It could well be. I am still discovering a lot of this stuff really. I know it, but I don't KNOW it. I got most of these albums while I was in a stage of not listening to music properly anymore. I had become a passive listener. As for Ray and Dave's opinions on it..... they are interesting, but I generally don't pay too much attention to what artists say about their own work. Dave would have been annoyed the band were in showtune mode, almost certainly. If they spent a lot of this time drinking too much, that can have a big effect. Also, lots of artists grade how much they like their stuff, by the audience response to it...... Barry Gibb being a prime example of that..... so I tend to somewhat ignore what the artist thinks.
Kinks Kronikles: As mentioned, I had this album back when I was in my teens. I also mentioned earlier in the thread that as a result of this thread, I realized that although I had the album, and feel like the album cover is burned into my mind as one of my favorites, when I revisited the track listening earlier in the thread, I realized that really had not known many of the songs. I must have bought it largely for Lola. What’s interesting is that now, after having participated in this thread, most of the songs which had been unknown to me (it seems like I never really gave the album a fair chance) are now many of my favorites. Mr. Winstanley’s thread is clearly achieving the desired effect!
Everybody’s in Showbiz: Other than knowing Celluloid Heroes from the live album One from the Road (And loving that version), I knew nothing from this album up until two weeks ago. Thus far, having given it a fair number of spins, I like it quite a bit. As others have noted, it’s a little bit more upbeat and bouncy than MH, which I like. I have yet to sit and listen closely with headphones while reading the lyrics but I intend to do that shortly so that I’ll be ready to talk in greater detail about the songs.
No they didn't. I think you're confusing a subjective opinion with an objective one. You don't like the song. I do. And life goes on.
That certainly seems to have been the case for me. As I have said, I went through ... probably a decade, of being a passive listener. Albums became something to put on while I was doing something else, rather than the something I was doing. That's partly to do with being busy, and partly becoming a lazy listener. The main reason I like doing these kinds of threads is ....it is kind of like a rehabilitation course for music listening .... and it seems to work, for me at least
I was suggesting they "may" have done so and you are categorically stating they didn't but the actual confusing part was that it was hard to know by the written word that i was joshing around Steve.
The Jon Savage biography prints part of a particularly scathing review of Showbiz by Mike Saunders. Can't find a link to that online, so I'll try to dig it out this evening. The words "abysmal beyond belief" and "worthless" feature in it!
You never forget your first Kinks album. Everybody's In Show Biz was mine. It was originally my big brother's, which he bought after seeing them live at the Opera House in Boston, which was his first concert. He had a few other records in his small collection, which eventually went to me & eventually traded in for other records. I can recall the following: The first King Crimson album Frijjd Pink Ten Years After-Ssssss The Moody Blues-To Our Children's, Children's, Children Lord Such and Heavy Friends I wonder how my musical interests would have developed if I kept any of the above & traded Show Biz.Anyway, those albums went away, but the Kinks one stayed w/me followed by others found at the Record Exchange & various bargain bins, fueling my interest. According to Doug Hinman, Show Biz peaked at #70 on the Billboard charts on 11/18/1972, the 49th anniversary of which is coming up. The front cover may be a bit garish, but it's OK. I noticed that several of the celebrities were slightly disguised, probably to avoid legal problems. Everybody's In Show Biz may not be another VGPS, but I have enjoyed it for many years & it contains one of my favorite Kinks songs of all time (hint: it's not the usual suspect).
Ha ha. I’m surprised Metal Mike would even take a stab at reviewing this one. But no-holds-barred from Mike Saunders.
Rolling stone review Oct 1972 By BOB PALMER Ray Davies continues to wear his English citizenship like a badge. The Kinks have often used American musical idioms — especially variations on Richard Berry’s “Louie Louie,” as revived by the Kingsmen and by the Kinks themselves — but Ray has regularly used his considerable songwriting talents to anatomize situations of class and culture that are peculiarly English. Years of touring, boozing, and occasionally brawling onstage with his lead guitarist brother Dave haven’t diminished it. His nostalgia for the afternoon of the Empire, and his interest in the music hall/vaudeville traditions of his youth, continue unabated. His early efforts at the stand-up crooner idiom were often exquisite, especially “Sunny Afternoon” and “End of the Season,” and most recently he has shown ingenuity in adapting fashionable rock currents to his obsession. Muswell Hillbillies, for example, used the idea that the cockneys are England’s answer to the American cracker to validate a series of country & western essays that managed to maintain an implacably British flavor. Everybody’s in Showbiz, a double album containing a studio and a live record, is Ray’s first extended look at America. The new songs deal for the most part with touring, and with the difference between Hollywood stereotypes and American reality, the live record comprises hard rock and vaudeville material from recent Kinks albums performed with juiced gusto, high spirits, and occasional rank sloppiness. But the four sides hold together remarkably well, since most of the song situations deal with show business and its facade of tinsel and celluloid. While the Rolling Stones on their two-record set sing about a mythical American South to music that suggests a chemically augmented roadhouse band in some improbable Arkansas, the Kinks sing about an only partially mythical freeway to Hollywood. Their tunes roll and lurch along, with born arrangements that forcibly reminded an English friend of the BBC Northern Light Dance Orchestra, several Gilbert and Sullivan-style mock-oratorios, and a Buckingham Palaceful of vaudevillian quavers and music hall ivory tickling. Some listeners may find parts of the album revoltingly reminiscent of the kind of entertainment favored by their mums and dads, but Davies isn’t just trying to become the new Val Doonican; in fact, he seems to be magnifying and exaggerating the excesses of show business in order to call attention to its essentially grotesque character. The album is not the homogeneously delightful sort of LP the Kinks were once known for; it has its ups and downs, its lapses and its masterpieces. The opener, “Here Comes Yet Another Day,” is a fashionably bored touring song (“tune up, start to play/just like any other day”) that rocks along nicely but has a curiously (and perhaps intentionally) unfinished quality; several of the breaks sound like a rhythm track waiting for a solo, and the tinny Toussaint-style horns don’t help much. “Maximum Consumption” describes the touring rocker as a “maximum consumption nonstop machine” and compares him to the inefficient, gas-gulping, often quickly discarded American automobile (“I’m so easy to drive/and I’m an excellent ride”). Beginning with images of abandoned and undifferentiated consumption and moving into more specifically unappealing comparisons, “Maximum Consumption” is the thematic meat of the album. Musically it’s excellent, with a deliberately loping beat and an excellent mix of Dave’s slide guitar and the trad jazz horns. “Unreal Reality” has more of the “Mike Cotton Sound,” a garish and determinedly awful trumpet-clarinet-trombone trio that’s trebly and piercing and just right for the effect Ray’s tunes convey. “Hot Potatoes” is a Davies domestic situation, cast this time in a mold that resembles a Little Eva record instrumentally and has excellent ensemble work by the band. “Sitting in My Hotel Room” is a bonafide Kinks Klassic, dreamily wistful with a beautiful melody and featuring “the exquisite Mr. John Gosling at the pianoforte.” The Hollywood mystique and the reality of lonely hotel rooms and interminable turnpike driving collide head-on through much of side two. “Motorway” has the most memorably apt opening line of the album: “Motorway food is the worst in the world.” It’s a country rocker with nice finger-picking from Dave and a memorable organ riff from Gosling. “You Don’t Know My Name” is another near-incomprehensible but strangely satisfying song from brother Dave. There’s a “Going up the Country” flute break (seems both Stones and Kinks are picking up a few tricks from old Canned Heat records) and a schizophrenic structure that’s unsettling at first but ultimately appealing. “Supersonic Rocket Ship” is quintessential Ray Davies. It invites the listener to travel the spaceways in a sort of flying Victorian music box that tinkles away with all the flavor of a period tintype. The words are quite explicit, and the following tune, “Look a Little on the Sunny Side,” is even more so. The rock business is show business; a rock group running through its hits, trying to please an essentially frivolous audience, isn’t much different from a stand-up comic in Las Vegas or Rex Harrison doing Dr. Doolittle or The Ed Sullivan Show. Ray isn’t likely to win a lot of new converts by emphasizing this truism, but he makes it perfectly clear that on his rocket ship “nobody has to be hip/nobody needs to be out of sight.” This goes a long way toward explaining why the Kinks are so durable; no trippy giggles here, no heavy metal warlocks, just “a round, unvarnished tale” with plenty of belly laughs and solid rock & roll along the way. “Celluloid Heroes” is the watershed of the album. It’s a masterful, fully-realized six-minute cut with one of Ray’s very best vocals and several of his finest, quirkiest, most original lines. Gosling, a relatively recent addition to the band, proves his worth with some tasteful, shimmering piano, and Dave, drummer Mick Avory, and bassist John Dalton contribute effective backup, with nothing out of place. The album could have ended here, but there are two more live sides. These sound at times like a juiced Jersey bar band with a semi-pro horn section chiming in. “Top of the Pops,” from the Lola album, has contagious, raw power and an exciting feedback break from Dave. Ray clowns with Harry Belafonte’s “Banana Boat Song,” “Baby Face,” and a mercifully brief “Mr. Wonderful.” His performance of “Alcohol,” one of the best tunes from Muswell Hillbillies, is almost scary. The Staten Island audience is obviously dominated by juicers and reds freaks, and they contribute shrieks and screams that are most apropos. Ray slurs his words and draws out the verses until it seems the whole band is about to fall headlong into the gutter. This is the definitive recording of the song, cutting the studio version by a mile. Ray’s MC work throughout is like that of a popular British TV compere … everybody’s in show-biz. Despite its faults and its unevenness, this is a delightfully varied, endlessly entertaining album; its best moments equal or surpass the best rock & roll of the last few years. And the indications are that Ray Davies is just beginning to loosen up.
An aside for those who may not be familiar with Mike Saunders: this is his opening paragraph for Houses of the Holy review (copied from Rocks Back Pages; requires subscription to read the full thing): Led Zeppelin: Houses Of The Holy Metal Mike Saunders, Phonograph Record, May 1973 MERCY ME, it's time to bring out the Sominex again. If it weren't for Slade and the Stooges, God knows what sort of utter decay the filed of hard rock might be in by now, and this latest does of pablum doesn't help things at all. How it hurts to think back to 1971, the banner year of heavy metal rock: Paranoid, Master of Reality, Love It To Death, Killer, Led Zep IV, Look At Yourself, Man Who Sold The World, Dust, UFO1, Fireball and E Pluribus Funk were but a few of the metallic stompers that graced that year's release sheet. War pigs, black dogs, and loose geese running amok through the land...those were the days. —-end—- So, I look forward to reading the Showbiz review!
Some other reviews Alt rock chick - 2014 - The Kinks – Everybody’s in Show Biz – Classic Music Review Hokeyboy - 2013 - http://millheiser.com/hokeyblog/2013/06/06/album-review-everybodys-in-show-biz-the-kinks-1972/ Steve Horowitz - 2016 - The Kinks: Everybody’s in Show-Biz, PopMatters
Everybody's In Show~Biz First heard about 20 years ago when i bought a new (Velvel?) CD with a couple of bonus tracks. I had some Pye albums and wanted to sample something from the first half of the 70's & I think what I had read made me cautious about buying Muswell or the Preservation albums. That said I had read about this special & great Ray Davies non hit that for some ranked with his best work called Celluloid Heroes. I do recall that the UK Record Collector had mused that perhaps it's length had kept it from being a hit though felt it deserving of success. I think I was a bit disappointed overall on early listens comparing it to their loftier Pye creations but I warmed to more songs and forgave the more tossed off ones. Happily i really dug Celluloid Heroes from the get go and several other tracks revealed their charms to me in short time. The live sets selections i found wuite odd with a throwaway Lola & an over reliance on theatrical cuts from their previous album, Ray was clearly focused on the future! P.s. In closing i believe i already had the German 7" Picture Sleeve of Supersonic Rocket Ship & i must say that there is one song on this album that sounds like it could have come straight from the pen of Goodie Bill Oddie, another hirsute (but respected) gentleman!
Here is an interesting aside. A little article with a show from 72 up the top .... from a radio broadcast, and starting at the 5 minute mark The Kinks: Drunkards in Showbiz
1972 review The Kinks: Everybody's In Show Biz (RCA VPS 6065). The first question to be asked about a new Kinks album has to be: What is Ray Davies going to say about the world this time? Davies is the flamboyant superstar personality who writes and sings most of the group's material and makes or breaks their live performances. It is a fairly well-accepted opinion among people who listen to lyrics that Davies is a master songwriter, an unexcelled painter of people and scenes. In the course of 16 or so Kinks albums, he has created dozens - maybe hundreds - of incisive, bittersweet, funny-sad observations on the way that people live. The British group's past several American tours have established in irreconcilable contrast between Ray Davies, the sensitive and intelligent songwriter, and the onstage buffoon of the same name. This two-album set is about that contrast. The second album is a recording of a live concert, all wild good spirits and spurting brasses and - recent development - good playing from the group. The first record is a comment on the other one, a series of songs about what it's like to be that funny man in the spotlight. The new material is desperately grim. On the one hand, Davies' lyrics with an unaccustomed lack of subtlety, come out and say how unpleasant the various aspects of the star's life are. On the other hand, that ambiguity of emotion, the understanding of several sides of a situation that generally characterize Davies' songs, is here temporarily (I hope) suspended. The result is basically a series of musical complaints, literate, occasionally charming, at one point ("Sunny Side") obnoxiously cynical, and consistently depressing. Even the boisterous gaiety of the live album isn't fun in this context; it can't be when you are made watch the concert through the eyes of the bitterly dissatisfied performer. The two records are evidently not intended to be the Kinks' most enjoyable release. They can, however, be pretty instructive listening for all young guitar players who would like to grow up to be pop stars. Nancy Erlich, The New York Times, November 12, 1972
Lilian Roxon in New York The Divine Bette Midler, of whom you'll hear a LOT more soon, was sitting right next to me and the equally divine Candy Darling (a gorgeously convincing transvestite) smothered in furs, was sitting in front of me. It was a very glamorous night and it was, of course, The Kinks latest New York concert. I can't say that the Kinks have a wide following here yet, certainly it is not as wide as they deserve and I still can't understand why, but it's a following that's growing by the minute and it's nothing if not totally demented. There were two concerts this time, two nights in a row, and not only were both completely sold out but they were also pure insanity and chaos. The Valley Stream branch of the Kinks Appreciation Society, for instance, came to both armed with confetti, paper plates and cans of beer, so that the minute Ray Davies started squiting the front rows with beer, he got as good as he gave. Soon great fountains of it were gushing everywhere. From start to finish, both nights, the audience was up on it's feet. No one was about to miss any of the fun and Ray Davies really is one of those performers whose every gesture and nuance you just have to see and enjoy. Bette Midler, whose new album has already established her as a superstar to those who have not yet seen her in person, was there taking it all in with an expression of delight on her face. She had never seen the Kinks in action before and I can tell you right now that she's gone off to buy all the records and that her big New Year's Eve concert the Philharmonic will have to include "Lola." By the way, you haven't lived if you haven't seen Candy primly joining in with the chorus of the song that just has to be about her. I went to two nights in a row because it seemed to me that despite the crowd's ecstasy, Ray was rushing through his songs with unseemly haste. His movements are always so luxuriously lazy, so slow and deliberate and sensual, that I felt a little cheated, even though it was a long show with many songs and lots of action. He was definitley better on the second night (belive me, those fans didn't notice a thing either time) and the band sounded better, too, but there was still this niggling feeling that something is wrong. No Kinks' performance is ever slick or without flaws, and that's it's charm, but this is something else. I think if you'd never seen them before, and you weren't in the business like Bette, or turned on by the audience, you might just have been disappointed. As it happens, most of the people there were hard-core Kinks fans who left the show shining with happiness. I found one little group singing "Sunny Afternoon" all the way along Eighth Avenue. Lilian Roxon , 1972
