This is the only song, along with "Art Lover", on the album that I really like. "Predictable" is a good track as well, that benefits from a funny video. But apart from these tracks I don't like Give the People at all! The songs are not very good for a start, but in particular I don't like the production and sound of it. Americanized stadium rock at its worst!
Better Things: A good tune to end the album…and most certainly the highlight of the second side (if one lasted this far!). “Here’s hoping all the days ahead won’t be as bitter as the one’s behind you” “Be an optimist instead…and somehow happiness will find you” I’m glad to see this was released as a single though disappointed to see its lack of success. It’s warm, pleasant, a roll-down-the-windows and let the warm breeze ruffle your hair type of song. The Final Count: 7-3-1
The Kinks Bottom-end Album Rankings: ‘Schoolboys In Disgrace’ ‘Misfits’ ‘Low Budget’ ‘Soap Opera’ (boring; uninterested in topic) ‘Sleepwalker’ ‘Give The People What They Want’ (on the bottom; 2nd side sabotages what would have been a good record)
Actually, here's a bit of typical Kinks "luck". It was not unknown for songs just outside the top 40 to get onto Top of the Pops - in fact in the previous two weeks before "Better Things" reached its highest point in the charts, Depeche Mode's "New Life" (no 43) and Barry Biggs' "Wide Awake In A Dream" (no 53) had featured. But in the week when "Better Things" was at no 46 and would have been a TOTP candidate, it happened to be the 900th edition. Thus it was a special live edition featuring several of the DJs, lots of old clips (none of which were The Kinks) - and only a handful of current hits, all of them from the top 20. I don't know if the band would have been available to come into the studio that week if they had been asked, but it looks as though it wouldn't even have been an option. Would have made a good link back to the past clips, though. The following week "Better Things" had gone down to 51 so was no longer eligible. Meanwhile Depeche Mode featured again, with their previous appearance having boosted "New Life" into the top 40 and started their long career!
I first heard the Strolling Bones as a joke/insult at my school when Some Girls came out in 1978. Mick and Keith were 35!
Radio 2 currently playing Tom Robinson "2-4-6-8 Motorway" - I bet you know which song is going through my head!
Fascinating, this kind of info is totally up my alley. There are several such cases of near misses where a make or break TOTP appearance that was on the cards but thwarted by fate/scheduling would have changed history: Wire with 'Outdoor Miner' and The Freshies with 'Virgin Megastore Checkout Desk' come to mind.
Better Things This to me is Klassick Kinks and I thought so at the time. Here Ray ticks so many boxes that I think make a great Kinks song: - happy chords - positive lyrics - sing-along chorus - Ray uses his proper singing voice with a hint of a quiver - and it's not too long. Ray ticks the same boxes in the next album with Come Dancing. As much as I like serious lyrics I think Ray's choice of song topics on this album were a downer. I'm relieved he increased the happy-sad ratio quite a bit in the next two records.
Yeah, about 15 seconds via one more chorus and fade. No mix differences. They did this back with A Gallon Of Gas where the original album version was an edit of the 7” single. Usually it was the other way around. Anyway, the 1998/99 Velvel CD reissues collected these longer single versions in place of the original album edits, so if you have those, you have these. Love Better Things and a great album closer but here’s the thing. Remember at the start of this album’s discussion, we saw Ray’s original proposed album he submitted to Arista and this song is nowhere to be found even though it had just come out as a single. Mark touched on this in the write up above where Ray says he wrote this sarcastically. I read somewhere he called it a total send up. OK Ray, is anything you wrote in this era sincere? Or is it the old if it’s a hit, it’s sincere and if it’s a flop, well then it was just a joke that no one got. I hope his psychologist in this era was being paid accordingly, ha ha, but I do love this song, total send up, or not.
For some reason, I get the feeling the writing and recording of this LP were a bit rushed. Some songs seem a bit underdeveloped, still at a tentative stage, almost like first band attempts at running through demos that Ray still hadn’t 100% fleshed out lyrically either. Some others are more "complete" while retaining a certain rawness, so this rushed thing has its upside. And I've warmed up to the record's sound (still not the title song as of yet, though). I'll definitely crank it up when I'm back home in a week or so, as I've noticed it's a @RL mastering (I'm on a trip for work right now, but doing my best to keep up with the thread, so @mark winstanley, if you could lay out the next days’ program?). I think Ray's made a big mistake with the album's title. Don't get me wrong, I love this title (and even enjoy the cover art, sketchy as it is) but it's selling it short as a "sell out" of sorts. It makes people think the big so-called "arena" sound was part of a cynical plan, a narrative that's proven almost impossible to shake since then. That's why it's so overlooked in the band's History and in the great book of rock'n roll, despite featuring three very important Kinks songs in Destroyer, Art Lover and Better Things, songs that are part of the Ray Davies kanon, no matter what one may think of them. I think it's a shame because our closer analysis in the last days just showed as misjudged this assumption is. It's made me realize that a lot of the criticism against the later Kinks (from Low Budget on) are based on assumptions of wrong motivations (we call it "procès d'intention" in french, "judgement of intentions", and I can't think of a perfect equivalent in english). The assumption being they were selling out to current trends, or trying to ape other band’s styles, or pretending to be 20 years old again, or whatever. And that’s unfair because that’s what "judgement of intentions" always are: unfair and uncalled for. One more thing. With yet another decade passed, Elvis dead, Lennon dead, Brian Wilson temporarily brain dead, Dylan still in his evangelical phase, I think it’s the first record the Kinks did as survivors. And that’s how we should appreciate it, the moment when the Kinks start contemplating that still being around is a thing in itself, and reflecting about their singular place in the pop world, their legacy, what people expect from them… all this in a context where giving people what they want was becoming mandatory. All of which makes it a good and, dare I say, important Kinks album.
This is what was on that episode. Seriously, did no-one on the TOTP staff at the time see the potential of saying "this band appeared on Top of the Pops in its very first year - and here they are now with their current single - The Kinks!!" 9-7-81: Presenters: Jimmy Savile, Alan Freeman, David Jacobs & Pete Murray (Live) (900th Edition) (16) Kirsty MacColl – “There’s A Guy Works Down The Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis” (-) The Supremes – “Baby Love” (clip from 7/10/64) (-) Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas – “Little Children” (clip from 26/2/64) (-) The Dave Clark Five – “Bits & Pieces” (clip from 26/2/64) (-) The Beatles – “I Want To Hold Your Hand” / “Twist & Shout” (live clips) (12) Randy Crawford – “You Might Need Somebody” (-) M – “Pop Musik” (montage of clips) Mary Hopkin / Sandie Shaw – brief interview (10) Tom Tom Club – “Wordy Rappinghood” (Legs & Co) (9) Bob Marley & The Wailers – “No Woman No Cry” (live clip) Alan Clark & Tony Hicks (Hollies) – brief interview (14) Motorhead – “Motorhead Live” (video) Bill Wyman – brief interview (-) The Rolling Stones – “The Last Time” (clip from 4/3/65) (6) Imagination – “Body Talk” Adam Ant – brief interview (1) The Specials – “Ghost Town” WATCH (4) Starsound – “Stars On 45 Volume 2” (Legs & Co/credits)
Yea, it's rather odd... When I read the article or whatever it was about this song... The impression I got was that he had written it as a sarcastic kiss off.... To me though, the song sounds completely sincere, and that's how I hear it.... for this album, that how I want and need it too.
I think after the extended period of exile, Ray was simply trying to get a higher profile for the band in the US. They partially succeeded. I saw the Kinks at JFK stadium in Philly in 1982 (Unfortunately Loverboy and Foreigner were also on the bill). 90k people there. The kinks also got a lot of airplay on WNEW-Fm in NYC at the time. MTV helped them too. They had good videos.
Just a reminder of where Better Things chord progression came from a year earlier. The Kinks - Album by Album (song by song)
I’m puzzled by your opening line. I guess it’s no big deal…but what am I missing? (We just finished discussing the entire album. Maybe you wrote this a few weeks ago?)
And yet the gap between Low Budget and Give The People What They Want was the longest gap between studio albums in their history to this point.
Definitely.... This album is very obviously sarcastically labelled/named. To the best of my knowledge a raw garage rock album that contains the song themes that this album does, is about as far away from what the majority of music fans seemed to "want" in 81/82 as it could possibly be.
Give The People What They Want I've had an up-and-down relationship with this album over the years, liking it a lot at first, then finding it slipping down the rankings as I heard more of the later albums, but then rediscovering its appeal more recently. It definitely has a garage rock feel about it - but personally I think Think Visual is a better example of a garage rock Kinks album, with less of the heaviness/shoutiness that may put people off of this one. I think it may rank as the best of the Arista albums we have covered so far, but whether it will stay there through the next two albums is doubtful. As with all the albums bar the final two, I've no idea how I would have reacted to this had I been a long-standing Kinks fan at the time it came out, but as someone who had been gradually discovering the 60s material during the mid 80s, I found it much more appealing than the RCA albums. Are we going straight into Chosen People tomorrow?
I think this is a very good point, and to expound: in some ways that 65-69 ban did The Kinks a lot of good in the long term, and not just because it led them to create all the now eulogised music of their late 6os phase. It also meant that they peaked later as a live act, and were far more vital as a group in the early 80s compared to, for instance The Who, who had broken through as a live act over a decade before, and now, down an irreplaceable member were circling the drain preceding a split circa 1981. Really only the ever-Rolling Stones, themselves coming off their own early 80s final silver age canonical hit ('Start Me Up' of course) remained ahead of The Kinks among their peer group for this couple of years in the newave/new pop/early MTV moment I'd venture. Of course it couldn't last for The Kinks either, but I've always thought of that 1981-83 Madison Square Garden into 'Come Dancing' period, where in the US at least they were both critically respected and a genuinely huge pop act as their ultimate peak moment in the sun. (And if you read Dave's autobio he definitely wouldn't agree with any of this: this was not a happy period for him, and it seems his mind was very much elsewhere!)
I get the distinct impression that The Kinks really upset someone higher up in the British music industry back in the sixties, because aside from the odd single here and there, they seemed to be completely shunned for most of their career
