I'll have to go through the songs. Like I say, that was just the impression i got just listening through, without studying the lyrics
Preservation Act 1 I have to admit that the first couple of times through this album, I was not happy with it. I thought Ray had gone off the rails, and maybe this should have been a Ray solo album and not a Kinks album. I have grown to like it. A couple of the songs are amongst their best, though I think Dave has been muzzled to a certain extent. The Ray/Dave harmonies are one of the highlights 0of the Kinks sound to me, and there is not a lot of it here. I am also not keen on some of the uses of female vocals on this, almost operatic in style in places, but will note where as we go through.
I believe we have covered everything up to the start of the Preservation Act 1 album. If you want to look through the thread, these links will take you where you want to be Oct 1963 - Nov 1966 Apr 1967 - Feb 1970 1965 Never Say Yes 1966 Trouble In Madrid Nov 1970 Lola Vs Powerman And The Moneygoround The Contenders Strangers - live 1970 - Dave live Denmark Street Get Back In Line Lola - TOTP - video - alt version Top Of The Pops - video Moneygoround - mono This Time Tomorrow - 2020 mix A Long Way From Home - live 70's - Ray live Rats Apeman - video - alt stereo - alt mono - ToTP - Calypso - live 94 Powerman - mono - 2020 mix - live 70's Got To Be Free Anytime The Good Life 1971 Golden Hour Of The Kinks Feb 1971 Percy (movie) - trailer Mar 1971 Percy (soundtrack) God's Children Lola The Way Love Used To Be - Ray live Completely Running Round Town Moments - Ray live Animals In The Zoo Just Friends Whip Lady Dreams Helga Willesden Green God's Children Outro The Follower Ray On Wonderworld 1971 You Really Got Me - Mini Monster EP Nov 1971 Muswell Hillbillies 20th Century Man - single - Alt Instr - Ray live Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues - live 73 - John Peel Holiday - live 73 Skin And Bone - live 70's - Ray live Alcohol - live 75 - cartoon Complicated Life Here Come The People In Grey - live 72 Have A Cuppa Tea - alt version - live 72 Holloway Jail Oklahoma USA - Ray Live Uncle Son - Alternate Muswell Hillbilly Lavender Lane Mountain Woman Kentucky Moon Nobody's Fool - Cold Turkey(Kinks?) Queenie Dec 1971 Muswell Hillbilly EP 1972 Muswell Hillbilly single (Jap) Mar 1972 Kink Kronikles Aug 1972 Everybody's In Showbiz Here Comes Yet Another Day - live 74 - live 75 Maximum Consumption Unreal Reality Hot Potatoes Sitting In My Hotel - 76 remix Motorway You Don't Know My Name Supersonic Rocket Ship - fan vid - BBC live - band video - live Look A Little On The Sunny Side Celluloid Heroes - live 82 Top Of The Pops Brainwashed - Alt Mr Wonderful Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues - Alt Holiday Muswell Hillbilly - Alt Alcohol - Alt Banana Boat Song Skin And Bone Baby Face Lola Til The End Of The Day You're Lookin' Fine Get Back In Line Have A Cuppa Tea Sunny Afternoon Complicated Life She's Bought A Hat Like Princess Marina Long Tall Shorty History Sophisticated Lady January 1973 The Great Lost Kinks Album Ray's near death experience/suicide? The Kinks Live AT The BBC 1973 Preservation Live World Radio History Starmaker Tv Play Ray On Wonderworld 2005 Thanksgiving Day Ray live on Conan Obrien Oct 2018 Dave Davies - Decade - interview If You Are Leaving (71) Cradle To The Grace (73) Midnight Sun (73) Mystic Woman (73) The Journey (73)
A lot of people in this thread are musicians and can write with some informed authority about what works or doesn’t work about Kinks music. I can’t do that. All I have are opinions. But regarding the cover: I can’t remember if elsewhere in this thread I mentioned my long career in publishing and marketing, where I have worn many hats. My longest role has been that of an art director/designer. So here I write with a degree of informed, professional authority with this statement: From a design perspective, this is the worst cover of a Kinks studio album. Full stop. On a conceptual level it attempts to make sense with that big Chairman Mao-esque rendering of God-knows-who (I’ve always taken it for Ray, but without further clarification, does it matter?) Had they only stuck with that alone it would have made better sense to use it for Preservation Act 2, where the theme of corrupt capitalism paving the way for an authoritative socialist takeover comes into a clearer focus. Here, for part one, which is a hodgepodge of the intended Village Green sequel tracks and the introduction of the Preservation play’s high concept, it only succeeds in confusing the audience. The bigger sin is combining that artwork with a fish-eyed photo of the band. There is no stylistic consistency between the two. The contrast is stark and clumsy. Worst of all, ones eye does not know where to focus. Bottom line, this is a design with two competing ideas. Who came up with this? It’s amateur hour. Its short comings are called to contrast with the previous album, Everybody’s in Showbiz, which is an example of a good design. That cover did everything right: Thematically cohesive. A consistent color palate. And designed to direct a viewers eye with the well thought out placement of the descender part of the “K” font to point to Ray, and Ray’s microphone arm pointing in the reverse to unify the viewers eye in a rhythmic circle. (Go ahead. I’ll stop here to give you time to refer back to that cover to see what I’m talking about.) In contrast, Preservation Act One fails in all these areas. I can tell the designer attempted to have the curvature of the fish eye photo connect with the curvature of the title in an attempt to frame the big red portrait. I’ll give the designer credit for the effort, but it looks to me by the choice of such stylistically diverse parts—not least of which is the distracting, dominate portrait that renders all other elements secondary—that the designer is in over his head. There is no harmony here. Again, amateur hour. Someone earlier mentioned they like it because it shows the band—the expanded stage ensemble it was, instruments and all—as a reflection of who they were at the time, circa 1973. Honestly, I would have just gone with fish-eyed photo alone and cut my loses. Fortunately, the music inside is much, much better.
I recall the Preservation albums supposedly being the time when The Kinks quality started to tank. I don’t know who told me this, but I quickly found out I didn’t agree. The same can be said about the next three albums. I always loved this album cover. I thought what is going on? The Kinks now have 14 members? This must be an interesting record. Why are they all standing in front of a large photo of Abraham Lincoln? I still can’t look at this cover and not think it’s young Abe. I suppose it’s a photo of Ray that looks like a drawing of a political candidate? I have been listening to this album a lot over the last couple months and can say I am impressed with it more than ever. There are at least a couple songs that I feel are better than anything on the last album, and I love the last album. One song gets the most love and attention and it’s for a good reason. It was certainly a highlight when I first bought the album many years ago, but there are plenty more gems to be found. I look forward to early tomorrow morning when “Daylight” is over the Village Green.
I wouldn't have put it so eloquently, but I agree with this. I don't hate the cover but I don't love it. The band pics are fine but the big red and yellow portrait isn't great.
I just had another complete listen and it was thoroughly enjoyable. Yes, I pulled x number of songs out onto a playlist but that doesn’t mean the other songs are lesser. Because they’re part of the concept. Yeah, I would have liked to have seen the stage show live. (When will I find myself disappointed and distraught? Not yet.)
Actually, the single of the song Preservation came out 6 months after Act 2 so in between Act 2 and A Soap Opera and apparently only in the US and Yugoslavia(!). Interestingly, this came out a month after the UK-only single release of Holiday Romance that would turn up later on A Soap Opera. It was pointed out earlier that this song works as an opener or a prologue for a live theatrical show, but I agree not for the album Act 1 itself considering what the real first two songs are.
It’s really quite a strange move putting out a thematic continuation of a classic album 5 (and not say 1 or 30) years later. Did anyone else ever do anything like that? The Beatles equivalent would have been if Paul McCartney and Wings had released ‘Pepper: Acts 1 and 2’ in 1972 and 1973.
My opinion of the front cover of Act I is "meh", neither horrible nor great. Avid Martyj's, analysis is spot on. Perhaps the back cover picture would have been better. I do think that the Guy In Red is Ray (I was thinking of Mick Avory saying in a documentary that if Ray's birthday was a national holiday, then people would be working harder.) Also, with all due respect to our Headmaster, I do believe that Johnny Thunder & Mr. Flash are different characters.
I’m fairly (though not entirely) sure that the big face on the Pres Act 1 cover is meant to be a rendering of Ray as Mr Black. As @Martyj mentons, since Mr Blsck features so little on the first album (only getting half of a song) it’s somewhat confusing to make him the main feature of it: really it would have made more sense to have Flash on the first and Mr Black on the secomd. But I reckon it was a Ray conceptual idea that got somewhat lost in translation not only with the graphic designer but also with Ray himself as the project changed and evolved.
True, but it was 15 or so years later when the original had become a classic that his audience was nostalgic for and so it made good commercial sense: I doubt many were nostalgic for VGPS or begging for a sequel in 1973!
Preservation Act One If it were not for 'Cricket', this album would add up to being my favourite of the RCA albums. The high points are up there amongst Ray's best of the decade, and I have never understood why reviews tend to slate these two Preservations. That said, I do prefer Act One, the highs are higher for me. Does LP cover art matter? Would the cover of an album put people off buying? I don't know, but if it did (does) then people are missing out. A great LP, which I obtained, again most probably from Mr Sifter in Didsbury, Manchester. Like most others, sometime around 1990-91, as having started with UK Jive, went all out in getting hold of all the others, the RCA ones on LP, as that was all that was available around then.
Are you referring to Village Green? Personally, I see it as only the flimsiest of connections. Thematic? I’ll think about it.
Yeah I meant VGPS. It ends up being pretty flimsy, but the project originated as a relaunch of VGPS. Elements like Johnny Thunder recurring in the first Act are remnants of what was originally intended. By Pres Act 2 there’s almost no direct connection to the 1968 album.
It's only logical most people of my generation and the generations after, people that couldn’t be there at the time (I was born in 1970) would have difficulties with this whole Preservation venture. Like a lot of their contemporaries or, dare I say, more than most of their contemporaries, the Kinks were a band we had to re-discover and understand through various competing and contradictory logics. Some of us came to them from an arena/Arista “hard rock” perception. Some were even introduced to their music by Van Halen or the Pretenders… This will not necessarily make you ready for There’s a Change in the Weather. Same with those who came to them by exploring the sixties pop canon. I can see how Demolition or Here Comes Flash might be challenging to them on first listen(s). Neither of these personal routes will prepare you for what this record’s about. And if you had the chance to fall in love with The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society first and approached the two “Acts” wanting more of the same, well, good luck to you… I was one of the latter and of course, my immediate favorite was Where Are They Now? which I still adore, but it took me some time to find my way through a lot of the rest. There are such things as expectations whenever you put a record on the turntable and when they’re not met, it’s definitely a double-sided sword. And Sir Ray has proved time and time again that he owns a huge collection of those sharp weapons in his private armory… Most fans love him even more for it (I know I do) but will still get some accidental cuts on their fingers along the way…
Both albums have ‘preservation’ songs and album titles, so an obvious link there. And Johnny Thunder, another link. Okay, I’ll see where I end up in my thinking.
One of the (pretty fundamental) problems with these two albums is what on earth Ray means by "Preservation"? I mean, what does that word and concept actually have to do with the content of these albums? Or is it, as I suspect, merely a case of the word being retained from an early album, where it's meaning and significance were obvious, and it's now just being used as a link back to that album. I also think 'Preservation Act' is a probably a pun on Acts of Parliament.
Preservation Act 1: I am new to this album. I started listening to it about a month ago. I came into it having heard lots of negative feedback about this album and the whole theatrical era so I didn’t expect to like it. Surprisingly, I find Act 1 to be quite good, although it does have a few solid fails that I will definitely be skipping.
Ray attempted not entirely convincingly to tie the word back in to what the storyline ended up becoming on the after the fact single ‘Preservation’ with its lyric ‘he did it for his own preservation’.
Keeping in mind I haven’t listened in decades, I’m curious to see what I’ll think as we go through track by track. To me Genevieve and Sitting were the highlights along with Survivors but I also remember liking Cricket as well. Who wouldn’t like a song that mentioned googlies and demon bowlers?
