The Kinks - Album by Album (song by song)

Reminds me of Paul Nelson getting access to live tapes of the Velvet Underground in 1974 to compile the Live 1969 album. John Mendelsohn:

John Mendelsohn (musician) - Wikipedia

 

Which reminds me, in turn, that Lou Reed was a big Kinks fan.

 

Yea, that was interesting to me too.
When we were looking at Something Else we found out Lou and John Cale were really into Lazy Old Sun.... it was very cool to read about that.

 

He also strongly disliked the Beatlers, so Lou was more than okay in my book

 

I'm an unrepented beatlmaniac, but I always enjoy the "I hate Beatles" posture. Maybe I'm a bit envious, as a drug-addict looking at the clean world outside.

 

He also liked saying things expressly to annoy people. Cale was a Beatles fan, I believe.

 

Well, at least you know that you've got a problem

Nah, I don't hate 'em (that much). They got a few good songs, were rightfully considered influential and Macca was/is a gear fab etc musician/singer/songwriter. Its just that the fanatics and the whole cult around 'em leaves me cold. That and of course the fact that Ray Davies alone IMO wrote more great songs in 1965 than that other bunch combined did in the '60's.

 

He also hated Cale from time to time, so it all makes sense.

 

Kinks Kronikles
This is a brilliant brilliant album and it's the early Kinks compilation I much prefer over Ultimate Collection or any of the greatest hits packages. There’s plenty of variety here. Waterloo Sunset, Berkeley Mews, Wonderboy, Shangri La, King Kong, Willisden Green: they could be six different groups! I think Village Green Preservation Society is under-represented because those songs really make the best sense alongside each other.

If you want to turn someone on to the Kinks you could do a lot worse than give them a copy of Kronikles - if you can find a copy.

I bought a copy in the late 70s in a Brisbane record store that stocked imports. I don't think I've ever seen another copy in my many, many hours of browsing second hand records in Australia, NZ and Europe.

 

This and Muswell Hillbillies are my Golden Startime Kinky Holy Grails on ze old vinyls. Never been able to find either in great condition or acceptable prices so far. Love the tracklist. Almost too good

 

Re-reading those wonderful liner notes properly for the first time in years, I’m struck by a lotta things:

1) I was thinking recently (regarding the eternal query of Why Aren’t The Kinks As Legendary In Rock Mythology as Beatles/Stones/Who/Beach Boys etc) that something they lacked early on was a myth making publicist or hype man, a Derek Taylor, a Loog Oldman, a Nik Cohn, a Lester Bangs even if we’re taking Troggs. It strikes me that in John Mendelssohn, they finally got one, albeit in an unofficial transatlanticly estranged capacity and one who would sour on their work almost immediately after penning this first and definitive critical essay on The Kinks in these notes. Reading back, it’s a revelation (and maybe a bit embarrassing) to see how many Kinks facts, myths and takes first appear in print here, and how many I’ve regurgitated into my own writings and postings over the last quarter century. It’s like the UR-text of Kinks Kriticism for me and I bet many others.

2) I first read these notes (having ordered the CD import of this through Tower Records to acquire the 6 songs I could not get anywhere else) at the age of 16 in 1996, so back then I read Mendelssohn’s notes with an unquestioning assumption of the authority of elders, but from my 41 year old perspective today it strikes me how young he was when he wrote these notes (25 seems zygotic to me these days!) and how much they stand up without qualification. He writes with a sharp wit, a breadth of appropriate referential Anglospecific colour, a keen and complete understanding of the Kinks and the meaning and resonance of their work, one I definitely hadn’t achieved by my mid 20s and am still working on, as well as (as @Fortuleo mentions) a seemingly unique (and definitely enviable) access to and knowledge of the obscurer corners of their output that we’ve only recently caught up with in the digital and box set age, and that in 1996 and I’m sure in 1972 seemed like some heavily masonic level Kinks fan insider baseball. I mean he mentions The Long Distance Piano Player! What Kinks fan (esp a US one) had even heard of that back then! And he just tucks it in as a sly allusion to the similarly named Sillitoe story/film for his 12 or so countrymen that would have got that in 1972!

3) One tiny tiny complaint though: why does he say John Dalton is ‘fair haired’! He wasn’t! A puzzler, esp as Mendelssohn saw them many times live in this era.

 

No it's "Muswell Hillbillies" I find musically samey

 

Oops. I thought it was an odd comment. I’ll edit that out then.

 

Mark was so quick posting his thoughts on "Kink Kronikles" that I got caught out.

 

I made it halfway through. I'll have to read the rest later.

It's an interesting write up. It struck me he mentioned all sorts of, what I would imagine to be, obscure sorts of things.

 

Sorry

 

Wow

 

“…and the country-flavoured Johnny Ned Mendelssohn & His Clean Hankies.”

 

I will never understand the heaping praise the tracklisting for Kinks Kronikles gets when there is ONLY ONE VGPS song included.

 

Really! I noticed he did reference Muswell Hillbillies (in passing) so it must have been after that if he “soured.”

 

I don’t think it was meant to be a definitive best of as much as a thoughtfully curated hits, rarities and by-ways comp. I think it was intended to work as a compliment to the main catalogue available on Reprise at the time, which included VGPS.

There are very few LP only tracks on the album, and since VGPS was all LP only cuts, it loses out. Face To Face and Percy probably get more attention than the more feted albums released in between because they were both unavailable in the US at the time (the first had just been deleted, the second was never issued in the first place).

 

It really starts to show in his next set of liner notes for ‘The Great Lost Kinks Album’. Also apparently his 1984 Kinks biography (which I’ve never read but would like to) propagates the ‘it was all over after 1972’ theory.

 

Prior to two or three weeks ago I had no knowledge of anything (other than a hit single or two) post-Muswell Hillbillies. So I could very well feel the same way once I hear the music. (I’ll save my Show Biz initial thoughts for tomorrow).

 

Ah, one nitpicking Mendelssohn liner notes thought. I’ve always thought the four chaps were remarkably handsome!

 

I seem to recall coming across Kronicles (or maybe it was GLKA) at a record fair back in the 80s, but it would have been far too expensive for me (probably £20+) at the time. Looks like an interesting compilation, but one I've never owned. The sleeve notes are "something else"!