The Kinks - Album by Album (song by song)

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

  1. Fischman

    Fischman RockMonster, ClassicalMaster, and JazzMeister

    Location:
    New Mexico
    "mehmorable"
    I love it! Very clever (although I personally love the song).
     
  2. Steve62

    Steve62 Vinyl hunter

    Location:
    Murrumbateman
    State of Confusion
    Mid-tempo rocker with Ray's vocals in the verses more spoken than singing. The call-and-response "state" and woah a woahs make this a pretty catchy song - not a great one by Ray's standards, but a pretty solid opener for their new album.
     
  3. sharedon

    sharedon Forum Zonophone

    Location:
    Boomer OK
    Heh, I was poor but bought some of those wacKy import Kompilations back in the day, on the chance that there might be something rare on them, or that the sound might be ever so slightly better than what I had. Just Kink Kurios in the end. Gotta love Kwack Kinks, though!
     
  4. DISKOJOE

    DISKOJOE Boredom That You Can Afford!

    Location:
    Salem, MA
    Wise words indeed, Avid Pyrrhicvictory. I doubt that Brian Wilson was a student of Pascal, however :laugh:

    Anyway, back to "State of Confusion", the opening and title track of the album. My fellow Avids have done a sterling job in analyzing it. I would like to add that the line about crossing the other side reminds me "See My Friends". I think it also means that Ray's regretting leaving his working class upbringing when he "crossed over" to be a rich and famous rock star.

    I also liked the video, especially the part when Ray's guitar is finally plugged in and the song gets an extra wallop.

    Headmaster, this song wasn't a single here in the States, but that #26 in that Billboard Chart was based on airplay on album tracks.

    Finally, I was listening to a rebroadcast of American Top 40 with Casey Kasem from May 29, 1976 this AM and Casey had a special report on "Waltzing Matilda"
    being the new Australian National Anthem.
     
  5. ThereOnceWasANote

    ThereOnceWasANote Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cape May, NJ
    Ray never really did leave the Flash character look completely behind did he?

    I kinda wish the studio version was played more like this.
     
  6. donstemple

    donstemple Member of the Club

    Location:
    Maplewood, NJ
    State of Confusion

    Never heard this song before last week. The chorus is extremely catchy with the call and response. It’s a simple repetitive chorus, but it also has a melodic instrumental riff in place of a more complex vocal chorus. So it works for me. As far as the intro, yes I immediately thought of London Calling and completely agree with all of this:

    I think Ray did this purposely to indirectly call back to Dead End Street. This is almost a sequel to that song. That song also mentioned the issues with the house — there’s a crack in the ceiling and the kitchen sink is leaking. But this time, the house is probably a metaphor as Mark so eloquently described.

    As far as the song, I really like the organ/synth color and the piano licks throughout. There’s a few variations in Ray’s voice. There’s some classic 60s descending backing vocals. It really has all the klassic Kinks elements I love.

    Lyrically, I like the play of “weather” and “whether”. Has Ray been literally talking about the weather all these years?

    It reminds me of how Ray introduced the performance of Stormy Sky on the Old Grey Whistle Test:

    “This is a new number from our album. The world premiere tonight. It’s a song- another weather song like Waterloo Sunset and Sunny Afternoon. It’s a thing called Stormy Sky, thank you.”

    …which then prompted someone to give one of my favorite YouTube comments of all time:

    “I love his intro. ‘HELLO WE ARE THE KINKS AND WE WRITE SONGS ABOUT THE WEATHER.’ :D
     
  7. Paul Mazz

    Paul Mazz Senior Member

    State of Confusion

    Not my favorite song on the album. Not being a fan of shouty Ray, it’s a relief that the whole song is not sung in that style. Besides the obvious reference to London Calling in the open chords, I also hear it in the non-verbal shouted “ahs,” or is that “arrghs,” at the beginning of SOC which don’t occur until much later in the song in London Calling. I like the fact of the Kinks referencing the Clash, who were referencing the Kinks, and all three songs being unique. In tracing the history of rock in his podcast Andrew Hickey has come to the conclusion that the truly creative songs in rock usually didn’t invent things out of whole cloth, but that small incremental changes can make a song sound new and exciting.

    I’m sure being in a state of confusion is unavoidable at times and is just part of the nature of being alive. I’m not sure my “state of confusion” gets worse the older I get, but life sure ain’t getting easier:help::).
     
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  8. palisantrancho

    palisantrancho Forum Resident

    I’m feeling very sad for “Look For Me Baby”! That song swings and rocks with some fierce Kinks swagger. They sound so Konfident and Kool. That would easily make my top ten. An interesting list to put together! I will have to make my own!
     
  9. Mark R. Y.

    Mark R. Y. Getting deep down

    Location:
    Seattle
    "State of Confusion" was more of an MTV hit than a radio hit. A friend of mine and I were particularly amused by the bit in the video where Ray looks harried backstage, but then instantly is all smiles and arm waves once he emerges on stage in front of a crowd. (Starting around three minutes into the music video.)

    It's a terrific track and I was very annoyed when I bought the Come Dancing greatest hits of the Arista years 2-record album and discovered that "State of Confusion" was not included.
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2022
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  10. Michael Streett

    Michael Streett Senior Member

    Location:
    Florence, SC
    State Of Confusion song

    Ray is famously an insomniac. Suffering from this somewhat myself, in my case lying there and not catching the zzzs right away all sorts of thoughts cross the mind. Whatever problems are going on in the world big or small, or whatever personal problems I’m dealing with on any given day, even stupid trivial ones, seem exponentially worse lying in bed and dwelling on them.

    These lyrics remind me of this and that weird “state” when you are half asleep and half awake, you’re not sure which one you’re in, and you may not be in either.

    I like this track a lot and the multiple changes in terms of structure and arrangement elevate this to more than just generic stadium rock for me and outweigh the negatives.

    It’s funny. I mentioned watching MTV non-stop when it first became available in my area, and saw Come Dancing several hundred times it seems.
    But this video for the title track, I don’t remember seeing this at all. Huh.

    Ray in a muscle shirt…:laugh:
     
  11. markelis

    markelis Forum Resident

    Location:
    Miami Beach FL
    That’s a great background story. Similar in many ways to mine, which I have related here before so I apologize if I’m being redundant. I had the benefit of having a grandmother who is into all these types of music and who had hundreds and hundreds of records in her collection. For me, rather than having to head over to the local record store (and I had one of those too, RIP Record Breaker in Manchester Connecticut), I was lucky enough to be able to just dip into her collection. And I may not have mentioned it much yet, but she was very big on prog related artists as well. Yes, Genesis, tons of Tull, the Moody blues (arguable if there pro I suppose) etc. She was down for the heavy stuff as well, so Zep, Purple, some Sabbath. When it came to more straight-ahead rock ‘n’ roll, I could really go deep, checking out the Stones, The Who, the Beatles are, as well as lots of less notable bands (for example, I remember really liking the Russ Ballard written songs that Rainbow covered, Since You Been Gone and Surrender, figuring out he was from Argent, and then finding the Argent album with Hold Your Head up in her collection). My education into the past 20+ years of rock’s growth and development was easily accessible and free (And yes, she did have some Free, as well as Bad Company). I would listen to the music at her place, tape the stuff I liked on to cassettes for further listening, and then of course go and buy my own albums when I really liked what I was hearing.

    What a resource, and dang did she have an open mind and good taste. I remember hearing little red Corvette by Prince for the first time on the radio (in Florida, on a rock radio station of all places) and buying 1999 immediately. This was long before people knew who prince was really, and yet a few months later when I brought the 1999 album to her house to expose her to it, she of course already had it.

    I could go on and on about her, but suffice to say she was a great grandmother who really opened my mind to music at a young age. I highly doubt I’d be here on this thread today but for her turning me onto all different kinds of music, including the Kinks themselves.
     
  12. palisantrancho

    palisantrancho Forum Resident

    "State of Confusion"

    Someone has obviously been listening to The Clash. The problem is The Kinks can no longer match the power of late 70s and early 80s Clash. The Kinks always followed their own path, but now they are latching onto current trends and attempting to remain hip. It's actually a pretty good song with a nice balance of shouty Ray and melodic Ray. I like the bass line, which also sounds very Clash like. I never cared for this song much before, but I'm finding it enjoyable this morning. I'd still rather listen to The Clash over this song, so I played "Clash City Rockers", and I was instantly reminded of "The Hard Way". What goes around comes around! Rock n roll is all a bit of give and take.
     
  13. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    It's interesting that this has brought so many comparisons to London Calling, and I can hear it, but I don't find the songs to be similar at all.... It is merely a stabbed minor chord, but even the intro's come across differently to me.
     
  14. croquetlawns

    croquetlawns Forum Resident

    Location:
    Scotland
    For me, the biggest difference between this and London Calling is that London Calling isn’t boring!
     
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  15. Brian x

    Brian x the beautiful ones are not yet born

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    State of Confusion (song)

    Getting the comps over with: Yes, London Calling. Also a bit of Goon Squad. And the opening scream reminds me of the recurring scream throughout Imperial Bedroom, speaking of 1982 releases. The most obvious Kinks comp, as mentioned above, is Low Budget, but there's a fairly long line of first person Komplaint Kompilations, like 20th Century Man, Acute S/P Blues, etc etc., which convey increasingly chaotic claustrophobia as failure and disorder pile up & threaten to crush the narrator/Ray.

    Konveying Khaotic Klasustrophobia and Konfusion make a Kool Komplaint Kompilation. (Sorry, couldn't help myself).

    But I do think of @mark winstanley 's point when listening to the Kinks, Dylan, Nirvana, Eliot Smith etc (or reading Dostoyevsky, Plath, Kafka, etc)... am I in some way vicariously experiencing -- or, worse, enjoying -- the chronicle of someone's emotional/psychological breakdown?

    There are a lot of parts to this song, which belie the initial impression of monotony one gets from the call-and-response shouty stuff. & generally the shouty-ness helps convey the narrator's desperation, though it is (to my ears) becoming a bit of a tired gag at this point.

    But it's another in the series of theme-setting songs from the yeah sure nudge nudge this isn't a concept album Arista period. And from what I can tell in my first couple of listens, it sets up the rest of the album quite well.

    Side note for the oldies here: When I was the age Ray was recording this album, I did feel my emotional turmoil and general disorientation were getting worse. It wasn't until I was heading towards 50 that things started calming down a bit.
     
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  16. Smiler

    Smiler Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston TX
    I can go along with this. Not much to add to what's been said. A good start to the album, with lyrics aptly describing a living nightmare and yes, a lot of inner turmoil, to say the least. The screams at the beginning are an appropriate touch. RDD can write some great crowd participation hooks…it’s almost impossible for me not to respond “STATE!” when listening to this! Playlist-worthy. 4/5
     
  17. Brian Kelly

    Brian Kelly 1964-73 rock's best decade

    State Of Confusion (song)
    I thought this was a good opening song and listening to it for the first time in years, I still feel that way. As someone else mentioned, there is a bit of "a London Calling" vibe to the song. It was also a good live song as well.
     
  18. Vangro

    Vangro Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    Yes, this song is pretty catchy, it's not exactly breaking any new ground but Ray's toned down the shoutiness and the drums aren't giving me a headache.
     
  19. Vangro

    Vangro Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    By the way I think I know exactly where Ray is trying to catch a taxi in the video, it's Muswell Hill (of course!) where Muswell Hill (the road) meets Muswell Hill Broadway.
     
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  20. Geoff738

    Geoff738 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto
    Always liked this one. Always will. No, it’s not Victoria. But it’ll do.
     
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  21. ThereOnceWasANote

    ThereOnceWasANote Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cape May, NJ
    As far Kinks Komparisons wait till we get to Word of Mouth (the song). A lot of people hear Start Me Up in the intro. I am not one of those people.

    I don't really hear London Calling on SOC but there is a slight EC & The Attractions vibe to the farfisa.

    I think overall SOC is a very mod sixties-sounding song. The push pull of the rhythm gives it a subtle Motown groove under the hood as well.
     
  22. All Down The Line

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

    Location:
    Australia
    I won't guess which end the whistling was from but you missed my gentle joke about you perhaps loving Rush specifically for the singing and not drumming.
     
  23. All Down The Line

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

    Location:
    Australia
    I have heard of kneecapping but not oneself &
    as for Ray not wanting his New Orleans trousers cut they did already have a bullet hole in them!
     
  24. All Down The Line

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

    Location:
    Australia
    I think just before my time then as i arrived here in 1982 and almost 14.
     
  25. All Down The Line

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

    Location:
    Australia
    New then really, i assume we sang God Save The Queen before?
     

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