Violet Dreams Well that was a pleasant surprise, as in wasn’t expecting a Dave song this morning, and as in that was a pleasant listen. Fit my early morning mood perfectly. I like the shimmering guitar tone on this. Do tiny purple fishes have violet dreams?
Ok, here is a more detailed breakdown of how we're going to roll over the next period of time... Sorry about this morning's curveballs, I had no idea about the song, and while we were having a supposed "catch up" day, I thought I had better slot it in... although very late... about 8 years late lol Tuesday - Intro/Return To Waterloo Wednesday - Ladder Of Success and Going Solo Thursday - Missing Persons Friday - Sold Me Out Saturday - Lonely Hearts Monday - 4th July - The Good Times Are Gone and Not Far Away Tuesday - Expectations Wednesday - Return To Waterloo (reprise) and Voices In The Dark.... final thoughts on Return To Waterloo Thursday - Quiet Life (Absolute Beginners) Friday - Come Dancing With The Kinks Saturday - Think Visual Monday - 11th July - Working At The Factory Tuesday - Lost And Found Wednesday - Repetition Thursday - Welcome To Sleazy Town Friday - The Video Shop Saturday - Rock And Roll Cities Monday - 18th July - How Are You? Tuesday - Think Visual Wednesday - Natural Gift Thursday - Killing Time Friday - When You Were A Child Now barring any extra tracks that I can't find anywhere, so let me know please, that means.... Saturday - Dave Davies Fragile - No More Mysteries and Wait Monday- 25th July - Dave Davies Fragile - Bright Lights and Give Me Something Back Tuesday - Dave Davies Fragile - Hope Wednesday - The Kinks - The Road Thursday - The Road Friday - Destroyer and Apeman Saturday - Come Dancing, Art Lover and Cliches Of The World Monday - 1st August - Think Visual, Living On A Thin Line and Lost And Found Tuesday - It (I Want It) Wednesday - Around The Dial and Give The People What They Want Thursday - Ray Davies - 80 Days Friday - Let It Be Written Saturday - Our World and Well Bred Englishman Monday - 8th August - Against The Tide Tuesday - Ladies Of The Night Wednesday - On The Map Thursday - It Could Have Been Him Friday - Welcome To India Saturday - Just Passing Through Monday - 15th August - Who Do You Think You Are Tuesday - 80 Days Wednesday - Members Of The Club Thursday - Conspiracy Friday - Tell Her, Tell Him Saturday - Be Rational ... 80 Days summaries.... So let me know if there is anything missing in there, so I can get things organized correctly please peoples. Cheers, Mark
There are a few things in that list I know nothing about - like the entirety of "80 Days"! Never even heard of it before.
Violet Dreams What do we have here? An unexpected languid and pleasing-to-the-ears tune from a singer claiming to be Dave Davies. I know that's what it says on the label but I'm not sure this is really him. While Dave was late to enter his trippy hippy stage at least he's been consistent in staying there rather than becoming an accountant or the like. His lyrics do remind me of those by another astral traveller - Jon Anderson. I only copy these to offer a lyrics equivalent to Crocodile Dundee's comment: That's not a hippy lyric. That's a hippy lyric. A man conceived a moment's answer to the dream Staying the flowers daily, sensing all the themes As a foundation left to create the spiral aim A movement regained and regarded both the same All complete in the sight of seeds of life with you Changed only for a sight of sound, the space agreed Between the picture of time behind the face of need Coming quickly to terms of all expression laid Emotions revealed as the ocean maid All complete in the sight of seeds of life with you Coins and crosses never know their fruitless worth Cords are broken, locked inside the mother earth They won't hide, oh, they won't tell you Watching the world, watching all of the world Watching us go by And you and I climb over the sea to the valley And you and I reached out for reasons to call Coming quickly to terms of all expression laid Emotions revealed as the ocean maid As a movement regained and regarded both the same All complete in the sight of seeds of life with you
“Violet Dreams”: A bit of a surprise and actually a pleasant one at that. A nice, breezy song that certainly fits w/the lovely summer morning I’m having today. The guitars shimmer nicely. It reminds me of XTC circa Skylarking. I know that some of the Avids here also go to the XTC thread, so I hope that they will agree w/me.
To Paul's eternal credit, he was wise enough to scrap the project… I'm pretty sure it's all about legalities. There must've been a moment in the late 70's when it was "formalized" by kontrakt that the Kinks were "Ray & Dave Davies" (+ anyone else they'd see fit). That's what the Ray quote seems to indicate. My hunch is it must've happened in the same Arista contract (or an amendment signed after Dalton and Gosling left ?) that determined the "three Ray singles" rule (you win some, lose some). It clearly put Dave in a very interesting passive agressive position : up until then, he had to follow his brother's creative impulses no matter what, even if he didn't feel like doing it, because he was never more than "one" in a band of five. But suddenly, if he'd say "no" to anything, it wasn't the Kinks anymore which changed everything in the balance of power and the band's politics. I mean, it's obvious Return to Waterloo would've had much more coverage and lasting cult power if it'd been a Kinks film. Same for the (excellent) songs, that are all but completely forgotten even by devoted fans. At that point, Dave had a de facto validation power for every Ray decision. As fans, this thread has proven time and again that we tend to go for the underdog and imagine Ray was bullying his kid brother for years, forcing him to do theater rock and bear with Mick, not giving him credit as a co-producer etc. But then in 1984-1985, it started to balance out and even go the other way, as evidenced by Mick's departure and the Return to Waterloo kontroversy. I mean, we all know the Beatles films, the Who and Stones films, the Dylan films etc. But even most Kinks fans don't know anything about Return to Waterloo. Return to sender is what it was! As for Violet Dreams, I nominate it for best 1977 Dave Davies song! Joking aside, it would've been one of the best songs (if not the best) on Decade. It does remind me of Arthur Lee's fluid chord sequences and melodies and the singing's easy on the ears (I too hear a Skylarking quality to it, if I may say so even though I'm not part of the XTC thread) . The whole song's beautifully moody, but bridge and solo are really top notch.
Violet Dreams Very ambient and dreamlike in part as Dave channels the subconscious with some interesting melodic guitar lines and lush chords. It is a bit long and meanders with some average lyrics but the vocal does show tasteful restraint. Speaking of which some of the soft vocal tones with soft sympathetic chords with reverb in support make me think of Macca.
Violet Dreams Wow this is a nice surprise! What a nice sounding song, and very cleanly recorded and produced. Dave's vocal is great. I am curious what the background of this was. It seems like the only late 70s entry on this 2001 release. Was it touched up and finished many years later, like a few of the Decade tracks were? I wonder how much of this is recorded in 1977. To me, this more accessible and better than Trust Your Heart, and the other things we heard on Decade. I've added this to my 1977-1980 playlist
Today is ... Tuesday . Just a note to say that second Return To Waterloo is not really a reprise. It's a different version that was not in the movie nor on the 1985 album. It was released later on a comp. Your call of course, but I would include this with the Intro and opening track tomorrow. There will be two versions of Voices In The Dark for that day as well, one from the movie and 1985 album and one not. One is on that fan reimagined soundtrack and the other is not.
I love Return to Pepperland! And Loveliest Thing is one of my favorite McCartney songs ever. What a voice he still had at the time! I even once wanted to like the whole of the Phil Ramone 86-87 sessions but I have since broken up with such unreasonable endeavour. I'm not sure Return to Waterloo could have been seen as a Kinks Movie. It was written and directed by Ray, it would have been a Ray movie with songs by the Kinks. Pretty unique anyway. I already knew Violet Dreams and could have sworn it was on Decade and was reviewed on the thread. Fortunately I didn't (swear). It's a great Dave tune, with a rare (for him) reliance on major sevenths, a device that I don't always appreciate but that I find really nice here. There is some Yes vibes, and XTC too, indeed. I don't know enough of Arthur Lee, which is one of my many sins. But one I will redress some day (unlike many of the other ones). I forgot to give my take on the Arista years thing. There are 2 realities. The one we share, and The Late Man World. Both will be reunited in due time, as some of you may remember, when I finally get to be Master of the World. This will be a little bit further down the road, though, since my strategy is to wait for the other competitors to exhaust each other in vain wars before I step up as a saviour. I could wait forever, I've got time. Anyway, in reality 1, where the albums are such as you know them, the 1966-1970 years are great, the 1971-1975 years are a tiny step down owing to less dense quality of the albums, with the exception of Preservation 1. Then the Arista years are a stairway down to the 1980s hellhole. In reality 2, where albums get the special Late Man treatment, the Kinks are almost uniformly great from 1966 to 1977, with a last show of brilliance in my upgraded Sleepwalker album, which occupies much the same "last hurrah" position as Elton John's Blue Moves (just so that evereyone can measure the intensity of my bad taste and prepare their luggage for the trip to Mars). But the important thing here is that the time frontier trumps the label chronology. After 1977, the Kinks still retain my affection, but I have to make an effort. I'm not in my passion zone anymore. 1977 also makes sense, because it's the start of the line-up's disintegration. Dalton could almost be considered one of the original bass players, he was there in 1966, then 1969 on. A rythm section is a huge part of a group's identity. And the thing is, in a way, Avory also left at the time. From Misfits on, or at least Low Budget, he had to force his playing into patterns that weren't his. He became sort of a session player. Maybe this is one of the reasons why I fail to connect to 1978-on Kinks as I do with Glorious decade Kinks. Ray's great songwriting remains, but it's not the same. I'm not sure I can feel a big difference between Word of Mouth and Think Visual in the way they sound (not technically, but musically). So I'll side with the "labels don't matter" crowd here.
There are two other live tracks from this era and these same shows not included on The Road, but on other releases. "You Really Got Me" B-side and "Lola" from a V/A comp. I haven't looked to see if these are on YouTube yet, but if they are not today, they will be then. (The live "I Gotta Move" on the Did Ya EP is also from these shows, but that will get covered on the EP.)
"Violet Dreams" Not as good as Arthur Lee or XTC, but also not too bad for a lost Dave track. I love the XTC thread, and have gained an entirely new level of respect for them. An absolutely brilliant band! We just finished up the Dukes of Stratosphear album, which would most likely appeal to all of you Kinks fans. "Violet Dreams" would have been welcome on his first solo album. I even like his guitar lead and tone! My first thoughts were it reminds me of the soft and dreamy side of Peter Frampton's first album "Wind of Change". I don't listen much to Frampton outside of Humble Pie, but I love this lead off track from his first solo album. It's also my favorite solo Frampton tune. "Fig Tree Bay"
Violet Dreams Without coffee, I thought, I won't make it through. But after coffee, it's straight to work. So I brace myself for a few minutes of crammed-together transitions and strangled screams. I press the youtube link and grit my teeth. Then this, yes, sort of early prog piece comes on, very gentle, very pretty, with D in fine voice, to waft me into the rest of my day. Beautiful.
Great track on a wild, uneven, but also underrated double album. The Four Sail /Out Here Love were underrated in general especially Four Sail. Unfair comparisons with the Forever Changes album, era, and earlier version of the band. Sound familiar?
This is my take on it also. It tells me there could have been more stylistic variety on the post-RCA Kinks albums but it wasn't to be. Thanks for sharing these, I like both of them. I'm not familiar with Love past Forever Changes (and not intimately familiar with it, so I should pull it off my shelf and listen to it!). I really should spend an hour each day following up on my fellow Avids' excellent musical recommendations (and following the XTC thread more closely). If only I didn't have to spend so much of my limited listening time on Kinks homework...
I'm not familiar with it, but I found an apparently upgraded copy of the demos on cd, and i should get a chance to give it a decent listen before we dive into it.
I double checked myself, and the movie has a reprise/second version/or whatever... it's more to do with trying to follow the movie in its context... there's not much to say about the song at that stage.
Ok, I think I ironed out the rough spots .... and got the right dang day lol Wednesday - Intro/Return To Waterloo Thursday - Ladder Of Success and Going Solo Friday - Missing Persons Saturday - Sold Me Out Monday - 4th July - Lonely Hearts Tuesday - The Good Times Are Gone and Not Far Away Wednesday - Expectations Thursday - Return To Waterloo (reprise) and Voices In The Dark.... final thoughts on Return To Waterloo Friday - Quiet Life (Absolute Beginners) Saturday - Come Dancing With The Kinks Monday - 11th July - Think Visual Tuesday - Working At The Factory Wednesday - Lost And Found Thursday - Repetition Friday - Welcome To Sleazy Town Saturday - The Video Shop Monday - 18th July - Rock And Roll Cities Tuesday - How Are You? Wednesday - Think Visual Thursday - Natural Gift Friday - Killing Time Saturday - When You Were A Child Monday- 25th July - Dave Davies Fragile - No More Mysteries and Wait Tuesday - Dave Davies Fragile - Bright Lights and Give Me Something Back Wednesday - Dave Davies Fragile - Hope Thursday - The Kinks - The Road Friday - The Road Saturday - Destroyer, Apeman and You Really got Me (If Available) Monday - 1st August - Come Dancing, Art Lover and Clichés Of The World Tuesday - Think Visual, Living On A Thin Line and Lost And Found Wednesday - It (I Want It) Thursday - Around The Dial, Give The People What They Want and Lola (If Available) Friday - Ray Davies - 80 Days Saturday - Let It Be Written Monday - 8th August - Our World Tuesday - Well Bred Englishman Wednesday - Against The Tide Thursday - Ladies Of The Night Friday - On The Map Saturday - It Could Have Been Him and Welcome To India Monday - 15th August - Just Passing Through Tuesday - Who Do You Think You Are Wednesday - 80 Days Thursday - Members Of The Club Friday - Conspiracy Saturday - Tell Her, Tell Him and Be Rational ... 80 Days summaries....
I think I understand what your plan is now. You will be bookmarking the movie itself, correct? If that's the case, then yes the movie does has a reprise that is not on the album. (I thought you might be referring to bookmarking that fan soundtrack video which is another thing entirely). I'll follow your lead and fill in whatever other details I have and other versions/mixes where appropriate. My focus will be the album (LP and CD) and song releases and clearing up any questions or differences between these as apparently there are some folks here who don't have any of these physical releases .
Calling all Avids - just dropped into a Burlington, Ontario pizzaria named Blaze Pizza and one of their signature pizzas is artichoke dominated and is called "Art Lover" I told them it was named after a Kinks song and they smiled trying to pretend they knew what I was talking about.
An article from Kindakinks.net The Great Lost Kinks Movie "I'm still a frustrated filmmaker. I got diverted by joining this band of my brother's called the Kinks." - Ray Davies The man quoted above has long since earned his place among the Great ****-Ups of Our Century. As with anyone nominated for this pantheon, it's easy to describe the fellow's ****ed-upedeness - the attributes of which are, let's face it, shared with legions of less defensible mortals. But to the prim of heart, it's difficult to explain what's so bloody great about him. On the debit side, one could simply say, as Dwight MacDonald said of James Agee, that "even for a modern writer, he was extraordinarily self-destructive...drinking too much, smoking too much, making love too much, and in general cultivating the worst set of work habits in Greenwich Village." (Then, when one's loved one starts nagging one, one could add: "And look at how much he accomplished!"). But how to vindicate such incorrigible characters? Well, here goes. Ray Davies: the man, the mind, the booze. Return to Waterloo: the album (Arista), the movie, the mess. Yup, Ray's done it again: every conceivable strategically wrong move. In America (the Kinks most lucrative "market" since the early 70's), the movie premiered in May at New York's Waverly, where it closed pronto, without a chance of reaching the legendary Kinks Kult. Then, in August, a soundtrack was at last released, but with no lyric sheet or story synopsis - unlike 1969's Arthur, or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire. Also lost in space this time were "Ladder of Success" (one of the film's most pungent and crucial songs), and the voice overs that made otherwise undistinguished songs like "Dear Lonely Hearts" or "Sold Me Out" so dramatically effective. Finally, in September, an ineptly publicized reopening of the film was "timed" to coincide with the Kinks gig at Pier 84, where a hodgepodge set Kinks crowd-pleasers included only one selection from Return to Waterloo. Hey, what better way to plug a movie that 90 percent of the audience will never see? And through it all, Mr. Davies remained gloriously incommunicado, a not uncharacteristic stance towards publicity. Clearly, if everyone had his sense of logistical coordination, D-Day would have fizzled. Then again, so would've the Wermacht's invasion of Poland. Depends on your point of view. It tickles my heart to see that somebody up there plainly doesn't care about those rules. Yet despite his obviousness to the business side of it, Return to Waterloo has clearly obsessed him for several years. (This accounts for the doodling, perfunctory air of the four previous Kinks albums of the '80's: One for the Road, Give the People What They Want, State of Confusion, Word of Mouth.) Indeed, according to Jon Savage's The Kinks: The Official Biography, Davie's declares Waterloo "my final stand". Let's hope not. For while it signals an ambitious return to his most worthy thematic - the every day condition of the working class during the protracted decline of the British Empire - the movie's marred by one too many bathetic lapses. It would be wiser for him to think of it as a beginners exercise. Yet I, for one, look forward to him becoming as adept at conveying the visual dimensions of "the Ray Davies sensibility" as Julian Temple was on the 1982 "Come Dancing" video. Because I've long valued Davies much more as a storyteller than Davies as a singer (poignantly frail, at best) or the Kink as a band (irritatingly sloppy, except when leaned on). Still, for two decades he's been an almost peerless songwriter. His early raveups smoked: there may never be a more explosive adolescent expression of horniness, or of white r&b grunge, than the summer of '64's "You Really Got Me." But Davies got bored with variations of same real quick, and suddenly the hardest rockin' bunch in the U.K. comes out with the timeless music-hall/cabaret stylings of "Sunny Afternoon." Another reason I bless Ray Davies: the proletariat's pain warrants his earnest anger, while it's modest pleasures (e.g. "Drivin'") elicit mirth of bittersweet affection. But when he turns self-referential, to the "I can't sail my yacht" woes of a millionaire pop star, it's just a rich joke, and he's never lost sight of that. Contrast this with Carly Simon, Duran Duran, or prime-time soaps, where the-rich-have-problems-too ideology is ladled out with melodramatic syrup. However explicitly "political" Ray Davies may not be - and he's never a leftist team-player in the Clash/Weller/Bragg/Midnight Oil sense - his class instincts, and loyalties, are unfailingly on target. Savage's bio does a fine job of explaining how the Great ****-Up can keep such a level head regarding what matters to him and yet - not coincidentally, I suggest - be so cavalier toward his music-biz obligations. He'll always have his people to fall back on. The man is rooted in Muswell Hill, in the continuities of a nurturing, extended family and a community with solid class-in-itself consciousness rarely seen in the U.S. outside embattled pockets of Appalachia. So Ray never went along with the "generation gap" horse****, that nefarious divide-and-conquer trick assiduously promoted by Time, Jerry Rubin, and other allied sleezeballs. In fact, he especially misses his grandmum, who drank nightly and stayed merrily soused until she was ninety-eight. Take that, Alcoholics Anonymous!) So is he really the "conservative" of Village Green? Or the maximalist radical of Arthur? He is, of course, both, just as every intelligent radical should be: "We Marxists live in traditions, and have not ceased being revolutionists because of it," sayeth Trotsky, Yet how much more stupidity will be bandied about in the trap of familiar left/right categories, without the essential questions ever being broached: What's worth conserving? And what deserves to be destroyed? Which brings me to The Great Lost Kinks Movie. It was Arthur, folks, and we all missed it. Actually, Arthur was originally conceived as a made-for-TV movie, and the story of why it never came to fruition is yet another in a long line of Davies misadventures. Yet even as one of those pristine movies-in-our-minds (the ruination of which is the most common lament about video), Arthur has two ingredients that Return to Waterloo lacks. One is humor, and rock's most gifted clown should never be without it. (Besides, daily life really isn't unrelievedly grim - it only seems that way between paychecks.) More seriously absent from Waterlooo is, as we say, "the moment of affirmation," of resistance to present conditions, other than raw punk fury and vague invocation of "another dawn" breaking. But to intimation of contemporary struggles: no miners' strike, no Greenham Common, no break from the endless cycle of quotidian misery. Arthur's rousing finale, on the other hand, made Davie's class empathy and utopian vision explicit. In reconciling the generations, you see, it suggests the fusion-in-practice of traditional working prole demands with the 1960's maximalist agenda, beckoning all to "a new horizon where there's plenty for everyone." Gosh, to paraphrase ultraleftist journalese, you might even say: "It represents a synthesis, within the realm of art, uniting the waged and unwaged sectors of the class, aiming toward a condition of zerowork." The actual Davies formulation was marvelously succinct: "If only life were easy, it would be such fun." This CORRECT, dammit, and there was NOTHNING WRONG with what we wanted. We merely failed. Finally, I should mention that Return to Waterloo, the album, sports the virtues of masculinity, focus, and evident care in production last heard and welcomed on 1979's Low Budget. It also embodies Davie's most consistently sustained aesthetic vision since, you guessed it, Arthur. And "Not Far Away" is the best punk song ever. (I'd like the False Prophets to try to top "Chaos will rule/The world will be saved.") Moreover, Davies' filmmaking career, at age 42, shows infinite promise. All he needs now is a ton of Marx, some early E.P. Thompson, and the rest should be a piece of cake. So brave on, drinking class! Perhaps the Great Lost Kinks Movie, like the reinvention of life, still lies ahead. Tom Ward The Village Voice - October 1, 1985
