Thank you for the reply. OK, now this is just too funny (for me). It would be very hard to explain why or what is so funny but the producer of that record, Pytten, is mostly known for running a studio were most of the (True) Norwegian Black Metal Klassics were recorded. He is also the father of one of the beste handball players we've had, Mia Hundvin. A small world and you learn something in this thread every day, for shore. And that Frode guy is rather a well-known musician in Norway (and Germany) from the late '80 and onwards and he is a YUGE Kinksfan, so that at least makes some sense.
I can go you at least one bigger on the 'musical ignore list', but yes, it is sorta like the earlier, stoopider Beach Boys records. I can almost picture a combovered Mike Love giving this his best creepy uncle... Are you keeping the Wilsons out of your heart on purpose or is it coincidental, BTW? "Sail on Sailor" and Sunflower should be in almost every home (if you ask me). Dennis' Pacific Ocean Blue too.
De Musikalske Dvergene / Frode Alnæs - Veldig Respektable Menn This one is a compilation of a lot of different tracks. The Ray Davies song is called Jerry Cotton ....? Osmo's Cosmos - Hulluna Huomiseen
Yea I don't hear Arista here at all. As someone said earlier on, perhaps @Martyj , this album is sort of easily accessible initially, but somewhat decreases in listening value with more listens. There are some good tracks on here, but the deeper I get into this album the less I like it. ..... I think that is a first on the thread for me. I think there are a few keepers here, but it may be my least favourite Kinks album so far.
Jack The Idiot Dunce This is one of the tracks that really sticks out to me from my youth. I can remember listening to this with one of my friends and finding it very funny. I didn't even get the musical references. Not an A level track, but fun. Nice harmonies.
Oh? Are those the lyrics? Sorry! Not the first time I've misinterpreted Ray's enunciation. I should have checked the lyric sheet rather than rely on my less than stellar lyric deciphering skills.
One of my favorite albums coming under thread scrutiny and I'm buried under work and ex-teenager management. Schooldays, indeed. They never leave you, provided you have the weird idea of mingling your genes with someone else's. One last quick word on Soap Opera first. I tried my alternate tracklist that leaves aside the last song on each side. It works great. Soap Opera becomes a short and dense album with no redundancy. Friendly warning for you Avids, because I like you good : as soon as your hear on the radio that I've finally taken over world leadership, hide those Soap Operas of yours together with your Muswell Hillbillies. So, Schoolboys in Disgrace. I must have discovered it pretty much at the same time as Soap Opera, in the early 90s, but I don't remember if I listened to Sleepwalker before or after. I enjoyed it at the time, more than Soap Opera (I never really knew which one was released first until this thread, they were the 1975s Kinks albums to me), but I viewed it as substantially lesser than Preservation, the first steps down after the peak period of Ray's creativity. I loved Schooldays and Last Assembly, I remember trying to sing them, but the register is too high for me (especially Last Assembly), but I played them a lot. I re-discovered it during the 2020 lockdown, and I re-evaluated the whole album favourably. The more I listen to it, the more I find it flawless. Once you love someone or something, you tend to re-appreciate their flaws in the light of their strengths, and I have become partial to Schoolboys in Disgrace in such a way. I'm even beginning to like Education. Well, not the Finale, that I decided to throw away, with mixed results, but we'll see that in due time. I would like to elaborate a bit on this "end of an era" feeling that's tied to this album. There are some objective reasons to view it in that particular light, but some other motives, that acted upon my subconscious, have to be challenged. I realise that for a long time, I assumed there was a hiatus in Kinks output between Schoolboys and Sleepwalker. 1976 was the first year in Kinks history that saw no new Kinks album being released. Also, I was born in 1971, and 1976-1977 is kind of the beginning of really-conscious history for me. Things before 1976-1977 are the past, things after are contemporary. The 1976 summer heatwave in France might be considered the starting point in my conscious, remembered life. Probably the first year I could name. But the truth is, there was apparently about the same amount of time between the recordings of Soap opera (Summer/Fall 1974) and Schoolboys (Summer/Fall 1975) on the one side, between the recordings of Schoolboys and of Sleepwalker (Summer/Fall 1976) on the other. So, no chronological hiatus whatsoever. And a lot of continuity between those last 2 : the "back to basics" attitude, the disppearance of the horns (much less present on Schoolboys, absent from Sleepwalker), but also some tricks of songwriting/arranging. I guess you could copy/paste some parts of the first 2 songs from Schoolboys and re-build most of Sleepwalker's opener. I still feel Schoolboys marks the end of an era, though. As I said earlier, the sound is terrific, and will never be as great again. I won't mention the change from RCA to Arista, which didn't have to have an impact. Schoolboys is the last farewell to early 70s sound, but also to musical and lyrical ambition. The following albums will focus on having fun, and that's the reason why they're such pleasant listens. But with "No More Looking Back", the most late-70s sounding song on the album, a poignant "The Dream Is Over" feeling never fails to grip me.
"Jack The Idiot Dunce": A goofy rocker that reminds me a lot of "Ducks On The Wall" on the previous album. It certainly rocks in the spirit of the 50s, although it does sound a bit more 70s. I believe that Ray based this song on a real person that he read about in the paper. The poor sod got tossed out of his home by his parents because of his poor marks in school and ended up become a success in a field that I don't remember, maybe a dancer. Avid The Last Man: I'm starting to worry about you. You don't happen to stick one of your hands inside your shirt & wear a big hat w/a cockade? Avid Gary Steel: You were too young to witness the domination of Western pop culture by John Travolta & the Gibb brothers from 1977-79. I remember John Travolta from his role as Vinnie Barbarina in the TV show Welcome Back Kotter.
I thank my lucky stars for this each and every night And I had to google Kotter. Man, John has been around for quite some time. Apropos the Volta and Pulp Fiction: I was 7 years old when that one came out and of course my parents didn't watch it with the kid. But I remember that for some reason there weren't any tracks from Schoolboys in Disgrace on the soundtrack, the cd of which was stuck in the changer in the family Volvo for quite some time
Schooldays I agree that there is some indulgence to be found in the musical composition of this song, but it works great on me. It sounds as a compilation of the musical licks that flatter my ear. It opens on a rather overused trick that gets me most of the time : this kind of I-VI-ii with a chromatic upward bass that goes I-I#-ii. This, and the I-III7-vi that occurs when the verse (or chorus ?) starts, on "Schooldays... were the happiest days..." (a very 50s-60s chord progression, that also opens "Life on the Road", or Bowie's "Lady Stardust" after the intro). The whole chord progression is made of rather predictable hooks, but in somewhat the same way that some comedies do with jokes (Zucker brothers come to mind), the pace and quantity of them prevent me from stopping to ponder the lightness of the devices used. Not sure it makes much sense. What I mean is, I love this song. Jack, the Idiot Dunce I used to dislike this song. But the big difference between so-so songs (on first listens) of this time and their more repetitive counterparts on later albums is that, when you come back to them, there is always new stuff you hadn't paid enough attention to. To be honest, I lack Mark's impressive attention span and find it kind of difficult to concentrate even on a single song nowadays, and it takes me repeated listens to round a multi-part song up. I like the bridge in this one, with the ascending trick that I described for Schooldays repeated twice (that would be something like I-VI-II-VII-iii, with ascending chromatic bass, if that makes any sense). The very same progression, or very close, will find its way to Life on the Road (first on "Oh yeah, oh yeah, this time I'm gonna get them...") - a track that partially belies my "goodbye to ambition" claim, but let's not jump ahead. One thing is, with age, I have become more sensitive to sound quality, and that may be why I'm so willing to reconsider this collection of songs.
Exactly! I wrote up my Dunce notes after the third listen. Then modified it again, less kindly, after my 4th. And I have no intention of listening again. I’ll leave the Soap Opera out as fodder. (Muswell will be well hidden.)
I remember when Welcome Back Kotter first came on in 1975 was that the Boston ABC affiliate refused to carry it due to fears that it would inflame feelings in Boston, which was then going through a busing crises. The first few shows were broadcast on a UHF station until the affiliate came to its senses.
I've clearly gotten sillier with age because Jack joins Ducks on the Wall and Holiday Romance as the songs from this period I play most often. In fact, if forced to make a Kinks playlist with one song from each album, Jack would be the one I'd choose off Schoolboys in Disgrace. Why? It isn't a particularly emotionally complex or evocative lyric. Ray does a bunch of voices and seems to be having tremendous fun describing Jack, but the arc is pretty obvious from the beginning, when Jack just smiles. You know he's going to triumph over the bullies, and it's no huge surprise that it's because, hey, the kid can dance. But even when I got the album ('78) and was in much more familiar territory with The Hard Way or even Education, I'd play Jack to get myself out of bed and dressed for school -- and it's an absolute go-to for my kids, who are delighted that, for some reason, dad's had it on repeat for the last 24 hours. It's the kind of song (like Peppermint Twist or, yes, At the Hop) that practically forces you to jump up and down, spin around, sing along, and wriggle your backside. Ray's voice(s) are great throughout, and the band does everything it needs to do to keep up the momentum. Still wondering what the last word is, right at the end -- I always thought "pain" (which doesn't make sense), but my 12 year old insists it's "him?" (like HIM?, JACK?, HE'S the groovy looking dude dancing with all the chicks?!). It isn't going to break your heart or spark any transcendent philosophical insights, but it does something that's arguably just as valuable -- it makes you want to dance.
Schoolboys in Disgrace: I downloaded this album probably five years ago, gave it a spin, and must’ve decided I didn’t like it because I never went back. Having now listen to it for the past couple of weeks, I have found that I quite like it. I suspect the fact that I am deeply into a kinks’ frame of mind with this thread has allowed me to come at it with less in the way of preconceived notions. I would agree with those that have said that this album paves the way towards the Sleepwalker sound, as it does seem to straddle the line between some of the theatrical elements of past and what is still to come in the upcoming Arista years. Schooldays: You guys are all a bunch of great writers with insightful thoughts and a deep knowledge of the band in question. As a result, when I get here late, there’s not a whole lot left to say without being redundant. I think this is a fine opener, generally I prefer a kick in the pants right out of the gate (like Victoria for example), but often a gentle melodic song as the opener (especially if short), Followed up immediately by a blast of rock ‘n’ roll works well in my mind too. Not sure if the next song quite qualifies as a”blast of rock n roll”, but I’ll address that in the next paragraph. Jack the Idiot Dunce: This one is a bit of a mixed bag for me, it’s a nice short fast paced number that is kind of fun to sing along to, but not necessarily the way I would’ve followed up the melodic but mellow opener. I suspect it’s good enough that it will make my playlist, but I suspect it may drift towards the tail end. That said, I had it on in the background just now and I was mindlessly bopping along. I can see how if you are looking for another Waterloo Sunset, you’d need to look elsewhere, but it’s quite easy to like if one doesn’t put those very high expectations on every song the kinks release.
This part of your post got me thinking: The end of the RCA era/beginning of Arista represents a significant point in the Kinks story that provokes the kinds of insights and commentary you and many others have randomly touched on over the past several months. It seems a topic worthy of a days discussion of its own with some general overview and reflection without tying it into (and possibly dominating) a particular LP or song. I don’t know if that is in Marks plans with this forum, but it seems like it would make sense and likely yield a lively discussion.
