The Kinks - Album by Album (song by song)

I hardly remembered the last 4 tracks on the album, so they're almost new to me.

Live Life

A really pleasant rocker. Now that @Fortuleo is saying it, the verse might be stronger than the chorus, but it didn't strike me as much as on other songs (acting the contrarian here). My analysis of the verse lyrics never went much further than "political stuff put in smart sounding words", contrasted with the basic stoician (or epicurean ? I just spent 3 days with philosophers, my perception is altered) idea that in the end we don't give a damn about it all. It reminds me of a comedic fake advertisement that my conational probably remembers, in which a former revolutionary sells a brand of yoghurt named "Don't give a s**t" (litteraly "don't give a wa*k" in French) and says it has cured him from his militant past.

Out of the wardrobe

I have always thought that the right way to address offensive words was to disarm them, not ban them, but that's not the way society has chosen to handle this problem, and after all society may very well be quite right about this. I say this just to state that the offensiveness of words is not much of an issue for me : I always thought it a sane discipline to force myself to hear the meaning of words behind their appearance. But of course it's easier when you're not in a minority, and I don't use slurs myself. Still, I'm in the "context is everything" team, and since the context of this song is my childhood, I really don't see any problem with it. My main reproach is, I find the narrative a bit too straightforward. I don't hear any hidden meanings, irony or ambiguity, and in a way that's what's bothering me. The point being made is one of tolerance and openness, and that's great, but I wish it would have been made a bit more elaborately. The music's OK. Like a minority of Avids, I'm not so fond of the "princess" hook though. Neither do I enjoy the bridge that much. A pleasant song, not a skipper, quite touching actually, but not a favorite.

 

Is he not allowed to write songs from different viewpoints?

 

Found this RS article on Ebay. The article is from during the Misfits tour. Thought it was a good read:

 

Am I not allowed to criticize him for putting out contradictory messages? Are these particular songs written from someone else's viewpoint other than the viewpoint of Ray Davies? If not, then am I allowed to wonder what exactly it is that Ray Davies is trying to tell us in these songs? Or maybe I should just accept that the songs are just meaningless and, despite appearances to the contrary, Ray isn't actually trying to say anything and it's just some words to sing because a song needs words?

 

It's not so hidden anymore -- real estate values have skyrocketed here as Montgomery County residents (and others) have been discovering it. Great for those of us who have their homes, but tough for young people. I wasn't here during the Clinton years, but I have a friend who grew up here and says he once saw Nixon (with a couple of Secret Service agents) hiking around the Camp David area. I'm recently retired and could live just about anywhere, but this is where I belong.

 

Read p.11, top right of the RS piece @Wondergirl just posted. Clearly, Ray writes in character. Uncle Son isn’t Ray. Mr. Black isn’t Ray. Dan the Fan isn’t Ray. The guy going to the discotheque with his hair in a permanent wave isn’t Ray.

 

Thank U Very Much for posting this Avid Wondergirl. This is the very issue of RS that I bought back in the day (Cover Person: Gilda Radner RIP) and I still have it. You have saved me the drudgery of going through my pile of old mags to find it since I wanted to take a look at it before writing about "Trust Your Heart".

Speaking of Dave, he does rock the beard a bit better in the front photo than he did earlier in the decade, although it's still a bit disconcerting.

Finally, one of the Avids said that Gordon Edwards was a member of the Electric Banana. This is true, but it was really the Pretty Things under another guise so that it could supply background music for films & TV as a side gig (there's a 3CD set of their music that came out several years ago).

 

I think you've misunderstood my point. Are "Live Life" and "Get Up" character songs?

 

I believe the fella who wrote that fine RS article also wrote a book about The Kinks many years ago…

 

You're most welcome. I saw a mention of Woody Allen and thought of you.

Dave can carry a beard better than Ray can. I've seen Ray with a mustache shortly after his 1966 breakdown and then in a full beard in that 80s Rockaplast (sp?) video and Ray needs to remain clean shaven. So sez me!

 

For our Sunday off, I'll share this performance of YRGM from TOTP.

At the very front of the clip, Ray introduces himself. Hearing him do so reminded me of the rather long discussion we had early on in this thread about the proper pronunciation of "Davies."

Here you have it, straight from the horses mouth.

 

I know that Mendelsholn mentioned him in his book, telling him to get his Kinks book out soon, but the only books by Fred Shruers that I could find were about Blondie and a bio of Billy Joel.

 

Frederick is pretty much just "Montgomery County North" now. All of my Republican friends there fled to Florida and points South even before the pandemic hit. The days of "Fredneck" are long passed (lol).

 

It is

 

Wow. With thread participates spreading through the United Kingdom and Europe, plus all corners of the US, I had no idea (and what were the odds?) of more than one person either being from or familiar with this northwest outpost of the wider Washington DC metro area. By my count, we're up to three now.

And "Montgomery County North" is right. When I moved to Frederick in 1998 the talk of the town was the fight to prevent development that would turn it into another Rockville. Preservation, indeed!

I'm trying hard to think of some kind of Frederick/Kinks connection to make this relevant to the thread, but I'm coming up with nothing. I will say this, though. Living in this part of Maryland was close enough to the areas in Northern Virginia where Dave's solo shows routinely stopped, which enabled me to see him in concert three times. I didn't have that opportunity when I lived in Indiana.

 

I agree with the beard observation... it looks weird on Ray

 

Ok, it looks like most people have been through, so this is the slightly less tentatively listed upcoming attractions
After checking, all five songs @Martyj posted are available, so here they are slotted into the mix
Unfortunately I don't have Picture Book, at the moment I just can't afford it ... che sera sera


Monday - Trust Your Heart

Tuesday - Get Up ... wrapping up the Misfits

Wednesday -
20 Golden Greats
Dave's Decade continued - Islands

Thursday - Dave's Decade - Give You All My Love

Friday - Dave's Decade - Within Each Day

Saturday - Dave's Decade - Same Old Blues and This Precious Time



Monday Mar. 28th - Low Budget the album intro

Tuesday - Attitude

Wednesday - Catch Me Now I'm Falling

Thursday - Pressure

Friday - National Health

Saturday - Superman



Monday Apr. 4th - Low Budget

Tuesday - In A Space

Wednesday - Little Bit Of Emotion

Thursday - A Gallon Of Gas

Friday - Misery

Saturday - Moving Pictures



Monday Apr. 11th - Hidden Quality

Tuesday - Duke

Wednesday - Nuclear Love

Thurday - Maybe I Love You

Friday - Stolen Away Your Heart

Saturday - Second time Around (RCA era compile)
Dave Davies AFL 1-3603 the album intro



Monday Apr. 18th - Where Do You Come From?

Tuesday - Doing The Best For You

Wednesday - Visionary Dreamer

Thursday - Nothing More To Lose

Friday - The World Is Changing Hands

Saturday - Move Over



Monday Apr. 25th - See The Beast

Tuesday - Imaginations Real

Wednesday - In You I Believe

Thursday - Run

Friday - The Kinks One For The Road the album, EP and video intro

Saturday - Opening (album and video)/ Hard Way (album and video)



Monday May 2nd - Catch Me Now I'm Falling (album and video)

Tuesday - Where Have All The Good Times Gone (album and video)

Wednesday - Intro/Lola (album and video)

Thursday - Pressure (album and video)

Friday - All Day And All Of The Night (album and video)

Saturday - 20th Century Man



Monday May 9th - Misfits

Tuesday - Prince Of The Punks/ Stop Your Sobbing

Wednesday - Low Budget (album and video)

Thursday - Attitude (album and video)

Friday - Superman (album and video)

Saturday - National Health/ Til The End Of The Day



Monday May 16th - Celluloid Heroes (album and video)

Tuesday - You Really Got Me (album and video)

Wednesday - Victoria (album and video)/ David Watts

Thursday -
Waterloo Sunset EP
Dave Davies Glamour album intro

Friday - Is This The Only Way

Saturday - Glamour



Monday May 23rd - Reveal Yourself

Tuesday - World Of Our Own

Wednesday - Body

Thursday - Too Serious

Friday - Telepathy

Saturday - 7th Channel



Monday May 30th - Eastern Eyes

Tuesday - The Kinks Give The People What They Want album intro

etc

 

He grew into the look nicely

 

April 4th (day of the Low Budget intro) will also be the 1st birthday of this thread!

 

Who is the bearded guy

 

Nice one lol ... I actually like that idea
I hadn't noticed

 

I recognise the face, but I can't put a name to it.... I'm pretty sure he's an actor I recognise, but the name isn't coming to me

 

When I lived in Baltimore, I used to visit world-famous 78 collector Joe Bussard up in Frederick to listen to his rare (and often mint) pre-war blues and Cajun sides.
My buddy who lived just up the hill from him back then was a world-class Beatles collector with lots of nice minty original U.K. 'Parlys' to enjoy. Always a cool 'listening
tour'. We were both big Kinks fans (not Joe!) and caught every Kinks/Ray/Dave show in the area starting back around their killer 1972 Kennedy Center appearance.

 

I agree with both sides of this argument. As a writer, Ray's at the same time always coming back to similar themes and ideas (you might say obsessions) but he's also conflicted, contradictory, contrarian – to the extreme. More often than not, he knows how to turn it into a quality, but not always. A lot of his songs come from a place of observation, a few of them from a place of introspection, and then we have the "method acting" writing technique he describes in the RS article @Wondergirl posted. But on some songs it seems he's… well, maybe "preaching" is not the right word, but saying his piece about politics or politicians, the state of the world or the country etc., songs that don't express his sentimental and open worldview (his forte) as much as making up slogans about whatever he felt while listening to the news last night, which is not necessarily his strongest suit. Live Life and Get Up may fall into that trap.

I love the Misfits LP, I appreciate every song on it, but I've noticed not a single one of its songs' lyrics so far have been unanimously praised by us thread participants. Some have been called too "slight" (Fever, Land, Wave), some too cliché (Misfits), some too simplistic (Live Life), some too messy (Fantasy), some too insensitive (Messiah, Wardrobe). I mostly disagree (my reservations on a few songs are mainly musical), but these very diverging opinions bring me to thinking Ray's writing is probably a little less sharp, a little more vague than before. An example: not sure if anyone mentioned it, but it occurred to me it's very possible that the Live Life chorus could come from a Big Brother type figure, like an instruction by the media or the government (keep calm and carry on indeed), a bit like some brainwashing or propaganda parts in some Arthur tracks. But even if it's the case (I like to think so), it's not handled sharply enough to make sure it reaches the listener's consciousness, and the song ends up being suspected of simplistic sloganeering…

Now onto a very different matter : esteemed leader @mark winstanley, you know me, I’m all in favor of making this thread last the longest time possible. But I wonder if it would not be better to switch to two songs a day for Dave’s solo records and the live one (for the road). Not because they’re not deserving of praise and scrutiny, but because it kind of hurts the Kinks kontinuum by putting too much time between their next two studio LPs (Low Budget/Give the People What They Want). I don’t know, what do you think?

 

Google says it’s Ray. Prob during the height of the pandemic