I just picked up the album One Year by Colin Blunstone at a local record shop. It's almost a Zombies record. Rod Argent plays on it, and is also produced by Argent/White. "Caroline Goodbye" is a song that I have loved for a long time. Looking at the liner notes we have none other than our own Kinks headless bass man Jim Rodford in the lineup. Even when I am not listening to The Kinks, it is somehow Kinks related. I was aware that he was from St. Albans and played on the Argent albums, but didn't know he also played on this fantastic song.
I am reminded of a bad taste party i attended in a roughneck bogan area in the early 90's wearing an "unusual" shirt i had found at my shopfitting work. On the way home i unfortunately had to stop for gas and after filling up and paying i turned, realised all the eyes staring at me and remembered what i was wearing. It was a flamboyantly styled white long sleeved shirt covered all over in bold red lipstick kisses which on reflection kind of fits in (though more garishly) with the Kinks Word Of Mouth cover artwork! N.b. Seinfeld could have written a whole episode around it and though a photo or two was taken i am not sure they still exist? Memo to @mark winstanley , please never post your cocktail party dress photos here, that Kink would surely have the thread locked!
"Good Day" Single by The Kinks from the album Word of Mouth B-side "Too Hot" Released 10 August 1984 Recorded June 1983 - September 1984 at Konk Studios, London Genre Rock Length 4:35 Label Arista Songwriter(s) Ray Davies Producer(s) Ray Davies stereo mix, recorded Jun 1984 at Konk Studios, Hornsey, London The sky is blue but there are clouds in my head, With big decisions looming ahead. The sun is out but the room is so grey, So much confusion headed my way. Get positive, try to be gay. News of the world, tea and biscuits in bed. The headlines said that Diana is dead. She couldn't act much but she put on a show. She always smiled even when she felt low. I used to fancy her a long time ago. So today has got to be a good day, Today is gonna be a good day, Today is gonna be a good day, Good day, good day, good day. Holes in my socks and I can't find my shoes. It's no surprise that I'm singing the blues. So many holes in my life still to mend, And someone just said that the world's gonna end. So today better be a good day, Today is gonna be a good day, Today has got to be a good day, Good day, good day, good day, good day. If we blow away the past with a bloody great blast, Make it fast, make it fast. So have a good day today because it could be your last, Make it last, make it last. Will it light up the sky? Will it blot out the sun? Well we've waited this long, So it better be a good one. Good day, good day, good day. Yeah, it's gonna be a good day. Hey baby, if you come back home it'll be a good day today. They could drop a small atom bomb on the city today, But if you walk through that door honey, you know it'll be a good day. And now survival is my only aim. I call friends and see if any remain. Who was that girl who used to be my flame? I'd call her if I could remember her name. So today is gonna be a good day, Today has got to be a good day, Today is gonna be a good day, Good day, good day, good day, good day. Hey Diana, I've really got to learn to take a tip from you, Put on my makeup and try to make the world take notice of you. Yeah, it's gonna be good day today. Good day, gonna be a good day. (repeat) Written by: Ray Davies Published by: Davray Music, Ltd. This song starts off a little unusually. We get a digital beep, and then a drum machine starts, then it stops and we get the digital beeps again, and this happens a couple of times, and it gives the idea that the tempo is being adjusted, or we're switching between patterns, or something like that. During the sessions for "Good Day," a drum machine was used instead of drummer Mick Avory, due to the conflicts between Avory and Dave Davies. Ray Davies said of this: "Dave and Mick just couldn't get along. There were terrible fights, and I got to the point where I couldn't cope with it any more. Push came to shove, and to avoid an argument I couldn't face....we were doing a track called "Good Day" and I couldn't face having Mick and Dave in the studio, so I did it with a drum machine." Good Day was released as a single in Britain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands, and didn't have any success in any of those countries. Good Day was actually the first single released from the album, released in August 1984, and the album followed in November ... The album was the first since Low Budget to fail to reach the US top twenty ... It's merely speculation, but I get the impression that although this is a good Kinks song, I doubt that the drum machine, particularly so obviously being a drum machine, did the band any favours in the charts..... For example, although by this stage I become completely accepting of synths, it took a long time for me to be accepting of drum machines in rock music... I kind of expected them in pop, and particularly synth pop, but in rock music there didn't seem to be any excuse for a drum machine. I believe that the Diana referred to in the song is Diana Dors Who had sadly passed away on May 4th 1984. Diana had been a quite popular movie and tv star, also doing stage performance and a lot of other stuff. She also released a solo album, and was on several movie musical soundtracks. She released singles between 1953 and 1981.... Many on here may remember her as the fairy godmother in Adam Ant's Prince Charming video... I honestly don't know that much about her, so I'll leave it to those more familiar with her to fill in the blanks. I know of her, and I know have seen her in movies and tv shows, but that's about the sum total of my knowledge. Ray opens us up with the idea that although the sky is blue and it is a nice day, he has things going on in his head that are weighing on him. Then we have him in bed reading the morning paper while eating his breakfast? but perhaps it isn't breakfast ... brunch? tea and biscuits.....News Of The World could be a tv show too. It's here that he learns that Diana has passed away... this recalls him remembering her, and he says she wasn't necessarily a great actress, but she sure did put on a show, and more importantly for our context here "She always smiled even when she felt low".... He used to fancy her when he was a young lad, and it looks like she was an attractive young lady, so that's hardly surprising. When we hit the chorus, the first thing that strikes me is it has "got to" be a good day. It almost seems like he is hoping for, rather than expecting it to be a good day... and iut gives the impression that he actually needs it to be a good day. We move on to the idea that his socks have holes, and he can't find his shoes, but this reminds him that he has holes in his life that need mending, and they are more significant than the holes in his socks. We end this verse with the line "And someone just said that the world's gonna end".... It was the eighties, so someone almost certainly said the world's gonna end... it was the MO during the early eighties at least... I get the feeling that all through history there has been an underlying theme of "the world is going to end", and certainly at some point it will, and it will be out of our control anyhow, harping on it isn't useful though. We gotta "live life" This chorus starts off with Today Better be a good day. If we blow away the past with a bloody great blast, Make it fast, make it fast. So have a good day today because it could be your last, Make it last, make it last. This could be read several ways... from at least the village green days Ray has been lamenting the destruction of English traditions and the general race towards the future that the world has been caught up in, and so we could easily read this as being, look if you are going to destroy the past, get it over with, and stop tormenting me that there's hope... But we get a little hint that it is more than that. Blow away the past with a bloody great blast ... we get a closer reminder in the next lines Will it light up the sky? Will it blot out the sun? Well we've waited this long, It seems to me Ray is talking about the ever present threat of a nuclear blast blotting out the whole human race... and we have talked about this before, because this threat loomed large over the whole of the eighties, and as I've said many times in my adult life, that was why the eighties were so colourful, and the music of pop singers was generally light and fun, it was almost creating a world to escape to, with the constant threat of obliteration in the air. In November of 1983 the heart warming, fun and full of joy movie "The Day After" first aired, and I probably don't need to tell anyone from the era what that was about, but for any younger folks, the premise was about a nuclear war between NATO forces and the Warsaw pact ... The Day after is pretty self explanatory... post apocalyptic world gear.... it was a ton of fun... and I can't help but wonder if it was on Ray's mind when he wrote this one. The Day After was the seventh highest non-sporting televised show up to that point in time, and it was the highest rating television movie in history..... a record it held until 2009 .... yea this movie had an impact.... and yes I saw it lol.... So we start to see why it better be a good day.... because it may be our last. Yeah, it's gonna be a good day. Hey baby, if you come back home it'll be a good day today. They could drop a small atom bomb on the city today, But if you walk through that door honey, you know it'll be a good day. We have the protagonist longing for the return of a partner, and we are left with no doubt what Ray has been singing about here. He doubles down on this idea And now survival is my only aim. I call friends and see if any remain. Who was that girl who used to be my flame? I'd call her if I could remember her name. He is even thinking about long lost crushes he's had, and wishing he could remember them and seemingly see them again. Taking stock of a life in the balance like someone diagnosed with a terminal disease.... and for anyone not there, yea it did kind of feel like that. I figure I have never been very perturbed by the idea of death because all through my childhood I was being told I could die at any moment.... and then society wonders why as teens we start drinking and drugging lol .... It's a funny old world. He brings the lyric back full circle and thinks of Diana again Hey Diana, I've really got to learn to take a tip from you, Put on my makeup and try to make the world take notice of you. Yeah, it's gonna be good day today. But don't forget the key line from earlier, that may well be the key line in the song She always smiled even when she felt low I get the impression that this is the theme of the whole song. No matter what it comes down to, we have no idea how long we have left, so don't sit wallowing in the dumps.... put on a smile and do your utmost to make today the best day ever, in spite of all the doom and gloom. In spite of our shortcomings and the little tragedies that a/effect every one of us.... Accentuate the positive... Make today the best day it is possible for it to be, no matter what. Yea, I know, easier said than done, and we all have those moments... times... days... when it weighs us down... and as unpopular as it is to say, I think at least, I'm never sure anymore, try and input some positive things when we're on that downward leaning... Avoid politics, super negative music, super negative movies and tv shows etc .. I don't believe they generally cause us to drop into depressive states, but they can help to keep us there... from my experiences at least... anyway, I'll shut up now Musically ... once we take the drum machine out of the equation, I really like this song musically... Ok firstly, the drum machine... It is actually pretty well programmed, as in it has a couple of change ups, and they work well... My problem is the robotic feel that drum machines create. Very suitable for some songs, but in many ways songs like this that are very human, often feel cheapened by drum machines...... but again... This song kind of plays into some Ray themes that are quite popular... and there is a hint of that repetitive lifestyle we have seen. So from that perspective, perhaps the robotic rhythm works as a counterpoint to the organic effort to treat every day as a good day and strive to inject yourself into life in a manner that works against the robotic nature of the world and its systems... in this instance rebelling against the system of fearmongering. We get this organ flowing in the background and what sounds like a palm muted rhythm guitar, but it could be a keyboard I guess... later in the song it sounds keyboardy, but it's hard for me to tell at the moment. Ray is delivering my favourite kind of Ray vocal. He has his regular inflection oriented style, but it is straight, human Ray.... with that slight melancholy, with a hopeful edge. We have augmentation with harmonica (how long is it since we had harmonica? it seems like a while) We get some nice electric accents in there and all in all it flows really well. The bridge is excellent and it has a sort of propulsive, uplifting kind of feel to it, and also the chorus prior has a slight chordal modification that works really well too. We build up to an excellent ending and I really like the way the keys add that sort of carillion bells kind of sound come in, and I think it is excellent.... accentuating the idea of celebrating each day... even if it is a fake it til you make it scenario. Underneath for the close out we get the real bells come in... does this signify success? The fake it til we make it idea worked, and we have a real celebratory joy kicking in? Anyway... I really like this song, I think there is a lot more to it than I had previously considered, and a lot of that would be my contention with the drum machine, which on closer inspection could have been a reasonable choice contextually, even though I would have preferred Mick to be on here ... if Mick and Dave could have sorted their crap out ... oh well.... such is life
I sympathize with @pantofis being repelled by the drum machine effect. The other day, he said it colors his appreciation of the whole album, which I think is a bit harsh. But regarding the song, it does bring a certain flavor to it and cast a shadow on an otherwise perfectly charming tune. Why would they do that ? This bleep is so weird, at the start of such an affectionate sixties Kinks throwback. I guess Ray imagined it would work as a kind of time machine device : I wake up in the morning, I have to adjust to the fact that we’re in the eighties, though in my mind I’m still this guy from the fifties/sixties, longing for dying old stars from my youth, putting up a smiling face in front of the sad “news of the world”. There’s a light element of paranoid dystopian feeling in the song but hey, it’s 1984 after all… Everything’s bad, but I’ll act like a good lad/soldier/robot, pretending all is good and jolly and gay, pretending I can sing an old styled Kinks tune with a bouncy chorus. I think it works fine, the harmonica (from the formative years) and the talking bits (straight out of Soap Opera) are nice touches, as is the slightly panicked “make it fast/make it last” bridge. It certainly works as planned: whenever it’s on (whenever I put it on), it brings a stupid smile on my face and I start to bop along, enjoying the keyboards marimbas, the dry guitar chords and cool singalongs, before realizing that it’s a pretty sad song about a depressed guy attempting to cheer himself up in the face of gloomy news. Maybe this meta aspect makes it less charming than it could’ve been, I don’t know. But Ray never said it was going to be “great”, did he? He said it was going to be good. And it most certainly is!!
News of the World was a salacious tits-and-bums Murdoch rag published on Sundays. It got closed down for hacking into the phones of murder victims and their families et al. A truly vile publication, British tabloid "journalism" at it's worst - and few things are worse than British tabloid journalism News of the World - Wikipedia I'm going to take issue with Ray saying Diana Dors couldn't act much, a bit unfair and inaccurate. Of course, Diana and her husband. Alan Lake, were never out of the News of the World
Despite the drum machine, which is a bit annoying, this is a really good (day) song. Nice backing vocals. I'm not surprised that it wasn't a hit though!
"Good Day" I can't say that the drum machine has ever bothered me, or that I'd even registered that a drum machine was being used. The beeping noise at the start has always sounded to me like the alarm on a digital watch going off. Three songs into Word Of Mouth and a third completely different sounding song. This one is very firmly in the 80s pop territory, but it has most things that a fan of the 60s band would expect or hope for in terms of music, tune and delivery. The voice that Ray uses in the bridge section could have come straight from Arthur. It is a fine song, but it's one that I've often tended to underappreciate - perhaps I feel that it's one that Ray could have written in his sleep, or maybe it's that it feels like a misfit in this album (as most tracks on this album do). It's probably at least as good as most things on the next album, but I appreciate those more because they sound like they belong together. A pedant would point out that Diana Dors died on 4th May 1984, which was a Friday, so Ray probably wouldn't have read about it in a Sunday paper. The bells over the outro are apparently wedding bells - a reference to Chrissie Hynde getting married to Jim Kerr.
"Good Day" is a good song and it is interesting to read who Diana refers to but, when I listened to this song this morning, I thought of the Diana who would have been on the minds of most people in England (for that matter, the world) circa 1984 and hearing a song speculating about a world where Diana was dead seemed pretty prophetic to me. This song is different from the two that proceeded it. Generally, Eighties production is an annoyance to me but I do not feel that with this song - drum machine or not. It is also a very positive song. Sort of a Ray self-help song.
Yea, the Lady/Princess Diana implication via what is now past history, is eerie. Even though it was 13 years later
Good Day I have never fully realized what a sad lyric Ray penned for this tune. ‘It’s gotta be a good day.’ Or what? This is a poor soul who’s reached the end of his rope, it’s all gone wrong. ‘What would we do without wishful thinking?’, Jeff Tweedy asks in one of his most beautiful songs. And ‘Good Day’ does contain the Davies optimism of old, that big red ball shining through the glooms of this text. There is a similar melancholy to be found in Paul Westerberg’s song of the same name. Both ‘Good Day’s’ mournful, each offering their own glimmer of light. But just because you think things can’t get any worse, it doesn’t mean they won’t. Ray’s lyric reads and is delivered by someone in a deep depression, maybe even suicidal, and the broken-down, washed-out (and subtly gorgeous) arrangement only exacerbates the general unease. And what if that good day doesn’t arrive? Has our hero set himself up for a fall? Will he do the unthinkable? Ray missed out on being Pye label mates with Diana Dors by about four years. I have a 45 of hers called ‘So Little Time’, and it’s surprisingly good, though I don’t believe any of her songs ever charted. I wonder if Ray really learned of her death reading The News of the World or if that was artistic license. I ask this because, if this is a real snapshot of his life, then as he was reading these headlines, events were occurring that he would discover in the next day’s paper. And tomorrow would not be a good day. Diana Dors died on May 4th, 1984. On May 5th, Chrissie Hynde married Jim Kerr. She dropped an A-Bomb, and wouldn’t be walking back through that door. I heard this song on the radio once, on WNEW, coming home from school in a classmates parents car. My friend, Rich, a metal head, did not approve. I’ve undervalued it, too, all these years. I always thought it was light-weight, papery; but no, there’s heavy lifting to be done, and after examining the lyric, it may receive from me the blue plaque it’s always deserved. I was going to say as a single it deserved to flop. That it boasts one sheepish introduction. A Timex watch alarm over a sparse drum machine (oh, Mick) beat. If your mind is set on a hit, those precious initial seconds must be better. But this song has me in a spell, it can do no wrong. This guy’s musty, window-sealed bedsit, and the instruments here that help establish it, are mundane, quotidian. As disposable as he himself, and this modern world, is disposable. It’s a bright sounding song, yet everything is ultra-drab; the acoustic guitar, Caribbean synths, the (welcome back) harmonica, even the ‘Big Black Smoke’ bells are muted. Like we are being forced to hear the way our protagonist does; through the numb haze one experiences during depression. This song is resigned, regretful, optimistic, deluded, romantic, bathetic, fatalistic, and anything else you can think of. Most importantly, it’s Daviesian.
Good Day I never paid attention to the drum machine beyond the first bars. I'm not sure I can tell the difference between a drum machine and Bob Henrit anyway. It's a good song, the bitter-sweet words give it a special colour that has been skillfully described by Mark and Fortuleo, among others. And yes, I remember those Apocalypse-fearing 80s I grew up in, and this song brings back their taste very efficiently. I don't know if it's such a good thing. The other day I compared this song to George Harrison's writing, but listening to it again yesterday I didn't hear it that much. Mostly the "Good Day, Good Day" part, which reminds me of the way Harrison opens his melodies on some choruses, as in Blow Away. Whatever.
OK, this makes sense and throws a new light on the lyrics ! Didn't Ray pretend that he learned about his break-up with Chrissie in the paper?
Good Day This I never realised. I’m the same and I can usually detect a drum machine at 100 paces (it put me off much of the Blue Nile’s work). Me neither. I just focused on the positivity of the chorus. Thank you for summing it up so well.
I have to jump in here. I applaud your effort. I’ve wrestled with it myself but wind up unable to come up with an album by album hierarchy, and settle for general groupings of good, bad, and meh. I won’t argue with a ranking based on tastes, and agree Muswell belongs at the top and The Road at the bottom. But design-wise, the Kinks never put out a bigger design fail than “Preservation Act 1” with its grating combination of competing visual styles. And as for an embracement of solid design principals pulled off spectacularly, “Everybody’s in Showbiz” is among their very best. So to see you rate Showbiz below Preservation leaves me shaking my head! Anyway…as for today’s song. I love it. I consider it among the best they did in the Arista era. As far as evoking the feel of my favorite version of The Kinks of old, it does so even better than Better Things. Or, in other words, this is the band's 80's update of "Sunny Afternoon."
Yeah, I think I underrated Showbiz a tad. I do think that while the front sleeve is alright the back is a bit too tacky and the gatefold is a huge waste of real estate with a poorly chosen live image. I’ve never owned Pres Act 1 on vinyl so tbh I don’t have that great a familiarity with its sleeve art and it’s failings so it got kinda lost in the shuffle. I’ll maybe try for a more carefully considered list (inc early US albums and notable comps) later in the thread.
Im thinking if not breaking the news, the Sunday papers would still have been full of obits and retrospectives though?
Yes. This was the UK 12" version released in August and later as a bonus track on the 1999 Velvel CD reissue of Word Of Mouth. Whereas the version on the album is an edit of this by fading at the wedding bells and then crossfaded into Living On A Thin Line, this longer version from the 12" keeps going descending into cacophony after those wedding bells and into life after that with sounds of kids playing and then the instruments dropping out one by one until it's just Ray and acoustic and some final bursts on the harmonica. This potentially gives the song a different meaning or interpretation. The mix of the track between album and 12" is the same however, so nothing unique there. There may actually be some real drums here. The toms toms mixed left and right sound like overdubs to me as opposed to a drum machine, but it's hard to know for sure as no one is credited for any real drums on this track. Don't get me started on drum machines. The Diana reference was totally unknown to me at the time. I later found out it was Diana Dors, but in the US in 1985 I had no idea who that was and neither did my friends. Speaking of credits, Ray's daughter Louisa sings on this track and it's B-Side Too Hot. Have a good day.
