I visited a local record shop today that just re-opened. It's a place that has been in business since 1977. You could easily spend an hour or two digging through here. They have been closed for 9 months after a truck crashed into their building. They were also closed during parts of Covid, so I have not been there since moving back to Seattle in 2020. I had a feeling they would have what I was looking for, and they did! I picked up a copy of Think Visual for $6, and even Dave's Glamour for $5, which was still sealed! That almost completes my Kinks studio album vinyl collection. All that is left is Phobia (and the US-only Kinks-Size and Kinkdom). Phobia was released on double vinyl in 2018, but is now going for around $80. It's likely one of my least favorite Kinks albums, so I doubt that will ever end up in my collection.
Just FYI to all, the audio in this video is not remixed. Just a remastered even shorter edit of the original US single edit. This edit is not even listed on the tracklist of this forthcoming Deluxe Box Set. The selling point of this video is the video footage.
On Spotify, the track is accompanied by a photo of the Muswell Hillbillies and Everybody’s in Show-Biz albums sitting together on a table, so I assumed the “US single version 2022 edit,” as it’s carefully called, might be on the box.
It might be part of the Blu Ray video with this edited original mix audio, so that might be true. However, the bonus CD track of “Celluloid Heroes” shows “2022 mix” so I’m expecting (and hoping) for a remix of the full track itself, but maybe it will just be this edit. If they did actually remix it, it’s surprising they didn’t give us remixed audio in this new video, even in edited form, to give us a taste of that too. We’ll see.
I found this interesting. I showed my girlfriend the Think Visual album tonight, and she said "It looks like an Eurythmics album". I thought that was a good observation, so I looked it up. Both of these Eurythmics albums came out in 1984. One is a soundtrack for the film 1984. Roger Deakins was the cinematographer. The same year that he also filmed Return To Waterloo. I don't know what any of this means, but thought it was worth sharing. "Video Shop" is now playing on the turntable, and I must say that some of these songs come more alive when you place the needle on the record.
Hope I was in the right frame of mind for this when I heard it a few minutes ago. I had a somewhat stressful day and the opening synths were peaceful sounding, in nice contrast to the more aggressive drum machine. I like the melody, and Dave’s vocal tone for the most part, even though he sounds like he’s struggling to hit some of the high notes. The song seems to have a positive message, though I’m not sure about the last line of the song, which sounds dismal “life means nothing, nothing.” Long Lonely Road Starts out promisingly, then becomes incoherent for me, almost like the whole became less than the sum of its parts. I don’t really even remember this one from the first time it came up on Decade, which isn’t a good sign.
Heh I had a used record store experience today too; 13 year old was dying to go and I'd been wanting to get rid of some duplicates so I picked out a half-dozen LPs & headed over in the 3,000 degree heat. The guy liked what I brought (an unopened Wings Over America, an almost-new Between the Buttons, and some other odds and ends) and offered me $40, which was almost enough to cover the Great Lost Kinks Album I'd seen the last time I was there, Tumbleweed Connection, and my daughter's choice (Bad Brains).
Long Lonely Road This is clearly the same recording basis as the Decade version. What's interesting here is I like the latter a lot and just can't listen to the former. The Davies sons have made a great job of remixing, restoring and probably overdubbing.
Live: The Road Live album by the Kinks Released 11 January 1988 (US) 23 May 1988 (UK) Recorded 29 June – 1 July 1987, recorded by Fanta Sound mobile studio. September – overdubs at Konk Studios, London 2–12 October mixing session at PUK Recording Studios, Denmark. 17–27 October mixing session at Konk Studios, London. 2–9 November – mastering at Masterdisk, New York City.[1] Genre Rock Length 54:23 Label London Producer Ray Davies Liner Notes: The band: Ray Davies--Lead vocals and guitars Dave Davies--Lead guitars and backing vocals (lead vocals on "Living On A Thin Line") Jim Rodford--Bass guitar and backing vocals Ian Gibbons--Keyboards and backing vocals Bob Henrit--Drums Live recordings at Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia, MD and The Mann Centre, Philadelpha, PA in the Summer of 1987. Mobil recordings at Fanta Sound, Nashville, TN Engineer: Johnie Rosen Assistant recording engineers: Mervin & Billy Mixed at Puk Studios in Denmark Mix engineer: Jeremy Allom Assistant mix engineer: Peter Iverson Post production engineer: Dave Powell Assistant post production engineer: George (Boy) Holt Mastered by Bob Ludwig at Masterdisk Corp., New York, NY Art direction--Jeff Adamoff Design Direction--Jeff Lancaster/Dick Bouchard for L-Shape Photography--(cover) Michael Ruppert, (back) Comstock Inc./Dale O'Dell Side 1 1. The Road stereo mix, album edit (6:07), recorded Sep 1987 at Konk Studios, Hornsey, London 2. Destroyer live, stereo mix, recorded 1 Jul, 1987 at Mann Music Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 3. Apeman live, stereo mix, recorded 1 Jul, 1987 at Mann Music Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 4. Come Dancing live, stereo mix, recorded 1 Jul, 1987 at Mann Music Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 5. Art Lover live, stereo mix, recorded 1 Jul, 1987 at Mann Music Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 6. Clichés Of The World (B Movie) live, stereo mix, recorded 1 Jul, 1987 at Mann Music Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Side 2 1. Think Visual live, stereo mix, recorded 1 Jul, 1987 at Mann Music Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 2. Living On A Thin Line live, stereo mix, recorded 1 Jul, 1987 at Mann Music Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 3. Lost And Found live, stereo mix, recorded 29 Jun & 1 Jul, 1987 (spliced together) at Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia, Maryland & Mann Music Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 4. It (I Want It) live, stereo mix, recorded 1 Jul, 1987 at Mann Music Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 5. Around The Dial live, stereo mix, recorded 1 Jul, 1987 at Mann Music Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 6. Give The People What They Want live, stereo mix, recorded 1 Jul, 1987 at Mann Music Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania This album seems to have a slightly unusual release schedule ... but perhaps I just missed a few others. It seems normal for the US and UK releases to be different, for whatever reason, but the releases for this seem a little scattershot.... The German cd was released in December 1987 The US record and cd were released January 1988 The UK record was released in May 1988 I like most of this live album.... I have a cynical feeling it is called The Road, in an attempt to get some sales from the many folks that bought One For the Road ... It's a tenuous link I suppose, but One For The Road had been incredibly popular, and with the falling stocks of the band, it seems releasing a live album called the Road at this point seems like a bit of a "Hey, remember us" type of thing. Many have already said they aren't fond of the cover, or that it is somewhat lazy in its name and the way it's presented.... and I can understand that, but I am neither here nor there about the cover to be honest. It is serviceable. I do like the swipe the window clean to see thing they did here, and I like that it is a long view of the highway leading into the mountains.... It is neither good nor bad to me..... It's pretty good, serviceable. Almost the whole album was recorded on one night. The opening track is a really good new track, recorded in the studio, and made to blend into the opening live track, and I think they do that really well. All of the eleven live tracks here were recorded on July 1st 1987 at the Mann Music Centre Philidelphia.... but Lost and found has a splice somewhere between the 1st of July show and the 29th of June show at Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia, Maryland. I really like the way the album opens, and the way the first three songs work together. For me Ray is in fine form as the master of ceremonies, and it all sounds like a solid performance... I think there are some interesting song choices that I may not necessarily agree with in some ways, but they have made sure not to copy from previous live albums, and I think that is a good thing.... I also think it is very apparent that the band were of a mind to forge ahead, and still reject the idea of being a nostalgia act, with Apeman being the only older song, and of course Destroyer's tip of the hat to the past. All the other songs are from the last few albums, and I think for the most part they work.... and we have two new songs, the opening studio track, and It, which is just another live track, but a new song nonetheless. The album is just under an hour, which is a long record, and a good length cd..... I'm not sure what more one could ask for here, in terms of the band attempting to remain contemporary, and release a live album that captures who the band are in a live context in 1987.... Having said that, I do think a couple of different song choices may have been wise in some ways, but we'll get to the songs as we go through. This album charted at 110 on the Billboard album chart, and sadly signalled pretty much a definitive end to the renaissance the band had been having for the last ten years... It was a commercial and critical flop really with Allmusic saying "a tepid document of their workmanlike arena rock shows from 1987" and "wasn't anything special." Rolling stone gave it a somewhat backhanded compliment with "it's less predictable and more textured than the tiresome arena-rock performances of the early-Eighties Kinks." I think that this reinforces the fact that for the most part the music press rejected the Kinks 77-87 period for the most part, and that seems to be the basis for a lot of folks failing to acknowledge how good the last ten years of music had/has been.... The Arena Rock tag gets used as a pejorative constantly, but it is an empty term to me.... For me the last ten years have been filled with as many highlights as the first ten years, particularly when you consider this is a twenty five year old band that seems to have frequently outperformed their contemporaries over the last decade, to the point where they pretty much redefined their contemporaries. Anyway, Please give us your thoughts on this album, and we'll race through it, in light of it being a repeat of songs via these live versions, that appear to be not as appreciated as they may be. What did you think when this came out/when you first heard it? What do you think of it now ? and we'll sum it all up at the end ....
Back from the road (I landed in Paris yesterday after my three weeks in Alberta and Montana) but on the road again, I guess… My memory is not crystal clear but I’m almost certain I’d seen the video for The Road (the song) in real time and loved it, just a few years before I fell deeply into the Kinks. So when that happened, I started to look around for the studio version of that great song I'd heard. I looked and looked and looked, but there was no trace of it on any of the official studio LP's. So I reluctantly bought this live LP only to realize that its opening was indeed the studio cut I'd been looking for… Another Kinks head scratcher, then. Except for that song, I have virtually no recollection of listening to the rest of the LP more than once or twice. In a way, I’ve treated it like a maxi 45: buying it for the one big song, and treating the rest as disposable B-sides material. As far as live Kinks go, I got One From the Road and one for The Road. Hopefully, this will change in the next few days in this most distinguished kompany.
Hope Not sure what the aim was here musically it does seem unfocused, confused and maybe underdeveloped or is that overdeveloped by way of mixing things up?
Long Lonely Road Yes Mark I get a KC feel riff in the intro though little sunshine elsewhere. Dave the slick axeman returns and with a dense mix that seems thick of conceptual ideas and ideals. Interesting however the vocal is pretty underwhelming.
I've never owned nor even heard The Road - I didn't know that there were otherwise unreleased songs on it until recently. I did take a brief listen to "The Road" a few months ago and thought it sounded OK, but I'll need to give it a proper listen before tomorrow.
Absolutely loved the 1970 Gulf Porsche 917 but can anybody throw some light on the stunning privateer white Porsche n.o. 25 that initially led the race in the film?
Appropriate that we were discussing 'Long Lonely Road' yesterday as the cover art of 'The Road' (particularly the back sleeve) does indeed depict roads long and lonely looking. It's far from the Kinks ugliest album cover, but the literal aspect in terms of interpreting the title hits you like a sledgehammer and on a personal level I find the crepuscular imagery kind of bleak and depressing to the soul. It says 'guys well into their third decade of touring on another go around hitting the usual spots' not to mention 'gas station cassette of trucking anthems'.. I mean just compare it to the cavalcade of touring glamour glimpsed in that new 'Celluloid Heroes' video in footage filmed 15 years before.. 'The Road' as an album is kind of like 'One For The Road Disc Three' in that it continues to document the stadium approach, and mops up 80s songs recorded after the last live album, but it also dismally reflects the afterglow of that peak, as the white light of that early 80s glory fades into everyday embers. Even the title invites the comparison that it it a lesser successor the 80s LP, in that 'The Road' is already contained within 'One For The Road', (and is half the size LP wise and title word count wise) so you ain't getting much new here folks, just an addendum 8 years on.
The Setlists. July 1st - Mann Music Center, Philadelphia Destroyer Low Budget Apeman Come Dancing Clichés of the World (B Movie) Working at the Factory Think Visual Welcome to Sleazy Town Muswell Hillbilly A Well Respected Man Art Lover Living on a Thin Line Batman theme Superman It Guilty Lola All Day And All Of The Day Give the People What They Want I Gotta Move Celluloid Heroes Around the Dial You Really Got Me June 29th, Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia Is actually, the exact same identical set.... and that makes sense, from the perspective of making a live album. Obviously they recorded both nights, but used a partial for Lost and Found.... although, interestingly Lost and Found isn't listed, which could be one of a couple of things.... these setlists aren't always very accurate, or it was flown in from another night? Also Interestingly if you look here Search for setlists: Kinks 1987 (page 2) | setlist.fm The setlists around the same time do have a bit of variance, and Do It Again seems to be set in as the opener. We also get a few different older songs... so although I read on the forum that the band didn't show the variety in their shows around this time that they used to, it seems they did. The other thing that strikes me, is they were certainly running the new material, and looking through June and July, the new album gets a lot of exposure. As to how this went down at the shows, I don't really know, sadly I never got to see the Kinks, but in the bands mind at this stage, they certainly weren't ready to be deemed a nostalgia act, with four or five tracks from the new album seeming fairly consistent and also the totally unknown It getting a run at most of the shows. With the other thing being that most of the rest of the sets were made up of recent material, with enough of the older songs to perhaps keep the older crew happy. Interesting time in the band's career here.... I'll be interested to see if the next tour holds firm in this ideal.
Let’s look at the Kinks live releases. Kelvin Hall is a British Invasion scream-fest time-capsule. Everybody’s in showbiz is part full-album concept, part essential live chronicle of the band’s use of a horn section. One For the Road is more or less the defining statement of the band’s Arista/Arena iteration. To the Bone is--in part-- a retrospective catalog overview with striped down, re-thought arrangements. And then there’s this LP—The Road—which is pure product. As such, it’s the least important of their live releases…and I say that despite the fact it contains a) a studio cut, their single best original song of their brief MCA tenure, and b) a stand alone laudable attempt to combine a truncated presentation of their mid-70’s theatrical period with the band’s only genuine attempt at 80’s Prog. These two worthy efforts tend to be buried in the Kinks cannon because…well, the are buried among a somewhat pointless single disc re-hash of One For the Road. And by the way—were it not confusing—the appropriate title for this should have been One More For the Road. These live rehashes of their 80’s catalog don’t get a rise from me. Not a single live cut stirs the blood. Or engages my mind. By the way, because I was absent during the Come Dancing discussion, I’ll say it here: it’s weak tea when performed live. It simple doesn’t work in an arena context. In ranking the memorability of Kinks live cuts, I place it even below the very brief “Mr. Wonderful” snippet from Everybody’s in Showbiz. Seriously. And the cover could not be more predictable, uninspiring, and forgettable.
The Road One snowy December evening, on my way to pick up Sarah for our first date, I pull out of the driveway, turn on WNEW-FM, and there it is, that voice. I missed only the first thirty seconds or so but I knew instantly it’s the Kinks. Of course, being so autobiographical in nature, how could any self-respecting Kinks fan not come to that conclusion? I took this to be a good omen for the date (it was not). The road(!) to the highway was treacherous, I got lost, and we were never going to make it to the cinema in time for the late show. We ended up at a diner on Rte. 17 (motorway food), and then back to her place in time for the always killer final fifteen minutes of SNL. As for The Road, it was gifted to me in peculiar fashion. Peggy, an older PathMark employee, close to retirement age, sidled up to my register one day with a cassette. Her son was apparently a big Kinks fan. She knew I liked them (how?) and thought she’d give me their newest release (why?). Now, I’d occasionally bump into her around the time clock but we scarcely had any interaction; she worked in frozen foods and with the stalwart butchers, while I was upfront in teenage wasteland manning the registers. I can remember her gnarled hands, more than one incomplete finger; she clearly had a rough go of it. I sure hope I thanked her properly but truth be told, I can’t recall. I’d like to say this was the start of a friendship, even if only as workmates, but it wasn’t, and in a years time she retired and my own departure neared. Funny how this thread, and the discipline involved in participating, can pinpoint a specific time and place, and release the memories within. People you haven’t thought of in decades emerge, and it’s as if they were never really gone, you’ve just been tuned to a different station. So here’s to Peggy, and all those other ‘extras’ we knew as our past selves, because no matter how much situations change us, and we adapt in kind, there’s always a Peggy, traveling time, showing you who you once were.
The Road: I drove right by this one. Took a detour? This is where I chose the road less traveled, away from Ray and The Kinks. After Think Visual and by 1988, I had very little interest in what Ray was doing. It was those late 80s doldrums for so many artists of the 60s and 70s, floating from one mediocre album to the next. It was also a time when all those 80s indie bands I had grown up with, starting with U2 and INXS and moving on with R.E.M. and The Replacements (among many others), were getting their chance to reach larger levels of popularity (with mixed results). The 80s were like the afterlife of punk, even country, as newer sub-genres rose up and, while never coming anywhere near taking the place of those larger genres, become alternatives. You could even say the same for disco and synth-pop (although that whole movement was seriously waning by the late 80s). I remember buying the first few Smiths album, and I must have looked like the RCA Victor terrier, head cocked sideways while listening to the gramophone. I wasn't quite getting it, but I could feel something going on, wheels turning. I was buying albums like my avatar and feeling genuinely engaged in a weird mix of rock, country, punk and a handful of other key influences. Stumbling onto the Trojan catalog via numerous 2-CD compilations was just starting to happen as I noticed those magnificent collections in the import bands. I had moved to NYC and was taking advantage of the then-stunning record stores (slowly switching to CDs) and their comparatively massive range of sounds to your average rural/suburban mall store. What had started as a strong interest in Motown towards the end of college blossomed into a full-on appreciation of 60s soul, and I spent a lot of time 1987-90 enlightening myself with greatest hits collections and various artist collections, culminating in the first Stax Volt box set in the early 90s, which felt overwhelming. The main way I felt cool back then was through movies: Something Wild by Jonathan Demme, Blue Velvet by David Lynch, Drugstore Cowboy by Gus Van Sant. Things like this appealed to that ideal self I wanted to be - much in the same way a really good Kinks album had done previously. Curious to hear this stuff, but I suspect it may not change my life. Frankly, I'm just relieved to be through the latest Dave solo round!
I first got The Road when it first came out, which was after the Christmas gift season by the way, typical Kinks timing. I think my first copy was a cassette, which has been upgraded to a CD. I actually saw them play during this tour in the summer of 1987 at Great Woods, the first time since 1981. I just basically think of this album as a souvenir of that tour, w/the addition of “The Road”, which I thought was somewhat unusual, as well as releasing a live album for your second album for a new label. Things were starting to go downhill fast for the Kinks. I’ve been messing around the CREEM Magazine archives and I noticed in one of the 1988 issues that there was actually a contest in which they invited anyone to write a review of this album. Unfortunately, I didn’t see the results of this contest in the remaining issues. Avid Fortuleo, nice to know that you’re back in France. I hope that you and yours had a fab trip and that you were treated nicely. It’s also nice to know that you were still able to continue w/your erudite comments while on vacation. Avids All Down the Line and Martyj: Yes, the Porsche 917 was the car to beat in the early 70s, taking the mantel from the Ford GT40. Finally, Avid Brian X, great record store story, although I hope that you meant a spare copy of Between the Buttons
I also was/still am into 60s soul myself, especially after reading Sweet Soul Music by Peter Guralnick, which I highly recommend. I remember picking up all the Soul Shots by Rhino at the time and my very first box set of too many was that Stax one which was funded by my tax return.
