As Oscar Wilde noted "Talent borrows. Genius steals!". Some of the greatest writers have taken freely from other sources (Bob Dylan). The Hendrix riff appropriation does not bother me one iota. If this were a thread about the Beatles and a similar example was raised, someone would say they invented sampling. I like the song a lot especially Ray's vocal which makes it sound much more like a Kinks record than most of the Preservation songs.
Wishing Well actually didn't come to mind... they are all three very similar, without quite being the same.... ahhh the incestuous soup that is music
It's like the Wishing Well riff with the Purple Haze groove, then. I can't help but also hearing some White Stripes or Lenny Kravitz revivalisms somewhere in there too. To sum it up, I think we can all agree it makes for some pretty cool air guitar riffing! On a different subject, I think @mark winstanley was really on to something yesterday when he went all the way back to the Village Green original song to retrace the History of Preservation. I find it very interesting that the bookends to this eight years creative endeavor would be a 1966 song called Village Green and a 1974 song called Preservation. The thing is, the two concepts don’t necessarily align. In many ways, they even contradict each other. As we all know, the “village green” is an abstract Edenic/fantasy place, what you leave behind that never quite leaves you. By contrast, in reality, Ray knows all too well that “preserving” can raise dangerous political issues, as soon as tongue in cheek affectionate “societies” of small villages become self-appointed/self-righteous “shepherds" of whole nations. Then, “preservation” can be just as destructive as “demolition” (tellingly, the two words are sung to the same melody in their respective parent songs). As was discussed upthread, while working on this project, Ray found himself caught up by some British populist politicians talking about traditions and morality. And so Mr Black was born, and what was first envisioned as a "merchants in the temple" kind of tale, became this story of a utopia turned dystopia. Right now in France, we have a candidate for the presidential elections that does the exact same thing as Mr Black, using “preservation” rhetoric and endlessly talking about the “eternal France of old, the traditional France of little villages and churches etc.” only to advocate for authoritarian and xenophobic policies that ostensibly and openly oppose everything this “human rights” country of ours supposedly stands for. Not sure he wants to create automatons, though! During its long and convoluted elaboration, Ray often changed his mind at the risk of contradicting himself, but the Preservation ensemble clarifies how he ultimately felt about political conservatism (preservation) as opposed to sentimental nostalgia (the village green). It’s difficult to admit, but gut feelings and visceral emotions don’t always align with political ideas. Come to think of it, they often shouldn’t… I suspect that’s what Ray got to discover along the way.
A nice little write up on the 1968 classic Village Green album The Genius Of… The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society
It is so disappointing that our supposed evolution has failed to instill balance and common sense in the species. It always seems to be swinging extremes.
"Preservation" the song: I had (still have) the vinyl of both Acts when I purchased the 1991 Rhino CD on one of my record/book store trips to Cambridge (I probably tucked into a Ruggles pepperoni pizza afterwards). I was at least happy to have this rare song, even though it was perched rather wrongly at the beginning of Act I. It's an OK song, "borrowed" riff and all. The fact that it was recorded and released after Act II showed that Ray continued to tinker w/the concept even after it was finished & couldn't let go of it. I enjoyed the video that Avid Ajsmith found on his YouTube travels, especially how Mr. Black was portrayed. It certainly whetted my appetite to see a complete version of a Preservation show that was at least semi competently filmed.
I probably won't have time to write my thoughts on the Preservation Live Show tomorrow, so I hope no one minds if I scribble down some reactions today. * Morning Song and Daylight seem to be sung completely by non Kinks members, even the male vocals. * Ray doesn't appear to make his vocal debut until 'Change In The Weather' .. unlike the studio version, here we actually get different people playing the Wokring, Middle and Upper Class men: Ray as the Working Class guy, Dave the Middle, and ..... who's doing the Upper Class guy? Dalton putting on an accent? or a non-Kinks male cast member? *Ok, it looks like Mark was correct and the personas of the 4 other Kinks members are all meant to be Flash's goons.. Dave as Mr Twitch, (spiv) Mick as Big Ron, (gangster) Gosling as The Vicar (is this meant to be the same character who sang 'Cricket'? if so, it's a stretch) and Dalton as the Che Guevara type whose name I can't make out.. anyone any ideas? *the Floozies (female singers) also all get intros. Ray's one for Debi Doss (who I only found out today was also one of the new-wave styled girls in Buggles 'Video Killed The Radio Star' clip, see below) is very odd.. 'I call her my melancholy baby.. cos she's got a head like a melon and a face like a cauliflower' WTH Ray! *Putting 'Shepherds Of The Nation' and 'He's Evil' back to back and THEN 'Scum of The Earth' and 'Slum Kids' makes a lot more sense than the confusing way things were presented on the LP. *ALL the Tramp songs are dropped and the character doesn't appear! I guess it would have been hard to have Ray triple up, and also there's the fact that most of the Tramp songs don't contribute to the plot so I guess it makes sense practically, but though I knew the live show was a streamlined version of the LPs, I'd never noticed this before.
Thats an old joke, but Ray screw up the punchline--possibly intentionally?--by saying "cauliflower." The punchline is supposed to be: "....head like a melon and a face like a collie."
No...you heard right. I heard this bootleg in the past, too, and found it perplexing why he would intentionally say "cauliflower," as if cauliflowers have faces. I've heard of boxer's with "cauliflower ears" to describe a malformed ear from repeated blows. But a face?
It seems Preservation is wearing on some folks, and I understand that, so here's how we're going to roll it out, and save a day. Tomorrow will be a look at the Preservation concerts, and I will include the Slum Kids bonus track as part of tomorrow. Even though the version on the later album release is from 1979, it essentially ties in with the Preservation tour, where it first surfaced. After that we will have two more Dave Decade tracks on Thursday and Friday. This means we'll load up the Soap Opera on Saturday morning, opening up a fresh discourse for the weekend. Hope that works for everybody. Cheers Mark
I am falling behind. That darn puppy is taking up all of my time and I am getting no sleep! …and I still haven’t posted a picture, I know. All I can say is, I promise, it will be worth the wait! Salvation Road: I like this one. It is clearly reminiscent of some of their other ending track rave ups, although a little more concise (as others have mentioned, arguably to its detriment). Too late of course, but more Dave on this one please! Preservation (the single): I’ll be quick because I’m going to be redundant, I first heard this song as the opener to Act 1 and I agree with everyone here, it just doesn’t fit there. It really doesn’t fit anywhere. Nonetheless, it’s a good rocking tune and I could care less about the Hendrix rip (surprisingly, for a hard rock, guitar freak, I really just have never liked Hendrix that much, so this way I get hear a great riff without having to listen Hendrix (I’m sure that’s blasphemy)). Preservation Act 1 and 2 as a whole: I like it, a lot!… And I wasn’t expecting to, based on all I had heard about it before. The good: I think there are a ton of really good songs scattered through the three albums. I don’t particularly care if they don’t tell the story as cleanly as they could, they are just kinks songs and I’ll mix them in with other good kinks songs from this era. …and there are a lot of them. The not so good: Act 1 at least still had two songs that might be considered minor classics. Act 2, I’m not sure I believe that any of them truly qualify as Kinks classics. To me these three albums really are a set of fairly consistently good songs, but what’s lacking are those one or two stand alone, mind blowing, absolute classics per album that we have come to expect (and since we are paying for the album, arguably, we deserve) from Ray, Dave and the gang. And a little more not so good: Yeah, the sound quality of the overall recordings are not as crystal clear as I would like, and as others have already noted, the minute you put on Soap Opera you can really hear the difference.
Maryann seems not to be checking Facebook messenger, so I dunno. I don't think she's seen my messages, sadly.
"Preservation" I'm in this camp. When I heard the first few seconds of this, I was excited to hear some beefy Dave Davies guitar. When I realized it was a direct Hendrix lift (or "Wishing Well," which takes me back to my early FM radio days), it spoiled the enterprise for me, and other than the solid rock feel, there isn't much else to win me over. An odd choice for a single. I wonder if it was about now that some RCA executive was counting down the months until the expiration of the Kinks contract? I lose respect for an artist when they do a direct lift. All artists are inspired by or borrow from other creative works, but to not at least modify a "borrowed" riff comes across as laziness and a lack of creativity to me. At least when the original artist is given copyright credit, it's not outright theft and the original artist can profit from it, but it still seems lazy to ride the coattails of someone else's work and creativity. And when I discover it after the fact - when the original source material is revealed after I am familiar with a piece - I feel I've been deceived by the copier who passed it off as his own creation (for instance, when I learned that John Lennon's "John Sinclair" riff was a direct soundalike copy of a riff played in a Ringo Starr song - that stolen riff is basically his whole song!). I know that unconscious plagiarism happens, and that's understandable, considering how many songs we are exposed to in our lives. I'm talking about deliberate theft of someone else's work without crediting them. But I know not everyone feels this way.
“Preservation” The guitar riff may be borrowing from Hendrix, but the song itself is far different so I don’t see a problem. I’m not sure if I ever even noticed that it was such a similar riff, but I don’t listen much to Hendrix or Free. I do prefer The Kinks song. It’s still an odd song for The Kinks and is definitely out of place opening the first album. Sound-wise, it would be better placed on Act 2, but I love the way that album begins as it is. Not necessarily an essential tune and it’s strange that it came out and was recorded after the Preservation albums were already released. I don’t care much for the talking parts, but I like Ray’s little warble when he starts to sing.
Preservation (Song) When I was first getting in to Act 1, this is listed on Spotify as the track right after Demolition. So thank goodness it wasn't listed as Track 1. I LOVE how Act 1 opens. I had just figured this was the closing track of Act 1, as almost a sister song to Demolition. It made sense to me at that time in that slot as it seemed to introduce the story for Act 2.. kinda like an epilogue/preview of the next book in a series. I think that is probably the best spot for it, as it doesn't work for me as an opener for Act 2 either. Soundwise though, it does fit in with the sound of Act 2 more than Act 1. When I heard the riff the other day, I was trying to recall which Act 2 song the riff was from.... but then realized it was this song and was the "bonus" track on Act 1. In any case, I have known Purple Haze for more than 25 years, and I honestly did not even notice the lifted riff. I just thought it was cool and funky with Gosling's piano added in. But yeah, I hear it now. I wasn't familiar with the Free song, but yeah, I hear that too. The song itself seems very different though, so maybe that's why I didn't notice it. It's a good vocal delivery, and I like some of the crazy stuff Dave does near the end.
I'm going to add some late thoughts on Preservation, particularly Act 2. By the time Act 2 was released I was buying every Kinks record as soon as it came out. I loved Act 2 as I felt it was much more plot-oriented so the whole project felt complete. Act 1 seemed sort of bewildering at times. I confess I haven't listened to it much since, maybe influenced by negative reviews (I tend to be like that). Also I confess (this is starting to sound a bit like "Flash's Confession" ) that throughout this thread I have not been re-listening to the records as I felt I knew them pretty well. However I did play Preservation Act 2 in the past couple of days and found myself feeling both desultory and exhilarated ("Nobody Gives"). I like "Money Talks" a lot too and it was interesting to hear all the negative comments about the track.
