Yeah, I sure as hell am not working with someone who spits in my face. At a minimum I’d be looking for another band. (And it’s bewildering because I watched that one Dave film that makes him out to be so soft spoken and charming! )
I have been trying to figure out the Dave/Mick thing.... and this post gives it more light.... I still find it odd though. I wonder if something weird happened when they lived together? It doesn't seem logical to me really.
I found this interesting, that Ray distances himself from the others in the band. (This is Ray speaking to LA Times.) Normally, at least if it was me, I’d say “we” were sloppy and “we” had to tighten up.
That struck me as well. I guess with Ray playing guitar less, it was less him distancing himself from the band, and more the reality that the other guys were playing most of the music... I'm not sure
AOR was the warm bosom of rock that I was raised in. My friends were raised in it, too ... and most of them never left it! Like so many people throughout history, the music they loved as teenagers remained the only music that sounded "good" to them, and everything else failed in comparison. A terrible way to look at music, but that's life, to this day, for so many people. FM radio was the vehicle for AOR, and it was a beautiful thing in the beginning. With The Kinks, for example, I could recall hearing "Muswell Hillbillies," "Oklahoma USA" and "One of the Survivors" routinely on FM radio, despite the songs not being big hits. When I'm thinking The Kinks and real, died-in-the-wool AOR, I'm thinking Low Budget. But we'll get there eventually. Sleepwalker: so, I'm a kid, big-time into the Kinks via Kronikles. For a brief time, my favorite song is "Shangri-La" (and still a Top 5 choice). I'm seeing all these wonky concept albums in the bargain bins and don't know any of the songs. Early spring, 1977. (Why are so many of my childhood memories from the spring?) I'm helping my Dad fix one of our decrepit AMC junkers (that he bought so he'd have a hobby for his mechanical skills). The car key is switched over to AC so I can listen to the radio. Announcer: And here's a new one from The Kinks, still going strong ... and "Sleepwalker" comes on. I liked it. It didn't floor me - and this was the age of hearing legendary rock tracks for the first time and being absolutely floored. As the weeks went on, FM radio started bombarding us with "Juke Box Music." And this sounded like something special, classic Kinks, yet new. I decided to buy the album, which in this case meant the 8 track. (Mine was blue, unlike the red one Mark features in the photo section.) I'm sitting here now, decades and worlds away in NYC, looking at it on my nightstand. I haven't played it in years, as I haven't had an eight track since my last crappy Soundesign "all in one" home stereo from the early 1980s. But it's like some kind of totem, a reminder of a time that seems so impossibly lost now, like I dreamed it more than I lived it. That, and Heart's first album are sitting there in that neat little stack that I'll pick up and hold every now and then, like Hamlet picking up poor Yorick's skull. Sleepwalker is so embedded in my personal and music history that it will be impossible to give a fair critical review of it. Some of the tracks, then and now, are terrible, or at best so bland that I never need to hear them again. Some, I could listen to every day and never get tired of hearing. I can see now in the context of the band's history, it was a huge shift, and a conscious effort to be more contemporary and have a few hits. It would launch the band into a new phase that I was 100% down with, even when it grew so large in the early 80s that I witnessed frat boys singing along with "David Watts" in concerts. It was a great time to be a rock fan, and equally great to be a Kinks fan.
Until a few weeks ago I don't think I'd heard anything the Kinks had recorded after "Schoolboys in Disgrace" apart from "Come Dancing" - that's how far off the radar the Kinks became in the UK. So I've been listening to the Arista albums off and on recently and, yes, it's really not my thing but there are still some outstanding songs in there. To be honest, when I listened to "Sleepwalker" my initial thoughts were that, if it wasn't for Ray's vocals, you'd never know it was a Kinks album. Talk about cleaning up your act though, sonically speaking!
I heard the Arista albums before I heard the theatrical RCA albums. The Arista records always had a reputation (in my head, at least) of being part of a movement by the Kinks to be a more conventional rock n roll band, get on the radio more often and get out and play for the people (particularly U.S. college students). I bought the Winterland 1977 vinyl bootleg and got to know the Sleepwalker songs from listening to that broadcast.
I loved Sleepwalker a lot when it came out, not so much these days. The live shows were really good. Robert Christgau’s review irritated me at the time (and I like his reviews, so not looking to start a dump on Christgau sub thread): Ray Davies's temporary abandonment of theatrical concepts may have ruined his show, but it's freed him to write individually inspired songs again. It's also freed his band to play up to its capacity, which unfortunately falls midway between professional virtuosity and amateur fun. Doubly unfortunate, at least half the songs are in a similar range. Recommended: "Jukebox Music" and "Full Moon." B-
Sleepwalker was one of the last Kinks albums I became acquainted with. Like fspringer above, I became aware of popular music during the stadium-rock era, and most of my high-school collection was made up of the bands that defined that genre and period -- Van Halen, Foreigner, Boston et al. Those were the "cool" artists, and in high school being "cool" is everything. I came around to the Kinks a little later -- the first Kinks song I ever heard on the radio was "Destroyer". I began reading liner notes more closely, and I found out that "You Really Got Me" was originally a Kinks song. But by the time I immersed myself in the band, I was pretty much burned out on stadium-rock, and spent most of my time and money exploring (and falling in love with) their earlier periods. I figured the Arista years featured a style that I had essentially moved on from, and were a low priority for me. Then one night our college radio station played Low Budget, end to end, uninterrupted. I was familiar with the Low Budget songs on One For The Road, but when they got to the second side the songs, if anything, got better, and featured a nice grungy sound that I appreciated. I started looking into the Arista albums in more detail after that. Sleepwalker was the last one I got to. To be honest, I wasn't particularly impressed. The songs sounded kind of rote, with two or three major exceptions. I didn't go back to it very often, there being so much other Kinks material available. I gave it a couple spins the last couple of evenings, just to get my appetite up for this thread. It did sound better than I remember. But Dave's guitar, so vibrant on Schoolboys, sounds more remote and processed on Sleepwalker. That's a block I'll need to overcome. I'll go into my impressions in more detail as we go through the album. In particular, you guys need to sell me on Side 2, which I find very bland after "Juke Box Music". But who knows, I might wind up loving it in the end.
Remember when I compared the Kinks to the sports cars of the era? (60s classic, 70s big bumpers, loud colors, smog chocked engines) The Kinks of the Arista years are like the Lamborghini Countach that some of us fellow Avids had on their bedroom walls at the time, loud, flashy and fast. The Kinks had finally MADE IT, at least in the US, after years of struggle. They finally got to play the big arenas, the Madison Square Gardens. They also got gold albums again after waiting since 1968 to get one. You can hear their singles on American Top 40 w/Casey Kasem, as well as the big FM stations. This was their most sustained period of commercial success since 1964-65. How did I feel, a newbie teenage Kinks fan who witnessed this in real time? Frankly, with mixed feelings. On one hand it was a thrill to go to my local library (where I'm now typing this while working) and see how the latest album was doing in Billboard. On the other hand, there was a bit of yearning that something was missing, the spirit of VGPS and the thought that their a lot of their new audience wasn't into the subtlety and joy of their earlier work. Now, I'm much more understanding of the situation and it's all good. I have been trying to figure out the Dave/Mick thing.... and this post gives it more light.... I still find it odd though. I wonder if something weird happened when they lived together? It doesn't seem logical to me really. Headmaster, how about the wacking to Dave's brainpan by Mick in Cardiff back in '65? I think that has still clouded their relationship to this day.
We haven’t discussed the album yet! I shouldn’t laugh but I’d say holding on to a 10+ year grudge isn’t exactly normal (unless you’re the Hatfield’s and McCoys; or the Lawson’s and Hill’s (DBT’s ‘Decoration Day).
Also, it's not like (as proportionality unwarranted as it was) that attack was unprovoked! Mick only went for Dave after Dave had been verbally abusing him onstage in more extreme and colourful terms than those quoted in the 1977 article above!
Close to describing my experience. At that time it was an AMC Hornet, FM radio blasting and weed. I lived in Michigan at the time.
Drumming issue: as a musician, Dave clearly thought something was awry or amiss. Any drummers out there know what was triggering his anger? As a Saturday aside: when my son was 11 his piano teacher invited him to sit in with the teacher’s jazz band at a gig at the Ballard Bait & Tackle. So, being a doting father, I brought along my Sony MD player and pressed record for the entire set (not just the one song, ‘Coming Home Baby,’ that my son played on). The next time I saw the teacher I handed over a CD copy of the gig thinking he’d enjoy it. The next week he thanked me profusely and said, “I counted the beats and fired the drummer. I told him (the drummer), “you’d be a great drummer if you could only keep the beat!” I was speechless so he hastened to add, “He was spot on during ‘Coming Home Baby,’ though.”
Hardly time to read, much less to write these days. RCA Years I'll give my ranking, so that all combinations of the 6 albums have been tried on the thread... 1. Preservation Act 1 2. Preservation Act 2 3. Schoolboys in Disgrace 4. Everybody's in Showbiz 5. Muswell Hillbillies 6. Soap Opera Transition to Arista years I hear great continuity between the Pye and RCA years. That's all the same band to me, with a short prehistory and a brilliant history, 1964-1975. As far as the Arista Years are concerned, for a long time I only knew the first 3. I kind of forced myself to listen to them, and to like them. It's not spontaneously my cup of tea, but I got to appreciate some of the songs, and listening to the albums these days, I realise the songs are pretty much ingrained in my memory. Then a friend of my elder brother's - who as such held quite an esthetic authority over me - lent me Give The People What They Want, telling me it was rubbish and I could keep it. His argument at the time (probably late 80s, early 90s) were that the Kinks were trying to go metal or hard rock (I never quite knew the difference) and they did it badly. At the time, I was under the impression - that hasn't totally left me since - that 60s acts ceased to be interesting after 1980. I mentally labelled the album "contemporary crap recorded by a once great band" and put it away. To me, what came after Give The People was necessarily even worse. That was the direction of history. I still bought Phobia when it was released, and To The Bone (the only Kinks albums I bought in real time), and I enjoyed them without delving much into them. During lockdown, in 2020, for some reason, I decided to give these 80s Kinks album another chance, starting with Give The People What They Want. I'm not saying I was blown away by what I heard, but I found myself enjoying the listen more than I had expected. I tried the next couple of albums, and thought they didn't suffer too much from this 80s sound. Then one day, I started listening to State of Confusion or Word of Mouth, I don't remember which one, and my wife had exactly the same reaction as my brother's friend all those years ago. There seems to be an esthetic slot labelled "60s band trying to be cool in the 80s by turning their amps up". I'm not much of a label guy, but at the time I was also discovering Milton Nascimento, Chico Buarque and Argentinian 70s prog, and I left the 80s Kinks to rest for a while. Over the last months, thanks to the thread, I've been listening to all the albums I didn't know, and I was pleasantly surprised. I expected the late 80s records to be abysmal, and they were not. Still, I cannot really appreciate the post RCA albums without telling myself it's a different band. To me, post-RCA Kinks doesn't really hold the comparison with the glorious days. Why ? I guess, as I've said before, the ambition, the originality, the sense of adventure and discovery are gone. When I come to these records, I expect no surprises, no shocks of any kind ; the best I can expect is fun, and a "whoa, it's not so bad after all" type of reaction. I'm venturing in these regions for completism's take, because Ray has become dear to me, and I'm prepared to be indulgent. After Schoolboys, the music becomes very competent, very professional ("midway between professional virtuosity and amateur fun", in @sharedon 's words, seems pretty harsh to me), but also very mainstream. There are fewer breaches of good taste (even if there are some, and they're often my favorite). The Kinks, unfortunately, have become like everybody else. At least musically.
Oh, how I want to put this album on and find some excitement and positive things to say, but mostly I’m bored out of my skull and want to skip almost every track. For me, this is a what in the hell happened to The Kinks moment. I listened to it again last night and I still find it mostly to be an uninspired album with weak songwriting. It’s the first album I can’t find anything that I absolutely love. Every other album has been the opposite of this. There are a few decent songs that I like, but this album is a major disappointment. It’s like Ray was scolded and told to straighten up and act normal. We need radio friendly hits! I know that looking at these tracks individually will bring out their best for me. When we discuss a song I try to focus on what I like about it. I will have a few nice things to say, but this record doesn’t excite me like all the others. It was 1977 and my taste sides far more with the punk rock movement that was taking off. My favorite album of 1977 is Leave Home by The Ramones, which was released one month before Sleepwalker. The Kinks album in comparison is far too slick and like a lot of great 60s artists they start to sound out of touch and like old fogies by 1977. It happened to the best of them. I like when The Kinks were taking chances and being diverse in their musical ambitions. Sleepwalker just seems safe and bland. I’m generally not a fan of lead guitar jamming and I hear a much different Dave on this album. He’s a great guitar player, but at times on the next several records I want to unplug his amp! I do love the album cover, so that’s a positive! The follow up album Misfits brings back some of the fun, and sounds more like a logical step in the Kinks progression. Sleepwalker sounds too serious! What happened to the humor and all the joy? It was probably too much to consider at the time, but a double album of Sleepwalker/Misfits would have been more balanced and would actually make for a pretty impressive record. I always thought Misfits sounded like it was released before Sleepwalker. They both have some similarities, but with Misfits, we get a little more of The Kinks we already love and are familiar with. The transition to Arista might not have been so jarring if Misfits came out first. I expect to appreciate this album more after this discussion. Before we start, there are maybe three or four songs that I enjoy on some level. The others will take a whole lotta love and convincing from all of you merry Kinks fans!
Also, something I miss in the post-Schooldays years is the extra musicians. Most of the time we're trapped in the 5-piece pop-rock formula. It never bothered me with the Who, because they were incredible musicians, but with the kinks I get sonically bored after a while. Especially with the slick FM sound.
Sleepwalker I tried so hard to like this album that my efforts did pay, to a certain extent. I can listen to it all the way through with a certain pleasure, and some songs are still in the process of growing on me, especially on the second side. My stand-out tracks have always been Life on the Road and Full Moon. I'm not a great lover of most of the Kinks' album closers, and this record is no exception. The uniform sound is something I resent, though, as I said, and for all the fun in the songs I can't help feeling a little sadness. Maybe this will all change in two weeks' time, after therapy !
Particularly when you are used to a certain drummer, and their feel, it makes a lot of difference. I've jammed with guys that are probably good drummers, but they just don't have the right feel, and you can't lock into them.... I'm not sure it is something that can be explained unless it is something you have done. I'm not altogether sure why Dave had issues with Mick though.... I would suggest it had nothing to do with his drumming... after so many years they would be locked in, if they were playing enough.
