The Kinks - Album by Album (song by song)

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by mark winstanley, Apr 4, 2021.

  1. The late man

    The late man Forum Resident

    Location:
    France
    Opening

    I assumed the guitar on the left was Ray. If not, it's even more difficult to understand how he could put a "Ray Davies" credit on this. It probably was the intro to next song and was severed out to give a "concept album" feel to the whole. Well it works on me.

    Wall of Fire

    Everything @croquetlawns said about this song is true, plus I hate the guitar sound, and yet I love this song. It's a recent love - I hardly paid attention to it for 30 years - and I can't explain it really. I read the lyrics and I found them quite moving. I guess the hot summer we just went through, and the morning when I sent my kids and wife away partly because the nearby forest fire threatened to make the air if not unbreathable, at least very unpleasant... All this concurs to confer this song a prophetic value (in my view of things). Climate change was already discussed in the early 1990s (IPCC was created in 1988), so it could even be the litteral meaning. And anyway I often like it when the Kinks sound like the Stones, as long as they don't outright rip them off.
     
  2. ajsmith

    ajsmith Senior Member

    Location:
    Glasgow
    Do you think it could be possible that that inner image of the two naked 'Babies' (referring to the song but also meant to represent Ray and Dave? ) was intended to be a play on the sleeve of Nirvana's recent paradigm (and radio friendly unit) shifting opus 'Nevermind'?

    [​IMG]
     
  3. markelis

    markelis Forum Resident

    Location:
    Miami Beach FL
    Opening/ Wall of Fire:

    The opening starts out nice with some searching, lead guitar, which leads nicely into the opening riff of Wall of Fire. I will likely use modern technology to combine these two songs into one as they really make sense together as one.

    The lyrics sound ahead of their time (as usual with Ray), with a focus I can only assume on climate change. Climate change (under its old name of global warming) seems to have been first mentioned in 1989, so once again Ray beats the rest of us to worrying about the end of the world. I don’t like when songs get overly political, but something veiled like this works just fine for me. ....if that’s even what he is singing about, I haven’t read anyone else’s posts, so for all I know Dave burned down Ray’s house around this time (obviously because he wasn’t getting enough soloing time on the Kinks albums) and this is what Ray is going on about!

    The chorus is fine, I can chant along like it’s the early 80s again. Its not their best opener, but it’ll do nicely as an intro to get un into the meat of the album.

    Dave gets some more cracking lead work at 3:45. This is followed by the music slowing to allow Ray’s sweet voice front and center, largely unadorned, followed by an immediate speed up in the music and some gang style vocals as a climax that all really works for me. Dave gets to lead us out over the final 30+ seconds with some sweet guitar styling. It worth noting that Dave is back front and center in a good way on both this song and this album as a whole.

    Overall, I would say this is a fine track. There is nothing 60s or 70s about this one (which many won't like). Its pure 80s in style and song layout (although not in production). As an Avid with no issues with Low budget and GTPWTW, this song works just fine for me, especially with Dave allowed to roam a bit more freely off the leash than he has been allowed on the past few albums.
     
  4. The late man

    The late man Forum Resident

    Location:
    France
    Great find!

    The secret subtitle of this painting is actually "Inside @Zeki 's mind when pondering whether he'll include a borderline good song on a playlist or not".

    So they commissioned a real artist to paint the cover and then they ruined it by adding their faces on top with no sense of composition whatsoever. The painter must have been happy.
     
  5. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    :D:D:D
     
  6. ajsmith

    ajsmith Senior Member

    Location:
    Glasgow
    Wow, we can discuss this at the appropriate time in the kronology but I just thought I should alert the gang that the 2000 JANE STREET audio (Ray premiering a lot of forthcoming solo stuff and some hits and deep cuts with Yo La Tengo and pals) just arrived on Youtube!

     
  7. D.B.

    D.B. Forum Resident

    Wall of Fire is a very good opening track in my opinion. Really enjoy its dynamics, and it does not outstay its welcome.
     
  8. sharedon

    sharedon Forum Zonophone

    Location:
    Boomer OK
  9. DISKOJOE

    DISKOJOE Boredom That You Can Afford!

    Location:
    Salem, MA
    Avid paulisdead, the Boston Rock Opera didn’t do Preservation Act 1. What they did do is Act 2 first in 1993 and then they combined songs from both albums in 1998.

    As for that Soap Opera video, my friend Jimmy did see it in a movie theater in Boston in 1975 (the live version never played in Boston). He also said it was in B&W, which is surprising.
     
  10. DISKOJOE

    DISKOJOE Boredom That You Can Afford!

    Location:
    Salem, MA
    “Opening/Wall of Fire”: The first part reminds me of the beginning of Kinks concerts w/an instrumental that used the riff from you “Really Got Me”before the first proper song. OK, but inessential. “Wall of Fire” is a bit too heavy metal for my tastes, even though the music matches the lyrics. I much rather have “Did Ya” as the opening for the album. I’m more of a “Did Ya” kind of guy than a “Wall of Fire” one.
     
  11. Fischman

    Fischman RockMonster, ClassicalMaster, and JazzMeister

    Location:
    New Mexico
    Opening/Wall of Fire

    I'm afraid others have done this humans-are-awful-and-the-future-is-bleak theme better, both lyrically and musically.

    And I don't really like Ray's vocal here either, and not just the shout part. But one thing I do love is the tone on Dave's leads. Give more of that!
     
  12. paulisdead

    paulisdead fast and bulbous

    Thanks for the info. B&W video makes sense in that it was a cheap way to film on location. While colour tape formats like U-Matic were around in 1975, it wasn’t that common (or as cost effective) as the more portable EIAJ-1 B&W format. Real shame RCA couldn’t give them the budget for colour 16mm (and for that matter, film the Preservation shows!)

    That said, the ghostly quality of the Black and White video, does make it seem more like, well, an old Soap Opera.

    And I literally just finished watching the BRO performance. Really enjoyed it. Some theatre company should put on another version of it!
     
  13. All Down The Line

    All Down The Line The Under Asst East Coast White Label Promo Man

    Location:
    Australia
    Interesting to note that Rick Rubin produced Mick Jagger's best studio album Wandering Spirit at the very same time which even shocked Q magazine in the UK!
     
  14. All Down The Line

    All Down The Line The Under Asst East Coast White Label Promo Man

    Location:
    Australia
    At this point was Ray expected to sign an Albarn? :hide:
     
  15. fspringer

    fspringer Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York City
    If I wasn't at this particular show, I was at one of them during his stand at this small theater. Will discuss more thoroughly when we get there. Last time I saw Ray - and it was really something being less than 20 yards away in a venue of that size!
     
  16. donstemple

    donstemple Member of the Club

    Location:
    Maplewood, NJ
    Opening / Wall of Fire

    The opening reverb or whatever it is starts out making me think of Morning Song from Preservation Act 1.... until the guitar comes in, that is. I don't know why they separated this out though as a separate track. They did that too on some versions of Lola vs Powerman, with my CD having Introduction as track 1 and the Contenders as track 2, but others just combine both as the track 1 Contenders.

    The back and forth guitar work though seems like a cliché of the rock world.

    The very start (don't want to say "opening") of Wall of Fire proper sounds like it could be an AC/DC riff. But here we go, after a 38 second opening track, it takes another 35 seconds of further intro before the verse starts. More than 1 minute into the song and we are finally into the heart of the verse and starting the pre-chorus. So that is why this is easily a 5 minute song. All that said, I don't mind the buildup to the plodding groove here. There is a cleanness to the production here that hints at some of Ray's upcoming solo recordings, I think.

    I really like how Dave's leads and licks are sprinkled throughout here, and really throughout the album Dave really shines with breaks and leads that fit the songs pretty well. Especially here. There are some really neat things in the low fast guitar strums (?) as the outro starts around 4:24.

    Lyrically, this starts out with a twist on Cliches of the World. From Sunset over the high-rise by a motorway to Standing at the end of the horizon looking at another setting sun. It certainly sets the scene up well. The "through the storms and hurricanes we rode" recalls Lost and Found, Life Goes On, and various other songs with metaphors about storms. (Ahem, Stormy Sky, ahem!)

    One thing I don't really love is the wall of vocals on the chorus. It seems to "perfect" for a Kinks record. I'm used to the recordings not being so perfect.

    Overall I like the song. I like how it's more straight rock and has less synth as we go into the 90s. Dave's guitar tone really elevates this for me. And, as I said, I think I'm starting to hear how Ray transitioned to some of the work on Other People's Lives.
     
  17. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    Sidebar: I found this as I was searching google for Ray Davies BMI million-air awards. This award category is really difficult to search as I can’t see to find a tidy little chart that serves as a database.

    Anyway, from 2006 award event: “In a written tribute to Davies that was read at the event, Who guitarist Pete Townshend called Davies "the true laureate of British popular music." In addition to Townshend, who credits his sound to the 40-plus year music vet, artists as diverse as Morrissey, Blur and Oasis also claim Davies as their main influence.”

    P.S. I’m reading a memoir now where the author recounts working on a kibbutz in Israel. A standoffish new guy shows up, silent, aloof until the author starts bringing his guitar out to play in the evenings after work. Then the New Guy joins in on bongos.

    After a period of time the author has this nagging feeling, recalling how he’d gone to see Fleetwood Mac play live and how blown away he’d been. And so he asked him, “Are you Peter Green?” And he was!

    After that he immediately tried to get Green to play the guitar but Green refused, saying, “I want to learn to play bongos.”

    Reason I brought this up? I see ‘Black Magic Woman,’ written by Peter Green, has 4 million “airs” as of 14 years ago.
     
  18. Michael Streett

    Michael Streett Senior Member

    Location:
    Florence, SC
    There is no indication any of the 1974 full blown Preservation stage shows were professionally filmed. That's not to say there couldn't be some amateur video from somewhere like a local tv station or such, but I've never heard about anything like this turning up either.
    There could be pro audio however, and I would gladly take that if such a thing exists and they choose to release it.

    As for A Soap Opera, that 1975 May Beacon show in New York was videotaped in Black and White only and later transferred to 16mm film to be shown in US theaters. But after a very short limited run of showings in the (I assume) July/August 1975 time frame, it was pulled due to objections by the band of the poor video quality. This would have been when @DISKOJOE 's friend saw this.

    The only show that was reportedly filmed was the final show of the tour on June 14, 1975 at the New Victoria Theater in London. Apparently this was filmed in color and partially financed by the band themselves for potential theatrical release, but this film has never been shown or heard from since as far as I know.

    Audio from this show, however, has been released. This was recorded separately, mixed by Ray into quadrophonic, and was broadcast in 1975 in the US by the DIR network on their syndicated program A British Biscuit.

    Several songs have been officially released over the years:

    One track on the 1976 RCA The Kinks Greatest - Celluloid Heroes compilation:
    • "Here Comes Yet Another Day" (though only on the original vinyl/tape releases and current download. This is not on the 2000 Velvel reimagined CD reissue release of this set).
    Three tracks on the 1998 Velvel CD reissue of A Soap Opera:
    • "Ordinary People" (different song from the song with the same title on the album proper).
    • "You Make It All Worthwhile"
    • "Underneath The Neon Sign"
    All four of these live tracks sound great and I would welcome release of a full set of this show's audio if nothing else.

    ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    "Opening/Wall Of Fire"

    OK start that doesn't deter me from pushing forward into the album, but neither does it set me on fire. I actually do not like the layered chorus backing vocals, but I do like Dave's guitar leads here. I think of this as one song and it was probably written as such, hence the Ray-only songwriting credit. The first track crossfades with the second so there is not really a gap there, but they put a CD track index on "Wall Of Fire" for some reason. For those that can't suffer 38 seconds of solo lead guitar call and response, they actually did you a favor by putting that track 2 index in there. Dave says in his first autobiography that he, Ray and their manager wanted "Wall Of Fire" as the lead single, but Columbia objected.
    I think both leads in "Opening" are Dave, but there's no way of knowing for sure. Not nearly as grating as the intro to "Labour Of Love" (no Dave credit there either, but also not split into two tracks), "Opening" doesn't bother me, but it's no "Soggy Noodle" :laugh:.

     
    Last edited: Sep 27, 2022
  19. palisantrancho

    palisantrancho Forum Resident

    “Opening”
    Skip. I really don’t need this intro.

    "Wall of Fire"

    Opens up with a guitar riff that sounds very similar to the beginning of "One" by Metallica. Then it breaks into a song that I can hear Frank Black singing during his Stones influenced days with the Catholics. Some of the lead guitar playing turns me off and so does Ray's vocal rasp, but overall this is a pretty solid opening tune. I tend to go easier on some of these songs when I focus on one song at a time. I do think they could have tightened it up into a three and a half minute song. At five minutes, it goes on a bit long and I have had enough at the three minute mark. I am feeling hopeful for the rest of the album, because this song never did anything for me, but I am now hearing some potential.
     
  20. Brian x

    Brian x the beautiful ones are not yet born

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    Opening/Wall of Fire

    Well the guitar is the best part of this. Funny that DD went on his Twitter spree the other day about American music, because you can hear all kinds of influences in his work and he clearly isn't of his brother's school of "oh I don't really listen to what's being released." DD takes a lot of near-cliche contemporary guitar techniques and blends them and makes them his own in a really distinctive and moving way... as a hard-grinding, melodic, sloppy-precise guitarist he's vastly -- I'm going to have to use an annoying word here -- underrated.

    And (weirdly given the songwriting credits) this feels like much more of a Dave song than a Ray song to me. Not just the length, the semi-plod, & the guitar emphasis, but the very generalized *big statement* lyrics about some sort of *we* or *us* or *let's* and a moving-target *they.* Yes, as @donstemple mentions, we start off with our narrator standing somewhere, but it isn't somewhere you can visualize, like a hotel window -- it's the the *edge of the horizon,* wherever that is. And yes there are some storms and hurricanes, but otherwise it's all very vague and abstract & disconnected.

    Musically, I like it a lot. I hear a kind of Crazy Horse thing going on, it's just on the edge of gritty, there's a kind of unravelling/re-ravelling that works really well with the vocals -- which are, yes, growly, but lazy-sloppy-growly, not shouty-growly, and certainly not barky. (These are highly technical musicologist terms). And the lead(s) are really ace.

    But in a very rare instance for an RD song I keep wondering what he's on about. Everything's falling apart, city slickers are screwing things up, so let's run right through the wall of fire?

    "Transcendental moonshine," as my 12th grade English teacher used to scrawl across my particularly preachy, abstruse essays.
     
  21. CheshireCat

    CheshireCat Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cheshire
    Opening/Wall Of Fire
    A great opening track to set the scene for the album. In fact, it being the first track after looking at the cover, it links to and further emphasises this burning, sprawling metropolis of Sue Coe's cover art.

    This lets us know 'Phobia' is a band album. It's a guitar based album. As Ray said about Dave on this album 'you've gotta let the soloist solo'. And he does. Perhaps after all the bad feeling around the brothers work for 'UK Jive', this album was Ray's attempt at keeping Dave happy and in the band for one more run through. And it sounds like an engaged band. 'Wall Of Fire' doesn't outstay its welcome for me, and I do like it when Ray writes about contemporary environmental issues!

    'Phobia' Ray is more growly Ray than shouty Ray, and that's quite a notable vocal style throughout this album. For me, this is the most consistent sounding album since 'Low Budget'.

    It's also possibly the most 'Dave' Kinks album in the entire career.
     
    Last edited: Sep 27, 2022
  22. sharedon

    sharedon Forum Zonophone

    Location:
    Boomer OK
    Thanks yet again for all this great info!

    I was at the taped concert in New York… and later on got to see the film, which was awful to look at and relatively hard to reconcile with the actual concert experience, visually. But indeed, the performance itself was terrific, and lots of fun. Here’s a link:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuYOd-vOCHE
     
  23. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    Cheers mate, excellent overall info, as always.
     
  24. Fortuleo

    Fortuleo Used to be a Forum Resident

    We only use those. It's the thread's specialty…:cool:
    About the cover, are we positive Sue Coe was commissioned to do it ? Just as the The Great Lost Folon cover, I wouldn't be surprised if it was just a piece that Ray (or the label in the case of the 1973 piece) loved and decided to use, as it often happened in rock.
    100% unrelated, but I recently learned that Steely Dan's Royal Scam cover was first supposed to be the art work for a shelved Van Morrison 1975 record, tentatively called 'Mechanical Bliss'. When Van didn't use it, its author named Charlie Ganse offered it to Becker and Fagen. Well, maybe 99% unrelated. It has a little Cliche's of the World/Unreal Reality flavor to it…

    It must be said that with no exception, no matter how much we'd want him to be act as a romantic balladeer and a nostalgic midday sun dreamer, all the Kinks openers from Low Budget on (Attitude, Around the Dial, State of Confusion, Do It Again, Working at the Factory, Aggravation and now Wall of Fire), all have elements of anger, alienation, anxiety, stress and dread to them.
     
    Steve62, pablo fanques, D.B. and 16 others like this.
  25. CheshireCat

    CheshireCat Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cheshire
    Quite fascinating looking at the work of Sue Coe on a Google search. The 'Phobia' art doesn't appear in a search, nor does Wikipedia mention it. This line however stood out to me on there: The artist's subjects are the victimized. She often depicts harsh realities, and her subjects are largely animals and humans oppressed by social and political forces beyond their control.
     

Share This Page

molar-endocrine