Available as part of 50th Anniversary The Kinks Are The Village Preservation Society.
Impossibly good for something just left in a box on a shelf for fifty years (and now part of a box).
New old song from The Kinks
by 45 Comments
Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Possibly from early/mid 70s rather than TKATVGPS era.
And I like it a lot.
Thanks for posting. Good stuff.
Superb song.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Ray Davies, not Macca, is the greatest UK pop songwriter. And the Kinks made records as good as/better than the Beetles. What an effortlessly lovely song.
If The Kinks had been recorded at Abbey Road and if George Martin was the producer and if Ray Davies had been just a little bit more collaborative ….
He only needed to be prettier to have attracted all the benefits you list. The Kinks were mostly a boy’s band, with Ray a bit too gaunt and prognathous for the girlies. The greater talent, though.
My mother would disagree, or would have in about 1966 anyways. But then she married my Dad so her tastes are hardly mainstream.
Apparently in the 1970s RD’s arse became popular.
Paul is a PR genius, or close to one. Ray is very much… not.
If McCartney was ever touched by genius, it was surely for P.R., Neela. Ray was always an awkward bugger. Having a groupie-magnet like his brother in the band couldn’t have helped, either.
Every single song Ray has ever written is about being on the outside looking in rather than partaking. That’s his greatest asset as a songwriter.
The full monty is £125 … that’ll be the “NO” then … Ker-and-very-much-no-ching … the 3-CD version from 15 years ago, bought for about £10, is more than enough anyway. This 50th Anniversary set bizarrely only comes as a 2-CD version!
The thing I don’t understand is why The Kinks (they weren’t alone) were so forgetful about their back catalogue when it actually had a reasonable chance of shifting significant units.
I remember in the dire 1980s having to make do with a dubious/semi-bootleg £2.99 cassette of VGPS from the Virgin Megastore as the original record was nowhere to be found on the LP/CD racks.
Meanwhile, The Beatles’ CDs were flying off those same racks.
94 quid on Amazon UK. And those of us overseas get it cheaper (no VAT), have pre-ordered hoping for a lower price and will probably cancel. Don’t need it really having several versions already on vinyl and CD.
I agree – the 3CD Deluxe set on Sanctuary has really interesting archive gems on board, including “Mick Avory’s Underpants”, and there’s a great booklet. Best of all, there are still a few new copies available on Amazon for a song. Hurry children, you won’t spend a better tenner this side of Crimble.
I’ll be buying the new double CD version anyway, to hear if the 2018 remasters are in any way an improvment over those from 2004. And the “Time Song” monitor mix above is a proper delight.
I shouldn’t imagine the Kinks had much (if any) control of their back catalogue in the ’80s.
They were on Pye Records for most of their heyday and then RCA for a while after. The Pye catalogue has changed ownership a few times since the ’70s. I think when labels get sold on to bigger groups and then the subsequent owners also get sold on as well, there’s a danger that material can get forgotten about, or ignored in favour of newer acts.
The Beatles were associated with EMI throughout and they were a strong label right through into the 2000s.
Surprised you think that @deramdaze.
Whenever I go into a physical shop these days – mainly HMV or FOPP there seems to be more Kinks catalogue on sale than any other 60’s artist including Stones and Beatles. All reissued 2 cd sets that are both very good quality aurally and good value for money.
I think he was talking about how it was in the ’80s, regarding Kinks and Beatles records.
Jesus, in 1993 I had to go to a market stall to buy proper Kinks albums on CD. In HMV and so on it was about 20 cheap-jack compos called “You Really Got Me” featuring the same 12 tracks in different orders. Times was hard.
It’s from the Preservation Act era 1973, so no idea what it’s doing on Village Green
https://www.spin.com/2018/08/hear-the-kinks-previously-unreleased-time-song-from-village-green-preservation-society-50th-anniversary-reissue/
Yes I said that above. I believe the Preservation project started out with a bigger connection to TKATVGPS, he may have written it earlier, who knows?
That’s weird, like putting a track from “Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid” on “John Wesley Harding.”
I mean, you could, but why would you?
It rather suggests that there really is nothing left in the VGPS barrel.
But the “nothing left” is on vinly, so that’s alright … hoorah and very-much-ker-ching!!!
Hopefully this won’t the start of the same thing that Pete Townsend did with Lifehouse – i.e. pulling unrelated songs from outside the correct timescale into the concept
Mr. Davis explains his thinking about adding the new track in the article linked above.
For those who can’t be bothered to read it – no, it’s not related to the “Village Green” album, it’s about the EU, and anyway, he thinks it’s fitting to release it now.
Totally fab. Gear, even. I have no higher praise.
It’s from the early 70s, not the 60s. It is therefore either groovy, cosmic or too much.
Heavy.
I admire Ray Davies as a songwriter but he rarely moves me. He’s created some lovely tunes (Tired Of Waiting is probably my favourite) and his word skills can be very impressive (the scansion on Autumn Almanac is quite perfect). He can be very witty (Dead End Street) and he can tell a story with a clever twist (Lola). However, there’s the rub. He is mainly an observational writer with a wistful fondness for the past to a classic England that today’s Brexiteers dream of. Too often, he is dispassionate about the characters in his songs. He seems to care more about places, Waterloo Sunset being the most notable example. His own personality doesn’t often shine through and he rarely expresses emotion, such as anger or grief, despite the social problems he frequently describes.
Don’t get me wrong, when he’s good, he’s very, very good but, for me, almost all of the occasions he resonates are singles. He doesn’t quite seem able to put together a collection of songs that are varied enough to maintain my interest but have enough in common to make a satisfying album.
I do enjoy a cover of a Ray Davies song, though, which is a good indicator of quality writing, so this entire post may just be about my personal difficulty relating to Ray. For the record, my favourite album of theirs is The Kink Kontroversy but I’m happiest with a Best Of.
I used to think that they were best appreciated as a singles band, however I was wrong, the run of Face to Face/Something Else/VGPS/Arthur/Lola/Percy*/Muswell Hillbillies is as good as any British band has produced.
I understand Ray can appear to be dispassionate, and he is certainly an unusual guy, however Waterloo Sunset is not about a place, it is about loneliness.
* less so, but includes one of his greatest songs God’s Children. I think there is some passion in it.
Oh, the rich man, the poor man, the saint and the sinner
The wise man, the simpleton, the loser and the winner
We are all the same to Him
Stripped of our clothes and all the things we own
The day that we are born
We are all God’s children
And they got no right to change us
Oh, we gotta go back the way the good lord made
Oh, the good lord made us all
And we are all his children
And they got no right to change us
Oh, we gotta go back the way the good lord made us all
Yeah, we gotta go back the way the good lord made us all
My point about Waterloo Sunset is that he displays a genuine affection for London, flaws and all, that isn’t often there for people. Perhaps, that’s why he’s lonely.
I’ll give God’s Children a try. Maybe if I think of him as an introspective making observations of the world around him (the England of his childhood) but really he’s reflecting on his own inner turmoil, I might find the key to loving his songs more.
Waterloo Sunset *sounds* like loneliness.
⬆️
@lando-cakes
Most truest thing ever.
I’ve been thinking about this post @tiggerlion and I agree with a lot of it. I’ve gone through Kinks phases and Davies’ gift is undeniable. There is a lot I love about them (and I love Time Song), but as I get older, RD’s disconnect just ends up with him disconnecting from me. A song like Shangri-la I now read as sneery, although I understand @dai saying that perhaps Ray wishes he was that way too. I don’t think Ray can have it both ways though. If he’s saying I’m Not Like Everybody Else, then by extension I feel he’s being dismissive to the protagonist in Shangri-la. “The little man who gets the train/Got a mortgage hanging over his head”. What a patronising lyric.
Ray looks backwards to a glorious England, yet I feel sympathy to the man sitting in his Shangri-la. The generation before Ray went through the horror of WW2; of course a house in an estate with an indoor toilet is paradise. Why wouldn’t he just want to sit there? Also: maybe he’s happy.
We now live an era where housing has become beyond the reach of many. Has Ray written a song disparaging the banking system that has delayed or destroyed the dream of people owning a Shangri-la in recent years? As a working stiff myself, I don’t need a Ray Davies song inferring that I’ve no imagination and I’m to be pitied.
Maybe I’m reading too much into this.
Overall, I’m more with Billy Joel: The good old days weren’t always good and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems.
(Side note: My fave album remains Lola Vs… – This Time Tomorrow, there’s a song that has come out of the shadows in the past ten years. It feels personal and not dispassionate or dismissive. And go look at Spotify: Dave’s Strangers is in the Kinks’ top 5. Not sure how that happened.)
I still think Ray has some empathy for the “little man”, and as for the old times being the best, I also believe some irony is involved there. He also wrote some absolutely cracking tunes.
Cracking tunes abound, no doubt. Here’s one:
I did listen again to Village Green and Something Else. I’m afraid they didn’t work any magic apart from the odd track. However, I’ve discovered the disc of their singles I own is over 30 years old. I’ve updated it with the Ultimate Collection and look forward to a bit of a binge on remastered material.
Thanks for trying!
And this was my gateway into them. What a great compilation!
https://www.discogs.com/The-Kinks-Golden-Hour-Of-The-Kinks/release/457294
This is the one I’ve bought:
https://www.discogs.com/Kinks-The-Ultimate-Collection/master/419673
Not too shabby.
I think Tiggs is about right, rarely does he show empathy. But here he does, a good, so rare, later song from the Kinks when they were otherwise spent.
https://youtu.be/tHjiqz9Q-JQ
I think part of his greatness is that in his observational lyrics it can be hard to be certain if he is ridiculing people’s life choices or perhaps wishing he was that way too. Pretty complex. As for showing empathy Some Mother’s Son from the same album (Arthur) has it in spades and is very moving (as one example).
I bloody love this, should have been a heeyoooge hit. But by then they’d committed the grave error of going out of fashion.
The last great Kinks’ song … with a passing nod to “Come Dancing” and (if only it had been edited down to 2:30) “Scattered.”
I’d have made “Scattered” massive for the Kinks … why didn’t they ask me?
It was an open goal … with Blur suddenly going mod (with a small “m”) and everything from America being shite … how on earth did they screw that one up!
I was at a fiftieth birthday party last night, and the host’s father was there. He was in his early seventies, and raised in Muswell Hill. Somehow The Kinks came up and we got chatting. Turns out he had been mates with Dave Davis – they were in the same class at school. He knew Ray (two years above) who was head boy. Rod Stewart was at the same school, and they hung out a bit. Wonderful conversation about music, touching on some of the topics on this thread, growing up in 60s London, the club scene etc.
Cool