The Kinks - Album by Album (song by song)

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by mark winstanley, Apr 4, 2021.

  1. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    Good result from an absurd post.
     
  2. Luckless Pedestrian

    Luckless Pedestrian Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire, USA
    Same here, that was quite a description!
     
  3. Luckless Pedestrian

    Luckless Pedestrian Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire, USA
    I do the same thing as a mental trick to overcome a negative initial impression of an unfamiliar song. Challenge myself to find one thing that is good, can be anything, something interesting the bass is doing, an unusual turn of phrase in the lyrics, the way the snare was miked, etc. Often this is enough to purge the negative mental energy that is preventing your ability to find pleasure in the work, and suddenly it opens up to you. I am also an amateur musician and spent a lot of time when I was young playing and recording music, maybe this helps one be open and charitable to what an artist has gone through the trouble to create - having an inkling of how much hard work is involved to get to the point where a song could be professionally produced, recorded and sold for money!
     
  4. Fortuleo

    Fortuleo Used to be a Forum Resident

    « über-macho riffola deftly mixed with a tillfitting hodge podge of prog twaddle », you mean ? :nyah: Ahah, yes, that was pretty good.
    Re- Dave Grohl, Billy Joel and Lars Ulrich : I can name at least one good song by each one of those guys. Well, "at least" may be a bit generous in some cases. Not familiar with those Uriah guys but if someone can direct me to a song of theirs as good as Foo Fighters' Big Me or Billy Joel's Through the Long Night, I'll be happy to listen! :agree:
    You posted this on the Mirror of Love day, which was the last song on the first LP of Act 2. Believe it or not, counting only the studio LPs stricto sensu (= leaving the live ones, the various comp's and the Percy soundtrack out), it happened to be the exact middle point of the band's discography ! 11,5 LPs behind us, 11,5 LPs to go. With Nobody Gives, we're now not only one song into the second act of Preservation, but one song into the second act of their recording career… Fortunately, there's no need to panic about our beloved thread ending anytime soon. If we add both brother's solo albums of original songs to the mix (and still discounting the live ones, the hybrids like To the Bone, the comps, the other soundtrack work like Return to Waterloo or the curios like 80 Days etc.), we get an extra 11 albums to cover (Dave has been quite prolific, hasn't he ?). So we still have basically two thirds of the way ahead of us. The way we're going, we could target the 2000 pages mark! An exciting but almost frightening prospect…
     
  5. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    I compared @Fortuleo ’s great-Ray-songs with mine (through Showbiz).
    Fortuleo: 74 tracks
    Me: 59
    Shared Tracks: 38
     
  6. palisantrancho

    palisantrancho Forum Resident

    Nice one, but I think I would come up with much different numbers for The Kinks (they would most definitely have hit 100 by now) and I could come up with easily more than 100 for Dylan. I would most likely come up short with Neil. I'm not sure who else I could put in the 100 club. Steve Kilbey from The Church would likely be in. Interesting to think about. I'll try and report back with my Ray numbers so far, and see where I get with Dylan.
     
  7. palisantrancho

    palisantrancho Forum Resident

    I also had to put on Uriah Heep for a minute, and that's all I could take. I have to admit I was listening to some Billy Joel last night. He seems to get picked on a lot. I'm no super fan, and he has his share of terrible music, but he has a handful of tunes I really enjoy. Lars also gets beat up pretty bad, but I love And Justice For All, even if he gets blamed for the lack of bass and sound of that record. It's really the only Metallica album I like very much. You all can have Dave Grohl. I don't get his appeal at all.
     
  8. palisantrancho

    palisantrancho Forum Resident

    Where are these listed?
     
  9. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    Neil has 1000+ songs (per Billboard article) and I’m a hardcore fan. Threw the kitchen sink at it…but there is a difference between I-like-this-song and great song. I do plan to look again, especially at the front end of the discography because that’s when I’m probably being harder on the selections. Along about the end of the discography, at least I found this to be the case, I started to really loosen up. Then I’d look at the track and think “I cut such and such from Everybody Knows and I’m including this?” And so had to apply the scalpel.

    Please let me know how many/what you end up with!
     
  10. palisantrancho

    palisantrancho Forum Resident

    I don’t doubt Neil has at least 100 great songs. I’m just not familiar enough with probably half of his discography, especially the last 15 years.
     
  11. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    I came up with 84 (and that’s with two from his latest album…which is absurd because they don’t pass the test-of-time test). So realistically 82 and a need to look at first two or three solo albums one more time. But it won’t be 100.

    Fortuleo’s list:
    I tried to be very objective (even restrictive) in my definition of "great".

    And I propose Ray Davies.

    You Really Got Me
    Stop Your Sobbing
    All Day and All of the Night
    Tired of Waiting for You
    Set Me Free
    I Need You
    Nothing in this World Can Stop Me Worryin’ ‘bout that Girl
    Something Better Beginning
    See My Friends
    I Go To Sleep

    Till The End of the Day
    Where Have All the Good Times Gone
    Well Respected Men
    Dedicated Follower of Fashion
    Sunny Afternoon
    I’m Not Like Everybody Else
    Rosie Won’t You Please Come Home
    Too Much On My Mind
    Dead End Street
    Big Black Smoke

    Mr Pleasant
    David Watts
    Two Sisters
    Waterloo Sunset
    Harry Ragg
    Situation Vacant
    Lazy Old Sun
    Autumn Almanac
    Wonderboy
    She’s Got Everything

    Days
    The Village Green Preservation Society
    Do You Remember Walter
    Picture Book
    Big Sky
    Sitting by the Riverside
    Animal Farm
    Starstruck
    Village Green
    All of My Friends Were There

    Lavender Hill
    Berkeley Mews
    Rosemary Rose
    Pictures in the Sand
    Till Death Us Do Part
    Victoria
    Some Mother’s Son
    Drivin’
    Australia
    Shangri-La

    Get Back in Line
    Lola
    The Moneygoround
    This Time Tomorrow
    Apeman
    Powerman
    Got to Be Free
    God’s Children
    The Way Love Used to Be
    Dreams

    Moments
    20th Century Man
    Alcohol
    Have a Cuppa Tea
    Holloway Jail
    Oklahoma USA
    Nobody’s Fool
    Hot Potatoes
    Sitting in My Hotel
    Motorway

    Supersonic Rocket Ship
    Celluloid Heroes
    The Time Song
    Sweet Lady Genevieve
    There’s A Change in the Weather
    Where Are They Now ?
    Sitting in the Midday Sun
    Demolition
    When a Solution Comes
    Scum of the Earth

    Nothing Lasts Forever
    Flash’s Confession
    Salvation Road
    Have Another Drink
    You Make it All Worthwhile
    Ducks on the Wall
    A Face in the Crowd
    You Can’t Stop the Music
    Schooldays
    No More Looking Back

    Life on the Road
    Juke Box Music
    Stormy Sky
    Full Moon
    Misfits
    A Rock’n’ Roll Fantasy
    Out of a Wardrobe
    Father Christmas
    Catch Me Now I’m Falling
    Moving Pictures

    Yep, that's 100, all great. And stopping in 1980, with a few dozen more great songs to go…
    —-
    end paste
     
  12. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    Uriah Heep have been together since 1969, have journeyed through many different musical places, and in fact up until the covid outbreak were still touring and releasing albums, albeit with a different line up to the original band.
    I guess they have somewhat of line similar to Deep Purple, but I don't subscribe to the idea that they were Purple imitators. People are just lazy, hear an overdriven Hammond, and think that Purple are the only band to do that. In fact Purple didn't get that sound until 1970, with the In Rock album ... In 1970 Heep released their debut album.

    From the 1972 album Demons And Wizards - Circle Of Hands



    I like Heep, I like Billy Joel, I like a few Foo Fighters songs, and much like @palisantrancho I only really enjoy Justice For all from Metallica these days, though Master Of Puppets and Ride The Lightening are good also....

    Not sure why we are diving into band slamming.... the Kinks stand on their own, without the need to slam other artists
     
  13. croquetlawns

    croquetlawns Forum Resident

    Location:
    Scotland
    Agreed - it's all a bit of a pointless bore really.
     
  14. donstemple

    donstemple Member of the Club

    Location:
    Maplewood, NJ
    Nobody Gives

    I've read all the posts this weekend, and I have to say I agree there is not much that is memorable about this song, so I am there with @Martyj. It's dark, it's serious, and the "hookiest" vocal part includes lyrics about killing left-wing intellectuals and annihilating the Jews. I realize he's not saying to try negotiating with the Nazis, but that is certainly what one could deduce from looking at the lyrics. And this isn't even the first reference to Hitler, as an earlier song included the phrase "final solution".

    A general rule in writing (at least when arguing on forums or Twitter) is to avoid comparisons to Hitler, Nazis and the Holocaust, and I think that should hold true with pop/rock music too. Even if it is meant to be a history lesson by Professor Davies.

    I hear the similarity to 20th Century Man, but I also hear it musically. The piano breakdown and buildup around 3:30 seems of Nobody Gives to recall the last minute or two of 20th Century Man. I am not one one to know if they use the same chords or not, but it seems similar.
     
  15. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product Thread Starter

    Ray has been setting Mr Black up as a Hitler type from the start. Play on the weak minds of the voters to get them into a frenzy about something, so as to manipulate them into a certain position, and once in power, take it where you wanted to begin with.
     
  16. palisantrancho

    palisantrancho Forum Resident

    I came up with 102 great songs by 1980. I did it quickly and tried to be selective. Without looking I had 97 and then easily found 5 more trying to get to 100. 65 shared tracks with @Fortuleo. I have 79 up until Showbiz.
     
  17. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    I have 83 on my playlists up to Showbiz so can easily understand your number of 79.
     
  18. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    Remember to not include Dave’s songs!
     
  19. palisantrancho

    palisantrancho Forum Resident

    Just doing a quick look and I can get to 100 with Dylan by 1976 with just including his main releases. I am guessing I can easily get to 200 throughout his career. Some of his albums I count every song.
     
  20. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    I’ll pm you my Dylan list
     
  21. The late man

    The late man Forum Resident

    Location:
    France
    I have a child's sense of justice, and I would feel cheated if I couldn't exert my right to a Sunday evening off-topic post like everyone else. So I'll say I never listened to Uriah Heep or Metallica, and I had to google David Grohl (though the name sounded familiar). As for Billy Joel, I have the notion that he must be difficult to appreciate when you're American, surrounded as he seems to be with a persistent vibe of unhipness (from his very beginnings). Wilson, from the old Wilson & Alroy's review site, once asked "who needs a third-rate Paul McCartney (with a Long Island accent, yet)?" Still, the same site raves about Elton John, while from my French point of view they're pretty much alike. I met French people who considered Billy Joel much hipper than Elton John.

    I love both artists, and in my opinion there is not a single bad Billy Joel album - even if the last 3 are of lesser quality, in my experience. There are a few bad Elton John albums, of course, but he's taken more risks and has been much much more prolific - Billy Joel's songwriting career pretty much ended in 1993 after 12 albums in 22 years. Elton John, who started releasing albums in his own name 3 years before Joel, released his 12th album in 1976 (counting Friends) ! And 2 of those were double albums.

    I'm surprised at avid @Fortuleo's mention of Through The Long Night, a great song but a rather deep cut, I'd say !
     
  22. Wondergirl

    Wondergirl Forum Resident

    Location:
    Massachusetts, USA
    Are we just about through with the Uriah Heep portion of the Kinks catalog??

    :whistle:

    :wave:
     
  23. idleracer

    idleracer Forum Resident

    Location:
    California
    :kilroy: I don't think Billy Joel belongs in the company of those other three. He composes tunes with verses, choruses, bridges and all those other good qualities that leave you humming them throughout the day. Any connoisseur of psychedelia would be proud to have concocted this:



    Scandinavia Skies
     
  24. palisantrancho

    palisantrancho Forum Resident

    I love this song. I almost mentioned it. It sounds like Robyn Hitchcock to me, especially when he sings "We pulled the shades and closed our eyes". The very Beatlesque "Laura" is another good one on this album.
     
  25. The late man

    The late man Forum Resident

    Location:
    France
    Yes, great song, great album. One of the few 1970s artists whose favorite album of mine dates from the 80s. Other exception is Randy Newman with Trouble in Paradise.

    It's Monday now (here at least), weekends over, the Master is going to bring us back to Kinks reality.
     

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