All Night Stand. mono mix, demo version (1:50), recorded Dec 1965 at Central Sound Recording Studios, London All night stand, Been around seen a thousand places. All night stand, Seen a good half a million faces. Because I've lived this life, And I made it for myself. If you scandalize my name, Then you scandalize yourself. Because I'm not to blame, For the things that I've been doing. You all say that I'm bad, And I'll only end in ruin. All night stand, With a different girl each night. All night stand, With two hundred miles to ride. But I won't give it up, As long as I can make the bread. When I do, I shall stop, Close my eyes and go to bed. And forget all this night[?], And all the people on my back. Once I'm free from these chains, I ain't never looking back. All night stand, Been around seen a million faces, yeah. All night stand, Seen a good half a million places, yeah. All night stand, Can't get these people off my back. All night stand, Ten percent for this and that. All night stand, All night stand. Written by: Ray Davies Published by: ? Similarly to Mr Reporter Ray is playing with a folk styling, and telling a story. So I assume a lot of the folks that weren't too fussed about Mr Reporter are probably going to be a little non-plussed by this also. There is a palpable melancholy here, and unfortunately from my perspective the lyrics don't really live up to the melancholy ... so this ends up being an interesting curio, and not much more. I really like the sound of it, and I like the delivery of it ... but as a song it is really just a bit of an experiment in folk, with not enough substance to make it particularly remarkable.
All Night Stand - is this Ray's first song about the grind of life on the road, a theme to be developed greatly on Everyone's In Showbiz? Anyway, I like it!
All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth. Thanks to @Steve E. we have this live recording from the end of 1965 .... The thing I find interesting about this, is that the guys were willing to experiment with anything..... Stick it in the mix and see what happens... This track was written by Donald Yetter Gardiner in 1944, as a novelty Christmas song. He was teaching second grade, and asked the kids in the class what they would like for Christmas.... while they were replying he noticed most of the students were missing at least one front tooth, and somewhat lisping their replies.... So later he went aside and wrote this in about 30 minutes. In a 1995 interview, Gardner said, "I was amazed at the way that silly little song was picked up by the whole country." The audio is fairly primitive, but you can hear the song pretty clearly. We get the vocals, and we get a nice jammed out lead break from Dave. It is actually pretty cool.
'And I Will Love You' is a very odd enigma/anomaly in the Kinks discog to me: do any of their other recordings have that 50s/early 60s sounding churchy organ? It sounds so un-Kinks like and of the immediately previous epoch. Musically/lyrically this again sounds like some kind of ultra sincere 50s Drifters style song a la 'Something Better Beginning', but for late 1965 that already seems majorly antique for The Kinks. So you'd think this would be some extra curricular genre exercise Ray dashed off for Denmark Street's use only, BUT 1) no one seems to have recorded it and 2) it was in the frame to be issued on (another) cancelled Kinks EP (the cover of eventual 2015 RSD facsimile release is shown below) in 1967 ish, by which time it would have sounded even more out of time. Weird indeed. It must held some kind of special significance for Ray at the time that we're not party to.
I don't think this has been posted yet... If it has forgive me... Here we have the guys in Sweden, September 3rd 1965. "See my Friends" "Set Me Free" & "Wonder where my baby is tonight"
All Night Stand was recorded properly by obscurish Freakbeat ish band The Thoughts, and we actually have footage of them performing it from French TV, where we can observe they were fronted by a guy who was a quite uncanny lookalike for the Liam Gallagher of 30 years later. You can hear the song really reach it's full potential here in this faithful expansion of Ray's demo which is probably very similar to how The Kinks would have done it. The weird thing about this song to me is it's structure: it's basically one verse up to the 1 minute 20 mark, and then one chorus/refrain for the entire rest of the song! It always seems unresolved to me cos I feel it should go back to the first bit!
Live In Offenbach, Germany 65/66 Well Respected Man, Milk Cow Blues ( a real slashing performance here)
Live In Offenbach Germany 65/66 pt 2 Till The End Of The Day, I'm A lover Not A Fighter, You Really Got Me
I posted the songs individually, but not as the one-er full set. Always worth posting again though! This is the Swedish show 'Drop In!' which The Beatles were more famously on two years previously, although they played live whereas The Kinks mime.
This was recorded for the famed era -defining UK pop show Ready Steady Go! on 17th Dec 1965 (broadcast Xmas Eve) and, though the edition is long gone, audio taped at home by a fan so we have this audio today. The whole Christmas special featured a special pantomime starring the great and the good of the UK 60s pop scene, with Cathy McGowan as Cinderella, Keith Moon as Buttons (of course) , Pete Townshend as the Wicked Stepmother, Peter Noone as Prince Charming etc etc. Ray Davies and Hilton Valentine of the Animals were The Ugly Sisters. Here's a different upload of the same recording where someone has tried to synch up the audio to very lo res 8mm footage of The Kinks on the previous years New Years special: all that exists visually of SEVENTEEN appearances The Kinks made on the now mostly missing show from between 1964 and 1966.
To my ears, And I Will Love You is the less accomplished and less engaging of all the demos we’ve looked at so far. It seems Ray stopped writing it midway. I too noted the incongruity of the organ sound, maybe it's because it's not a demo but a composition tape ? it doesn’t really go anywhere but it’s still leading somewhere : like Tell Me Now So I’ll Know and I’m on an Island, it bears some of the exotic leisurely melodic flavors that we’ll come to appreciate on the likes of Sitting by the Riverside or Monica. As such, it’s an interesting curio. But today’s star for me is All Night Stand ! Absolutely ! The Thoughts' version @ajsmith posted adds structure through arrangement. It starts acoustic, then the band comes in, then you get the almost a capella vocal "bridge" (think Carry On by CSNY), before the cascading finale. Their version was showcased on Rhino's fabulous “Nuggets II original artyfacts from the British Empire and Beyond” box set and it shows what a great Kinks track it could've been, with its repetitive building crescendo quality, a form Ray already mastered in All Day and All of the Night and would soon use again to stupendous effect in I’m Not Like Everybody Else. But to me, this song is already a semi-classic in its embryonic solo demo form. Ray seems to tackle the life of young musicians on the road, on the verge of exhaustion and nervous breakdown, full of frustration and bitterness. As early as 1966, he’s already showing signs of touring fatigue and show-biz disenchantment. More (and even more) of which was to come, of course, but this first attempt is not satirical or tongue in cheek at all. Ray's not a detached observer, here, but a manic and obsessional first person protagonist.
Also worth noting that All Night Stand was written as the spec theme song for a projected (ultimately never made) film based around sci fi author Thom Keyes beatgroupsploitation novel 'All Night Stand'. There are connections to Talmy, Space 1999/Dr Who writer Johnny Byrne and one of Talmy's other groups The Creation in the story behind this somewhere but I forget the details exactly. It was all untangled in a Creation biog I read 15 years about but have forgotten the details of since.
Not heard either of today's demos before. "And I Will Love Her" sounds like a half-formed idea that's always on the verge of crossing into something decent, but never quite gets there. Not surprising that it was never recorded as the demo doesn't suggest a lot of potential. "All Night Stand" is quite different - the potential is clearly there in the demo, and it is fully realised in The Thoughts' version. The arrangement and the harmonies are spot on and this sounds like a great record (which again I've never heard until today).
After Pete Quaife's comment regarding the song being for this film, that's a relief to finally have knowledge about what happened! Such a shame the track was never finished by the group as Pete said was intended. It's a fascinating demo, with a great lyric by Ray. Full of potential, even through the scratchy acetate. As for And I Will Love You - what a bizarre track! I apparently first heard it on the acetate sourced copy on the Picture Book box, but was first aware of it on the Kontroversy deluxe. It sounds nothing like the Kinks, and makes no sense on the final EP it almost ended up on. A Strange, Stripped-Back song with a Bizarre history.
Today’s batch of songs are all pretty good. I’ve only listened once so far but was quite taken by ‘And I Will Love Her.’ ‘All Night Stand’ is good, too (and now I need to listen to that cover posted above). ‘All I Want For Christmas,’ hmm, I never would have expected this but The Kinks turn it into something raucous and fun.
Just realised the title is "And I Will Love You". I think some of us might be getting it mixed up with a similar title by another band!
And I Will Love You/All Night Stant To me, the former is the experiment that has a mismatch between lyric and musical style. The latter sits better in my ear.
Time Will Tell Mr. Reporter All Night Stand And I Will Love You Catching up after being away for the weekend. In his liner notes for Kinks Kronikles, John Mendelsohn offered the observation that many of Rays songs during his very prolific period in the 60’s had a twin. I get what he is saying: not necessarily in melody or tempo, but rather thematically and in arrangement. It’s like he is a baker who uses the same ingredients to make two separate dishes. My hunch on why none of these songs found light as proper Kinks releases is because the band was content with the first “twin” and didn’t feel the need to fully develop the second.. In the case of And I Will Love You it never gets beyond the blueprint stage. The suggested calypso feel of the drums and bass makes me think Ray decided to pursue “I’m on an Island” (where its lyrics fit the music better) and ditch this one. A shame, because I can see this working on Face to Face. As for Time Will Tell it’s pretty obvious what it’s patterned after, and those stop-and-go-power-riff songs were market driven. Bottom line: “Till the End of the Day” filled that niche in the fall of ’65, so “Time Will Tell” was unnecessary. I find Mr. Reporter and All Night Stand being the twin of each other. Each are patterned on verse driven folk with a rockstar-life autobiographic content. The vitriol in “Mr. Reporter” finds its way into two verses of “All Night Stand,” which I find the more fully realized of the two songs. Perhaps that’s why it’s the one that comes of as more finished. “Mr. Reporter” always struck me as awaiting editing: at nearly four minutes it doesn’t conform to the typical running length of their releases of the era. As for Little Man in the Box, like many of us I first encountered it on the Kinked compilation of Ray covers. It jumped out at me as one of the more Kink-appropriate, another Face to Face candidate. Thanks to ajsmith for all the back story on that one. And thanks to Mark for All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth. I knew that song from the Spike Jones and His City Slickers version, and at the time the Kinks did this I was in elementary school. All us kids sang the song in an ensemble in front of our parents. I had no idea the Kinks gave it this rockier version. Maybe the TV show felt it was appropriate for Ray to sing because of the gap in this teeth!
At the risk of steering things down a Van Halen rabbit hole, I'll suggest whatever vaudeville-esque leanings Van Halen ever had began and ended with David Lee Roth's desire to play up the camp angle. And he took that with him to his solo career.
I'm probably reading into this something that isn't there (as is my habit!), and scanning the comments on the song above no one else seems to feel this way, but... This feels quite sinister to me. The organ sound, the almost-but-not-quite calypso rhythm, the ominous bass drum sound and the strange vocal melody, phrasing, timing and harmony, combined with the lyric all combine to give an uneasy feeling. "And I will love you" (whether you like it or not!), and "church bells will chime so they know you are mine all of the time" makes it seem as though the narrator is the more enthusistic party to the impending marriage...! Also, she hasn't agreed to be his wife yet: "The finest moment in my life, Is when you say you'll be my wife" Not "was when you said you'd be my wife"... Musically I love the unusual, quite harsh sounds and the way the tension is maintained throughout. As someone else mentioned (apologies, I read it but can't find it now!), it feels it is heading somewhere but never arrives. Given my interpretation, this works well as it perhaps means the marriage remains a fantasy in the narrator's head. And why not throw in an organ and calypso feel? As I said, I'm probably reading too much into it, but I think I prefer hearing it as a mildly sinister unrequited love/obsession thing than just a not quite there demo! All Night Stand I'm going to be contrary and say that I prefer And I Will Love You. I'm sure this one is a fine song of its era, and it has nice hummable tune, but it feels to me very much of a type, and I don't find the music or lyrics particularly interesting. By contrast, I could imagine the previous song still sounding fresh and different were it made at any time since, right up to the present.
"And I Will Love You" I have never heard these two songs. Looks like I need to pick up the deluxe Kontroversy! I am really enjoying this song. It opens up with a lyric similar to "The Way Love Use To Be" which begins "I know a place not far from here, it's not far away love, but if you come". This is a unique tune with the organ sound and the drums. I can't believe there are so many great songs I wasn't aware of. This is one of my favorites of the unknown songs so far. I'm a huge fan of Rocksteady and this may be the closest Ray gets to a song that could have came out of Jamaica in the mid 60s. It would sound right at home on a Heptones record. I love it! "All Night Stand" This is harder to fairly judge since it's a rough demo. This could have also been an album track with a little more work. The cover version has a Hollies vibe. There should be a collection with all of these extra songs in one place. It would add up to another fantastic Kinks album.
Oh yes 100%. That’s why my original post specifically mentioned the DLR era. It made the band all the more interesting for doing it. They lost me after he left
Three chords (until the fade-out) and not a whole lot of attitude. It sounds like a Bob Dylan basement tape. In other words, the lyrics are being made up extemporaneously, while somebody thumps away on a set of bongos. There's a pretty good tune here. Essentially a minor-key two-step like "Mother's Little Helper" (which also dates from this period). It probably could've made some impact if it had been restructured slightly. What is used as the extremely long fade-out would've made a good bridge, and then there should've been an instrumental break, followed by one final return to the main theme. In other words, when Shel Talmy produced this record, he stayed too close to the original demo, as I suspect he wasn't musically savvy enough to make the kind of changes that I'm certain George Martin would have. Talmy produced two different versions of this, one for the UK market and one for the US market. The main difference between the two of them is the tempo (the American release is a lot faster). I'll post both of them. The Thoughts / All Night Stand (September, 1965) UK Version:
