The Kinks - Album by Album (song by song)

But just consider how much your life has been enriched for so little financial pain!!

 

Mr Moon.

stereo mix (3:49), recorded 1975 at Konk Studios, North London

I'm just sitting wondering why...
Straighten my tie, kiss my girl and say goodnight...
One click and this world is phased. Seeing myself in the light of the night.
I journeyed many lifetimes, seen countries rise and fall.
Seen the heretics of Islam, and the Polynesian gold
Oh tell me Mr. Moon what secrets do you hold.

A dream or guiding vision. To tend my ever aching Soul.
A Love or just a moment passing. Ever aching for a fight.
I'm just sitting here wondering why...
Oh cheerful Mr. Moon. You twist my thoughts with such a strange light.
Sing me your song.
I journeyed many lifetimes, I've seen countries rise and fall.
I've seen the heretics of Islam, the Polynesian gold
Oh tell me Mr. Moon what secrets do you hold.

A dream or guiding vision. To tend my ever aching Soul.
A Love or just a moments pleasure. Ever aching for a fight.
I'm just sitting wondering why...

One click and this world is phased. Oooh

A dream or guiding vision. To tend my ever aching Soul.
A Love that surrounds each and every waking. Ever aching for a fight.
Oh cheerful Mr. Moon. You twist my thoughts with such a strange light.
Sing me your song. Tonight.
Oh cheerful Mr. Moon. You twist my thoughts with such a strange light.
Sing me a song. Tonight.

Oh tell me Mr. Moon what secrets do you hold.

Written by: Dave Davies
Published by: Dave Davies

To some degree this sounds like Dave experimenting with chord and rhythm patterns a little.

Lyrically this is one of Dave's, kind of word salads.
The basic idea seems to be pondering the things that the moon has seen unfold on the earth during the course of time.

It is a somewhat interesting angle for a song to take, but Dave doesn't really carry it off for me. It comes across a little awkward, and is closer to some of Dave's less decipherable lyrics

We open up with a nice audio swell, and then move into this quirky groove, with an unusual chord pattern that actually works pretty well.
Dave opens us up with a lead guitar.

We bounce into this sort of folkish section, that is heavily accented.
I think we have a couple of interesting time signature drop ins, that again make this quite interesting.

The style, not the song, kind of reminds me of some artist ... maybe Tull.... I don't know, it isn't coming to me at the moment.

Essentially for me, this is one of Dave's quirky interesting songs that I enjoy for what it is, but probably wouldn't make it to some ultimate list of Kinks related songs.

 

While they're still era relevant, I thought I'd post two bits of 1974 live footage. First one is Wide World In Concert at the Rainbow Theatre (again!) in London. 'Here Comes Flash' is the only Pres-era song included, although note Ray is wearing the Flash jacket.

 

'You Really Got Me' from The Midnight Special taped in beautiful downtown Burbank, a rare mid 70s US TV appearance. Unfortunately the whole thing isn't on Youtube, only this clip of their greatest hit which I think comes from a later compilation. Great quality footage though: would love to see the full thing.

 

I wonder how many times they played at the Rainbow? I saw them twice there. Thinking back I first saw them at the London Palladium which was also 1974. Then the Preservation show at the Royalty. Twice at the Lyceum, twice at the Town and Country Club, once at Ally Pally (Alexanda Palace), then the Shepherds Bush Empire and once at the Clapham Grand. I think that was it. The one London gig I regret not attending was at the Roundhouse in Hampstead (1978) which by all accounts was one of their best.

I missed a lot of concerts because, back then, you knew there would another show in a few months time so it wasn't a big deal. Now I wish I had gone to all of them.

 

I enjoy two things in this clip. (1) the fading up of canned audience noise in "Here Comes Flash" to mask the word "screw." How quaint! (2) In the bridge of the same song, when Ray is singing from backstage and Pamela Travis (?) is obviously mouthing the lyrics, the camera cuts to a shot of the audience. Look at the guy in the center with the wire-rimmed glasses. He's smiling broadly, obviously enjoying himself, but sinking in his seat, cringing with embarrassment. Are they really engaged in this cornball enterprise? That is me as a Kinks fan, in the grip of conflicting feelings: pleasure and pain, joy and...disbelief.

 

"Mr Moon"

Hearing this for the first time...OR AM I??
The opening line "I'm just sitting here wondering why" - you'll hear it again some time in the future when we get to Dave's 2003 album Bug, as it has clearly been lifted and reused wholesale as the basis for the song "Why"!

Having heard that, the rest of the song passed by in a bit of a blur. I'll need to hear it again, but in terms of its meandering structure and strange chord sequences it is pretty much on point with his solo album material.

 

Mr Moon

I like this one too. To me, tells how you enter another world of fantasies, past and future possibilities, as soon you turn off the living room light, but in a very different way from Ray's.

 

Mr Moon; I like the title. The song is a mish-mash, all over the place. At least the vocal melody is all over the place because the underlying song makes more sense than the vocal does. Personally, I think there’s entire sections from which the vocal should be cut; just keep the instrumentation.

Reminds me of? Nobody really. Thought Wishbone Ash at one point but think that’s wishful thinking.

 

With a surname of Davies perhaps?

 

Not silly, it got my brain thinking hard.

 

Yesterday we had half a good song, probably half re-done in 2017. Today, we have a rather poor one, disjointed and meandering, struggling painfully to find a groove and (especially) a melody, though some of the playing is fine. Shocking fact : to the best of our knowledge, these two song are the full extent of what Dave wrote in the three year 1974-1976 period (or so he implied when he released Decade, explaining he took everything lying around from the seventies and finished it up for release). I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again. To this day, the conventional wisdom in the rock – and Kinks – crowds was that Ray lost the plot in the RCA years, assumed sole leadership/dictatorship/censorship of the Kinks creative output at that time and wouldn't allow his brother to get his songs on records because he became this megalomaniac control freak. Being exposed to these two underwhelming Decade tracks after our extended Preservation journey on the thread should put this nonsense to rest forever. I'm not saying the RCA/theatrical period wouldn't've benefited from good Dave songs, just that there clearly wasn't many of those in sight (and almost no songs at all).

 

30th November 1974 - Palace Theatre, Providence, Rhode Island.

An interesting series of shows no doubt and despite the sound quality it does seem to all work a bit more organically in a live setting.
I appreciated the listen and of course enjoyed even more of the first set which was no surprise.

 

Spot on as far as I can tell

 

However, it is nice to find that not all of Dave's 70s demos were completely discarded and wasted. I think this is the first one we've covered that was eventually pulled off the reject pile, albeit 28 years later! This is what "Mr Moon" became:

 

Slum Kids

Derivative though it is it's always great to hear both the Davies boys vocalise together and Dave & The Baptist given space to improvise.
Ray doesn't develop too much lyrically as the song moves forward and yes the Sam Cooke connection was obvious big time!

Hearing this takes me back (decades) to turning up to Sunday afternoon beer gardens with guitar in hand & waiting for my turn onstage with the house band to jam on a few blues or roots derived numbers!

 

Well he put out three solo albums at the start of the 80s, do we know for sure those didn't include songs he'd been stockpiling since the 70s?

 

I don't know.
It seems like he started writing more in the late seventies from what we have on Decade.
There is a couple of songs here and there from 71-76, but 77-78 he seemed to start writing, or at least recording demos more..... if that continued, then logically between 78 and 80 he decided to try and put a solo album together...

It almost seems like it took ten years to get over the pressure in the late sixties to put out a solo album.... remembering that at that time he was really young, and a bit of a party lad.

 

Yes, seriously. I read some interviews w/him saying that he wanted to do a movie based on Schoolboys In Disgrace, but apparently, nothing came of it.

 

"Mr. Moon" a "meh" Dave song that he redid better later on, as I listen to it while typing this. The lyrics, seem to indicate that he wonders what secrets the Moon holds, which reminds me of Ray wondering the same thing about the Sun in "Lazy Old Sun".
Avid Fortuelo was right about how none of the songs on Lost Decade seem to be lost masterpieces to grace Kinks albums. To me they seem more like exercises to get back into songwriting shape.

 

Mr. Moon: What a strange one. I actually rather like Bug, and Why?!! was one of my favorites there with the silly spoken word parts (with a major Supertramp ripoff/homage!) Interesting to hear the song that it was built out of. The riff was there from the beginning, and that's fun to listen to. But Dave's lyrics and vocals/vocal melody on Mr. Moon are so disjointed. I get that it's a demo but it just isn't compelling.

 

I will for now take your word for it, I am also happy it's an original UK pressing.

 

Have read about it in more than one place but here are a few links:
The Kinks' <i>Schoolboys in Disgrace</i> Being Turned into a Musical by Bobcat Goldthwait | Exclaim!
Bobcat Goldthwaite Talks to KCRW About Meeting The Kinks’ Ray Davies

Too bad it didn't get off the ground...

 

Mr. Moon: I may be wrong but I think it was Mike Campbell from Tom Petty‘s band that said “the guitar solo should be in service of the song”. In the case of Mr. Moon, as well as yesterday’s song, I hear Dave valiantly trying to get across his rather esoteric thoughtful lyrics and layering it with some interesting instrumentation but in either case it doesn’t really seem to be in service of a good song. Contrast that to his efforts within the fold of the kinks. I suspect it must be Ray who steps in and hammers (or who helps Dave hammer) Dave’s riffs, guitar orchestrations and lyrical tidbits into what ultimately becomes a catchy song. This is a long winded way of saying that while I like what Dave is doing here, I just don’t hear a good song that I would want to hear again.

 

"Nothing Lasts Forever" is not my cuppa tea. Like @Vangro said, "syrupy and showbiz," and I agree with @All Down The Line that the female lead is pretty underwhelming. I'm sure it has its place, but it's not why I spin a Kinks record.

"Artificial Man" - No. I'm just getting tired of this. Too wordy. Too showbiz. I'm not there.

"Scrapheap City" - Not as hard to sit through as the last few songs. Not as long. More of a song than a diatribe laid over music. Just pretend it's not the Kinks and it's easier for me to accept. Definitely not the Sons of the Pioneers.

"Salvation Road" - "Goodbye freedom, hello fear / A brave new world has suddenly appeared." What predicts COVID more than that? I'll poor one out for those still under their beds. Slowly salvation road will come about. This is the best track we've had in awhile here. It's not drawn out, bloated, or epic. Could use a solo, some more intensity.. and maybe it's just good in comparison to most of the album, but our Ray is still in there somewhere.

"Preservation" - This is a decent rocker, but I'm not surprised it didn't even chart as a single. I am used to the song being track 1 on my Act 1 CD, and while it doesn't fit there like others have said, it works for me better than as a single. Gave the album some energy.