I'm a big fan of Costello but I never quite got into this album. Maybe some day. Cool that he's a friend of yours! I love his last few albums, though I was not so much into the late 00s early 10s stuff. School Days: a favorite of mine too. I think it's on both my lists, though I'm not sure about the first and am too lazy to check. Anyway my real top 80 has at least 180 songs on it. This song must have been written quite easily, it's made of quite obvious chord changes, but I think it works really great. Also, in my opinion, this is a great opener to the best-sounding Kinks album (Misfits has a great sound too, but the songs are not as good, as far as I'm concerned). Yes Sir, No Sir: everything has been said. Not on my list, but the whole of Arthur should be (except, for me, the last track, that I erased from my version of the album, putting Shangri-La in its place).
I was saying yesterday that Schooldays is my favorite opening song on a Kinks LP. I'm well aware it's not a very common/popular opinion (but we got the song in the top anyway, so there! ) But here's an interesting forum data about the Kinks (et moi et moi et moi, as @DISKOJOE's beloved Jacques Dutronc would say). Yeaaaaars ago (2016), did I mentioned it already ?, I ran a series of polls here on SHF about the Kinks, based on the model of the "track by track best of". I would post a poll and people would vote for their favorite "track 1" on a Kinks album. After a couple of days, I'd close the poll, we'd discuss the results and I'd open a "best track 2 on a Kinks LP" poll. Then a couple of days later, a "best track 3 on a Kinks LP" poll etc. The idea being to compile the best "track by track" Kinks record possible. I got some great turnout (over 150 voters were in, including a few of our current friends here on the Thread) and interesting (if often predictable) results. For instance, Yes Sir No Sir came in on 5th position in the "best track 2" poll, only beaten by Rosie, Clown, Walter and Strangers, its fellow second tracks from the golden 66-70 run. Multiple votes were allowed, I think up to five (I'm not sure). Below is what we got for the opening songs. Out of roughly 165 voters, Schooldays got… 3 votes (including mine)!!! You'll note the overwhelming supremacy of the usual suspects from the usual golden years albums (hardly a surprise, hardly an injustice in this case). Also worthy of note, Do it Again was the best of the non 66-71 tunes, but then the subsequent three (openers of Think Visual, UK Jive and Phobia) got… 0 vote! And of course, Introduction to Solution (from my beloved Preservation Act 2) landed a 0 too… Here's the complete results we got: Beautiful Delilah 4 votes Look for Me Baby 1 vote Milk Cow Blues 10 votes Party Line 28 votes David Watts 69 votes The Village Green Preservation Society 68 votes Victoria 104 votes (60% of the voters) The Contenders 9 votes God's Children 21 votes 20th Century Man 50 votes Here Comes Yet Another Day 6 votes Till Death Do Us Part 5 votes Morning Song 1 vote (I beat myself for not combining it with Daylight) Introduction to Solution 0 vote Everybody's a Star (Starmaker) 11 votes Schooldays 3 votes Life on the Road 4 votes Misfits 18 votes Attitude 6 votes Around the Dial 12 votes State of Confusion 10 votes Do It Again 27 votes Working at the Factory 0 vote Aggravation 0 vote Opening / Wall of Fire 0 vote
57 I Need You 1965 b-side 283 points On 9 lists 5 top 10 I Need You didn't make my 176 A good song, that keeps in the early hard rock Kinks mode, but for me there's nothing special about it to lift it into my list. If I remember rightly I really loved one of Dave's live versions. 56 Alcohol 1971 Muswell Hillbillies 285 points On 12 lists 4 top 10 Alcohol came in at 102 for me. Personally I love the album and live versions of this song, and I imagine it would have been great to see them do it in the early seventies with Ray's much talked about antics.
KM Dave is 2 for 2 today! Hurray! 56) Alcohol (285) <53 #27 57) I Need You (283) <45 #4 Filling positions 16 and 17 on our 2nd top 40, two great songs today (from my really great 2nd list). Alcohol at #56 with 285 points, down very slightly from our last ranking of it at #53, was #27 on my list. I Need You, at #57 with 283 points and down slightly farther from #45 on our first list, was #4 on my new submission and is a fantastic, great, GREAT song with some not too shabby guitar work on display. I'm 7 for 25 and we've got 15 exciting more reveals left to go.
I Need You had to be in the list, didn’t it? I was left unranked it myself but only because I decided to be a rock orthodox on the riff-related business, and so I gave my nod to the big hits rather than to the hidden gem in this case. Whatever, I love them all (almost) equally. Now, a little Paris by night anecdote. One of my best friends used to do some drunken DJ’ing in a youngster’s club. He's 12 years younger than me and it was some 8-10 years ago, so he would've been thirty-ish at the time. As an ace up his sleeve, he always played I Need You whenever the energy level lowered in the room. And he would get a crazy response from the kids (also of drinking age, but kids nonetheless). I went to see him there a couple of times and I congratulated him on this connoisseur’s choice of his. To which he replied “what do you mean? It’s just my favorite among their early hits!”. Having been exposed to the kompilations on the streaming platforms, he never knew it was a b-side, he just assumed it was part of the initial rush of big riffs hit singles!! For him there was no difference whatsoever between All Day and All of the Night and I Need You. He thought both songs were equally catchy and famous. So I advised him to try ADAAOTN and the response was… demented! This time, all the kids would not only dance, they would scream the chorus at the top of their lungs. Which was a sight to behold. Still, I can attest the I Need You response had also been extraordinary, especially given almost no one in the room had ever heard before! Such is the power of this propulsive primal riff. And such is the power of alcohol, too. But more on that subject a little bit later today…
Again I had neither of today's songs in my list. "I Need You" was never considered as it's another of the chunk riff rockers that I already had enough of on the list. However, it's as strong as any of them, and would probably have been a bigger hit than its a-side, and a few of the other a-sides too. "Alcohol" is one of the tracks that would probably benefit the most if I were able to do a complete reset on Muswell Hillbillies - i.e. forget that I had ever played or even bought the CD, pick up a decent 1971 original copy and hear it for the first time that way. Whereas I find some of the tracks dull, this isn't one of them - it's a classic Ray Davies song stuck in the middle of an album that I have a negative impression of.
Two more I didn’t have on my lists. I Need You is a solid riff rocker but I tended to move on with my list choices going for different styles and eras. I love Ray’s performance of Alcohol, he’s such a great showman and I felt like I was watching him in a musical here. Add me to the Costello Crew. Imperial Bedroom is never far from my rotation and his latest, The Boy Named If, was a very pleasant surprise.
Nice! i am kind of hoping it continues on long enough that i get to do a second one. i am plotting already BTW, if anyone likes them enough to dive deep, the Dogs are a band that also loved to out a cool song or two on their cool b-sides. It takes a lot of extra digging to find all those gems when a band is that obscure, but well worth it.
I didn’t have either of today’s songs on my list. ‘I Need You’ was never in consideration and I kept ‘Alcohol’ off because I didn’t want to go overboard with Muswell Hillbillies (one of my favorite albums). Self restraint.
I remember his cameo on Frasier which was was cool. *Edit: I may be showing my age and uncoolness but when I think or hear of E.C. i think of Clapton!
Dare I say, continence? *or temperance? I was looking for the English word associated with drinking moderately but I'm not sure I hit it right...
2 for 2 for me today! “I Need You” was #4 and “Alcohol” was #35 on my list. Two different songs from the Kinks in two different periods, but both great in their own ways. Kinda like this clip, that I know that Avid Zeki would appreciate:
I Need You This is my favourite among the early riffy songs. To my ears, while the lyrics aren't that more unique than "You Really Got Me" or "All Day and All of the Night", the sense of urgency in Ray's singing and his and Dave's guitar playing are much more intense in this song and that makes the song more special for me. I first heard this song in the mid-90s on the Rhino CD Kinks-Size Kinkdom which I think is a really great Kinks album as a whole. It is fascinating that this a strong song like "I Need You" was originally "just" a B side to "Set Me Free". I can kind of imagine the two songs being about two persons in a couple, where one of them wants to leave (the narrator of "Set Me Free") while the other desperately wants the relationship to continue (the narrator of "I Need You"), so they complement each other. Alcohol On my 41-80 list I had both tea songs but not "Alcohol" which might be a fair reflection of my beverage consumption. In any case, I am surprised that I didn't include "Alcohol" (the song, that is) on my list as I've always loved the theatrical nature of this song. There is a real dramatic short story told in the lyrics (and I also think the word "floosie" is funny, I don't think I've heard that particular word sung in any non-Kinks song in my record collection) and there is again that blend of humour, empathy and darkness that makes Ray such a unique writer. The studio version on Muswell Hillbillies is very very good, but the live version on Everybody's In Showbiz is truly outstanding.
