those great old hits could both move forward and still be themselves.
     
  18. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    Number crunching:
    Leaving the debut album out of the equation (I didn’t spot the thread until well into ‘Kinda Kinks’), I find that 56% of opening tracks have made my playlist. 59% if I eliminate ‘Percy’ (due to soundtrack clause). The Arista years, though, are over performing at 75%.
     
  19. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    That's pretty interesting
     
  20. Michael Streett

    Michael Streett Senior Member

    Location:
    Florence, SC
    Try this:



    I don't have the bootleg so I'm assuming this is it. This is obviously from vinyl as you can hear the pops, so that further leads me to conclude that it is. I read Arista had Ray trim that radio dial intro down and I think it was the right call. 3 minutes of this is a little much, but interesting to listen to once. Just to make sure all here know, this has never seen official release anywhere.
     
    Last edited: May 9, 2022
  21. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    Well…it’s unique to me alone (and I can manipulate the numbers to mean anything I want! :D ). But I do think the Arista albums have had good openers.
     
  22. Paul Mazz

    Paul Mazz Senior Member

    Around the Dial

    I really relate to this one. I'm pretty sure it's not about him, but my favorite DJ, by a very wide margin, was Vin Scelsa in NY. I listened to Vin most of my radio listening life (I don't listen to radio much these days). Vin's show introduced me to lots and lots of music in all kinds of genres. Vin was one of the last free-form DJs left in NY when he retired. He played pretty much whatever he wanted, and might play John Coltrane, John Lennon, the Ramones, the B52s, Lyle Lovett, John Prine, and Mary Martin singing I Won't Grow Up from the Broadway soundtrack to Peter Pan, in the same show, but somehow his setlists always tied together. I would tune in to his shows whenever I could, for probably 40 years - until he retired in 2015. I'm sure he played Around the Dial when it was released. It would would easily have slotted in to one of the few playlists of Vin's that I found online dating from 1982 where he played Robert Gordon, Are You Gonna be the One; Queen, Now I'm Here (Live); Thin Lizzy, The Boys Are Back in Town; and Graham Parker, Local Girls.

    Anyway - Vin did disappear from the airwaves at a couple of points in his career, without any announcement from the stations. Mostly when management instituted playlists. His avid listeners were left searching "around the dial" to see if he would turn up anywhere. He did get to announce his retirement and do a farewell show when he retired from broadcasting. After he retired, his daughter talked him into doing a podcast (The Kate & Vin Scelsa Podcast). Sadly, the podcast petered out, and evidently stopped in 2020, leaving his listeners wondering....... For those that are interested, he was also a great interviewer, and has archival interviews up on his podcast with Townes Van Zandt, with whom he had an interesting history, Kurt Vonnegut, David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, and Laurie Anderson.

    I didn't intend to make this post about Vin, and could say much more about him, but just wanted to point out, that this listener at least, could feel an emotional bond with a DJ. I'd love to know if Ray had a real person in mind when he wrote the song, but musically and lyrically Around the Dial speaks to me.
     
  23. Brian x

    Brian x the beautiful ones are not yet born

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    Around the Dial

    I'm picturing some future cultural historian trying to piece together evidence about this period in western pop music -- penning a short article for an obscure academic journal -- "Crisis and Critique: Musical Responses to a Shifting Commercial Distribution Landscape." Footnoted would be a cluster of songs released around the same time: Radio, Radio (Elvis Costello); On the Radio (Cheap Trick); On Your Radio (Joe Jackson); Do You Remember Rock n' Roll Radio? (Ramones); The Spirit of Radio (Rush) and Around the Dial.

    As noted, it was a DJ on Bethesda, Maryland's WHFS 102.3, playing the entirety of Soap Opera late one schoolnight, who triggered my Kinks obsession. In 1978, you could still find idiosyncratic DJs on the right side of the dial who spun whatever struck their fancy. & you got to know them, their humor and personalities, their tastes & obsessions -- ultimately developing a strangely intimate, emotional connection.

    By 1981, that kind of radio programming was disappearing, and rock radio started to seem like one long commercial for a handful of artists pushed by huge corporate entertainment conglomerates.

    Around the Dial is a kicka*s song with tons of little musical asides and shifts (reminding me a bit of DD solo, but actually coherent) -- just delightful -- the sound EFX opening -- the initial SLASH/POUND of guitar & drums -- Ray doing a spoken word/conceptual intro -- a stadium-rousing call & response thing -- a new kicka*s riff -- & all before the minute mark....

    What do the little guitar licks starting after "I've been around the dial so many times but you're not there" remind me of? Some new wave thing, sort of British-y, something like Big Country? And with "where did you go Mr. DJ?" we dip into Soap Opera-esque dramatic narrative -- then another in a long line of Beach Boys tribute sections -- and then, as @Fortuleo pointed out, the "was it something that you heard" bit, which starts out sounding like Bowie (which song, though?) and then goes into a full-blown, shameless tribute to Moneygoround.

    That seems like a clue to what Ray's getting at. It isn't like the various re-purposings of All Day and All of the Night or Jumpin' Jack Flash riffs -- it's an obscure bridge from an obscure old song -- Oh can somebody explain/ why things go on this way/I thought they were my friends/ I can't believe it's me/I can't believe that I'm so green.

    The lament of an artist being ground down and spit out by a huge impersonal corporate machine.

    The other clue is the next (title) song on the LP, which plays like part 2 of Around the Dial -- once they disappear the DJ, the corporate masters start serving up bread and circuses, lowest common denominator, violence and perversion.

    (To be discussed tomorrow, but that song has what seems to be a glancing lyrical reference to another Lola v. Powerman song, Sunnyside).

    Yes, as @mark winstanley suggests, Around the Dial clearly conveys RD's deep ambivalence about fame & stardom, but I also hear victimization and entrapment -- RD finding himself crammed into a creative prison by forces beyond his control. Was it something he said to the corporation guys? Did he step out of line?

    I thought they were my friends.

    No, it isn't you, Ray -- it's a soulless global moneygoround fueled by bottomless greed and blind ambition. It couldn't care less about your feelings, insights, or inspirations. If you don't want to disappear into the static, you'd better get back in line.

    Damn this is a first class Kinks song.
     
  24. pyrrhicvictory

    pyrrhicvictory Forum Resident

    Location:
    Manhattan
    Nice to hear that name again, and what a host he was. And a Kinks fan to boot. I would always try to find time to listen to Vin Scelsa and his Idiot’s Delight program. I believe in the nineties it was on K-Rock on Sunday evenings. I happened to tape that Scelsa/Cohen interview, still possess and listen to it on occasion, and plan on transferring it to cd soon. That is a great interview from around the time LC was on tour for The Future album. I don’t listen to much radio either, but when I do it’s Paul Cavalconte on WFUV. His show Cavalcade airs on Sunday evenings from 6-9. It is free-form and I think you might like him.
     
  25. palisantrancho

    palisantrancho Forum Resident

    "Around The Dial"

    Reading through all of the descriptions and comments and it sounds like I should like this song much more than I do. The opening of the song with the turning of the dial was done a year earlier by The Ramones on "Do You Remember Rock n Roll Radio", which opens the unjustly panned masterpiece produced by Phil Spector. That is a far better song, in my opinion. Did Ray lift this little idea for the beginning of a song and album?

    This song has its moments. I like the Beach Boys influence and the melody. I'm not super keen on the production and Ray's vocal on certain sections. @Fortuleo mentioned that there is no shouty Ray to be found, but I hear him barking his way in and out throughout this entire song. With a few minor adjustments, I think this could be an excellent opening tune. As it is, it somehow makes me want to change the dial. All of your comments have me appreciating it more than I did in the past. I find that many songs on this album fall into this same category. I don't dislike them, but I also don't love them. I already sense that I will likely rate this album higher by the time we wrap it up.
     

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