I honestly don't know, but like I said from the top, it has that cheesy sound of the cheap family keyboard... the Lowrey is the one that comes to mind.
I know you are a Church fan. The recent Starfish reissue by Intervention Records is gorgeous and sounds amazing. Get it while you still can! Best this album has ever sounded and comes with excellent bonus tracks. Do you have the Kinks mono box? Those are pretty fantastic sounding records and I love the packaging. So happy I picked up that set when it was available. The Village Green box is also beautiful. It's so sad that the corners are bent, because the rest of the set is perfect.
I looked at the mono box near the start of the thread, and it's out of my range now... The Church are a great alt kind of band.. with a really interesting history... My budget is shot at the moment... I'm hoping nothing else gets released this year lol
Ha ha. I'm with you. They need to stop releasing albums for awhile and also close down all the local record shops. I think I have a problem. I say I am not buying anything else this month and that usually lasts a week at most. I also just bought the Legacy edition of Everybody's In Showbiz. I didn't even know about it and it's one of the last few albums I need for the collection. It's three LPs with bonus tunes. Anyone have this?
The Way Love Used To Be stereo mix (2:11), recorded 11 Oct 1970 at Morgan Studios (2), Willesden, London I know a place not far from here It's not far away, love, but if you come I know a place where we'll be alone And we'll talk of life, the way love used to be I know a place not far away And we'll find a way through the city streets We'll find a way through the mad rushing crowd And we'll talk about the way love used to be I know a place not far from here It's not far away, love, but if you come I know a place where we'll be alone And we'll talk about the way love used to be Written by: Ray Davies Published by: Coronado Music Here we have Ray moving into a heartbreaking minor key melody. The opening piano is beautiful, and we move through a really lovely chord sequence, with an acoustic guitar working in accompaniment giving us some really nice textural things. Some really nicely arranged strings that set the emotional impact even higher. Again, we have this beautiful fragile melody and delivery from Ray. The string arrangement somewhat rises up in the mix over the course of the track, and it sort of works to give the song a dynamic lift. We have this longing reflection in the lyrics. Come with me my love to this quiet place, away from the maddening crowds, so we can talk of the way love used to be. It is left very open as to whether the lyric is suggesting that this couple is talking about the way their love used to be, or whether they are talking about the way in which the perspective of love has changed in general among the people of the world. I have to speculate that it was by this time that Ray and Rasa were having troubles. I can’t find any dates, except that he was married a second time in 1974…. Either way, to some degree this seems like a sad reflection on how the world can seriously impact the relationship between two people. The whole idea of getting away from the maddening crowd seems to indicate a want to get away from it all, and reflect on who we are, or at least were, before the impacts of the outside world altered our perspectives, and/or actions, and led to the growing apart. In that context we have a scenario where it would make sense to believe that talking about the way love used to be, would be an attempt to get back to where we once were before the distance between us seemed impenetrable. I think this is the saddest love song that Ray has put down yet…. and possibly the saddest love song he ever did. To me this song is really affecting, and I feel like I can hear the man inside the legend, hurting and unable to resolve this hurt. I’m not really sure what else to say about this track, but one thing is for certain. The first two actual songs on this album are two of the most beautiful things Ray has done up to this point, and possibly ever, but we have a long way to go, so that is a tentative thought for now. I love the opening song and it continues the idea of returning to a more pastoral life. The Lola instrumental is a bit of fun, and perhaps light relief, before we enter into the heartbreaking beauty of this track. Ray manages to wring every last drop of emotion out of himself here, and I think that is a big part of the attraction here for me.
Definitely. Except if you count a couple of early mid-tempo tunes on Kinda Kinks, I think it’s the first proper love ballad the Kinks ever did. The second being… the devastating Moments, on the same record. And then, hard to believe as it is, I think Ray's never tried his hand at the genre again…
What a fantastic song this is! Until reading @Fortuleo's post I hadn't thought about the lack of love ballads by the Kinks. Considering how long their career was, it is a strange omission, especially considering the quality of this one.
I don’t quite know how to break this to you, but your attempt to get VGPS in quadraphonic is doomed to failure.
The Way Love Used To Be: The first playlister off of the soundtrack for me. It has that gentle sound that creates an ache in the heart that almost envelopes me with a feeling of sadness. Short in length, it’s perfectly crafted.
The Way Love Used to Be is another one I discovered on the Great Lost Kinks Album, where it is sandwiched between When I Turn off the Living Room Light and I’m Not Like Everybody Else, one of the most unlikely sequence on any Kinks comp’. I'd say it's second only to the absurd run of Berkeley Mews/Holiday in Waikiki/Willesden Green on Kronikles !! Because of my early exposure to the GLKA, I was a huge fan of the song for quite some time before I ever knew of Percy’s existence. How can we Kinks fans have that many favorites ??? This song is the very definition of “exquisite” – and more. With those strings arrangement, it could be too sentimental, even cheesy, but the melody, lyrics and singing make sure that’s never the case. And during the instrumental bridge with this big harmonic shift, the strings do bring something majestic to Ray’s otherwise miniature music-box tune (just three short four lines verses, no chorus). Yes ! This is the key idea, and such a beautiful one. Was love really that different sometime before? Or is it about reminiscing of a shared lost feeling? What an unabashed romantic ambiguity this is… The place where the protagonists could go “talk” about love, is it near an old oak tree, by any chance? Is someone named Daisy involved in any way? Or a Julie maybe? In just a few delicate words, we feel the longing, the regret, both the closeness and the distance. “It’s not far away” he says, but it may also be unreachable. He calls her “love”, which can mean a lot of very different things, a lot of very different relationships, or moments in a relationship. “We’ll find a way through the mad rushing crowd”, the phrasing and musicality of that line is stunning. All through the song, the meter of the melody is constantly a bit off, serpentine, very unusual as far as pop writing go. Ella Fitzgerald could’ve given justice to it. “And we’ll talk about Life / the way love used to be”… It’s so fragile, timid, almost hesitant. I like the fact the whole song is a proposition, an invitation, with a fair chance to get a refusal… Who knows? It’s a song of both hope and hopelessness at the same time, which I find extraordinary.
The thing that always sticks in my mind about 'The Way Love Used To Be' is it's unlikely appearance in WWF/E wrestler Mick Foley's autobiography, where it's mentioned in the context of a naive young Foley attempting to chat up a girl by reciting the lyrics at her! In the book, Foley perhaps defers to the average wrestling fans sensibilities by saying the girl wasn't impressed by the 'cheesy' message of the song, although I can't imagine reciting the lyrics of any song cold to a crush would be the best route into their affections in most situations. In truth, Foley is actually a MAJOR Kinks fan, and last year wrote a great, thoughtful article on his 25 favourite Kinks songs which I'd recommend everyone on the thread to read if they haven't already: Mick's 25 Favorite Kinks Songs - , and in which he writes of this song: 'Another song that no other rock-star of his era could have written, I carried the lyrics of this beautiful testament to old-fashioned romance folded up in my wallet for my final two years of college. When I finally had a chance to meet Ray Davies, in 2010 at the Westbury Music Fair, I gave him a photocopy of the page from my memoir where I talked about the lyrics in my wallet. I did not want to be so presumptuous as to hand Davies the entire book – even though, in retrospect, I wish I had. But my wife told me afterwards that Ray held the page in his hand like it was a rare jewel; like he genuinely appreciated how much the song meant to me.'
Don't think The Kinks ever did this one live, but Ray did it solo! Here's a 2010 version, either the same or very similar to the live version included on the VGPS box, apparently because Ray claims the song was written that far back for that project, and as @Fortuleo alludes, with the songs invocation of lost love and times, it does fit well thematically (if not totally sonically) with that batch of songs.
This is wonderful, as is the entire list/essay. I know nothing about this chap and would never have clicked on anything with such a cover if you, @ajsmith , hadn’t recommended it. Well worth reading. An aside: I’ve seen this more than once recently and am scratching my head because it’s the opposite that I remember. “By 1966, The Kinks had seemingly turned their backs on the conventional wisdom of the day, that stated for a British band to be successful, they had to sound American.” I could swear it was in a MAD Magazine, that I read as a kid in ‘67 or early ‘68, that they spoofed how American bands had to sound British (to pretend to be part of the British Invasion). Why would British bands , who by default already fit the bill, try just the opposite? Anyway, I don’t think this is true (of that time).
The Way Love Used to Be Kronikles gave me early exposure to two songs off Percy (including the soon-to-be-maligned Willisden Green) but I didn't get a copy of The Great Lost Kinks Album until about ten years ago. So the first time I heard this excellent song was when I watched the movie and I remember it really got my attention at the time. I lean towards Mark's theory that this is a personal song - perhaps reflecting Ray's marriage breakdown, which was on the cards at the time he wrote it. It's certainly a deeper and more fragile love song than warranted by the movie's main character, who was only tracing his new member's old movements! I've read a lot of things on this Forum but @ajsmith has produced the most surprising of them all. That's a fantastic anecdote and link to Foley's favourite Kinks songs - a really well thought out list. I'm now hanging out for Ritchie Blackmore doing a cover of Death of a Clown!
"The Way Love Used To Be" It's an exquisite song which I've listened to far too little over the last 30 years. So simple and short but so deep, and with a wonderful musical backing. How it ended up on the soundtrack of a film about a different kind of organ transplant is another matter, but this one deserves to have a place in the top tier of Kinks songs of the Pye era.
i still buy lp's but i got the expanded showbiz on CD and like it a lot. should have come out as a double live , with a seperate stand alone single studio lp. i read that somewhere (probably on a kinks forum here ) and it always made sense to me.
The Way Love Used To Be "Achingly beautiful" was how one author described this song. I wouldn't disagree with that but is it Ray's most tender ballad? I'm not convinced but it's definitely in the top two. The later Nothing Lasts Forever is equally moving. Is The Way Love Used To Be describing the way the film's character "felt" about love before he had his transplant?
i have my import copy of percy from decades ago and am glad it is in my collection. it has a handful of great tunes amongst what i guess the lads felt was soundtrack fodder. didn't know there was an EP of the "good songs" from percy.
I suspect that if a count is made of top tier/top 10/top 5 referenced in this thread (to date), we’d find a bulging top with 25 tunes written in minuscule lettering, shoe-horned into a slot for ten.
Ditto. I was never a Wrestling fan really, but when it first came on Aus tv I watched a bit. Obviously Hulk Hogan and Andre The Giant seemed like the well known guys.... I liked Mankind and Junkyard Dog though lol.... I can't say i ever expected to read a well written article by Mankind on his love of the Kinks lol Also Blackmore's Knight doing Death Of A Clown would really be interesting.
