Althouse: "Don't You Fret."

September 3, 2011

"Don't You Fret."

Hey! I feel like I made this video...

But it's from jenzeppelin, who says: "Don't You Fret" is "a beautiful song, often overlooked." I wasn't overlooking it. I was scanning the songs in my computer picking out a Kinks song I was in the mood to hear, and that was the song I picked. And the driving-around-the-city-to-music video is just the sort of thing I'd been doing.

"Don't You Fret" was originally on the album "Kinkdom." I have the CD set "Remastered," but if you want a CD available these days, I recommend "Well Respected Kinks." 10 songs, all richly playable after — gasp! — almost half a century.

And here's jenzeppelin's channel. She's got a driving-around-video for "I Am Free" and a bunch of other Kinks songs. She specializes in The Kinks and... who would go with The Kinks if you had exactly one other musical passion?

Django Reinhardt!

18 comments:

edutcher said...: Frankly, yours take better advantage of the available lighting.

And, gee, the Kinks' sound awfully like that Grossberg guy from MN on that one.; 9/3/11, 11:08 AM
Wince said...: Keith Richards, on "fretting."

What?; 9/3/11, 11:15 AM
ricpic said...: Philosophical guy: Why does riding around playing cool music often end in despair?

Hippy chick: I don't wanna hear about, I don't wanna know, I don't care I don't care I DON'T CARE!; 9/3/11, 11:27 AM
sakredkow said...: Can I really trust Althouse's recommendation of a $5.98 Kinks' cd, or might she only be in it for the money?; 9/3/11, 11:41 AM
ndspinelli said...: "I love the Kinks. They sound good." Carl from Slingblade.; 9/3/11, 11:42 AM
sakredkow said...: EDH thanks for the link to Keith Richards. Interesting to hear him praise Don Everly's acoustic guitar playing. Gonna send me back to some Everly Bros.; 9/3/11, 11:45 AM
chuck b. said...: "She specializes in The Kinks and... who would go with The Kinks if you had exactly one other musical passion?"

I was going to say Elvis Costello, but that's too obvious.; 9/3/11, 11:53 AM
Tyrone Slothrop said...: Love the Kinks, but Steely Dan is the greatest band in history. In a hundred years, when the Beatles are a historical footnote, the cognoscenti will say, "Steely Dan is the greatest band in history."; 9/3/11, 12:03 PM
Beth said...: Althouse, if you like driving around to Kinks songs, you might enjoy this.; 9/3/11, 12:52 PM
The Crack Emcee said...: I am so very glad that I will never be able to claim a Kinks fetish. I can see myself, laying on my deathbed, just screaming, "FUCK!"

The fact that hippies openly admit to shit like that is enough reason to distrust almost everything they've ever thought or done. They are honestly without scruples.; 9/3/11, 1:36 PM
jr565 said...: I'm a big kinks fan, but this song is one of their leastsuccesful songs. Really ugly sounding to my ears.; 9/3/11, 1:37 PM
jr565 said...: Crack wrote:
I am so very glad that I will never be able to claim a Kinks fetish. I can see myself, laying on my deathbed, just screaming, "FUCK!"

The fact that hippies openly admit to shit like that is enough reason to distrust almost everything they've ever thought or done. They are honestly without scruples.

the kinks never really struck me as a band hippies loved. A lot of their stuff sounds decidedly conservative (village green preservation society, Victoria, Rosie won't you please come home). Many of the songs are about the days of yore, and Victorian houses, and girls who leave home to seek stardom only to find disappointment. Almost no pro drug songs or free love songs.
And I can't think of a band that adopted more diverse styles, from proto punk to british musical theater to country to pop to pub rock.
Songs like I Need You have more pop and energy than a lot of punk songs, and something like Waterloo sunset or village green work as great pop songs with melodies as good as most of their peers.
Like it or not ray Davies is one of the songwriting geniuses in rock. Not everyone gets him or appreciates the songs, but give the guy his props.; 9/3/11, 1:52 PM
Tyrone Slothrop said...: @jr565

What he said.; 9/3/11, 2:13 PM
sakredkow said...: The fact that hippies openly admit to shit like that is enough reason to distrust almost everything they've ever thought or done. They are honestly without scruples.

I could be wrong but I don't think it's meant (or should be meant) to be taken seriously.; 9/3/11, 2:23 PM
The Crack Emcee said...: jr565,

Mine isn't a diss of The Kinks or Ray Davies, both of which I've discussed, favorably, here before. I'm grossed out by the fetish that's made of them, or the Maharishi, or any number of other people and things - hippies just can't help it. They are worshippers, as bad as any big haired Right-Wing Anita Bryant-type pseudo-tyrant Christian evangelical of yore. (And that's not a diss of evangelicals, even, but a statement about the hippie's ever-present and over-arching hypocrisy.)

The worst part about it is they cop to nothing. They are so stubborn and disingenuous, the only way to get the truth out of them is to beat it out - and then they start with the fascist talk. Meaning killing them, if that were possible, is the only option left for finally ridding us of their corrosive nonsense. That and waiting them out. I've rarely wished for anyone to die, but an entire generation? That's totally new. Bury them and all their fetishes as deeply as we can without bumping into the bottom of China for all I care. Just make them go away.

I want to feel a sense of individuality again. I want to see fairness emerge once more. I want to think of my country in terms of common sense and integrity, not this forced march down the road to oblivion. I am sick of the 60s and all it represented. I'm especially sick of most of what it's bequeathed us. We will have to spend a good portion of the early post-hippie era just destroying things they left behind - cults, and musical relics, and a billion bad assumptions about the nature of reality. And if there's nothing left to bury and destroy with, because the selfish bastards made sure to try and take it with them - as they likely will - then we'll do so with only our wits and bare hands. But rid ourselves of them, finally, we will.

Like driving a stake through a vampire's heart, clearing the landscape of almost every vestige hippies ever existed will always be Job 1.; 9/3/11, 3:16 PM
The Crack Emcee said...: Hey - speaking of the previous generation's stupid obsessions, and the problems they make for the rest of us, Sixty Grit and his buddies pushing the race shit finally got a response - from Drudge:

"White Supremacists Hold Rally to Protest Wisc. State Fair Mobbing..."

Like anti-vaccinationists bringing back the measles, good job assholes.; 9/3/11, 3:24 PM
The Crack Emcee said...: Tyrone, I told you, you're an ass, a long time ago:

I said I wasn't attacking The Kinks (or jr565) but the worship of them - that's a distinction, dumbshit, probably too fine for you single brain cell - if it hasn't halved itself by now.

But yes, I despise waking up, day after fucking day, listening to fucking hippies still rehashing the fucking bullshit of their youth. You talk about new politicians but not newer artists? You're not still discussing Nixon.

I've got 30,000 .mp3s on my hard drive, with The Kinks maybe taking up 5 of them. What's the matter with you people - all the other bands since The Kinks or Dylan don't matter? They've never written a lyric that matters, or a melody worthy of mention?

You're a bunch of fucking cultists and the rest of us are trapped in your wake and it SUCKS.

Not as bad as you, Tyrone - your stupidity is in a class all it's own - but it's pretty excruciating.

And now, I will go back to ignoring you.; 9/3/11, 9:39 PM
Tyrone Slothrop said...: @Crack Emcee

Appreciation is not obsession. It is your obsession to see it that way. Where did the idea of "worship" enter the discussion?
When Crack's fevered brain projected its own pathology on to others here who just said they liked the Kinks. They just said they like the Kinks. I'll say it again, they just said they liked the Kinks, and Crack's fevered brain inserted the word "worship". You're fucked up, buddy, you seriously need help.; 9/3/11, 10:02 PM