Definite Maybe - The title perfectly describes the song for me. I love how the tune starts and then it sort of drifts. Some great individual parts that don't quite come together but I do get engaged again in the last verse. I don't know if they had a video for this but I can picture Ray doing a nice performance of his/our frustrations with these government and business bureaucracies. Happy Memorial Day or Decoration day if you like. Time to cue up some Drive By Truckers!
I wrote my pithy thoughts on this track a week or so ago and this mirrors, in a kinder fashion, my thoughts. I end by noting “I was initially appalled. But I will admit that I end up thinking, yeah…the song is okay. But still not Kinksian-okay.”
Outwith the Yardbirds tip/rip (probably unintentional but it would be typically Ray to re-purpose that tune, originally accompanied by a lyric guilelessly celebrating the abundance of pleasures available to the affluent youth of Swinging London to be about an individual continually trapped and frustrated by computerised bureaucracy) the other bits of this melodically really remind me of contemporary Damned, at least the tunes where the Capt's pop Sensibilities were taking precedence over Dave Vanian's goth-isms, which I guess is to say it sounds like an original 60s band keeping pace with younger punk/newave acts attempting to revive mid-60s pop/rock.
First off, Happy Memorial Day in remembrance of all those who served, especially in places such as Normandy, where Avid The late man spent the day yesterday. How are the beaches there these days? Anyway, "Definite Maybe", a song that I didn't appreciate when I first got the album, possibly because even back then I recognized the riff from "Over, Under, Sideways, Down", just like the interviewer in Musician Magazine did in that interview of Ray and also that I didn't experience dealing w/various bureaucracies so much back then. I appreciate the lyrics a lot more now, even as I still wish Ray should have covered his tracks a bit more (maybe Noel Gallagher learned the art of riff nicking from Ray ).
Definite Maybe This song is a great example of why I can understand those who don't appreciate this phase of the Kinks kareer as well as the golden era. The lyric, in addressing modern frustration, has plenty of Ray's lyrical wit, but seems to lack the depth or charm of earlier entries. Either that, or it's just all been done before. This is essentially Party Line '83. Musically, it's catchy and engaging enough to stand up to repeated listenings though, and I rarely feel the urge to skip it.
Yes, a big thanks to your grandfathers here. The beaches are fine, thanks to them. I spent the first lockdown there, and even the beaches were forbidden space. I have the extreme privilege of having parents who own an appartment on the sea, so we had - visually at least - the whole empty beach for us. It was a uncanny experience, that made me think of the last pages of HG Wells's Time Machine, it was the end of the world, wild life reclaiming the space... When my mother was a teenager she used to wander the cliffs nearby freely, oblivious of the many mines left behind by the German army. We used to hear about people accidentally blown away on those from time to time. With the years such incidents grew rarer and rarer, until they ceased altogether. Another way to measure the passage of time. Once, with my elder brother, we fretted over a blue round object on the side of a path in the cliffs, that for some reason fitted with our idea of a WW2 mine. We came back home all excited, our mother sounded more amused than worried, and didn't do much more than advise caution. We went back, the object had been upturned, it was a plastic salad bowl. Strange to think that these beaches were invaded more than 1000 years ago by a Germanic-language speaking people, who became French-speaking in little more than a century, then invaded England, who long afterwards colonized North America, from where came back those who, together with the British, Canadians and also Australians, would free Normandy from another Germanic-language speaking people. Will it ever cease ? Definitely maybe. I like the song by the way. I also was deceived by the overly simplistic beginning. It does makes me think of Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985), but the first reference it awoke in my memory was The house that makes people mad, in the 1976 feature Asterix cartoon "the 12 tasks of Asterix". A fond childhood memory, probably one of the first cartoons I saw, since I grew up without television and had to rely on holidays at my grandma's and (later) the local suburban cinema. There, I found an English version. Incredibly slow-paced comedy by today's standards, but it's a great memory.
I remember watching that at school, that whole scene really stuck with me. It took me a while to work out later on that it wasn't in any of the regular Asterix comic books, and was an original creation for a film.
Definite Maybe: Reviews at the time murdered this song for "borrowing" the riff from The Yardbirds song. Admittedly, at the time, I didn't know "Over, Under, Sideways, Down." My older brother had a Yardbirds compilation that had this on it, but I somehow only focused on their handful of massive hits. So, I educated myself, along with developing a deeper appreciation for The Animals, whom I also only knew by their hits. (We had fun with "The Black Plague" at a few college parties in the mid-80s. We'd often play that in tandem with "Deck of Cards" by Wink Martindale as a talking-song tribute.) Ray should have just admitted that they sounded very similar and let it pass, but I recall him being offended at the time. What I found even more odd: if you go back to the Jeff Beck Group's 1972 album, there's a song called "Definitely Maybe"! (In truth, I far prefer that song to this.) Still, this is a good song, solid album track, but not something I find myself returning to much.
That was a great clip, Avid The late man. It's pretty funny. Unfortunately, my family was still in Poland when D Day occurred, withstanding the terrors of the Eastern Front. However, a father of a good friend of mind did participate in D Day as part of the US Coast Guard. He later got transferred to the Pacific and was involved in Iwo Jima. I can't believe that the WWII vets will soon be gone. I remember a neighbor down my street who was a WWI vet in France.
I never followed Prince but vividy recall him being touted via Controversey on some type of emerging artists or at least hits television show. Also featured IIRC was Duran Duran and Planet Earth and the debut single (Young Guns?) from some guys called Wham!
Definite Maybe I did not know this song until just before we started discussing the current album. As I mentioned, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the album, but this song did not stand out for me on the first couple of listens. I did enjoy it a lot this morning however. I was just in the mood for it’s driving beat. The call and response is a lot of fun. I must say that I don’t really hear the similarity to Over Under Sideways Down. Maybe someone could point me to the specific riff. I tend to focus on the vocal melody. The songs certainly feel pretty different to me. Unfortunately, getting trapped in a bureaucratic quagmire seems to be an unavoidable part of modern life around the world. Any time I think of labyrinthine bureaucracy, I also think of the movie Brazil, especially the scene where the hapless bureaucrat doesn’t know what to do with the refund check for someone’s torture, and his only idea is to maybe lose it behind a filing cabinet. Now I’ll have a song to sing to myself when facing the idiocy of large organizations.
Quick Catch-Up: I just love the "State Of Confusion" album, to me it's like "Give The People What They Want" was a dry run for that. I first heard the album in the year 2000 borrowed from a library and was astonished how every track seems to be a hit in its own right. The whole album is full of strong melodies and good rocking fun. The definite Kinks 80's album for me. Title Track: Again, the video made me love this, rather straightforward song. It nicely sums up Ray's world. Not the strongest song in the world, but it does make its point. "Definite Maybe": This is a better melody in the verses than any track #2 of an album has any right to. Love the loose vocal delivery, such a refreshing contrast to the perfectionist approach of the "Sleepwalker" and "Misfits". Ray doesn't even seem to hit all the right notes, but he gets the melody across somehow. I guess this is where he learned to use the Konk studio as it was intended: as a home studio where he could cut loose.
???? To me it's very specifically the verse vocal melody (not any other element) that's the same! If you don't hear it you don't hear it I guess. It could be argued that there are few things more subjective than a melody.
I don’t hear it, either. I just listened to both songs back-to-back…but found myself quite liking ‘Definitely Maybe’! I’ve been acclimated.
Apologies if this seems like a rash or gauche statement: just thinking out loud really. I do sometimes wonder what some of my favourite songs/types of music sound like to people who don't like them: I wonder if they actually hear them completely differently than I do. It's an interesting topic: a bit like the 'do other people see colours the same way I do?' thought experiment, but I don't really have the time or brainspace (or brain capacity in the first place likely) to do it justice on this thread today.
I was just ‘hmm’ing because I can think of a lot more things that are subjective. Such as if the song is “good” or not. But I’m not over-thinking it.
19th Nervous Breakdown, Over Under Sideways Down and Definite Maybe to my ears have similar verse melodies AND that origin is who else? Chuck's Memphis Tennesee and his vocal melody in the verses. The melody is slower but it sure sounds like the foundation for those songs' verse melody. Because in the end so much goes back to Mr. Berry doesn't it? Each of these great bands did something different around the verses and melody. Chuck was never too far away from the mind of the brothers Davies even decades later.
