The Kinks - Album by Album (song by song)

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

  1. pyrrhicvictory

    pyrrhicvictory Forum Resident

    Location:
    Manhattan
  2. CheshireCat

    CheshireCat Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cheshire
    Thanksgiving Day

    Ray likes tradition, and has seemingly been living in New Orleans, so saw this family tradition first hand. It's not a song I've connected with - we don't do Thanksgiving - but it sounds far better than the other Americanism we seem to have imported to the UK from around this time. Black Friday. Why? And why is it black??

    Does it get played in the US in the way Christmas songs get played through December?

    Anyway, it's a nice story, catchy tune. I'll come on over - but it's not in my top five for the album.
     
  3. palisantrancho

    palisantrancho Forum Resident

    Interesting to think of how it would rank along side of The Kinks albums. I would probably agree with you about all of these albums except for maybe Think Visual.
     
  4. CheshireCat

    CheshireCat Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cheshire
    Other People's Lives (album)

    Having heard four or five of these songs for at least five years before release, it already felt like an old friend when it was released. When we started our discussion of this album, I think I said it was great. I'm not so sure now. I'll say it's very good, with half-a-dozen stand out songs, which by any standard is a very good hit rate for any artist forty odd years into their career.

    It's perhaps a bit overcooked - if it had been written, recorded and released quickly, as The Kinks were oft able to do, it may have had more of a spark. It also lacks that beautiful emotional ballad that Ray is capable of.

    Top three personal favourites:
    1. 'Things Are Gonna Change (The Morning After)' Fantastic opening song. Favourite track on the album. This first single should have got airplay.
    2. 'After The Fall' Another great one. Almost prophetic in its opening verse!
    3. 'Over My Head' Perhaps has been ignored being hidden at the end. A great closing track. This second single should have got airplay...
     
  5. CheshireCat

    CheshireCat Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cheshire
    Will have to ponder where it fits in the '80s onwards catalogue. Maybe after we've looked at 'Working Man's Cafe'.
     
  6. pyrrhicvictory

    pyrrhicvictory Forum Resident

    Location:
    Manhattan
    ...and plugging away on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Wish he played ‘Things Are Gonna Change’ or ‘The Tourist’ instead but Ray was so keen on this song. At the February 2003 Tibet House concert, after duetting with David Bowie on ‘Waterloo Sunset’, he performed this song, then closed the show with ‘You Really Got Me.’

     
  7. croquetlawns

    croquetlawns Forum Resident

    Location:
    Scotland
    This is a gentle, and dare I say it boring, way to end the album, and I really wish that Over My Head was the final track, and this was kept as a stand-alone single.
     
  8. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    My wife feels the same. Born on the 22nd, she feels like nobody ever cared about her birthday, because it was thanksgiving lol
    I'm sympathetic, but essentially I don't even care about MY birthday lol.

    My sister was born a couple of minutes past midnight Jan 1st... apparently the first baby of 1966. I'll have to ask her if she felt gipped ;)
     
  9. CheshireCat

    CheshireCat Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cheshire
    It is a shame there seems to be no TV performance of 'Things Are Gonna Change (The Morning After)'. All the more surprising that this was a regular in the concert setlists (along with 'Creatures Of Little Faith' which also got missed out).
    On Youtube there is footage of a good selection of the tracks:
    'After The Fall'
    'Next Door Neighbour'
    'Run Away From Time'
    'The Tourist'
    'The Getaway (Lonesome Train)'
    'Other People's Lives'
    'Over My Head'
    'Thanksgiving Day'

    I'd guess that's probably more TV broadcast performances available than there is of contemporary material for any Kinks album!
     
  10. palisantrancho

    palisantrancho Forum Resident

    I don't think I felt gipped, but I also had an Aunt that we would spend Thanksgiving with, and it would also fall on her birthday some years. So, it was always a joint birthday for both of us, and Thanksgiving at the same time. It was a bit much. I mostly never cared for eating massive portions of food, napping, and watching football. It was so depressing to me, but I never liked football. It still depresses me! I haven't had a big family Thanksgiving in probably 20 years. It's usually just the two of us these days. I also enjoy turkey, but I'm not keen on torturing and killing 50 million of them in one day! I mostly go for the stuffing anyway. The Pilgrims and Indians rubbish that they sell you as a youngster is also appalling.

    I do have warm memories of Thanksgiving. Mostly just hanging with my Mom and Grandma and being thankful for family and friends. Which is really what it should be all about.
     
  11. StefanWq

    StefanWq Forum Resident

    Location:
    Vallentuna, Sweden
    Thanksgiving Day

    This is a lovely song, both musically and lyrically. We don't have Thanksgiving Day here, so basically all I know about the day is based on how it's been depicted in movies and sitcoms and of course in this song. I like the concept of getting together with family and/or friends and enjoy a nice meal and each other's company, with often different generations hanging out together. A big strength of the song is that it is so full of empathy and affection. It is not a cynical song. I think the lyrics show an understanding of what the day means to many people and how traditions matter and also that it can also be a day of sadness, as for the Papa in the lyrics who is happy to be amongst his children and grandchildren yet also misses his late wife. The song also shows awareness that Thanksgiving Day, like Christmas, can be very hard for those with noone to share the day with, like the spinster or the man in the bar. I am guessing Ray can relate to that too, having been on many tours spending months away from his near and dear ones.
    I think it is very fitting that the song has a strong soul groove and a gospel-ish choir in the choruses, giving the music a very warm American feel. It's a truly great song.
     
  12. The late man

    The late man Forum Resident

    Location:
    France
    Other People's Lives

    I have to listen to this again. For the time being, this album hasn't really taken shape for me. I still entertain projects of dismembering it.

    One silly reflection, I was thinking just now, in a certain way Return To Waterloo is his only real solo album: it's the only record on which he's the sole guitar player.

    I ordered the movie today, together with a DVD of One-Trick Pony (I'll probably end up not being able to play either for some technical reason but whatever).
     
  13. ARL

    ARL Forum Resident

    Location:
    England
    One-Trick Pony is actually available on DVD now? I've been making do for years with the copy that I taped from BBC2 in the 90s, later transferred to DVD-R.
     
  14. TeddyB

    TeddyB Senior Member

    Location:
    Hollywoodland
    This is out of order (in many ways) but I was looking over the coming attractions and did a little advance prep on Working Man's Cafe (I'm better acquainted with Sold on Song). All I can say is I'm looking forward to the discussion on that one. I suspect it may be Ray's best solo album, and perhaps most "Kinks-like".

    In fact, I've just gone and upgraded my copy by ordering one with the extra demos.
     
  15. The late man

    The late man Forum Resident

    Location:
    France
    Well honestly I don't know, I've read that it had never been released on DVD, so I'm not putting too much hope on that thing that I ordered... Best-case scenario is a pirate copy from VHS. Or some cheap porn, but with that title I fear the worst.
     
  16. Michael Streett

    Michael Streett Senior Member

    Location:
    Florence, SC
    Thanksgiving Day

    I liked this song well enough going in, but I think I mentioned at the start that I was underwhelmed with it as the first or second new song we heard from Ray in late 2005 depending on if you heard this or The Tourist first. I still think it's a strange choice for a single in the US. I also still find it strange that an Englishman would pen a song about a quintessential American holiday he did not grow up experiencing. But I'll also say that Ray would be one of the only, if not the only one, who could pull this off and capture both the happiness and the sadness within the same song both lyrically and musically that this holiday can mean and represent to different people in their own individual life circumstances. So, suffice to say that this song improved for me these last few weeks as I am older and my own life circumstances have changed. I do think it would have worked better within the album somewhere else as it doesn't feel like an album closer but we all would sequence things differently and then what to do with it on the album itself outside of the US. Would have been an even stranger single in the UK so not surprised it was not even listed on the cover of the album on the UK release and buried as a hidden track without even a track index on the CD for easy access if I understand correctly.
    The holiday itself for me is in the All Over column now so it’s not a time of the year I look forward to anymore for familial reasons so I can certainly relate to that side of the equation now. I still see family, but it feels so different now. I am sure this is a very common feeling for many people.


    Other People’s Lives

    Some great insights and analysis today by everyone and just about anything I could contribute has already been said today by everyone else or by me with my own thoughts at the beginning of the album. I do like it a little more now in 2023 after going though it here and reading everyone’s thoughts and pointing out the aspects I have forgotten or invariably overlooked after so many years of not listening and thinking I already felt a certain way about the album. I brought up the expectations things back in my album intro and again in one of my weekend midnight rambles, but there is no doubt that those hopes and assumptions, and the circumstances delaying and surrounding this release in real time in 2006 after such a long time, and then the album did not meet any of that in my own mind, clouded my opinions for years. If I had come into this album cold years after the fact or even now for the first time in 2023, I am sure I would have an entirely different perspective, mindset and an ultimately different opinion going into it with little to no expectations and that in itself could also be seen as an expectation of sorts.

    I always felt it’s a pretty good album in many respects with several outstanding tracks and some songs have improved for me these last couple of weeks, but there are others that I still view as weaker with the same opinions I had going in so I will be putting this away for a while but will bring it out again later in the year and I bet it will improve a little more again.

    Haven’t listened to Working Man’s Café in years either but my overriding memory is I liked it a lot more in real time at the time and I have that thought in my mind today. We shall see but the fact that I’m going into that album with that thought ahead of time may influence me in that direction as we go through it which may be unwise and unfounded. Should be interesting. As for the release of that album itself (releases actually, plural, so that's a hint), well that's another frustrating, irritating story for another day.
     
  17. DISKOJOE

    DISKOJOE Boredom That You Can Afford!

    Location:
    Salem, MA
    Nice to hear from you again Avid pyrrhicvictory. I hope you're doing OK
     
  18. Paul Mazz

    Paul Mazz Senior Member

    Thanksgiving Day

    I liked this from the first time I heard it around the time of release. There aren't too many Thanksgiving songs to begin with, and I liked that Ray wrote one about our quintessentially American holiday. I probably didn't realize at the time that he had lived in the US for a number of years. I'm still not sure how many years he actually lived here, between New York and New Orleans, but I'm sure he experienced a number of Thanksgivings. Not that he couldn't extrapolate the messages in the song from any number of family holidays in England.

    It has a certain melancholy to it, paying closer attention to the lyrics. Unfortunately, it reminds me of my shrinking extended family. Years ago I used to look forward to spending the day with my parents and all my aunts and uncles on my mother's side, all of whom have now passed away. I hope I’ll be able to look forward to it more again some day when my girls eventually get married and start families of their own, which fits well with the more hopeful, joyful ending of the song. There will always probably still be a little of the melancholy about the holiday for me that Ray captures so well in this song. I love the different ways of hearing “it’s all over.”

    If you want a really cynical Thanksgiving recording, listen to William Burroughs’ A Thanksgiving Prayer.

    As much as I love Ray’s Thanksgiving Day, musically as well, it hasn’t become part of my holiday ritual yet in the same way as listening to Alice’s Restaurant at noon on Thanksgiving. I plan on trying to remedy that.
     
  19. Paul Mazz

    Paul Mazz Senior Member

    Other People’s Lives

    Thanks everyone for helping me rediscover this album. I’m not sure I gave it enough of a chance when I bought it. I liked it, but probably never sat down with it and really listened. I probably fairly quickly moved on to other cds that I had bought. I don’t remember walking around with random songs from this album popping up in my head the way they are now. Is every song great, probably not, but there are some great tracks, and the whole album hangs together really well for me. I do prefer Over My Head as the closing track. It seems to bring the album to a natural conclusion for me. Ray can call the album Other People’s Lives, and he can categorically state, as he does in the liner notes, (which I just stopped typing to read) “At the end of this record please remember this. IT’S NOT ABOUT ME, IT’S OTHER PEOPLE. Sorry Ray, I’m not sure I believe you. I agree with the insightful @Fortuleo and @Brian x that instead it may be Ray’s most personal album to date.
     
  20. donstemple

    donstemple Member of the Club

    Location:
    Maplewood, NJ
    Thanksgiving Day

    I can’t find my physical CD of Other People’s Lives, I think it is in a box somewhere in my attics. But the mp3s that I ripped back then, and have travelled to make their way into my iTunes library and synchronized to my iPhone say that this is Track 13. Not an extension of Over My Head. It’s own track. Not hidden at all. So to me, this has always been the album closer. And with that choir at the end, it sounds like an album closer to me. After going through this track by track, and reading all your incredible insights and thoughts about the overarching theme or concepts of the album, I think it makes sense as a closer that way too. We may be creatures of little faith, or have trouble stopping our pattern of falling and doing it all again, but there is still something that is a blessing. Coming on over to spend time with family. Those with whom we have a lifelong bond. And different people approach this day in different ways. As an escape. Or as a burden. Or as nostalgia for the routine and traditions of our youth.

    Ray starts out talking directly to us. “Are you going on Thanksgiving Day to those family celebrations?” Then once we are in, Ray tells us the stories of how other people’s Thanksgivings are shaped by their lives.

    This song is touching, and so very Ray. I hear many different Ray eras. Verses that come from the same mind who wrote the verses on Yo-Yo. And the spoken lines? You know what I hear, the same voice (a bit older and deeper perhaps), but the same voice who told us that “Tomorrow I shall become Norman, I shall go to his office, mix with his workmates.” The very last note with the chorus is written by the same guy who ended Daylight with a choir’s note as well.

    I have always liked this song and the sound of the song, and I knew the gist of it, but it wasn’t until really listening along with all the lyrics and your posts today that I fully grasp how Ray approaches this. So thanks to you all, for giving me that, today.
     
  21. StefanWq

    StefanWq Forum Resident

    Location:
    Vallentuna, Sweden
    Other People’s Lives (the album)


    It was both exciting and a relief when Other People’s Lives was released in February 2006, giving us new Ray music after such a long time. I don’t remember what I was expecting or hoping it would sound like, just that I was worried I was going to be disappointed by it going in a bombastic arena rock direction. Thankfully it didn’t, far from it.

    At the time of release, both me and my then girlfriend (now wife) had been going through some difficult times, so I related strongly to the lyrics of the album and what I hear as a recurring theme of battling and coming out of a depression. Despite the album’s title it sounds like a very personal album by Ray or at least he is very successful in giving that impression. He sings each song with so much commitment and heart. The lyrics are very strong on this album. One flaw that I felt many of the songs on Phobia had was that they had a kind of helicopter view, trying to cram in as many problems in society as possible in one song – corruption, greedy corporations, crime, politicians, media reports. To me, that kind of “helicopter view” lyrics doesn’t move me that much, it becomes too unspecific. I think Ray’s lyrics are at their best when he zooms in and portrays one character or just a few characters, as in classics like “Well Respected Man”, “Dedicated Follower of Fashion”, “Dead End Street”, “Situation Vacant” and so on. On Other People’s Lives, this is what makes the lyrics so memorable and moving, he has zoomed in on one or two characters in each song and making them come across as real life persons experiencing real life emotions. It sounds very personal and all the better for it.

    The album has a very strong set of songs and they are also sequenced very well. There’s a flow, a narrative building, when I listen to the album. Ray is a very versatile writer and on this album there are many different styles of music but the songs together, the album as a whole, still manages to sound like a very cohesive unit with Ray’s unique persona giving colours to each song. This is an album that I have listened to zillions of times and it is a very reliable album, in the sense that each track is of a very high quality, revealing new layers and dimensions each time I listen to the album.

    I think it is also a good album for more casual fans – for instance, persons who may have listened a lot to the 1964-1971 records but haven’t heard that much of The Kinks after that. This is an album that I’d recommend to such a person to show that Ray’s creativity is still going strong and I’d feel confident that they would really enjoy this album.

    Other People’s Lives is an album that takes me back to what was happening in my life at the time and positive changes that happened at that time and it always gives me a boost listening to the album. I have many other albums in my record collection that can be very good and all that, but isn’t particularly connected to events in my own life like Other People’s Lives (of course those records could have a similar meaning for someone else, that is one of the great powers of music). It is such a great album from start to finish.
     
  22. All Down The Line

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

    Location:
    Australia
    Many thanks for that link Marty!
     
  23. CheshireCat

    CheshireCat Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cheshire
    Well, if you taped it off the telly, you shouldn't complain.
     
  24. CheshireCat

    CheshireCat Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cheshire
    If you have the LP edition of 'Other People's Lives', 'Thanksgiving Day' is there as the final track, no mention of it being a bonus. It is a US issue LP though.

    It would seem that it depends where you are as to what you would consider as the album closer. I see it as being 'Over My Head', with the annoying bonus of 'Thanksgiving Day' as a part of the same track on the CD. American listeners presumably see 'Thanksgiving Day' as the album closer. Both tracks probably 'work' in that position.

    Perhaps having the 'Thanksgiving Day' CD EP as a second 'bonus disc' with the album would have been a nice way of doing things.
     
  25. ajsmith

    ajsmith Senior Member

    Location:
    Glasgow
    Seconded!
     

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