The Kinks - Album by Album (song by song)

I remember watching 'THE LONG DISTANCE PIANO PLAYER' as a highlight of a fan club meeting, many years ago (mid '90s I guess).

 

Watched the two episodes (2 & 3) earlier on - haven't seen enough yet to form an opinion. Given that I've never heard of this show before and have no idea about the plot I'll be interested to see how it develops.

Alan Plater also wrote The Beiderbecke Affair/Tapes/Connection series in the 80s (which I have recently rewatched) - this is very different to those!

 

That’s cool you saw it at the fan event! I heard about that showing a few years after the fact. Until the programme turned up on YouTube, it was the only known sighting of the show since it’s 70s broadcast.

 

It was all very serious, with it being loaned by the BBC especially for the fan club!

 

No doubt for the Avid fans seeing it it was near BiBliCal!

 

Arthur and Kinks in the 60s:
I’ve followed this thread closely, but I haven’t much to add that hasn’t already been so well articulated by Mark and others. When I started following it, Face to Face was my favorite Kinks album, but it was replaced as we explored each successive album. My top three are virtually interchangeable; Arthur tops the list at the moment because it has fewer skippable tracks for me.

Arthur
Something Else
VGPS
Face to Face
Kink Kontroversy
Kinda Kinks
Kinks

Arthur strikes me as a transitional album: Ray is taking one more look backwards, while starting to develop the Kinks sound of the early 70s. Arthur has less stylistic variety than the previous two albums, but the "mini-suite" nature of some of the tracks keeps things interesting musically.

It is often noted that even as a young man, Ray wrote from the perspective of a much older person and expressed a yearning for earlier, simpler times. But it makes sense: by the time he was 21, he had lost two sisters (one to sudden death, one to Australia), was under constant pressure to deliver hits and album tracks, was embroiled in a lawsuit that kept his songwriting earnings in escrow, was constantly touring with a rowdy, fractious band in order to make money (but had been banned from the lucrative U.S. market), and was in a marriage that he had not planned on, with a family to support. For someone who wasn’t “like everybody else” and had fought to avoid a structured, conventional life, he must have felt trapped in many ways. It’s no wonder he wanted to escape into a simpler past, and that his resentment against the Establishment and the music business increasingly became a common theme in his writing.

As far as favorite Kinks songs of the 60s, I was initially going to limit to 10 but singles took most of the slots, so I too did 25. It was a tough exercise, and could change with the next track I play!

You Really Got Me
All Day and All of the Night
Tired of Waiting for You
See My Friends
Till the End of the Day
Sunny Afternoon
Dandy
Too Much on My Mind
Rainy Day in June
David Watts
Death of a Clown
Situation Vacant
Waterloo Sunset
Days
Do You Remember Walter
Picture Book
Animal Farm
People Take Pictures of Each Other
Berkeley Mews
Till Death Us Do Part
Victoria
Some Mother's Son
Brainwashed
Australia (Edit)
Shangri-La

 

Many Thanks just watched the whole thing through and appreciated Ray's performance.
I think I read in a link here that the writer was inspired by the book "They Shoot Horses Don't They?"
If that be the case, well it just speaks for itself!

 

Thanks again for that, I have a mid 60's Rave Magazine or two with a Ray Interview or Kinks feature.

 

Today I hope you'll indulge me in a bit of a diversion to talk a bit about the director of The Long Distance Piano Player, Philip Saville* (1927-2016) as co incidentally I've just finished his posthumously published autobiography, They Shoot Directors, Don't They? - a hugely entertaining and very recommended read, although despite it's title referring to the same 1935 book that inspired TLDPP (as mentioned by @All Down The Line above), the Ray Davies play doesn't merit one word within: however what does come across greatly is that despite not being a household name what a storied scene hopping Zelig of the 60s era he was, being among many other things the director of the lost early 1963 BBC Play Madhouse On Castle Street, now considered of huge historical import for it's incongruous appearance by a pre-fame Bob Dylan, as well as the man behind the only production of Hamlet ever to be filmed on location at Kronburg Castle (and starring Christopher Plummer and Michael Caine), not to mention (something he goes on at great length about, and I guess why not) dating Diana Rigg for 7 years at the time when she was close to being the ideal woman of collective Western male desires! Later in the 80s he would hit further artistic and popular highs with the esteemed Tv series Boys From The Blackstuff, and The Lives And Loves Of A She-Devil , as well as the 1987 Mandela biopic with Danny Glover. Despite directing several feature films he always seemed to have a preference for TV work, which is why he was still happy to do Play For Todays for the BBC in the early 70s when he'd already graduated to making Oedipus Rex with Orson Welles a few years before.

So again this guy is a fairly heavy talent for Ray to get involved with here, even if ultimately their collab didn't merit any ink in his memoirs. A shame cos even though it's a minor work in his ouvre, it'd have be interesting to read about how working with Ray compared with his experience with Dylan 8 years earlier, being the man who directed both of them in their first dramatic roles.

*I spelled his name slightly wrong in my initial post, apologies!

 

Part 4 of LDPP:

 

Part 5. Ray's performance of 'Marathon' is near the beginning of this one. In the context of the play, it seems to be placed as a justification of why his character is setting himself such a strenuous task: the spirit of carpe diem contrasted with others who just 'watch the show' (and their own lives) go by:

 

I take it you didn't read this due solely to his link to Ray?

 

Haha no! I’m interested in his other work too. I admit I was a little disappointed there was no Ray but that was more than made up for by how readable it was: I just tore through it. I definitely didn’t read it as homework for this thread! Was just a co incidence, thought I’d mention it as it’s a fresh memory and vaguely relevant.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/They-Shoot-Directors-Dont-Memoirs/dp/1900203804

 

I did have an old friend that made the acquaintance of Dianna Rig in the 60's but i was more than a little taken aback to hear they were quite underwhelmed by her!
Oh my friend was female and thought a lot more of Dave's company!

 

The piano player is quite interesting, and it has me wondering where they are going with it.
It seems perhaps a manipulative manager perspective by today's snippets.

 

This They Shoot Horses Don't They? connection is very interesting, as this is indeed a variation on the exact same subject. The fact the director would again reference it in his autobiography is almost too much. Also : after my "review" of Last Night in Soho, that's the second mention of Diana Rigg in this thread. Let's keep them coming!

Anyway, since we're in the filmmaking process today, I'll indulge myself and add my two cents about Alan Sharp who wrote the script. He was a Scottish novelist/writer, whose claim to fame (and to my personal pantheon) comes from a bunch of out of the box / outstanding westerns he wrote in the early seventies, like Billy Two Hats (an extremely curious film shot by Canadian – and future Rambo director – Ted Kotcheff in the Israeli desert, with Gregory Peck in one of his weirdest less amicable roles and an unforgettable gang of leprous "Indians"), the Peter Fonda directed The Hired Hand with Warren Oates, sitting somewhere between Dennis Hopper, Monte Hellman and Sam Peckinpah and, last buts not least, the extraordinary Ulzana's Raid, directed by Robert Aldrich, about a little commando of Apaches escaping the reservation and raising hell in Arizona, tracked by U.S troops led by a young fascist lieutenant and an old trapper played by Burt Lancaster, with wonderful moustache and resigned attitude. This is one of the greatest "lost" westerns of the early seventies, and a huge favorite of mine. Sharp then wrote the script for the remarkable Night Moves, a very very dark "film noir" with another great moustache (Gene Hackman) directed by Arthur Penn, and starring Melanie Griffith in her very first role (I think). All these films were unsettling and very violent, but they don't deserve the "nihilistic" tag they often get (well not quite "often", since they're little known anyway). On the contrary, I'll argue they're imbued with a humanistic world view, only disillusioned and showing no signs of naivety whatsoever. Something they definitely have in common with the guy who'd just written Arthur…

 

You're welcome. I realize that some of those articles were already used in Kinks bios, but there were other tidbits of info that I've never heard about & piccys that I never saw before, so go for it my fellow Avids.

 

There was quite a bit that was new to me, inc that portrait of Mick Avory as a child drawn by his father!

 

Note for others: this is in 2nd article (from top).
Afterthought: should have considered Pop Avory for album art director!

 

Funny you should say that: I have heard that it was Avory’s dad who designed the Kinky Boots logo for the band!

 

Really!?

 

I’m I read that somewhere at some point, sorry I don’t have an original source for it. Was just mentioning in passing in one of the biographies I’m fairly sure.

 

I believe you. My “really” was meant more as a laughing wow.

 

Today in Kinks history:
The Kinks single Sweet Lady Genevieve is released on this day in 1973. Recorded at the band's own Konk studios in July of the same year.

 

With "Sitting In The Mid Day Sun" on the flip, it could've been a huge double a-side if it had been promoted properly.