I like this as a run up to "Wicked Annabella", which takes this theme and turns it up to eleven -- not to mention having one of the most diabolical musical outros I can think of. Points to Dave for diving into the darkness!
Yeah, it sure looks like a perfectly serviceable "rarity" collection. I certainly would've been very happy to get this at the time (that is : if I hadn't been fooled by its title and lead-off song into thinking it was some kind of greatest hits!). Talking about rarities : I adore the cover version the (well named) Cardiacs made of Suzannah’s Still Alive. It turns the manic alienating tension of the original into pure trashy fun, and its anger into cathartic madness if you see what I’m aiming at…
Band releases masterpiece album, it sells disappointingly, faithless label quickly follows it up with a compiation inexplicably containing a poor quality version of "Louie, Louie". Sounds familiar.
Nestled on my compilation between the gentler Wonderboy and Days, I never initially twigged "Susannah's Still Alive" as a Dave track, oddly. I thought it was splendidly catchy and loved it. Dig the harmonica over the chorus. I even tried to get my teenage rock group to cover it - the only Kinks song I suggested - but they pulled (funny) faces.. ah stuff 'em. I'd assumed the 'soldier' line was key to the song, the point being he'd been killed in action and she couldn't mentally accept it, carrying on as if he'd be through the door any day now, while knowing it was impossible.. a neat way, it turns out, for Dave to address his own troubles. Hidden depth in a lot of the Kinks songs then. Curious that Dave layers stories that emotionally match his own experiences, while Ray increasingly constructs narratives that are deliberately ambivalent - I think Autumn Almanac certainly is.
It does, sadly. Wonder if Pye finally missed them when the band decided to sign with RCA in early 1971?
Makes me think in part that perhaps Pye were losing confidence in the group's ongoing commercial appeal despite having some high charting singles in 1967? N.b. I think I had this many years ago and abandoned it mainly over sound quality and some ordinary song choices to my mind at that time.
Compilation album by the Kinks Released 17 November 1967 Genre Rock Length --:-- Label Marble Arch MAL 716 (UK) Astor Records (USA) As far as I can tell the Astor Records listing is a mistake. Astor was an Australian label and neither the Wikipedia Kinks discography nor Discogs lists a USA release of the album.
I've seen some bizarre kompilations, but this one takes the biscuit! It's basically the Well Respected Kinks compilation with "Don't You Fret" removed and replaced by "Lola" - a track from 5/6 years later than everything else on the record! Even the sleeve is the same apart from some obvious cutting and pasting. The Kinks – Kinks Greatest Hits (1971, Vinyl)
Owned this one, along with a Marble Arch reissue of Kinda Kinks. Though the label claims this is a stereo disc, it's actually "reprocessed" stereo from what sounds like a pretty bad mono duplication master:
Suzanahs Still Alive I can't believe the opening 2 lines as shown here are actually correct, bedraggled.....really? I hear a budgie mentioned here as well and whilst I know this can't be true the opening then sounds to me like a conductor announcing his transports next stops! An interesting ascending/descending riff and a neat chorus provided the hit but sentiment for Dave aside i see this as a fairly minor song, especially compared to the quality of much of the recent Kinks output. N.b. The fun line about sleeping with the covers up hoping somebody gets in followed by the suspended single harmonica note strikes me as wry Dylanesque humour!
Susannah's Still Alive This is a song I never knew existed until about a month ago. I love that ascending/descending hook of this. Dave's songs are getting more cohesive, yet they still maintain this looseness and dirtiness that really separates them from Ray's compositions. The harmonica is lovely in the background, but not a huge fan of it taking lead for that bit. I thought he was singing "Ocean's South Beach on the buttcheek" in that first line! And that's still just all I hear, to be honest. I also think the melody/meter of "She sleeps with the covers down hopin' that somebody gets in" reminds of a phrase from "Party Line" for some reason... Again, a loose, dirty production, but it works for what it is. A solid rocker that again makes me wonder why Dave's volume of output didn't continue to rise like George Harrison's did towards the end of the 60s...
Great post! However, I have always heard the horn parts on Autumn Almanac as being played on a Mellotron; the attack sounds like the initial attack of the tape replay attack of a Mellotron as opposed to a more natural horn sound. A simply amazing song with so many twists and surprises (and sections) yet it sounds utterly natural. Pete chooses some interesting bass notes (as usual) on the This is my Street section. So many great posts here I am almost afraid to jump in and say something redundant! One of the most enjoyable and thought provoking (considering lyric meanings) threads ever. Thanks all! Now to put guitar and piano to task and use my ear to analyze the tuning/key/chord voicings of Autumn Almanac. Thanks for your excellent breakdown @Rose River Bear ! And as always, thanks for your initial posts and curating of the thread, @mark winstanley ! Karry on.
Very good observation! Certainly makes that Ebm easier to play. That has to be one of my favorite 'music videos' out there, next to maybe the Who on the Smothers Brothers perhaps. I love the face Ray makes at like 1:40. They always knew how to ham it up... and Dave's sense of fashion then was really unmatched. Susannah's Still Alive I like 'Susannah quite a bit. Always wondered why Dave's solo career never took off. Personally, I think that he would have been better off with the Kinks anyway, but the singles were all pretty strong. Gets you thinkng about how VGPS would have turned out if Ray encouraged him to write a bit more at least... In the beat club performance(s) posted above, I notice Dave 'plays' a Fender XII. It's always fun seeing the Kinks with their wacky guitars on these shows. Even the Vox acoustic 12 he has in the TOTP Autumn Almanac performance is rather unusal. Does anyone know if he actually plays it in the studio version? Or any songs from the era for that matter? The only guitar part that's really pronounced is the distorted flourish at the end.
As I was noticing how all of my recent Kinksian Studies is wreaking havoc with my Apple algorithms, my eye turned to the list of top Kinks songs as played on Apple Music (and I have no idea if Spotify mirrors this or not): Lola (1, 2, 15) You Really Got Me (3, 5, 10) Father Christmas (4, 12) All Day and All of the Night (6) Come Dancing (7) Sunny Afternoon (8) Destroyer (9) Supersonic Rocket Ship (11, 14) A Well Respected Man (13) Waterloo Sunset (16) These are the top ten songs. If listened to from separate sources/editions/compilations, it’s tallied separately. Thus, multiples. I listed the top ten individual songs. I’m rather amazed at some of these.
