the kinks
alieNDN
2,181 Posts
wtf?!i cant believe i slept on these guys, i mean i remember when i was a kid my dad would always play u really got me going and come dancing (which is a good tune, dont get me wrong)but i left it at that...but recently ive listened to Arthur and Village Green Preservation Society...and damn, its dope, why do bands today do the garage thing if it was already acheived years ago? this stuff sounds like it could be on the radio today. actually its odd that i didnt check them out earlier, cause one of my favorite songs today, thanks to a recommendation here is "waterloo sunset". any kinks fans? fav tunes? also i didnt realize how many albums they had, any other recommendations?
Comments
I'd recommend:
The Kinks Kontroversy
Face To Face
Something Else By the Kinks
Village Green
Arthur
Lola vs. The Powerman
Percy
and Muswell Hillbillies
after that Ray Davies "theme" albums start to get
really tiresome IMO.
my jams are:
til the end of the day
sunday afternoon
wicked annabella
I completely agree about the "theme" albums (also see; the who). But in their prime I dont think any rock band can fuck with the catalog. Some of my all-time favorite songs by far!
Waterloo sunset =
of extras, non-album tracks, B-sides etc.). I pick up the Lp's when I see them for cheap
but the CD's are the most bang for your buck.
Fav songs:
Autumn Almanac
When I See That Girl of Mine
Gotta Get the First Plane Home
Victoria
Driving
Apeman
and so on and so on and so on....
Shit I don't know if they recorded a bad song until Preservation Act I.
Gotdamn I love the Kinks!
If don't their was ever a better song writer than Ray Davies!
Everythings been done, so just do it your way and you'll be alright.
That's my jam... I've been meaning to do an extended edit of this for a couple months.
The Great Lost Kinks Album
i dont know, instrumentally...hip hop, country music,dance music and r&b dont sound like they did 20 years ago?
reading this the next day, i have to say i disagree with alieNDN.
thanks for the suggestions on the kinks!
ps: do they have a bbc session album? because i like the version of waterloo sunset from the bbc session better than the studio one.
I just borrowed it from the Library and put in my Itunes a couple weeks ago. Topshelf!
i dont think they meant the music itself, they meant the PHASE of music...country music doesnt sound like it did in 1956, but there are leventy-seven artists out right now trying to get that '56 honky tonk sound
1) IMO, the best kinks recordings are anything they did on the reprise label, or just in that general era (ca. 1964-71)...after they switched to RCA, it starts getting duller
2) don't underrate the garageier material from the early pre-concept years (like most kinks fans tend to do)
I totally agree with number one (although Muswell Hillbillies is really worth listening to). Regarding number two, I don't think i know the music you're referring to. If it's before the kinks - the kinks (and not included on the Sanctuary reissue that has a whole album worth of bonus tracks - definitely worth the price), I haven't heard it.
That said, I think their first two albums, The Kinks - The Kinks and Kinda Kinks, are really not that good. Their soul covers are lame. Once they stopped recording covers and went all original, they started to really kick ass. Something Else, Face to Face, and Village Green Preservation Society are all amazing end-to-end burners in my opinion. And my wife likes them too, so that's always a plus.
Elliott Smith's live cover of "Waterloo Sunset" is great.
JRoot
I like both bands, but find it hard to compare the two, since the Kinks dropped the crude punk thing fairly early. The Troggs, however, carried that hard garage-punk sound like a burning cross (even though they dabbled in other things here & there, like their ballad hit "Love Is All Around").
You do know what I'm talking about, believe me. When I say "garagier material," I definitely mean the songs from The Kinks, Kinda Kinks, and whatever other albums they had with a similar sound, like Kinks Size. You know, the "You Really Got Me"/"All Day & All Of The Night"/"Tired Of Waiting For You"/"Till The End Of The Day" era, before the Davies brothers got so sophisticated. This, my friend, is as garage as it gets.
And when you refer to an album called The Kinks, do you mean You Really Got Me? Because that was the title of the band's first American[/b] album, and that's the version I have, so naturally I'm gonna look at it from that angle. I will admit, that album doesn't do it for me either. (Sorry, don't mean to come off like a record geek about it, but some of those UK bands had their albums formatted differently in the US, and I don't recall a self-titled LP on Reprise.)
That said, I think their first two albums, The Kinks - The Kinks and Kinda Kinks, are really not that good. Their soul covers are lame. Once they stopped recording covers and went all original
I don't focus on the cover versions, I just brush 'em off like lint from a suit. No, most of those remakes weren't up to par (although they did a pretty good "Louie Louie"). I focus on the originals - they had quite a few self-penned selections on those early albums, right alongside the horrid re-do's.
Something Else, Face to Face, and Village Green Preservation Society are all amazing end-to-end burners in my opinion.
Ever heard that album that Ray Davies produced for the Turtles? Seems to me if you like Village Green and alla that, Turtle Soup ought to be up your alley.
As for the names, I've got the UK reissues on CD, not the American reprise issues. Different names. Kinda like the Beatles records, except the Kinks haven't decided to reissue souped up versions of their American records on CD (yet).
Turtle Soup is the only Turtles album that I have. But I listen to it about a thousandth as often as Village Green. I don't like the turtles as much. Maybe I should listen to it more often.
Yeah, I didn't mean to imply that this particular Turtles album (their last) was an exact carbon copy of the late-sixties Kinks***, but it's true that they were huge Kinks fans and for that reason, somehow managed to get Ray Davies himself to produce their final album. I can kinda hear how the Kinks' sound influenced the Turtles at that point.
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***not just Village Green, I just threw that title out at random; I really meant that whole mid-late 60s period of their music
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like mid-60's Kinks minus the UK-centric slant -
stuff like Village Green is so deeply British
that a US recording in the style comes off as pretty
unique just by lacking that element.
misfits