March 28th, 2009
“There should be more people like The Kinks. Unruly but dedicated to their work at best; at worst, misguided, misled, mismanaged and misunderstood; but when they get it right, they are unforgettable. The rockers couldn’t out-rock us, the hippies couldn’t out-hip us and the punks couldn’t out-punk us. They would never reduce themselves to our level or aspire to our ridiculously blithe yet sensitive heights….No one else would expose themselves to the risks, failures and outrageous successes and excesses we put ourselves through. We were the uncoolest and the coolest at the same time. But then doesn’t every garage band feel the same way?”
-Ray Davies
The first concert I ever saw was The Kinks at Irvine Meadows, Irvine CA, in 1979. It was their Low Budget tour, I was 13 years old, and it remains one of the best memories of my youth. It’s not that often in life you get it 100% right the first time you do something. My first girlfriend wasn’t the right one for me. (Sorry Cathy, you and I both know it to be true.) My first job wasn’t either. But my first concert was perfect in every way and The Kinks remain one of my all-time favorite bands to this day.
To be a Kinks fan is not an easy choice. It’s not like rooting for The Beatles or The Stones. You don’t get much argument from people if you claim to love either of those two bands (I prefer The Beatles, but that’s a topic for another day). But telling someone you are a Kinks nut usually elicits blank stares, mild amusement or just a dismissive indication that the comment was actually heard. The Kinks catalog is so deep, so varied and so confounding that I have given up trying to explain the allure in one or two sentences to suspicious listeners. Instead, I offer up a mix CD, or just encourage someone to dive in themselves (at the right end of the pool, of course) and let nature take it’s course. I’ve recently seen first hand how The Kinks music can completely connect with an unsuspecting listener, converting my previously ambivalent wife into a die-hard Kinks-Kultist.
For the first time in their career, The Kinks have released a box set. It’s a 6 CD collection that is ultimately Kinksian; brilliant, beautiful, frustrating, bewildering…majestically imperfect. It’s a collection for the hard-core fan, as no newcomer could handle this much content, much of which is intended as newfound manna for the rabid. The collection is not quite a greatest hits set; though it contains almost all the essential tracks, many are alternative versions or demos. It’s more of a ‘best of’ as assembled by Ray Davies himself, which while highly illuminating, brings with it it’s own complications. It’s only natural, for example, for Ray to be as proud of his 1993 effort Phobia, universally regarded as an inferior work, as his early or mid-career high points. He seems to be attempting to re-frame this later period in a more flattering light. While it’s true this era deserves a fresh look and actually stands up rather well, it’s hard to justify the amount of real estate on these CD’s allotted to this material versus some earlier, truly under-appreciated gems.
But this is nit-picking. As Kinks fans, we finally have a collection that makes the argument for this bands greatness in a neat, clean orderly way. And for that we must be grateful.
The box does a wonderful job of chronicling the bands evolution. A beautiful booklet with detailed liner notes holds your hand as you work your way though the decades with this transformative music.
Disc one starts exactly where you’d expect, with the legendary You Really Got Me, a song that is often credited for launching Heavy Metal, Hard Rock, Punk Rock and the power chord. That might be a tad hyperbolic, but somewhere in that claim lies the truth. The 33 tracks on this disc take us from those famous riffs, and variations on those same riffs for another couple of hits, to a more gentle, playful, artful style that begins to define Ray Davies as a songwriter.
Discs two and three are the unarguable heavyweights of the collection. Bursting at the seams with one masterpiece after another, these discs take listeners through the brilliant stretch of five albums that have cemented Ray Davies’ place as one of rock’s all time great songwriters; Face to Face, Something Else, The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, Arthur (Or The Rise And Fall Of The British Empire) and Lola Vs. Powerman and the Money-Go-Round. Ambition, it seems, can be measured by the length of an album’s title. With the selections from this quintet, the argument for greatness gets convincingly made in four-minute increments. Song by song the genius is impressively laid out before us, newly exciting and sounding as relevant and vital today as it did 40 years ago. (Holy shit! Can this music really be 40 years old?)
Unappreciated highlights of this period include Ray’s self-aware I’m Not Like Everybody Else, This Is Where I Belong, the elegiac Days, anything from the best kept secret classic Village Green Preservation Society, Strangers and Get Back In The Line (a song that is perhaps more relevant today than the day it was penned). Speaking of the brilliant Village Green album, I recently was telling some friends about how completely ignored that album was when it was released in 1969, totally out of step with the huge albums of the time (The Beatles’ White Album, Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland, The Stones’ Beggar’s Banquet). Upon its 30 year anniversary, a wonderful re-issue of the Village Green was released, garnering the accolades the album so richly deserved upon it’s initial release, better late than never. As I mentioned that the influence of this gem can be heard throughout the music scene today, my friend John cracked “It’s not easy to be completely ignored yet extremely influential.” While he meant to be cutting, he un-knowingly captured the essence of The Kinks career. There’s hope for him yet.
Anyway, back to the box set. Discs four, five and six continue the journey through The Kinks career, from Muswell Hillbilly through Ray’s rock opera period of the Preservation series, A Soap Opera and Schoolboys in Disgrace before entering the Kinks final heyday as arena rock stars. This period saw a rebirth of interest in the band and brought them back to the publics attention (as well as the sales charts) with the albums Sleepwalker, Misfits, Low Budget, Give The People What They Want, State of Confusion and the live One For The Road. There are true highlights on these discs, and plenty to enjoy on their own merit. Where these tracks fall short is only in the shadow of The Kinks previous achievements. Comparing this era to their peak is hard to avoid but ultimately futile. When a band endures this long, change is essential and if there’s one thing rock fans resist it is change.
When judged on it’s own merits, these albums show Ray’s continued sensitivity, his gift for melody and outsider observation and a continued exploration of his weaknesses and concerns. While he spends countless tracks exploring man’s fears (their 1993 release is called Phobia, for crying out loud), shafts of optimism still manage to burst through the clouds. When at the end of Misfits, Ray sings that “every dog has his day” you can’t help but feel optimistic. And if the stunning Better Things can’t inspire hope from sadness, you may be dead.
Better Things
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In the end, that is the true gift of The Kinks music. It can make you laugh and cry in a single verse, and you never once doubt the sincerity behind it all. Aside from the killer riffs, the gorgeous melodies and the deeply thoughtful lyrics, this music has something else. There is an elusive x-factor here that many other great bands are simply incapable of possessing, and that is the Kinks’ charm. Even when they fail, there is an endearing nature to their efforts that make this band special. And when they succeed, as they have so many times throughout the years, they are extraordinary.
