The Kinks - Album by Album (song by song)

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

  1. ThereOnceWasANote

    ThereOnceWasANote Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cape May, NJ
    My favorite Blur album.
     
  2. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    Same
     
  3. All Down The Line

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

    Location:
    Australia
    Give The People What They Want

    After the drum hey, hey, hey start i am waiting to hear the "Premier Drum" chant from Sell Out!
    This songs rocks nicely though i feel again it works better live and Free's up the Davies brothers to do inject more of themselves into the work.
    The lyrics are much better for this song and I am not entirely certain they don't scan better even on the page than sung?
    At least now i better understand the song and album covers meaning and that the Presidents brain line is far less shocking knowing it's come from a child's mouth!
    The video feast reminded me of Dylan's clip for Political World & perhaps more pointedly a decadent and depraved 70's French film mainly involving gluttony though it's title i cannot recall.
     
  4. All Down The Line

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

    Location:
    Australia
    Good catch and I noted the ascending guitars accompanying the "hold onto his brain" line!
     
    CheshireCat, Ex-Fed, DISKOJOE and 2 others like this.
  5. ajsmith

    ajsmith Senior Member

    Location:
    Glasgow
    I know no one will care, but I must correct myself here: the extras are dressed more like early 20th century types: think I mixed up the cut verse about the French revolution with my memory of the video (from only few months back!)
     
  6. ThereOnceWasANote

    ThereOnceWasANote Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cape May, NJ
    Give The People What They Want

    What a one-two punch these two opening tracks are. The Kinks just kicking down the door like its 1964 here. You really got the feeling this was going to be that lean, mean latter day garage rock Kinks album they always threatened to make but never quite did. After Dial and this one you were really waiting for that third song to seal the deal but Killers Eyes is not that song.

    Anyway, here its Ray taking a punkish tone and Dave slashing, tearing and screaming with guitar and voice. Lots of Chuck Berry influence here too guitar-wise.

    You could slam dance to this one and pogo too!

    In some ways this sounds more like the Stones than the Stones did at the time. Great as it is Tattoo You always sounded a bit too polished. Here the Kinks sound like they are in the garage and its part of this song's charm.

    Lyrically its cynical Ray just having a go at it all.
     
  7. palisantrancho

    palisantrancho Forum Resident

    This isn’t getting much of a warm reception, so I’m not on my own today with my feelings about it. I agree the lyrics are the best part, but the song isn’t delivering what I want. It’s almost a repeat of yesterday, except that was a slightly better song. Ray’s vocal sounds a bit forced again. Most of this album neither excites me or appalls me. They could have called it One For the Middle of the Road.

    It comes off better when I watch them perform it on the video. The mentions of Ramones and Chuck Berry should make this one a slam dunk, but it ends up bouncing off the rim. I hope I’m not being too hard on it, because I don’t hate it. I may struggle to come up with much to say about some of this album. I listened to it again last night and I don’t have strong feelings about most of it one way or the other.
     
  8. All Down The Line

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

    Location:
    Australia
    Perhaps but can you come dancing to it?
     
  9. Brian x

    Brian x the beautiful ones are not yet born

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    Give the People What They Want (title track)

    It's very hard to please the people every single time

    RD's radical ambivalence about modernity -- exemplified by media/popular culture -- takes a sharp turn from the sweet nostalgia of Village Green and the bemused frustration of Sunnyside into full-blown punk rage.

    And yeah, no, it isn't punk rock. But the punk RAGE is there, in the shouting, in the sloppy-sharp guitar, in the transgressive-ass lyric. Someone brought up Tonio K a few pages back, & the Kennedy lines here have the same kind of adrenaline rush shock value as TK's bit from H-A-T-R-E-D: well I wish I were as mellow/as for instance Jackson Browne/but Fountain of Sorrow my a**, motherfuc*er/I hope you wind up in the ground. It's "the sound of things falling apart," an aural/lyrical cri de coeur* against the relentless tsunami of cultural corruption and decay.

    There's a Sympathy for the Devil aspect, yes, but it also reminds me of a Dylan lyric in its furious indignation at the commercialization of humanity's decline:

    Now the rovin' gambler he was very bored
    Tryin' to create a next world war
    He found a promoter who nearly fell off the floor
    He said I never did engage in this kind of thing before
    But yes I think it can be very easily done
    We'll just put some bleachers out in the sun
    And have it on Highway 61.


    You do feel that GTPWTW was constructed to be shouted out in huge stadiums, but that doesn't feel like a sell-out so much as RD realizing that he is going to have the opportunity to go super-meta on their next tour and literally throw a metaphorical Christian to the lions to the visceral delight of a ravenous, roaring crowd.

    Like Highway 61, it's the distilled essence of whatever it is rock music is supposed to do -- or does best -- or does best for me, anyway: It's an alarm, a kind of klaxon of chaos, designed to wake you up and force you to open your eyes to what's going on around you.

    Again, just super impressive, straight to the playlist.

    * This one for our French-speakers. And yes, @Fortuleo, I think it is a scrap of Life on Mars in yesterday's song.
     
  10. Luckless Pedestrian

    Luckless Pedestrian Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire, USA
    Notable to me in Give The People What They Want is the musical irony; the exuberant performance with touches of innocent 1950s style rock and roll with the horrifying but essential inclusion of the Zapruder frame-by-frame at it's center, creating an irreverent, (bread and) circus atmosphere around the unceasing tragedy of the race [compare to the funereal, or at the very least eulogeal atmosphere accompanying His Bobness' Murder Most Fowl]. The "Hey Mom" part of Give The People resonates, as I vividly recall watching the film as a young person, images you don't forget in a lifetime, the first of very few executions I've had the misfortune to witness visually, each leaving a mark. An uncomfortable listen and I respect Ray and the Kinks for creating it.
     
  11. donstemple

    donstemple Member of the Club

    Location:
    Maplewood, NJ
    Give the People What They Want

    This is raw, intense, and does exactly what it sets out to do. Puts it right there in your face. Musically, the rock and roll riff and verses makes me think of a very sped up One of the Survivors. It's revved up Kinks, but yeah, still Kinks. Ray's vocals are very expressive. Even the robotic masses yelling "Give the...people... what they waaaant" is pretty darn expressive. Again with the Beach Boys homages... and before this thread, I thought the "we'll surf like they do in the USA" from Australia was the only Beach Boys homage in the Kinks katalogue!

    The "Hey! Hey! Hey!" seems like an homage to the Ramones or the fast/punk rock movement. The rawness of the recording also makes me think of the "garage band" resurgence in the late 90s and early 2000s with bands like the Vines and the Hives. The sound of the riff after the "Give the People What they Want" chorus is VERY Hivish to me, but 20 years before their Veni Vidi Vicious album.

    As for the "President's brain" line.... it certainly makes it a difficult listen, and I personally don't like that line at all, but I think that is what it was supposed to. It was not put there to be liked, and I think I agree with avid @ajsmith's third option for it's intention:

    It's in your face, whether you want to listen to it or not. This is who we are as a society. Ray's putting up the mirror, and it's not the mirror of love. It's the mirror of sex, perversion and rape, violence and all the stuff that we love to hate. We see this when there's rubbernecking traffic to look at a car accident. We see this when the worst people become populist politicians because "they tell it like it is" or "they say what I am thinking". And we have been this way for thousands of years. I guess Education didn't really save the day...
     
  12. Paul Mazz

    Paul Mazz Senior Member

    Give the People What They

    I don't mind this cut in the context of the whole album, and wouldn't skip it, but I would never seek it out as an individual track to listen to. I may respect the song a little more after paying closer attention to the lyrics, and reading other folks analysis, but I still don't really care for it. After I played this song this morning, I played some Ramones as a palate cleanser :laugh:
     
  13. Wondergirl

    Wondergirl Forum Resident

    Location:
    Massachusetts, USA
    Give the People What They Want
    The very start sounds like a combo of the song "Wipeout" and the Ramones. Ok, boys, you got my attention!
    Here's shouty Ray in all his glory (or not, depending on your Kink). I miss Ray regular voice on this one, I have to say. But I get that it's supposed to be aggressive, so it makes sense.

    I'd need to be in a certain mood to want to play this one. Maybe a little too heavy on the testosterone for me.

    It's good but will often be "too much".
     
  14. markelis

    markelis Forum Resident

    Location:
    Miami Beach FL
    Around the Dial/Give the People What They Want:

    I missed yesterday, so I’m gonna tackle both of these songs at the same time. As others have mentioned, this is a great one-two punch to kick the album off. I think both songs are pretty fantastic, I appreciated the harder rocking aspects of Low Budget, and these first two songs see the band kicking it even harder.

    As I have made clear, my interest in the kinks as a teenager (40+/- years ago) was always around the harder rocking stuff. As we have gone album to album, I have embraced their other styles with open arms. No one would ever call TKATVGPS or Muswell Hillbillies hard rock by any stretch, but I now love them just the same as LowBudget and One from the Road. I am and have always been an open minded sort when it came to music.

    That said, this album, and the last two, take me back to my sweet spot, with Dave being that loose on the guitar, Ray rocking out and penning some aggressive lyrics, and the rest of the band following suit. As the album progresses, we will see other aspects of the kinks, but I’m pretty happy right here right now with these two songs.
     
  15. CheshireCat

    CheshireCat Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cheshire
    Give The People What They Want
    Not the first time Raymond has used history to sell us his story. I've never liked the chorus for some reason, maybe its a bit repetitive and lacking a tuneful hook. Verses, I don't mind. Not as good as 'Around The Dial' for me. In fact, probably one of my least favourites on the album - yet one which the band has returned to in concert pretty well for the remainder of their career. Indeed, it even appears on the swansong 'To The Bone' album.

    The 'ooo eee's are an amusing hark back to the '60s - maybe Ray was making comment on his UK audience who were seemingly not interested in this 1980s brand of American Kinks, only wanting to hear those UK hits of the '60s.
     
  16. CheshireCat

    CheshireCat Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cheshire
    I've only become aware of it now!
     
  17. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    You’re setting yourself up for @All Down The Line He’ll have a heyday with this one. :D
     
  18. Geoff738

    Geoff738 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto
    The music is bludgeoning and the lyrics are a bit crass. Just the things I like.
     
  19. The late man

    The late man Forum Resident

    Location:
    France
    That would be Marco Ferreri's La Grande Bouffe. An incredible cast for this story of 4 guys eating themselves to death. I saw it in London, 30 years ago, and was shocked by the childish noises and laughters from the British public, acustomed as I was to the proud and pretentious silence of the Parisian "art et essai" crowd.
     
  20. Vangro

    Vangro Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    I saw it last year. Once seen, never forgotten.
     
  21. Steve62

    Steve62 Vinyl hunter

    Location:
    Murrumbateman
    That was I believe the first French movie I saw - and I confess it was the only image of French people I had in my mind until I eventually went to France in the mid-1990s.:D
     
  22. Steve62

    Steve62 Vinyl hunter

    Location:
    Murrumbateman
    :laugh::laugh:
     
  23. Vangro

    Vangro Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    It was written and directed by an Italian though. And two of the main actors were Italian.
     
  24. Steve62

    Steve62 Vinyl hunter

    Location:
    Murrumbateman
    I hadn’t noticed that at the time. I just thought it was a portrayal of “Frenchness”. I was relieved never to meet any French people like those charicatures - though they certainly (with good reason) love their cuisine.
     
  25. Luckless Pedestrian

    Luckless Pedestrian Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire, USA

    Cock-a-doodle-doo, it's a murder most fowl :D
     

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