Missing Persons A nice song, but sadly it doesn't work without the video in "Return To Waterloo" at all. As it is on the album, it's yet another tuneless meandering track that further threatens to sink the album. That said, I find the lyrics incredibly strong and effective. I don't have any of the narrator's experience, but this song does touch me on a very sensitive level about the matter.
Wow... I'm really not sure how it could be heard that way. I could understand it being seen as dull, and I suppose the spacing could make some feel the spacing leaves it feeling meandering ... but I'm not sure how it would be seen as tuneless
Missing Persons Man compositional stuff like what @Luckless Pedestrian posted is so helpful in figuring out how/why a song moves me. Stuff I can't consciously pinpoint or put into words but as soon as I read it I'm like, ah, yes, of course. RD is again practically transcendent with undiminished narrative skill -- fully inhabiting a character/situation while infusing it with lived emotion... he's clearly mining a core experience (missing his newborn, missing Chrissie, missing his brother, who cares) and transposing it into a story, creating both an intricately-crafted fiction and a raw & passionate autobiographical testament. The bit where he blames himself is heartbreaking. Agreed with @markelis, the truth of the song is in what it triggers in us, and having just gone through seeing two of my little ones with 103 fevers, and blaming myself, and waiting endlessly to hear back from pediatricians, it seems to apply directly to me. Cathartic. This is my favorite RD *voice,* which I choose to believe is his most natural and unaffected singing style. But I do feel like, musically, it could have used another pass. The lyrics and underlying construction are unassailable, but it would help to have Dave harmonies, a Dave lead, and maybe 1% less bombast. I'm also weirdly bothered by the synth wash at the end -- the resolve? -- I'd somehow prefer if it faded on the acoustic guitar/piano bit it started out on. But altogether a beautiful track that elevates side 2 considerably. PS The whole house is healthy now & cleared to go to a bat mitzvah on Saturday!
Total side note: Thanks to this thread and a little extra push from a friend, I listened to Paul Weller's Wild Wood yesterday. Wow.
I take it that you liked Wild Wood. It was basically the album that put Paul Weller back on the UK music scene map. Stanley Road, his next album cemented that position and made him The Modfather among the Britpoppers. He’s been going pretty strong ever since, at least in the UK. Nice to know that the Capital Xs and small xs are feeling better. Have a groovy time Saturday.
I'm loving it. Huge Jam fan, gave up on Style C pretty quickly, never imagined I'd like the solo LPs. How wrong a man can be. Outstanding stuff.
Here’s some of Weller’s later albums you may be interested in: 22 Dreams Wake Up The Nation Bruce Foxton is on a song or two Sonik Kicks Weller goes Bowie/Krautrock Saturn’s Pattern A Kind Revolution True Meanings On Sunset Bit of a LA vibe on this one Fat Pop Vol 1 His latest Modern Classics/More Modern Classics best-ofs that has songs from the albums I didn’t mention Finally, I too was allergic to the Style Council, but I do recommend the recent best of Long Hot Summers
Missing Persons Not a lot to add to what has already been said. It's a beautiful, touching, emotional piece of work from Ray and most of the Kinks, of the type dotted throughout The Kinks career, 'Young And Innocent Days', 'Oklahoma USA', '(A) Face In The Crowd' and so on. Nobody does this better than Ray. A highlight.
I guess we all hear things differently! Tuneless and meandering are not words I'd even consider here.
Missing Persons Heartbreakingly beautiful and melodic song. I’m sure it’s more affecting if you have children. It’s interesting that the face being asked about in the movie is that of a potential abductor, but just listening to the song, I imagined a dad showing pictures of his missing child. We’ve seen this too many times on the news where someone is missing and it’s unknown if it was an abduction or someone who just ran away, with the parents holding out hope and begging for their child to just call home. I can only imagine the anguish of an extended period of not knowing.
Missing Persons It's nice to get a piano ballad as a change of pace. This is OK, but Ray has done this type of song much better many times. Even on his recent albums, the "slow" song (A Little Bit Of Emotion, Art Lover, Don't Forget To Dance) have been better than this. Which doesn't mean this is bad-it is good-just not elite an level Kinks ballad. Edit: I read a few comments after I posted. I didn't watch the video, just listened to the song. I hadn't taken it as being a missing child-more a missing lover-if it is the former, that ups it a notch.
Knowing someone this scenario applies to, and just being a parent myself, I find it quite a moving song. That maybe fares better on Return to Waterloo than the sequencing here.
Neither, Avid All Down The Line, it’s the Jewish ceremony for a girl coming of age, the feminine equivalent of a bar mitzvah. By the way, I found a copy of the 2002 CD of Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass) by the Stones on Monday. I was wondering if I should pick up the 1986 version of Got Live If You Want It. Should I want it?
“Guilty” - power chord dominated, sparse and crisp - a nice contrast following the richly produced Massive Reductions. Henrit’s drums pop like static and lock in with Dave’s lone guitar to drive the track with energy and tempo. Dave’s vocal performance here is notably inspired; he sounds edgy and ticked off at times, letting his accent cut through to deliver his lyrics with depth and emotion - for example when he sings the delicious wriggle and squirm. The catchy chorus is built on a surprisingly jaunty melody and is one of Dave’s better ones - I especially enjoy how he bites off the last word of I’m sorry but you’ve sealed your own fate. “Guilty” also contains a characteristically concise but intriguing guitar solo from Dave - @DISKOJOE pointed out the appealing zzzzip slide-up at its conclusion, and Dave also makes some unusual, low-pitched clanging sounds throughout that are characteristic of what you hear if you put your head inside the case of a grandfather clock and give the works a good rattle - it’s a solo worth waiting for and rewards repeated listens, making “Guilty” a solid album track.
Missing Persons The very opening coincidentally reminds me of the following years intro to Bob Dylan's When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky in the musical meter used, vocal set up and how they both in unison caress and create tension as heard on from the Bootleg Series V.3. N.b. The Bob lyric intro includes the emotive line "When you see me returning" which in isolation is ironically the antidote to Missing Persons. Ray sounds completely immersed in a narrative that i pray no one here ever gets to live out in real time. Whether he drew on the ending of his relationship to Chrissie, loss of access to his new (or existing) offspring or his own humanity towards an all too commonplace and harrowing affair may be moot. Until listening repeatedly in isolation here the song was going past me as in Ray's film the visuals took my concentration from the sympathetic musical bed and plaintive plea and with the LP i had half zoned out after the opening songs on side two that lead us here. Whilst it was real life and had a happy ending we also get a "roving" girl in Paul McCartney's She's Leaving Home which i will note. I like to think that Ray's plural title (along with lyric and delivery) conveys the vastness of this epidemic proportion sized issue so we are not just showing sympathy for the parent but perhaps some of those listening could also be empathetic, having known of someone who went missing and remains so. Kudos to whomever said this was not unlike the acoustic ballads circa the Lola and Percy albums and that also rightly recognised this as a true sleeper and grower in the Katalogue.
Yes If it's cheap enough for you. N.b. It's probably below the 2002 remaster for sound but I seem to recall that there are some notable differences so despite the lo fi you may wish to grab it fast?
YES and I have fixed my post to read lo fi. Incidentally i picked up that identical used copy in 1995 in Vancouver having aquired the corresponding vinyl here in 1987 immediately following an hours market research group which paid the exactly required $30.
"Summer's Gone" Single by The Kinks from the album Word of Mouth B-side "Going Solo" Released 18 March 1985 Recorded June 1983 – September 1984 at Konk Studios, London Genre Rock Length 3:52 3:33 (single edit) Label Arista Songwriter(s) Ray Davies Producer(s) Ray Davies stereo mix, recorded Aug-Sep 1984 at Konk Studios, Hornsey, London Looking in a window on a rainy day. Thinking about good things that I just threw away. Looking in the gutter, watching the trash go flowing by. Thinking it's Summer, but there are only clouds in the sky. When I think about what we wasted, makes me sad, We never appreciated what we had. Now I'm standing in a doorway with my overcoat on, It really feels like Summer's gone. So alone. Summer's gone. [Extra verse from extended edit] Wish you were here to brighten up the view. You must have taken summer time with you. Now I'm standing in a doorway with water in my shoes, It really feels like Summers gone. So alone. Summer's Gone. It should have been a laugh, it should have been fun, When I think of all the things that we did last Summer. Now I look back, it seems such a crime, We couldn't appreciate it at the time. Now I'm standing in a doorway, thinking of Summers gone by. It ought to make me happy, but it just makes me want to cry. I was riding in the car with my mum and dad, He was drivin' the car, the kids were drivin' him mad. Dad looked at us, then he looked at his wife, He must have wondered where we all came from. And then mum said, "Dad, you know it won't last for long, Before you know it, Summer's gone." So alone. Summer's gone. I really blew it all, when I think it through, I really lost it all when I lost you. Now I'm standing in a doorway with water in my shoes, It really feels like, feels like Summers gone. So alone. Summer's gone. Summer's gone, so alone. Summer's gone. Written by: Ray Davies Published by: Davray Music, Ltd. This track has a sort of bright breezy feel to it, and the instrumental part of the chorus brings to mind a genre/sub-genre that isn't really coming to mind. To mix things up Ray is looking in a window, but the context seems that he is actually looking out of the window, and the way he is using the term, it is more that he is standing in front of the window and looking out of it. Essentially the song is somewhat an ode to the idea of Summer Love, Boys Of Summer, and the idea of summer romance coming to an end with the ending of the fine weather. The rain is coming down and the clouds are in the sky, and the last remnants of summer are drifting on by. I'm not sure why the second verse was taken out, but it gives us the context, whereas without it it is slightly more vague... though we do have the idea that this girl has gone and the romance of the summer has ended. So we get our opening verse setting up the theme, and then move into a slightly unusual chorus arrangement.... It is sort of like the chorus proper is predominantly the instrumental section broken up by the Summer's Gone catchphrase. This is followed by a bridge of sorts and the reflection that this summer fling should have been fun, but we failed to make the best of it ... We didn't appreciate it at the time. Then we move onto a reflection of youth and driving with the parents and the way the scenario unfolds, it seems like the message laying under the words here is that time is moving past us quickly and we worry about futile things instead of enjoying what we have at any given moment. Summer's Gone seems to represent the best years of our lives gone by, or the idea that we are moving into our older years. Autumn/.Fall comes and the leaves of our adulthood start to fall and we move into old age, and we reflect on missed opportunities and lost dreams. Musically it is a summery sounding song, and as I said at the start, we get this breezy feeling. We get some pretty good melodic movement here, and the song moves smoothly from section to section...... but on the whole it doesn't do that much for me. It is bewildering to me that this was a single.... It isn't a bad song at all, but it is a bit nondescript. It is pleasant enough but it doesn't leave much impression. I like the lyric well enough, but I think I prefer the theme to the actual execution of the lyric really..... So I don't feel any great urge to skip this, but it isn't a song I would seek out, and it is inoffensive and pleasant and doesn't bug me, but it is ..... it's kinda just there....
I'm assuming that the single didn't chart anywhere? If so, it's not a surprise. Although I enjoy it, it's more of an OK album track than single material.
"Missing Persons". Nice, melodic ballad. Doesn't really do anything surprising. It has a definite rock opera - or musical theatre - feel to it, gives the impression that it's a song there to drive a plot along, reminiscent of "Face in the Crowd" from "Soap Opera" in that regard and also in general.
"Summer's Gone" As intimated yesterday, for quite some time I thought this was another of the Return To Waterloo tracks, as it has a similar demo-like quality to those. Of course it isn't, and I assume that Dave is present and correct on this one? Anyway, I've always liked this song and it's possibly my favourite on the album. Mark has already touched on the theme of the lyrics, passing time, the best years of your life being over before you know they're even happening. The verse about the kids in the car seems especially poignant to me, almost a lump in the throat moment. I like the tune and chorus (I've never heard this extended edit with the extra lyrics) and particularly the bit near the end where the music seems to want to swing as Ray sings "do de do do" but the drums stay firmly foursquare. I think it's a solid Kinks track that's situated somewhere between 60s and 80s Kinks (but not the 70s!) and as such is a bit of a preview of the next album.
