It's a beautiful thing, and makes for a wonderful, relaxed visit to the band, it's music and history.
Hard to pick 25 but....... See My Friends Waterloo Sunset Rainy Day In June Lazy Old Sun Starstruck You Really Got Me Love Me Till The Sun Shines Sunny Afternoon Mr Songbird Days Victoria I'm Not Like Everybody Else Wonderboy All Day And All Of The Night Some Mother's Son The Village Green Preservation Society Fancy Autumn Almanac Till The End Of The Day Big Sky No Return Shangri-la Rosie Won't You Please Come Home Death Of A Clown Animal Farm Being the Kinks I naturally regret leaving about another dozen out!
Hi. If the surface noise is as distracting as you say, I think you should ask for a replacement. I know how you feel about doing this with your local shop - I've only done it for a seriously warped album. But we buy new records to enjoy them and they aren't cheap. On my anniversary version of Arthur, there are a few faint crackles at the start of Shangri-La (stereo) but they soon disappear. There is no noticeable surface noise beyond that. I have had albums before with bad surface noise. It's an occupational hazard of buying second-hand vinyl: I find about 5-10% of the used records I buy have noise issues on vinyl which looks fine. It's much rarer to get noise problems on new albums - except with picture discs which tend to be designed for decoration rather than listening. Caveat: I had been listening to earlier today to Charley Patton - a blues pioneer whose surviving recordings are mostly average quality - so my noise-tolerance threshold is probably higher than normal.
Reverse order for me ranking their UK LP's! 1. Arthur 2. VGPS 3. Something Else 4. Face to Face 5. Kontroversy 6. Kinda 7. Kinks
Kinks : You Really Got Me / Stop Your Sobbing Kinda Kinks : Tired of Waiting for You / Nothin’ in the World Can Stop Me Worryin’ ‘bout That Girl The Kinks Kontroversy : Till’ the End of the Day / Where Have All the Good Times Gone Face to Face : Sunny Afternoon / Rosie Won’t You Please Come Home Something Else by the Kinks : Waterloo Sunset / Lazy Old Sun Village Green Preservation Society : Village Green Preservation Society / Village Green Arthur : Some Mother’s Son / Shangri-la This list of two tracks per album by @Fortuleo is very good in itself and also shows a steady progression in the standard of Ray's songwriting - which is not meant to imply that You Really Got Me is anything but top quality! But it leaves Dave's efforts on the outer and doesn't pick up singles and b-sides that didn't make albums. So I'd take @Fortuleo's list and add a similar number of songs for part 2: Set Me Free See My Friends A Well Respected Man Dedicated Follower of Fashion I'm Not Like Everybody Else Dead End Street This Is Where I Belong Autumn Almanac She's Got Everything Berkeley Mews Wonderboy Creeping Jean King Kong Days!
Chocolates? I’m reminded of The Worst if Jefferson Airplane album cover. Google Image Result for https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/1f/Worst_of_Jefferson_Airplane.jpg/220px-Worst_of_Jefferson_Airplane.jpg
100% agree with this. Enjoy your time away, Mark! Well deserved. This thread was the reason I created an account here on these forums. From the sounds of it, and perusing around other threads, this is a unique thread in that there really is no trolling or arguing. Lucky us! But also, I think it's a testament to not only the Dedicated Followers of Kinkdom here, but also the band itself. There is a uniqueness to the Kinks that brings people of a certain ilk together, but also such a variety of styles and eras that it can bring people together of all different ilks!
First off, Mark, have a happy & safe vacation & enjoy yourself w/your family. This thread w/go on under the capable hands of Avid AJ Smith & you can come back relaxed & refreshed to tackle Lola. As it has been pointed out, this thread has been free of rancor, anger & general BS unlike some of the other threads that I've seen on this forum. None of us Avids has gotten into a fight w/each other or used the Ignore button (well, I did but only by accident!). Again, I'll just quote Mike Stax of Ugly Things who said that Kinks fans are the smartest ones. As for that 1970 Kinks compilation, I do like the cover & wish that Kronikles used it, but the track listing seems a bit skimpy to me, as well as the covers. Another thing is why "Dandy" is on Side 4 bookended w/2 VGPS songs?
Arthur......can i help to cheer you? Arthur was the first full Kinks album i heard and straight away not only did i think was absolutely top shelf in material and performance but also wondered why it did not seem to get all the accolades i felt it deserved? I rushed to hear the Kinks the other claimed Klassic's from Face To Face in 1966 through 1968's The Village Green Preservation Society and personally still gave Arthur the edge. Whilst a fan of the Who for much longer i further pondered why the band's 1969 equivalent story concept LP Tommy is so much better known and celebrated than the Kinks Arthur Or The Decline And Fall Of The British Empire. I conclude that much of the reason has already been played out in this thread: *The band memorably played much celebrated dynamic live shows of many of the tracks in concert whereby even the hero Tommy was present in the highly visible and visceral lead singer plus all the band members adopted their own cast character. *The highs were very high eg: Pinball Wizard, See Me Feel Me & Sparks, both studio and live. *The story was mystical & had some drug & sex references/involvement. That said I think Arthur's story is tighter, better developed and at times the studio recording actually out Who's the Who in heaviness as nowhere on Arthur do any recordings sound instrumentally like sparse demos. Great that Reprise promoted it heavily in the US but it can't have been easy timing, what with the Kinks still feeling their way back towards live confidence, US fan popularity and chart success!
I don't do comps, except my own to fill blanks. But the nature of discussion on this thread lends to the observation that the Black Album is the most legit compile I have come across. And Ray ultimately got his double album. It isn't trying to sell anything.
Yes, I do think that was probably why "The Black Album" as it is sometimes referred to got included in the otherwise excellent Mono Collection from 2016, which I never purchased partly because of this. Instead, I went piecemeal by adding titles to Spotlight On The Kinks, which I had owned since the mid-80's, including The Kinks Are Well Respected Men to round things off. I suspect a lot of folks are unfamiliar with that '87 "Past Masters" type set, so here is a link plus pics showing its track list (in case it hasn't been posted before): The Kinks - The Kinks Are Well Respected Men Interestingly enough, I've found this to be a more satisfying listen on its own than either of the two Past Masters sets. For the Beatles, I actually prefer their "Red" and "Blue" albums respectively for those non-album singles even though these are not complete on their own. I'm not really sure whether I could compile a 25-song "Best Of" for the 60's Kinks, and would probably end up with something a lot like Spotlight On The Kinks anyway.
Great collection and sadly out of print--I guess because everything is available as a bonus track elsewhere, but it's such a nice listen. It's missing just "This is Where I Belong" and five solo Dave Davies single sides from their 60's output, not counting the rarities that were later released (starting with Kronikles and Great Lost Kinks Album). All six of the missing songs can be found on a Japanese LP called Kwack Kinks, featuring an absolutely awful cover graphic of a photo of a Ray Davies as a child, printed in negative. It's the companion volume to "More Kinks on Pie" (sic) and a weird random comp called "You Really Got Me", the latter featuring a tied-up man harassed by gangsters on the cover. The concept, as far as I could gather, is that you would get all three of these LPs to get the complete 60's singles output, though why they built these two rarities collections on the back of this especially poorly-conceived "early hits and random stuff" LP, I dunno. Still, I play them rather often when I want to hear the 1966-9 singles, since I don't have "The Kinks Are Well Respected Gentlemen." The Kinks – Kwack Kinks (1983, Vinyl) The Kinks – More Kinks On Pie (1983, Vinyl) The Kinks – You Really Got Me (1983, Vinyl)
An essential Kinks purchase it is. I've just realized that I can even go as far as replacing the 1970 double set by it in my mono box if I want to. Is it allowed ? Or would it be judged heretical? You should replace it. I picked it myself a few weeks ago in anticipation our discussions, and there's no issue whatsoever with my copy… I like your list for vol.2 ! But if I were to use the same "objective" method for non LP tracks (based on what I feel was the song by song consensus when we discussed them on this thread), it would be closer to this: All Day and All of the Night I Go to Sleep See My Friends Dead End Street Big Black Smoke I'm Not Like Everybody Else Autumn Almanac Love Me 'Till the Sun Shines (Live BBC) Days 'Till Death Us Do Part Berkeley Mews This Man He Weeps Tonight Mindless Child of Motherhood King Kong
That Kwack Kinks cover is terrifying and if used for anything. should have been kept for ‘The Residents salute The Kinks’ should it ever happen! on the other hand, ‘More Kinks On Pie’ is kinda kute… there certainly were some truly inexplicable Kinks Komp Koncepts in the 80s.. ‘Candy From Mr Dandy’ anyone?
Has this been mentioned? Historically, one of the reasons people have sought out the Kinks' "Black Album" 2x LP comp is that it was supposed to have the best (or especially good) LP sound quality for a lot of the single tracks, if you could find a mint copy. I don't know if that's actually the case.
First, my thoughts on the Kinks’ albums from the 60s. This has been a strange, enlightening and thrilling experience to go back and listen to these albums that I completely missed from one of my favorite bands. I’m not sure why I never did the deep dive, other than, just as with the Stones, the fragmented and not readily accessible nature of the Kinks’ early discography made it difficult to do so back when I was discovering them in the mid 70s through mid 80s. To state the obvious, there was no Internet or YouTube to find these songs and lack of funds as a youth coupled with the need to ride my bike to the local record store (which probably did not stock these albums anyway) was pretty prohibitive. The first three albums, while containing more than a handful each of great songs, do play like slapped together affairs. I’m glad that I now have them and that I have listened to them, but for my purposes I would simply cherry pick the best songs. As has been widely noted though, many of the best songs during this first three album period are singles and are not on these albums. I have gathered those non album songs as well and have ended up with 42 songs from the combined album and non-album tracks that can be attributed to this very early period that I think are fantastic songs and that make my playlist. Not bad for the first three album period, all banged out in under two years. Once we hit Face to Face, the albums themselves transition in a way that one can clearly feel the albums are intended and designed to be presented as a cohesive set of songs. From Face to Face through Arthur, I like almost every single song. Add to that the incredible number of songs that did not appear on those albums, due to being stand alone singles, b-sides or remained unreleased (at the time), and you have a tremendous collection of brilliant songs from this additional period. To put it all into perspective, below is a small chart that shows you the number of songs by the kinks that I knew going into this thread versus the number of songs that I now know, love, and would include in a playlist. I broke it out by periods covered. First Three Albums. Known and Liked Before 13* New Songs Liked 30 Total Songs Liked. 43 Face to Face and Something Else. Known and Liked Before 6** New Songs Liked 31 Total Songs Liked. 37 Village Green, Great Lost Kinks, Great Lost Dave and Arthur. Known and Liked Before 4 New Songs Liked 42 Total Songs Liked. 46 Total. Known and Liked Before 23 New Songs Liked 103 Total Songs Liked. 126 *Also, it should be noted that of these 13 that were already known and loved, several were actually known to me not for the Kinks’ versions, but rather for cover versions (I Gotta Move by Tom Petty, Stop Your Sobbing by The Pretenders, Where Have All the Good times Gone by Van Halen). ** Same here in that I knew The Romantics version of NeverMet a Girl Like You Before but did not know the Kinks’ version. I loved The Kinks going in to this and, in particular, was a big fan of certain songs from the first 5 albums, but those were really just the singles I now realize in retrospect. I then clearly missed the entire era from Village Green through School Days. My love for them then resumed as a teenager with the release of Misfits, a look back to Sleepwalker and then moving forward through State of Confusion. Funny though how, as a completist typically, I missed out on all these great songs from the 60s. There’s no other way than to call this a bounty of brilliant new (to me) music that I have been listening to nonstop since starting this thread. I must now bow again to Headmaster Winstanley in thanks!
Just a thought (after clicking on that Candy From Mr. Dandy link to see for myself whether it was real!): for a guy (Ray) whose been in the music biz for his entire life...it seems like there’s no control over the discography. None! Heep were like this, too, except The Kinks catalog seems available to one and all, completely on steroids. Makes Heep’s gazillion compilations look like child’s play. Candy From Mr. Dandy?
Kinks top 25 of the 1960s I will give this my best go here... This is a bit heavy towards their earlier years, but I just love those songs so much and are a bit more fun to listen to than the heavier (topically) stuff from the later album. And "Come On Now" and "Time Will Tell" are new classics for me that I just love to listen to. I left off "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night" because while I love them, I think I have heard them enough and get more joy out of listening in these: Side 1: Tired of Waiting for You Come On Now Set Me Free I Need You Till the End of the Day Where Have All the Good Times Gone Time Will Tell Side 2: Rosy Won't You Please Come Home Too Much On My Mind Rainy Day in June Sunny Afternoon Big Black Smoke This is Where I Belong Side 3: Death of a Clown Lazy Old Sun Waterloo Sunset Autumn Almanac Days Do You Remember Walter? Animal Farm Side 4: Berkley Mews Creeping Jean Some Mother's Son Australia Shangri-La 25 just isn't enough. Here is my full Spotify playlist of songs that I love to listen to, based on where we are in the thread so far. I will be adding to this as we continue. I didn't leave much off this list, to say the least...
