From "They spent years following the Kinks. Was this their final stop? What happens when you build your life — and your friendships — around a band that can’t keep it together forever" (WaPo)(full-access link).
Here. I found it:
Of course, I watched that at the time. I loved the Kinks. Just turning around from my computer and not rearranging anything, I see this on my windowsill:
And I love the line "It was the sound...." I get the 60s vibration. I remember struggling to convey the meaning of "the sound" to my father when he Socratically questioned me about why the music I was listening to all the time could genuinely be considered good.
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34 comments:
What was your answer to your dad?
The “Muswell Hillbillies” and “Lola vs. the Powerman” are a couple of my favorites. Seminal rock.
At 4:38; the girls doing the Frug or whatever that was while sitting in their seats. And all seemed on the beat.
I am curious about the drawing on the left in the still-life. Who does the mysterious lapel belong to?
I am Laslo.
The 3rd best act of the British Invasion.
These "full-access links" rarely ever work for me.
You Really Got Me us credited as the origin of the modern power chord . That's saying something
Big big Kinks fan here. During an enjoyable rewatch of Complete Unknown at home with friends I noticed the Kinks showing up during the last Newport scenes. I think it was You Really Got Me and the organizer referred to it, asking Dylan if that was the kind of trash he was going to play.
My fave was 'Who'll Be The Next In Line" also from Shindig.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUALoD2E70s
Gibson Flying V = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju8Wu42hhbk
Hey Chicken it's my opinion they really invented the hard rock style. Dave Davies is the original Malcolm Young of rhythm guitarists.
Also big Kinks fan. But weirdly, no mention of their many tours featuring their "operas," or themed shows, like The Village Green. They used to come to Buffalo at least twice a year, almost always smaller venues. "For Christssake, have a cuppa tea!"
Father Christmas is the all-time best pop Christmas song and I can’t see a picture of a small English town without hearing the Village Green Preservation Society in my head.
They never got the recognition they deserved in the US.
I found the Kinks remarkably un-musical and boring, but they did manage this one great lyric:
You can see all the stars as you walk along Hollywood Boulevard
Some that you recognise, some that you've hardly even heard of
People who worked and suffered and struggled for fame
Some who succeeded and some who suffered in vain
As to the invention of "power chord" and/or "hard rock", there was Link Wray's "Rumble" in 1958.
1958:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucTg6rZJCu4
Wikipedia on the power chord: "The first written instance of a power chord for guitar in the 20th century is to be found in the "Preludes" of Heitor Villa-Lobos, a Brazilian composer of the early twentieth century. Although classical guitar composer Francisco Tárrega used it before him, modern musicians use Villa-Lobos's version to this day. Power chords' use in rock music can be traced back to commercial recordings in the 1950s. Robert Palmer pointed to electric blues guitarists Willie Johnson and Pat Hare, both of whom played for Sun Records in the early 1950s, as the true originators of the power chord, citing as evidence Johnson's playing on Howlin' Wolf's "How Many More Years" (recorded 1951) and Hare's playing on James Cotton's "Cotton Crop Blues" (recorded 1954).[6] Scotty Moore opened Elvis Presley's 1957 hit "Jailhouse Rock" with power chords.The "power chord" as known to modern electric guitarists was popularized first by Link Wray, who built on the distorted electric guitar sound of early records and by tearing the speaker cone in his 1958 instrumental "Rumble." A later hit song built around power chords was "You Really Got Me" by the Kinks, released in 1964. This song's riffs exhibit fast power-chord changes. The Who's guitarist, Pete Townshend, performed power chords with a theatrical windmill-strum, for example in "My Generation"...."
School Boys in Disgrace was an album I listened to frequently.
Been a big Kinks fan for a long time
Kinks were pretty great. They were the most overtly British of those bands and I've always thought that sensibility, especially about class issues, didn't resonate in the U.S., but the power chords and underrated melodicism always did. The Jam had the same issue later on, only more so -- it's not a coincidence that the Jam covered a great Kinks song that many don't know, "David Watts." Some lyrics:
I am a dull and simple lad
Cannot tell water from champagne
And I have never met the Queen
And I wish I could be like David Watts
And when I lie on my pillow at night
I dream I could fight like David Watts
Lead the school team to victory
And take my exams and pass the lot
Wish I could be like David Watts
I should also add, the subject of "David Watts" is gay, a topic one needed to discuss obliquely in 1967.
The bridge in "20th Century Man" is a work of high art, both lyrically and musically..
I was born in a welfare state
Ruled by bureaucracy
Controlled by civil servants
And people dressed in grey
Got no privacy, got no liberty
'Cause the twentieth century people
Took it all away from me
T-Bone Burnett has many ruminations on the "sound" of old rock and roll.
“Marshall McLuhan said a medium surrounds a previous medium and turns the previous medium into an art form, as film did with novels and so forth ... and as digital has done with analog.”
They did seem a little more intelligent than the average rock band, and they weren't spoiled by fame, like the Rolling Stones and other groups were.
Meet the Paleokinks:
https://chroniclesmagazine.org/web/the-muswell-hillbilly/
"They spent years following the Kinks.”
Yeesh. At least Deadheads got to hear some good music.
Saw the Kinks in concert in the early 80s, they put on a good show. They aren’t my favorite band, but I obviously liked them enough to buy tickets. Used to get a kick out of Lola, at the time I never thought Lola would demand that I call him a she. But I guess Lou Reed was singing about this shit as well. Holly became a she by plucking her eyebrows and shaving her legs.
It all gets back to Memphis, don't it?
The family name is pronounced "Davis" BTW.
The Kinks came through Atlanta a lot. Never missed ‘em. One time with Johnny Cougar who sucked balls. Another time it was Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers with Joe Ely. That was a big night for lotsa reasons!
Come Dancing is arguably the sweetest song that's ever been written.
I always thought it was funny that Lola makes a reappearance in Destroyer
Lola says, "Man, you look so weird."
I saw the Kinks live in 1975. They were terrific!
Regarding the verse in their "LOLA" that "reveals Lola to be a man, it is not quite so. The phrasing can be read in two way:
"Well, I'd left home just a week before
And I'd never, ever kissed a woman before
Lola smiled and took me by the hand
She said, "Little boy, gonna make you a man"
Well I'm not the world's most masculine man
But I know what I am and I'm glad I'm a man
And so is Lola"
Lola may be a guy, or a woman who is also "glad" her man is a man.
The Kinks are great. They adapted and enjoyed many musical lifetimes - the initial run, then Victoria/Schoolboys, then the punk era of "One for the Road" and "Destroyer." They're also among shrewd acts whom MTV rescued from the dustbin:
Heart, Steve Miller, Rod, Moody Blues, Hall & Oates and more. My favorite Kinks moment is the underrated 1984 LP, "Word of Mouth" - The Sopranos later used its "Living on a Thin Line." I saw Ray on his Storytellers tour ca. 1998 and it wasn't great, but then it again: It was.
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