The Kinks - Album by Album (song by song)

I don't know whether to thank you for the laugh or to curse you for putting this song in my head.

 

I’m thinking the latter. I had one brief, oh so slight, moment where I considered clicking…but…no.

 

FWIW Ray writes in his book Americana, regarding Sleepwalker: “Clive wanted The Kinks to make the more middle-of-the-road, commercial music he thought we had left behind since our early hits. The only problem I could foresee was that whatever we were, the Kinks were never middle of the road, so we settled on the term “accessible “.

 

Sorry to be out of step, but further to my post above in the RCA years, and for discographers…. Found the disc I was thinking of.

FWIW, the Japanese CD called The Greatest Hits II, 1971-75 has the mono mix of Everybody’s a Star (Starmaker) and the single edit of One of the Survivors.

Carry on!

 

Hey, Avid Vangro asked a question and I answered it for him without any comment

 

I liked the two Spin Doctors songs I know too lol

 

Sleepwalker

A jaunty pop song. It was all over the radio in the area where I lived. I like the rhythm guitar a lot, and especially The Ray/Dave harmonies (and call and response) are great.

 

That sounds pretty straight forward to me, and it's what I hear.... but I think pretty much everything they've done is accessible

 

I like Sleepwalker. I was going to mention that I would like it better if it faded out maybe 30 seconds earlier. I like the way the version you posted ends. I only listened on my phone, but I think I like the version you posted a lot better. I’ll check it out more closely when I have time later.

When I first heard the song I was maybe 19 and never really thought about the insomnia. I guess the “creatures of the night” and coming “in for a bite” had me fixated on the vampires. Now that I see that the lyrics are more open to interpretation, I like it better. It’s a little fanciful for me, but I like @pantofis pointing out that someone said it was about Ray’s ability to feed off other people’s stories for his songs.

 

I would say they progressively attempted to capture a wider audience from Jefferson Airplane to Jefferson Starship to plain old Starship. Going commercial (however one might define that) doesn’t necessarily bother me. I can name plenty of bands who, as they “went commercial” (or simply achieved more commercial success) I still like them or even like them better. Personally, I just didn’t care for the direction that Starship went in.

 

Further ‘Sleepwalker’ album meanderings: I initially thought that there were five playlist prospects, with two as shoe-ins. Then I cut two (all in my mind because we haven’t actually discussed the songs yet) leaving three. My latest version throws out one of the shoe-ins and possibly reinstates one of the tracks that I had given the heave-ho to. Bewildering.

 

I would have a total of three or four songs for consideration, and one song already made it. So, not too weak of an album. I like about half to it, with a couple songs that would be playlist material. I think Misfits will follow the same pattern. I could put together one really good album with my favorites from each. Sleepwalking Misfit playlist coming up!

 

That's a great album title or band name!

 

Sleepwalker
I've been listening to this one extra attentively to be sure I do enjoy this song today...or is my enjoyment attached to long ago memories of it. This was clearly a FM radio song that got played a lot.

Anyway, I have come down on the side that this is a really good (almost great, but not quite) song.

once again Ray is painting a picture of this 'creature of the night' that tip toes around while you sleep. Yes, Ray is a well known insomniac (since birth apparently), but I just love the idea that he turns into something else when he can't sleep and maybe we should all be fearful that Ray is going to slip into your bedroom (for me to have a 1977 version of Ray do that, would be most welcoming...I'm not gonna lie. ).

@mark winstanley and @Zeki mentioned that the song sounds like the Steve Miller Band. I would tend to agree. It is definitely a song that has a late 70s stamp on it, so maybe doesn't age as well as some classics of the Kinks. And the only other slight criticism is that it may be a bit too long.

2 out of 3 songs are keepers thus far. They still sound like the Kinks to me.

 

I think I have it. 5 songs from each album. I would love to share it, but I will wait until after we discuss Misfits.

 

Well, Susannah did sleep with the covers down hoping that somebody gets in.

 

I really wanted to say something along those lines, but thought it would be improper for me to .. and I kinda thought you would.....

 

The rhyming words are same, shame, pain and name. Had he been singing ‘gay’ I think professional songwriter standards would have had him rhyming it - say, day, pay, lay. Not difficult. Not necessary.

 

Yea, that sounds pretty spot on.

The sort of chorused "oh yeah" (after I might come in for peak) sounds like a section from a nineties song.... but it's not coming to mind.

 

I do understand that. The live performances sound more distinctly like "gay," and if it's actually "game," then I then wonder why the verse was cut.

 

Length?

 

I find the discussion of whether Ray was trying to be commercial a distraction from the music itself. It’s natural for us to compare the Kinks to their previous work but when you’re living it in real time - either as a fan or as the band itself - you’re far more likely to be only comparing it to their previous album. In this case Schoolboys in Disgrace. Putting myself in that mindset I’m relieved to hear (1) no thematic storyline (2) more prominent guitars (3) catchy choruses. After three songs I have a big smile across my dial. To go further into character, as a classic rock fan I might have been playing Paul McCartney’s latest album London Town just before the Kinks. What an absolute snoozefest that was. In contrast, Sleepwalker starts off with a bang, bang, bang.

 

Maybe the song is better off without it. Verses and lines get chopped out of songs all the time. Plus you hear gay and I hear game. If it’s the former what’s the verse supposed to mean?

 

Sleepwalker

The song sounds familiar. I am too young to have heard this on FM radio back in it's day, and I don't think it's made it into the "classic rock" radio playlists in the 2000s. I do hear some Steve Miller Band vibes here, but the verse melody is pure Kinks. The bridge is also very Kinks. The breakdown is VERY Kinks, again sounding like it could be off Preservation Act 2. Don't have much more to add. It's a great catchy earworm and was rightfully the mid-level hit that the band needed.

The other thing that these lyrics remind me of is Heartbreaker (1979) by Pat Benatar, so perhaps Sleepwalker was a bit of inspiration for Heartbreaker:

You're a heartbreaker
Dream maker, love taker
Don't you mess around with me

Finally, being a huge Jeff Buckley fan, I couldn't let this question about Mr. Big Man by avid @All Down The Line go unanswered:

Grace is in my top 13 albums of all time list, so I was thinking of what song you could be thinking of... I ended up on So Real or Eternal Life, perhaps? These songs are very different, but musically So Real is the slow churner, while Eternal Life has some of the biting vocal delivery.

 

I got the crazy fangirl stuff covered. No worries, Mark!