The is the Kinks flophouse mate, drop in when the time is right I'd hate to think anyone has stopped living their lives because we're talking about the Kinks lol
Don't sweat it as I have been here for 4 years and can still embed my post inside another's earlier response and not know how I did it. Furthermore I am not sure how to quote 2 or more posts at one time!
Great post @Brian x , i thank you for this great reveal into your professional world and must confess that if confronted with same would adopt the foetal position combined with mental inertia that shows solely a test pattern on repeat!
Whenever I hear about Mozart, I always think about my late friend Edgar. He was an older attorney who had his ups and downs over the years. He was a great fan of Mozart to the extent that his license plate read MOZART. He was into him as other people are into the Beatles. He thought he was the greatest in music and probably thought that rock music was just noise. Maybe he was right . But he was quite a character and I still miss him nearly 10 years after his death.
It's a sunny (sunday) afternoon so we bought the kids some new bikes at Target. On the way out i was reminded of some of our Avids Rockford and Rolling fandom whereby Steve McQueen's Le Mans film was concerned via a very particular Lego toy. 1970 Ferrari 512M
I miss so many people, including my mother, who gave me Mozart, Beethoven, and Vivaldi, Gilbert & Sullivan, Rodgers & Hammerstein. I tried hard to return the favor -- played dozens and dozens of bands -- but to her, yes, it was just noise. She might have responded to 80 Days, though.
Sorry, popping in once again because I realized my original post contained the above snippet of the lyrics, but then I didn’t explain why. In my defense, I am traveling in CO for one of my fiancés family gatherings (for frame of reference, her grandfather has 22 grandkids, so every family event (birthdays, weddings etc) are big gatherings). So I am clearly posting quickly and sloppily. Anyway, I really liked these lines. Bear in mind that I knew nothing about the Jules Verne connection when I was assessing this, I just thought Ray was referring to his own writing skills as “the beast” and stating how he needed to treat the beast to get the result he wanted, almost as though it is a separate entity from him. At this point I realize the reference is more geared towards the retelling of the story from the book, but to me it sounded like he was singing about his ability to write and craft songs as though it was almost a separate “beast” that lives within him. A beast that he had to treat carefully but which he could control to some extent because could perhaps outthink it because was smarter.
Let It Be Written Can it be of coincidence that Ray pulled for Verne to be a character and so with this scene setting introduction gets to play at being inside Vernes head whilst also his own? Speaking of this musical piece, we hear of a very different key-board that is less a funky Gibbon and moreso from a newspaper or typing pool. Thinking of the songs topic i have admiration for Ray Davies but have that and also sympathy for our own @Brian x with his constant demands of balancing voluminous creative prose against the amplified loud clicking of time. That brings me to this incessant 7 note phrase that is most insistent in how it begs for our attention through its simple repetition. It is so familiar but I can't quite place it with its current instrumentation though can see it used as a television series drama theme, a current affairs program, a Mastermind quiz type program and yet i am certain at least a good portion of the phrase has been used in a rock song. Yes i can see our Avids stating this would fit on Preservation Act 2 though I can also see the riff alone fitting in the Kinks Arista period also. The layered ascending lyrical lines concerning when the work will be completed remind me of Townshend's writing of Tommy, possibly in the part where the lines are sung about Tommy not seeing and not hearing what his mother didn't want him to experience let alone recall. The title "Let it be written" has rightly been described as one of grandeur if not near epic divinity but just perhaps could it not also be viewed as a wish of quiet desperation? I too had never heard of the 80 Days of Daviesland (Thanks there to Frank Smyth) so i too thank the Avids that made it possible and our own Moses Winstanley who decreed it to be that we examine one song per day from this rich and rampant creative sea!
I went thrifting last night and all I found was the soundtrack to The Darjeeling Limited, w/three Kinks songs, so it was a no brainer to get.
Speaking of that, I know that I posted about this before, but it was impossible to get my Oxford educated, Anglophile niece into the Kinks. But they’re English and old! held no sway w/her.
Let it Be Written This is a wonderful opening demo, which succinctly captures the pressure and thrill of writing to deadlines. If this were the first song Ray wrote for this project I can only imagine how excited he would have been when he wrapped it up. My CDR of 80 Days (which I've had for at least 20 years) sounds of similar lineage to the YouTube video. So I think it's unlikely there is a significantly better version in the wild. If there is a pristine-sounding version it's probably in Ray's house. Ha. We share similar habits half a world apart. Because of the time difference (it's 10.20 pm as I write) I'm expecting my wife to tell me shortly that I need to wrap up my "work" because I need to put the dogs out before bed time. My wife sings in choirs and has a degree in musicology so it was no surprise she didn't share my liking for classic metal (none of the new-fangled stuff for me). But/but a few years ago she bought me Bruce Dickinson's autobiography as a birthday present. And after I'd finished it she read it at my suggestion. Ever since then she's been all ears when I play Iron Maiden or one of Dickinson's solo albums. My wife, like yours, thinks he's a very fine vocalist. Back to Let it Be Written, I've heard a couple of the songs the music reminds people of, so here is the one that came to my mind from a classic Australian-Dutch-Scottish duo ... Must dash - I now need to let the dogs out.
Maybe try putting on ‘Have A Cuppa Tea’ and do some sort of shambolic foot shuffle, twirl maneuver as you serve her a nice cup of tea…in bone china.
I'm still catching up on reading the thread, guys (page 423, still a long way to go). I just want to thank @mark winstanley for creating such a complete, well-informed and loving thread for our dear band. And thank all the rest for your interesting comments. Great insights that make me think about The Kinks' music in a new light. I feel like I'm reading a great Kinks book! This thread is one of the best online resources for The Kinks, hands down.
How random to suddenly have a Lego model of a 1970 512M, here it was $28 AUD. N.b. In the same store last year I saw a tiny metal a la Le Mans 917 though you had to buy it with 2 other vehicles and a transporter.
This thread has been a real blessing. It almost feels like years of frustration at the Kinks being relegated to some kind of second fiddle singles band position in the history of rock music has left them somewhat in need of a place for folks to come and share all this information/love..... I wasn't even aware of that. I mentioned off the cuff in a thread somewhere along the way that I would like to do a Kinks album thread, because I knew I hadn't dived in deep enough, and thanks to the encouragement of @ajsmith to carry that through, here we are. For me this thread has been a revelation in many ways... what a wonderful community of fans the Kinks seems to have from the representatives that have played along with us here.... a thoroughly refreshing, and heart warming thing in light of such bickering and fighting in many other band's fans. Everyone seems to have given each period of the band's catalog due attention, and actually listened to the music with ears as fresh as they can muster, which is the whole point of doing this, and I think we have all learned something, because it seems everyone is also reading the posts and taking in the perspectives, rather than relentlessly sticking to old formed opinions... It is beautiful and remarkable. For me personally, it has given me a chance to really get into the songs, and by default the albums, and whereas I would have always said the Kinks were one of my favourite bands, now I actually know all the material really well, and it has been somewhat of a justification of the love for the band I have professed, and also a revelation that these guys may be my favourite band... and it's all due to this thread, and the participants in it.... and having listened ahead, we still have a stack of great material still to come
Folks as you're drinking down your wine can @Michael Streett or any other Avids chime in promptly on whether or not the US 12" of Father Christmas / Rock And Roll Fantasy has anything unique to offer? I didn't see anything mentioned upthread and ask now as an auction is ending shortly!
Look where it leads poor @A well respected man, @Wondergirl and more in their brave attempt to catch up… That’s what stood out (the most) in those two numbers that never were. Thanks for sharing them. Were they ever graced with music? Mozart ? What was that joke again? Moe who ? Was it in a movie somewhere? Sounds like something Mel Brooks could've come up with… Speaking of Mel Brooks – and since it’s Sunday – when I was in the US last month, a movie theater deep in Montana (a nice little town called Lewistown) was showing the new animation film Paws of Fury, in which Mel does one of the voices. Originally, the film was called Blazing Samurai, in reference to the mother of all farts movies, Blazing Saddles. I think it was seven years ago, I was attending the “American Film Market” in Santa Monica and I was invited to a presentation of this new up and coming animation project, Blazing Samurai. It was a packed meeting room in a hotel. The director started pitching the film and talked about the great Mel Brooks doing a voice. He was very enthusiastic and said triumphantly “and now as a treat for you all, I’d like to introduce our very special guest, the one and only … MEL B.!!!” And as we’re all cheering like crazy, enters Mel B.… the Spice Girl !! Oh, come on already… But now the director says “ok, joke’s over, here he comes, the REAL Mel B.” And this time, it’s the man himself. He must’ve been 85 years old (89, that’s right, just checked) but he stormed the “stage” and went on for some 40 minutes of improv stand-up comedy, so quick and funny the whole room was dying laughing. A real privilege to have seen this with my own eyes. (NB : just remembered “Moe Zart” was not a Mel Brooks joke but one from meta action film Last Action Hero. The bad guy was Fred Murray Abraham, so someone said not to trust him because “he killed Mozart”, referencing Amadeus. The “Moe” thing was a pay-off later in the film…)
I don’t normally gulp down a glass of wine for breakfast but if @markelis can start the day with Megadeth I suppose I can take one for the team! (But don’t know the answer you seek.)
It’s a little early for wine here…(hiccup) If you’re talking that promo 12”, it’s got the only version of “Father Christmas” as released everywhere else and the US single edit of “A Rock ‘N’ Roll Fantasy”, so nothing unique from my perspective. Neither of these songs has had an alternate mix released anywhere. You can bet if they did, I would have called that out at the time.
