The Kinks - Album by Album (song by song)

How about a pie in the face instead? sayth the man who was watching the Three Stooges last night. Perhaps Avid Martyj, the historian of cinematic comedy, can offer his opinion on the subject.

 

We’ll find out in two weeks time.

 

Money Talks

Musically a early/mid 70s plodding rocker? Sure, but they do do it well, so I can't complain. Love the backup vocals. And I can just see all the horn players up on stage swaying in unison as they rip their riffs. At least fun if not fantastic.

 

This is a very common expression. @Fortuleo has provided a firsthand example of this when he approached the record shop guy and dangled a fifty franc note (and a blank cassette tape) in his face as part of his successful pursuit of obtaining the coveted Kinks music. He’d tried asking nicely and had been rebuffed. But, then, money talks.

 

As it turn out, £5 in 1974 had a value of more than £60 today. Factor in the exchange rate back then and we’re talking almost $150.

 

In the words of Bobbi Flekkman :

Money Talks - Bullsh*t Walks

 

“Mazuma” is not a word I’m familiar with. Apparently of Yiddish origin, slang for money, especially money to be gambled with.

 

Thanks! I didn’t know that.

 

Thanks ! I understand better.

 

I love using slang for dollars. I picked it up from gangster-speak when I was a kid, reading old "golden age" comics. Moolah. Spondoolex. Fish. Apples. Cabbage. Cheddar. Smackers. Skins. My kids are so used to me calling dollar's "bones" they know to use it themselves to get a loan out of me. "Dad, can I borrow 60 bones until my paycheck" instead of "60 dollars" will increase the likelihood of me saying yes.

So, I've long known about "mazuma," and remember being please when I encountered it among the lyrics to "Money Talks." (Never knew it was yiddish, though, so thanks for that. )

After reading about some of the Kinks on-the-road hijinx, it's easy to assume at some point someone among them--somewhere at sometime--was on either the giving or receiving end of a pie to the ol' puss.

 

Money Talks

This one always rubbed me the wrong way, so of course, the Kinks released it as a single and played it a trillion times.

Melodically dull and not very funny. Some hear T Rex. I hear Ringo.

I'll go one step farther: It sounds like something Ringo could have written.

 

"Money Talks"

I like it but I always enjoy the Kinks rocking out. Once again it's not that far removed from the Arista years sound and could fit on Sleepwalker or Misfts. The problem is it's on the generic side in it's Stonesy/T-Rex strut. The Faces come to mind too in the sound they are going for. Though it's always great to hear the interplay of Ray and Dave's voices.

It's a long way from Something Else or Village Green. Though I respect the former more than I like it but still during their 1966-1970 run the band was creating its own sound not really emulating others. Were lagging record sales with RCA imfluencing the sound choices Ray was making?

The musicianship is great and the Kinks emulate that sound well but they don't add anything to it. It's a case of liking the song for what it is but at the same time asking, "is that all?"

Was Ray's dedication to concept and storyline overshadowing the music? I have no idea I was 7 when this came it out and collecting 45s.

I think IMHO this the quandry the Kinks would find themselves in for the rest of their career because they raised the bar so high during their peak. But that's true with any band really isn't?

Though for some reason for better or worse the expectations of Ray Davies seemed to be higher than even Jagger/Richards or Townshend.

Speaking of Townshend, much like Lifehouse and Quadrophenia has been his ongoing muse in a sense since 1970 for Ray everything always seems to return to the Village Green, or I should say themes of Village Green and Arthur continue inform his work to this very day. Someone wrote here that this may have started with the magnificent Waterloo Sunset (Ray the wry observer detatched yet still oddly invested as well). Maybe Terry is the later "Art Lover", it's an older Flash singing about "Sleazytown" or Julie besotted by the "Jukebox Music". Of course we all know he returned to his sister Rose on "Come Dancing" and "Don't Forget to Dance".

It is ironic or is it that a man like Ray reported to be tight about money writes a song like "Money Talks".

 

"Money Talks"

I think the general consensus on this song is pretty accurate. A Stones/T.Rex boogie that isn't bad, but for The Kinks it may come across as a little generic on a casual listen. It has the T.Rex vibe of Zinc Alloy with the soulful backing vocals, which was released only 3 months earlier. I think Ray and Marc would have been good friends. That album also gets unfairly dismissed as being the moment when Marc Bolan lost his mind. I happen to love the craziness of that record. When I first heard it I thought the critics had lost their mind by saying it was terrible. We also have mentioned the similarities to The Faces on many songs, but here I think we are much more in the Humble Pie camp. Hey, I love those early Humble Pie records. The more I listen to the song, I have more positive things to say about it. The bass guitar grooves along nicely and has a little fuzziness to it. This is actually another excellent little number.

 

I'll say. This is essentially "Tumbling Dice" with ♭Vi and ♭VII added. Another muddled borderline monophonic mix in which at least five people are singing at once (Ray, Dave and all three of the women), making it really difficult to understand any of the lyrics.

 

Great call. I heard Tumbling Dice in it too.

 

Money Talks

Agree with the general consensus here. I certainly here the Stones here, but I am not too familiar with many T. Rex songs so I will take your word for that one. The other artist I think this sound reminds me of us Brian Johnson era AC/DC, and not just because they also had a song called Moneytalk. Something about riff and the screaming vocals seems AC/DC to me.

On a side note, I was watching Oceans Eleven and one of the English characters used cockney slang and said “Oh no, we’re in Barney”.

He had to explain it to the others. Any guesses? I assume this might be an easy one?

Anyway, hearing that cockney slang made me think of Ray and his currant buns and jam jars.

 

PG Wodehouse also used much of the slang for the dollar in many of his novels, especially those set or partially set in NYC & involving figures from the underworld.

So, Avid Martyj, you think it's funnier to get the pie in the face rather than to get bopped in the head? By the way, could you lend me 50,000 bones?

 

Barney Rubble = trouble

 

@Martyj you are certainly learned of lucre!

 

Correct, I figured that was a simple or perhaps common one?

 

Never heard it before! A barney is a word for a fight though, and has been around a lot longer than the Flintstones.

 

I also agree with the consensus - Money Talks is an average barroom rocker. I don't hate it, but it's also the worst track so far on the album (which I guess shows how good the tracks have been so far!). Weird choice for a single and no surprise that it didn't do well when others were doing the same style better at the time.

 

Yea, a very common term in Aus too

I had to look up the Etymology, for interest sake, but the only real thing they know is it seems to have originated around 1864

 

You may be onto something their when it comes to the public's expectations of Ray's ongoing music.
Pete could pen some insightful lyric and add a few powerchotds, Mick & Keith a catchy open chord riff, strutting rhythm and vocal and people are halfway content even better if there is an exceptional melody on one track somewhere.
But to the public at large as far as the Kinks are concerned perhaps people are expecting or hoping for memorable melodies, engaging storytelling and even an Englishness that echoes the quality of their clutch of well known early Klassic's.
Perhaps Ray's "same old" is not as tolerated or worse paid attention to than most of his contemporaries?

 

It's really intriguing to me that most seem to dislike the idea of the Kinks playing rock/rock and roll.... and I assume this is why so many don't like the fantastic albums coming up in the Arista years.

I find it so intriguing because the Kinks always were a rock band, even when we roll through the peak Pye albums.
The curve I see isn't really an up or down curve in a specific period, it is more of a shallow wave form that starts from the beginning and goes right through to the end, with the beginning and the end being slightly lower than the middle (which I am looking at as being from Face To Face through Word Of Mouth - bearing in mind I am yet to have any kind of real listen to the last three albums, although I have heard each once on purchasing just before the start of the thread)

I was going to save this for when we got to the Arista albums, but whenever a rock song comes along we/I seem to get this idea through the posts that it has something to do with Ray losing his muse, or being lazy, or selling out (a little) and if not stated directly, it seems somewhat implied ... at least that's how I'm reading it, and I may well be reading it completely wrong.

From my perspective, and I did come along a lot later (One For The Road in about 1982/83)
The Kinks started out as a pretty straight rock band. Like the Who they started with some covers of R&B type stuff, and for me, like the Who, it is not really totally convincing, but then we got this barrage of great, original rock songs, that essentially redefined rock music, and set off a spark the laid the foundations for much harder rock music and all those things we already discussed.

Then when the band were banned from the US, Ray went on a sort of introspective journey.
It seems to start with See My Friends, Well Respected Man and Nothing In This World.... We see Ray branching out and either discovering and/or using ideas and styles outside of rock music, to bring into his rock music, which from the start was always slightly different than the bands around him.... to my ears at least. It must be said though, that Ray and the band never totally abandoned their version of rock music .... To my ears there is no Kinks album without rock songs.
Having said that though, Something Else and The Kinks Are Village Green Preservation Society have somewhat less in the way of Rock songs on them, compared to the albums around them .... but they are still there

From my perspective it seems more like Ray liked to play around with different ideas and musical styles, but he also didn't want to totally be removed from his roots. We see You Really Got Me move through a series of variations in some of the songs around that era, and we see the basic idea of Well Respected Man float through a series of songs in that era, and we see Sunny Afternoon and its relatives float through that era etc etc.

With the albums we see the thematic idea arise first with Face To Face (even though not fully realised), and after Something Else, we see Ray playing around with thematic ideas from Village Green through to Schoolboys In Disgrace, with varying success, depending on the listener and their perspective. When we get to the albums after that, the first batch of Arista albums, there are actually kind of themes as well, but not as distinct ... more a train of thought on topical issues of the day, rather than storyline(ish) albums. Anyway, it all shows a fluidity of movement in Ray's writing.

We see Music Hall, sort of slide into Broadway/Vaudeville type ideas, and later we get a variation on that kind of thing as well.

To me it seems like when Ray moved into his See My Friends, Well Respected Man and Nothing In This World phase, he explored that thoroughly up to about the Arthur album.
With the seventies he started to explore some American music stylings, and by the time we get to these Preservation albums, we have a melting pot of everything that came before, coming in and out at various points.

To me, as we move forward that simply continues. Ray has all these styles and sounds he has incorporated into his writing, and he draws on them when he feels moved by them.

I get the impression, whether rightly or wrongly, that the band moved to a more rock heavy sound as they moved forward, because damn, They Invented That, and everyone else got rich off it lol
but yet again, as we slide through a period that is a bit more rock, coming to a neighbourhood near you, soonish, we also after that move through another period that is different again.

I guess I just find it funny that the guys who invented a harder rock sound, get criticised for doing it lol

Anyway, that is probably a rambling mess, but it's Saturday afternoon... perhaps someone can glean something from that, and make a more focused post LOL