This thread makes requires me to examine the lyrics much more closely than I ever had and this chanty song struck me as being a cut above how I remember it. Of course, we get another Shakespeare reference with the "all the world's a stage" speech but, dare I say it, this is the Kinks version of "Sympathy For The Devil" which Mick Jagger joked was a history essay as he wrote the lyrics. We have references to the spectacles of Ancient Rome and the Kennedy assassination (the acetate reveals a French Revolution verse). But it's tied to a theme and it is one that Ray knows well - you gotta deliver the goods if you want to keep on keeping on in the rock n roll business. Some may see the title as cynical but it is the reality. Bands have to change in order to maintain interest over the years but also to adapt to the shifting marketplace. This song showed up in the Oakland 1980-10-08 and New York 1980-12-31 shows during the encores before the album was released.
I only became aware of the existence of this promo video in the last few months would you believe, as it was omitted from the Come Dancing With The Kinks VHS/DVD which I'd always assumed contained all the 80s Arista promo videos. I guess a likely reason for it being left off that collection is, well. DAVE AIN'T IN IT!.. not the last time that would happen in a GTPWTW-era clip either. I guess it's also unlike the other early 80s videos in that there's no narrative or much of a concept to it, it's just a performance video with a bunch of gluttonous 18th century/new romantic types who look like they'd wandered off the set of an Adam Ant video being the only visual element additional to the band.
I lent 'Give The People...' (the album) to a friend of mine in the early '90s when we were both around 20 years old and despite him being arguably more into the indie side of things he told me that he'd often found himself chanting "Give the...people...what they want!" as he went about his daily business. It's not my favourite Kinks track but I think it serves its purpose well. Interesting that 'Entertainment' was around at the same time, since that has the "sex, violence, murder and rape" line in it, whereas in 'GTPWTW' the human race is distracted by "sex, perversion and rape"...guess Ray had to separate them by a few albums! I'd never seen the video until now, either, despite my Kinks obsession. Always good to have something new to discover.
The line about JFK's brain makes me wonder if hadn't heard this (1979) single by Destroy All Monsters. Chrissie Hynde would certainly have heard it!
"Give The People What They Want" Not my favourite track on the album, though it is undeniably a slice of kick-ass hard rock, and like the opening track it bristles with electricity. The opening line "it's been said before the world's a stage" - presumably because everybody's in showbiz? This stage is much more high-stakes than stopping off in a motorway loo or pretending to be pretending to work in an office - this is delivering violence, war and death as entertainment. The lyric is savage, but flows off the page really well, and the band's delivery equally savage. Easy to see this being a big hit on the live stage - not much subtlety but plenty of audience participation potential. It's good - but I think there's better to come.
I'm assuming that Give The People and Entertainment were going to be part of the idea Ray had for the album to be about the US media messaging, but somewhere along the line he changed direction, and Entertainment didn't fit anymore.
First : I love @Brian x's interpretation of the Moneygoround musical quote in yesterday’s song, and how it sets this one up. Second : I think Life on Mars? Could be the elusive Bowie song we were looking for. The one that actually quotes the Moneygoround’s bridge’s melody… Now, on to GTPWTW. Structure is ok, sound is… what it is, meaning what Ray meant it to be: abrasive, cutting, very harsh and in your face. The guitar work is great, I tend to prefer Dave’s solos when they’re not too worked out, but just wild, like here. On the minus side, shouty Ray’s back. When he sings “natural”, he’s great, his same old quirky tongue in cheek self, but when he lets it all out on this particular track, it becomes a pretty clumsy performance. But at least he doesn’t ruin a great melody here… For what it’s worth, I think the extra verse of the “acetate” version was the best of the three. I find it quite amusing, and not because I’m French, just because I laughed ! It doesn’t add much meaning to the song, but it adds wit and a priceless line in “An execution costs nothing, it's a wonderful show”. On all three verses, the pay-off line’s the best. But of course, 4’57’’ was really, really overlong. I already find it overlong in the short version… Lyrically, especially if you add the French revolution bit, it’s undoubtedly a more successful sociological/political/historical mash-up than Nobody Gives from Preservation Act2. This time, the point comes across clearly and I do enjoy Ray’s Dylan imitation that can be heard on the “while the killer takes aaaim” line, with Ray dragging on the last syllable like he always does when he pretends to be His Bobness. But musically, this is not a favorite of mine at all. It's fast, agressive, hard and punk rocking, yet it falls a bit flat, it doesn't grab me, it doesn't drive me along. I'm staying on the station platform, while the train's rides away… Two songs in a row, it’s hard to miss the Ramones nod, but it's just not as inspired and fun as the first one. I don’t see it as trying to rival them or pretend to be “punk rock” like them. I see it as a friendly nod, a tip of the hat from the older band to the young. An acknowledgement, almost an endorsement. Though I don't care much for this track, I still think it's a nice gesture and sentiment. Of the British old guard, only the Kinks were cool enough to choose the Ramones rather than the Pistols or the Clash !
4ZZZ in Brisbane broadcast from Queensland University for about 10 years and have been going since 1975.
Give the People What They Want Forty years on and I’m still unsure of that high testosterone open. Considering the unrelenting energy that pulses through the entire track, I suppose it works. Mick is definitely not treading water anymore; goodbye doggie paddle and hello breast stroke. He’s much more prominent in these mixes and he has upped his game. In a charming 1988 interview on WNEW-FM with Dan Neer (Dan-O) which I taped Ray says he met Bruce Springsteen in a men’s room at Power Station in the late 70’s and they had a long conversation where ‘we decided the drum sound of the eighties would be this explosive snare drum sound like it’s being recorded in a restroom, a very echo-y and smashing drum sound, very live.’ A drum sound this and the next Kinks album (and Born in the USA) would highlight. As for the lyric, it’s decent, and clearly makes it point. The ‘there goes a piece of the president’s brain’ is unnecessary, a poor choice of phrase from such a lauded writer. The cost of giving the teen-agers what they want. Dave turns in a manic solo that could have been recorded at Pye Studios, summer, ‘65. Do you notice they start to play this song after finishing Art Lover on SNL as they break for commercial? Wonder if they kept playing because it sounded great, though probably not with the set changes going on in that small space, studio 8-H. Now some comments on the proposed video tie-in, Eat to the Beat. Oops, my bad. You can imagine the producer, presumably after a stiff drink, saying, ‘What, Dave’s AWOL? ‘There’s a guitar solo? Just zoom in on the community theater players tucking into the smorgasbord.’ Who was it who said ‘life on earth is so bizarre?’ Ray misses his cue but those pink jeans must be the best pair he ever bought. This is theater of the absurd; v. funny, v. Kinks. Dave sure did skip a lot of shoots in the eighties, though.
'Blow out your brains, and do it right Make sure it's prime time and on a Saturday night.' The lyric of this track gives no quarter in it's complete cynicism, but I think that's entirely appropriate for what it sets out to do. I can hear a casual listener only familiar with the Klassic Kinks Kanon sticking this on and being repulsed by the utter lack of heart and empathy displayed, thinking 'where is the guy who wrote Waterloo Sunset in this crass noisy tirade' and chucking the disc out the window. Well, in fact that guy is still present elsewhere on this album, but he ain't on the track and he ain't meant to be either. I guess it all depends on the breadth of experiences of what you're willing to allow Ray Davies and The Kinks to mean and convey to you. I'll admit I feel similarly oppressed by some later Kinks records as my theoretical casual fan does by this track as Ray keeps banging the drum for 'world and society=pretty bad' in later works, but for me it totally works here: it reminds me of a one of those carnivalesque spreads from a classic Mad Magazine, in that you see the very worst of human nature on display, seen from afar, small and stupid: tragedies and human miseries obscenely debased into fodder for mass media distraction, humans as pigs down in the sty eating each other with no dignity or higher conscience: and yes that isn't all of life., but it is a pretty accurate reflection of the media landscape of the time and one that's only expanded exponentially in the 4 plus decades since, far beyond what even this pretty prescient lyric could have predicted (I think the line 'Give 'em lots of violence, and plenty to hate' is the most relevant to our current milieu with regards to social media).. I'm not sure if Ray was aware of the 1974 televised suicide of Christine Chubbuck (Christine Chubbuck - Wikipedia ) when he wrote this, but the line I quoted atop this post can't help but bring that to mind and also seem like an unpleasant premonition of the similar 1987 Budd Dwyer incident (pictured above) R. Budd Dwyer - Wikipedia .. which brings me to the ultimate desecration, that of JFK at the songs climax, including that (intentionally) tasteless and heartless line about Jack's displaced cellular matter: This can be received in 3 ways I think: 1) with a gleeful chuckle revelling in the sick humour as I'm sure many young punk-adjacent Kinks fans did at the time (despite their name even The Dead Kennedys I don't think ever quite 'went there' with this subject: it does has the slight creak and grasping of a family friendly established comedian trying out some bluer material to show he still has it, but even so it still makes it imo). 2) with a roll eyes thinking ' I can't believe the guy who used to write with such sensitivity is reduced to this kind of idiotic try hard edgy crap' 3) as the unpleasant but inevitable conclusion of the theme of the song: the ultimate modern tragedy reduced to a visceral rubbernecking spectator sport, which I think is how it was intended. The deeper tragedy is implied if not in the surface text. And speaking of the events Nov 22nd 1963, I find it eerily serendipitous that this song was recorded but then released either side of the next 'shot heard round the world' of Western pop culture.. or course the murder of John Lennon, which must have struck close to home for Ray and The Kinks being as he was one if not the foremost figures of their peer group, and whose brutal death would (as I said a few posts back) set the tone for the decade ahead. While seemingly not directly inspired by Lennon's murder, the following track on the album which also deals with violence in the media (but was recorded 1981) can't help but have been informed by and carry the weight of the pervasiveness of this shocking event in a way the title track was, despite all it's pessimism , still blissfully innocent of.
Interestingly, as different as it is, this is the logical conclusion to The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society. The society is dead, all its members brutally murdered, all we have is this ever forward surging thrust of vulgar media depictions of how horrendous we are. The song shows little subtlety, because the world, from the way it is presented, has no subtlety. I understand folks may not like the song, but what the song represents is spot on.
Give the People What They Want: This is the first time I've listened to this song in years - not as bad as I remember. What I remembered most was that churning guitar riff that opened and repeated through the song, and I didn't much care for it. In actuality, most of the track features bopping verses and intelligent, darkly hued lyrics. A lot of the kids I went to high school with in the deep country were metal heads: Ozzy, Dio-era Sabbath, AC/DC, Van Halen, Judas Priest, etc. They look back fondly on hair metal - one recently attended a Kixx concert at a bar in a nearby college town (and he let me know this isn't unusual to see bands from those days routinely playing nearby venues to packed houses). The thing is, they would never listen to a song like this! Despite the fact that it didn't sound appreciably far off from what they were listening to. The smart lyrics? The band's age (although Ozzy and Sabbath were roughly the same age)? The Kinks' image? I don't know. Their music felt more like a lifestyle choice. Rush was borderline band for them - too smart for their own good. About the only non-metal album/band they would champion was Pink Floyd's The Wall, because it underlined their hatred of school. While I could hear Ray dabbling in these hard rock/metal touches to his songs, I completely understood that The Kinks were nowhere near this genre ... mostly because of how well I knew these kids and what they would and wouldn't go for.
Give the People What They Want My feelings about the song and the subjects touched on in the lyrics are intertwined - which is a very clever trick by Ray if it was deliberate. The song is loud, unrefined, aggressive, occasionally shouty - none of the things I'm generally looking for when I put on a Kinks album. Yet I find myself oddly attracted to it and willing to play all the different versions one after the other. And I believe this is the underlying point of the lyrics: all these things are horrible but we can't help looking. Has anyone here ever passed the scene of an automobile accident and not looked? Even assuming there are iron-willed folk out there, Ray is tapping into human nature in this song. These are the things we click on when scrolling news websites - sex, violence, murder are all classic clickbait subjects. Well said Headmaster! I'm reminded of the time I visited the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart and we were given a tablet on which we could register our feelings on each of the exhibits from strongly positive to strongly negative. Note: MONA has many beautiful works as well as some very confronting exhibits. I subsequently read in an interview with the owner that he wanted pieces that stirred an emotional response - which suggested the exhibits which received middling responses from the public didn't last long. Back to the song, the reference to the 'president's brain' isn't the only distasteful line: who actually wants 'perversion and rape'? But if Ray wanted to stir an emotional response he pushed the right buttons.
Give The People What They Want: My favorite part? When Ray sings “harder and harder to please.” I like his vocal right there. The music is hit-you-up-the-side-of-the-head blunt force. Primal. Lyrics? Bitingly true. My overall feeling is that it’s an okay song. Good enough to make it 2 for 2 on the album count (but not playlist worthy).
Give the People What They Want Five minutes expressing the news programming adage "If it bleeds, it leads." Effectively delivered.... although I'm in the group who thing the line about the President's brain is excessive, even in this presentation; and I did even when I was 17. Still, a fine rebuke of humanity as a whole. Shouty and punk enough to be appropriate for the subject matter yet melodic enough to be catchy.
My favorite Kinks album got it when it first came out after I first heard Destroyer and enjoyed the album as a whole, got an OG pressing, CD and a clear vinyl pressing from Friday Music.
"Give The People What They Want": The title track of the album, it's probably the most brutal song the Kinks ever did, at least lyrically. The "Waterloo Sunset" Kinks probably couldn't do this song, but the Kinks of "I'm Not Like Everybody Else", "All Day and All of the Night" and "You Really Got Me" certainly could. It's a combination of the early rocking Kinks and Ray's observations of current society, which is basically what one of the many later bands that were influenced by them said, that Modern Life is Rubbish. To bring things to a full circle, November 22, 1963 was also the release date of With the Beatles, their second album in the UK and the one, as modified as Meet the Beatles, that brought Beatlemania to the US.
Give The People What They Want This song is a lot more interesting lyrically than it is musically. The music is pretty much by the book not that interesting semi-hard rock. But lyrically it touches on a theme that perhaps explains why the music is so unoriginal. Because when you think about it, a lot of Ray's most original and creative music fell pretty much on deaf ears, particularly in the USA.
I used to see that album a lot in the bargain bins back in the day. It's not a half bad album, especially with "Sing" and "There's No Other Way" (I have the Blur21 box set).
