The Kinks - Album by Album (song by song)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the Davies family--before the boys were born--live in Lavender Hill prior to moving to Muswell Hill? Is Ray imagining a childhood he missed out on by not being born earlier to experience this wonderful place he heard about from his sisters and parents? Those harmonies! -- Like ghosts of someone else's memories, taunting Ray as he imagines a place he has only visited in his dreams. Best VGPS outtake, IMO.

Yeah, me too. I thought there would be more recognition for the masterpiece it is. Then again, I was surprised "Wonderboy" wasn't universally praised.

 

Interesting discussion. I don't agree that to compare Strawberry Fields and Lavender Hill is lazy, but as for myself I will freely admit to both being lazy and not a 60's music specialist.

I do agree that Lavender Hill is worthy of attention. As always with Ray, the lyrics, while uncomplicated, have a depth and character such that over time, and after repeated listens, they continue to reveal themselves. The meandering melody is evocative and lovely, it slithers so sensually, and with Ray's vocal performance the words blossom with emotion (for example when he sings "Saturate me with light"). Also, the shift in emphasis between the drums and background vocals creates an impression of drifting in and out of a dream. Top that off with a concise and artful guitar solo that one can always count on from Dave, and you've got yet another quality Kinks song!

 

According to Johnny Rogan's biography of Ray (the closest book I have in my bookcase, no Wikipedia used), the Davies family lived in the King's Cross area of London before moving to Muswell Hill during WWII

 

J0hn Lennon loved it.

 

Avid Luckless Pedestrian, not only do you write well, but I must say that your avatar constantly reminds me of one of the funniest Simpsons episodes that I ever watched.

 

Lavender Hill
A fairly new song to my ears. Imagine having an extra song like this just sitting around undiscovered for awhile? What an embarrassment of riches. Lovely song. Ray does a wonderfully delicate vocal and Rasa adds her own ethereal vocals. As Mark said, there's lots going on but yet it seems so light. Maybe up on Lavender Hill you're that much closer to the sun so you can be saturated by love. Ahhhhhh...bring me there!

 

Lavender Hill

Another new song for me over the past two weeks. It has certainly grown on me. I stumbled upon it once a year or two ago on some “overlooked songs of the Kinks” lists online. But really dove deep the past week. I love it. I don’t think it’s among the best songs of these “bonus” tracks we have covered, but to me, this is the one that *could have* been put on VGPS. It sounds of that ilk. It would absolutely fit. I might love Berkeley Mews or Till Death Us Do Part better, but they wouldn’t fit in with the album.

It’s the essence of Waterloo Sunset but with the sonic qualities of the Village Green. That’s just… wow! I never thought I would hear such a thing. What a treat! Thank goodness for this thread. Really!

 

Very well put!

 

I think that is a great idea expanding GLKA, possibly better and more rewarding than rearranging TKATVGPS.
In a vague way could the Kinks GLKA be a distant cousin of The Who's Odds and Sods particularly if GLKA is also made a double LP by the Avids?

 

Everybody's got something to hide......

 

My wife and I were looking at a house in Lavender Hill in Tunbridge Wells a couple of years back, and this song always reminds me of that now, even though that was brief and inconsequential. The song however I find fascinating. To me, the most overtly psych statement lyrically from Ray we ever got, and a production to match. It's got that lazy Kinks sound, but with a touch of dreaminess in the air, giving it a hazy and colourful feel. This could be in a smokey shack, or down by the riverside (again). I particularly enjoy the echo heavy drum breaks after 'biscuits with tea', which due to the mix almost sound so much drier. A hugely ambitious production I love, and would have made another fantastic EP track at the time if Ray felt it wasn't enough of a step forward for an A-Side.

 

Pictures In The Sand.

mono mix (2:45), recorded May 1968 at Pye Studios (No. 2), London

And I'm gonna spend my time,
Drawing pictures in the sand for you.
And I'm gonna ride the tide[?],
And I'm gonna make a rendezvous.

Sitting by the sea,
Sipping at my tea,
Drawing pictures in the sand,
And writing messages to you.

Pictures in the sand (Drawing pictures in the sand)
There is nothing I would rather do (There is nothing I would rather do)
Than just sit here in the sand (Drawing pictures in the sand)
And think of things I'd like to say to you (I love you true)
Every single day (Every single day)
I waste my time away,
Drawing pictures in the sand,
And writing messages to you.

(All together)
Pictures in the sand. (Drawing pictures in the sand)
Pictures in the sand.

If I didn't have a dime,
Would you still be loving me?
While I spend my whole life through,
Drawing pictures just for you.
But I could never draw my love,
It's so very hard to do.

Every single day,
I waste my time away,
Drawing pictures in the sand,
And writing messages to you.

Pictures in the sand. (Drawing pictures in the sand)
Pictures in the sand. (Do-bum, do-bum...)
Pictures in the sand. (Drawing pictures in the sand)

Written by: Ray Davies
Published by: ?

This is another brand new one to me.
This song opens up like it is going to be a somewhat uptempo stomper. We get a repeated hammer-on chord motif with some thumping drums and bass, and then we slide into a descending line, and we move into a tacet, and Ray comes in with the first line....

The lyric here is quite interesting, because although it seems like Ray is singing to his loved one, it kind of leaves the impression that this might be a fantasy.
Drawing pictures in the sand at the beach is generally a futile exercise, because of course when the tide comes in they are washed away.
He spends his time thinking of things he'd like to say to her, which suggests that this may not have actually ever occurred, even though the bridge starts off by saying If he didn't have a dime, would she still be loving him....
The general feel is that Ray is fawning for a girl he hasn't had the courage to connect with, or knows he won't actually be able to win. So we end up with this scenario of him sitting by the sea drawing picture messages in the sand - wasting his time away, and there is nothing else he would rather do.
He spends his whole life through drawing picture just for her, but he can't draw his love, because that's just so very hard to do.

I could be completely off the mark there, because it is altogether possible that this is a song of romantic love and he and his girl are both just sitting by the sea and these pictures are a shared relaxing pleasure. One could see them both sitting there drinking tea and watching these pictures be continually drawn and washed away, to be replaced once again perpetually.
The main thing that could lean the lyrics this way is the light and breezy delivery, that has this carefree, lighter than air feel, that gives this song a lot of its playful character.

Not sure which way I lean on this, but I think this is a song of wishful thinking.

Anyway after that robust opening, and Ray's opening line, we move into this wonderful bouncy, moderate tempo track that features some really excellent guitar from Dave.
Underneath Dave's guitar we have this really engaging shuffling beat with Pete playing ... It's kind of like a folkie/country/oom pah bass ... for some reason the style isn't coming to me this morning .. it's kind of skiffle but it's kind of not.... anyway I'm sure someone will better define it than me here... sorry. We have also a nice solid semi jazz kind of rhythm guitar holding it down underneath also.
But it's Dave's guitar that just really grabs me. It works as a counterpoint to the vocal and it is very expressive and we get these cool little hammers-ons that just give it a great feel, and some nice little runs.

The chorus comes in with a nice call and response thing going on. It is all so breezy, yet kind of lackadaisical or carefree. This, sort of chorus, section ends like the verse and then we move into a sort of alternate chorus with someone introducing it with a spoken all together. The pictures in the sand sounds like a few people singing and it has a sort of distant sound. Then is replied to by a falsetto pictures in the sand.

Then we get to that bridge, where the lyrics are kind of rushing onto each other and we move into a little scat singing that leads to a little run up that moves into a key modulation, which is opened with a lead guitar playing the melody, but essentially moves into a a la la la singalong, that closes out with the second half of a verse.

We have a really cool coda added onto this and this ends up leading us out of the song.

For some reason I am finding it hard to draw connections this morning, but I hear a lot of things here that are kind of familiar, but kind of not, and not really giving me anything specific to grab onto.

To me this is a delightful and surprising track that seems to be shooting above its class. It's kind of a humble little track, but there is so much going on, and it all works so well, and it has such a good feel to it.

So the whole idea that all these tracks missed out originally on being put on an album of some sort, is quite remarkable. This is quite remarkable to me, because a lot of these tracks are better than what a lot of artists were releasing, and yet I totally understand why they didn't make the Village Green album, for the most part. Each look a little deeper here, makes this seem, from these eyes, at this point in time, to be one of the most creative and original, yet almost totally out of sync with the times bursts of creative musical writing ever....

 

Instrumental/Backing Track

I'm not altogether sure if this is from the Big Box, but I'm not sure where else it would have come from, and it sounds like a different mix, and it sounds like a record, with a little crackle.

 

Nailed it. This was written, in his words, for his infant daughter, and was never meant to be recorded (so... how did we end up with a completed studio version?).

With this in mind, I love this song. It's a wistful singalong, with a carefree attitude, and would have made a nice little addition to a 20 track version of the album, with a day trip to the seaside. Having a baby of my own now only elevates my connection to this song in this regard. I'll let those that can dissect more do so, but to me it's just a jolly little track.

This comes from the bonus 10" with that compilation I mentioned previously.

 

That makes more sense, cheers ... and I'm glad they did record it

 

Pictures in the Sand
As usual, Mark sums up this track very well. It sounds more whimsical than the other songs Ray was writing around this time - partly because he's singing in his music hall-style (for want of a better term). The call-and-response section has echoes of sing-alongs around a family piano or at the local pub. I'm unsure why Ray left this song on the shelf but I'm adding it to the hypothetical bonus LP that should accompany every copy of TKATVGPS.

 

Pictures in the Sand has always been my favorite Great Lost Kinks Album song. I’d struggle to find any outtake by any artist that I rate higher than this one (well, ok, Blind Willie McTell – it’s just that I don’t count it as an outtake anymore). It’s such a fabulous tune, you get the jaunty almost cartoonish bouncy verse, everything is jolly and sunny and fine and whimsical, as all previous posters just noted. So jolly and sunny and fine you even get three of those verses, like happiness will never end… But then, it’s like the wind’s risen and the sky’s turned grey all of a sudden, and you can feel a dark veil of melancholy falling down on you, when this extraordinary chorus occurs, with its dramatic minor chord change and Dave’s raspy voice leading the group sing along. This fateful lamenting chorus is like a Greek chorus warning us that all is not so fine after all. You can actually see the tide erasing the pictures and the messages in the sand, and the singer left alone contemplating the remnant foam and his own condition as a failed artist, dreamer and lover (or father !), in the uber-kinksian “if I didn’t Have a Dime” section. This is genius pop music, incredibly graceful, indelibly touching, a lost masterpiece, and one of my personal most cherished Kinks tunes.

 

I'm feeling like a bit of a blowhard here cos now I can't seem to find an original source for my claim that 'Lavender Hill' was intended as a SFF take off. I'm sure I read it somewhere, relatively recently as in the last few years coming from the Davies bros themselves. Anyway I don't mean to diminish Lavender Hill by the comparison , to suggest that if it was a reaction to SFF that makes it a lesser, derivative work: Ray was just too good at this point to create something so basic even if he was trying to! I would however take issue with the idea that Ray was beyond writing his own parodies of other songs at this time, as there's an argument to be made that there was a degree of parody going on in the 'Where Was Spring?' tracks we'll be discussing soon.

 

Pictures In The Sand is AMAZING. I mean, what a cornucopia of effortless melodies just thrown aside and buried (officially) for nearly half a century! I could try and write more, but I can't bring the appropriate words to mind at the mo and I think everyone else is already covering it brilliantly.

The only original observation of my own I'll add, is: don't you think the 'If I didn't have a dime' section from around 1.13 sounds a lot like the chorus melody of The Lightning Seeds 1989 transatlantic alternative hit 'Pure'? (from around 1.09 in this video) This is PROBABLY a co-incidence, and it's likely that LS mainman Ian Broudie (no slouch himself as a composer) just chanced upon a similar melody, but you never know as the Kinks song had been out there for 16 years at the time. It kind of reminds me of how the brief middle section of Cat Steven's 'Matthew And Son' sounds a lot like the main tune of Tears For Fears 'Mad World'.. these 60s tunesmiths working on a blank page of pop music possibilty just blithely tossing out secondary melodies here and there that would later be echoed in the core structures of major hit decades later.

 

"Pictures In The Sand"

Another one that I'm hearing for the first time, and clearly another effortlessly great Ray song.

First impressions - it's actually so music-hall sounding, almost to the point of pastiche, that it sounds to me like it would fit more on one of the 70s concept albums, e.g. replacing "Holiday" on Muswell Hillbillies, or "Holiday Romance" on Soap Opera than it would on VGPS.

 

Today in Kinks History:

The Kinks classic You Really Got Me was released on this day in 1964, hitting no.1 in the UK charts and No. 7 in the US charts.
Although at the time it was customary in the music industry to release records on a Friday, during this period Pye were experimenting with Tuesday releases.

 

An excellent point - it may have also improved those albums (although I don't mind most of them personally!).

 

Pictures in the Sand

Here's the brilliance of this song:
Whether for a lover (real or imagined) or an ode to his daughter, you can hear genuine love in these lyrics. Ray somehow combines this deep emotion with a lighthearted whimsy, making for a uniquely rounded emotional presentation.

I'm not sure I'm really keen on the vocal affect Ray employs here, but I must admit it is truly perfect for the song.

While I can see the marvel that is this song, like yesterday's entry, this one is also a little too escapist for my taste. But it is beautiful and oh, so melodious! I can tell already, I'm probably going to be humming this one all day long.

And yet again, Dave astounds with his versatility on the six string. I think the guitar work is my favorite part of this song.

 

"Pictures in the Sand" - this sounded familiar when I heard it recently, I think because it reminded me of this old Sesame Street song of similar vintage from '69:

Goin' for a Ride



FTR, I like them both!

 

I don't know why, but this series of tracks is making me feel that the Kinks may have inspired this track to some degree, or perhaps just the band, who lean towards concept/thematic albums.

The Decemberists - Isn't It A Lovely Night



This track is from one of my favourite albums of the new millennium The Hazards Of Love.... I sort of feel a lot of folks on this thread may like it.
It covers a fairly broad range of musical styles, but is rooted in a folky/rocky base. It is based around an old folklore kind of story, and is executed really well