‘Superman’ at #31 on my Redux List, the only one to make it from today’s Great Reveal. I’m listening to ‘Berkeley Mews’ as I type and it’s resonating this time around. What a terrific song that, I do believe, I’ll play again as soon as it finishes.
Wow, what a fine and heartfelt review by @donstemple. I bow to you sir. I could feel your joy at getting THAT song onto the list. Further proof of the magic in this thread. Is Lola THE deep cut album from The Kinks? We were watching Ted Lasso last night (season 3, episode 8 - We’ll Never Have Paris) and a snippet of Strangers came on. My wife thought it might be The Band and when I told her it was The Kinks, she was astonished. Berkeley Mews is one I remember my dad liking. It starts off like the soundtrack for a Charlie Chaplin movie and morphs into a Picture Book sort of romp. This song hung around my second list for a time but eventually got pushed out by another Kronikles tune, another that baffled my wife. Superman shows our band can hang with Rod, The Stones and any of their peers when it comes to nailing a disco rock song. It has an undeniable groove and Ray’s trademark humor. It was #33 on my original top 40 and landed safely at #16 on the next in line list.
3 for 3 for me! 60) Berkeley Mews - Ranked #7 by me. this song had me at the first few notes. Nicky Hopkins did an incredible job with piano and organ bits(organ bits?! ). If there's any "truth" to the lyrics, I think this was based on a platonic affair Ray had in the 60s with some woman who I cannot remember the name of. But that aside, I love every second of this song and that's why it's placed so highly. 60) Sitting In The Midday Sun - ranked #28 by me. This song tries to answer the musical question: who needs a job when it's sunny? (ooooh ooooh) Another bum sitting by the riverside watching the world go by. Just re-listened to it and this is a good one! A lost klassic ensconced in a maligned Preservation album and the public is all the worse for it. LOL 60) (Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman - ranked #3 by me. I've mentioned my deep love of this song earlier. It was a minor hit in the US and it was definitely played a lot in my world back when I was a teenager. Ray's version of disco. Brilliant! The lyrics crack me up which will always endear a song to me. It's interesting to see people just not getting this song. Such a fun one!
As expected, we get our fourth (and likely last?) installment in the supremacy of Preservation’s first act over the kampier, kwirkier, “bonkerser” Act 2. What can I say, except repeating Sitting in the Midday Sun is a splendid song, in the breezy No Return style we all love some much, one of their many forays into Beach Boys territory (the overall feel of the track is close to Busy Doin’ Nothing/Add Some Music To Your Day's leisurely pleasures), graced with one of the loveliest bridges in the History of Kinks (thus in the History of Pop), one that could be mistaken for another nod to the Wilson bros. but I’ll argue this section is more in a Ram /Wild Life Macca territory, bringing to mind the likewise stellar bridge of Tomorrow. This may not be the best “sitting” song the Kinks ever did, nor is it their best “day” or “sun” tune, but it’s the only one that checks the boxes of all three groups of songs! So it’s fair to call it kwintessential in a way that no Act 2 song could ever dream of being. And let’s be honest, getting four Act 1 songs up there in a Kinks top 100 is to be feted as a wonderful achievement in itself.
Berkeley Mews. Number 26 for me. I definitely hear chilly not sh!tty, which would have been funnier. But its still pretty fun. Of the Sitting songs this one is down the list for me, so unranked. As for Superman? I have the 12” single. Unranked by me.
Avid Wondergirl, I believe that “Berkeley Mews” was based on a visit that Ray made to Ned Sherrin, the theater producer and BBC broadcaster.
Great rate up here! And so many other good comments above. I think a lot of people hit on something important about this song, and why it doesn’t seem to be more forward facing in their catalog: it really is a short little sleeper song buried in an album filled with real some real in-your-face classics, and it does seem to be truly overshadowed by it’s immediate predecessor on the album. I really liked this song when I heard it for the first time as we reviewed it on the thread and yet perhaps it didn’t/doesn’t catch my attention as much because I’m still coming off of the high of This Time Tomorrow every time I listen to the album. It’s like, “holy cow TTT is an incredible classic that no one knows!”, Followed by “holy cow, another classic, well, this must just be too easy for Wray and it is all becoming just a bit pedestrian”. One other thought, regarding the thrust of the lyrics. On the one hand, Ray has been quoted as saying that the lyrics stem from comments made to him by his father as their career grew. On the other hand, on the surface, it does appear very logically to be that he (Ray) is speaking to Dave. Maybe it is self evident (I’m very good at stating the obvious) but perhaps the idea sprung from comments to Ray by his dad and as the song was written it evolved to become not just the father talking to the sons, but the older brother talking to the younger brother. Either way, it is an incredibly touching and effective song. I love it, and re-focusing on it here has caused it to shoot up in my rankings. Perhaps we need to do a re-do of our top 100 because everybody’s favorites will have shifted by the time we’re done. then we can compare the first top 100 to the second top 100 to see which albums and songs benefited from the refocus during first top 100. (….ooops almost forgot)
Umm…please remember that Mark considers all suggestions in his typically reflective manner…and, chances are, will think this is a perfectly sound idea!
@Fortuleo Yes, "That Guy" sure really seems to love the One For The Road album. I bet he plays it each & every single day even!
1/3 for me today. Berkeley Mews was #34 on my first list, and #17 on my second. The Kronikles effect is real. Loved from when I first heard it. Sitting in the Midday Sun - I always loved this track from Act I. Amazingly for me, today was the first time I paid close attention to the piano flourishes by “the exquisite John Gosling.” I guess in the past the main vocal melody and Ray’s singing are what captured my attention, but everything about the backing track is so tasteful, the drumming, background singing, flute… (I Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman still has a tougher time gaining traction for me, but the live version and the 12” mix helped quite a bit. I enjoyed both.
If wikipedia is to be believed (and they do source Andy Miller's book on VGPS), this is about a one night stand (Hey, I know that song!). Berkeley Mews - Wikipedia for what it's worth.
Sitting in the Midday Sun - I had this at 21 in my next list. Maybe I’m a sucker for the sun songs. And the sitting songs. Also (especially??) the currant bun songs. Why should I have to give my reasons? Yes, indeed it is. Happy to see others give Berkeley Mews a well-deserved spot on the kollektive list. It was off limits for me this round as I was not considering any additional Pye. Oh, Superman, my old flame. I may have put down the torch some time ago, but I don't think the embers ever went entirely cold ... I kinda still love this catchy, hilarious tune (the humour! the pathos!). I must've played it 20 times since I joined this thread a few weeks ago. I mentioned earlier that this was one of the songs that first caught my ear and got me into Kinks in the first place. And there it is at no. 14 for me, right next to Low Budget. Ranking engine wanted to split them up, but I wouldn't have it so I put them together, where they belong ... on my list, in my heart, and on my blue vinyl Superman/Low Budget 12" single. (Could be wrong, but I think this may have been only in Canada, eh ... has it been mentioned on this thread yet? I searched, but did not find...)
Two more post-Pye songs today, which brings us to 29 (14 RCA, 15 post-RCA) out of 81 overall. More than 1/3rd of our songs so far are not Pye tracks. And from my personal predictions/calculation, I'd say there's more than a fair chance that we maintain this proportion when the kountdown is finished. When compared to the mere 8 songs (1/5th of the total!!) we got in the first top 40, it's a fantastic surprise, one that warrants the decision to make a second list in hopes of broadening our horizons. We seem to be getting somewhere remarkably satisfying!
Three songs from three different labels/bands. Interesting to see these three this high and this tied. I had none of these on any of my lists, but love all of them just the same. Sitting In The Midday Sun sits very nicely in its penultimate spot on the Preservation Act 1 album with the Tramp lazing on his sunny afternoon. This song was released as a single in both the UK and the US months before the album appeared and is the one song of this Preservation/Soap Opera/Schoolboys era that got released as an A-Side in the same version/mix on each side of the Atlantic during this entire run of releases (Mirror Of Love, you say? Nope. Different mixes for each). That’s a surprising little factoid and just goes to show Ray/RCA had a hard time figuring out what to release, where and when with ultimately none of these finding much success anywhere. This song appeared again on the 1976 RCA The Kinks Greatest – Celluloid Heroes compilation and was remixed by Ray for that comp. This one is only available on that original vinyl LP and has never been released on CD though it seems to be available on the download and streaming sites. Very strange. Anyway, for no particular purpose or reason, here’s Sitting In The Midday Sun (1976 Remix). Ray’s vocals and the backing vocals are more prominent and sound better here than the original mix, though you’ll notice the last little la la na na da das at the fade are mixed out here. The drums are centered too (they’re right channel in the original mix). New to the thread. Sitting In The Midday Sun (1976 Remix)
Yeah, appears the Canuck version was on blue vinyl. I have it, and the US version, which is on regular ole black vinyl, but the cover has a round hole cutout in the middle so you can see the label, unlike the Canadian version.
I’m posting again that rare early 12” original mix of (Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman that appeared on the first pressings of the UK 12” before being replaced with a new mix on subsequent pressings in the UK and all the US releases. I think this was the first time a few of us got together behind the scenes to get something together for the thread and make this mix available on the web and the thread. I remember asking if anyone had that early 12” and after a few days of no responses our old buddy @Boom Operator did have it and was able to provide an MP3 and send that to me and I shared that with @The late man who was able to upload it into a video that we shared here so everyone could hear this rare mix. Thank you again, gentlemen. (I wasn't yet set up to do videos myself at this point, but this community project inspired me to go that route myself shortly thereafter. I have subsequently acquired my own copy of this rare 12” so it sits proudly in my possession now after many years of painstakingly trying to track it down.) Brief notes on this mix. It does not yet have the synthesizer that was overdubbed later for the more common mix, and you can actually hear acoustic piano in this mix that is totally absent from the later mix. Gordon Edwards is credited as being on piano on the song Low Budget for his one and only officially cited studio appearance on a Kinks song, but Superman is from the same exact recording sessions and it’s my guess that this piano in this early mix is him too, though no official confirmation of this has ever been noted anywhere. I prefer this mix personally as it sounds less disco and more rock without that pulsing synth. Here's the link back to that original post almost two (2) years ago (!): The Kinks - Album by Album (song by song) Though this was posted back then, y’all didn’t think I was going to let it pass by here in the countdown without posting and commenting on it again, did you? No way. Who do you think I am, Superman? (Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman (Original 12” Mix) (on The Late Man's channel)
