The Kinks has never been as important to me as the Beatles, Stones & the Who. I don´t quite know the reason. Maybe one is that they have quite many songs with that "ramtitandi"-beat I don´t like. Also when I was young, nobody seems to have their greatest albums to borrow me (only one I heard then was Schoolboys in Disgrace, that includes that quite irritating Jack the Idiot Dunce which has been made Finnish translated irritating cover).

I have quite recently listened very lot Face To Face, Something Else, Village Green, Athur & Lola and of course they´re great, but still I don´t believe Kinks will ever become one of the most important bands to me. Maybe just because I haven´t listened it all of my life like many others. One thing I don´t understand how people who like Arthur don´t like Tommy? I find them lot in common like also Pretty Things S.F. Sorrow.

galaxie 500 - peel sessions (2005 - recorded '89-'90)

i hadn't listened to this before. half of it is a nice bunch of pleasant, mellow covers. opens with the sex pistol's slowed-down "submission" & ends with jonathan richman's "don't let your mouth go to waste". not bad for morning office work-- lively enough that it helps you function, quiet enough that it doesn't interfere. it reminds me of... mazzy star, a little bit, though not as mellow-- maybe with a touch of... what... damn i hear it and i can't name it. nico? well, everybody will hear something different. no-- the doors! yes, distant, and different sound, but there's a bit of the doors on the richman cover. if i only had the language to describe what i hear in musical terms my life would be easier.

The fucking Kinks are almost as boring as the Who.

Been listening to this on full blast in my new car

See, this guy knows what I'm talking about.

The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society is also a kind of concept record about a "simpler time" in England's history (the proverbial "village green" is the metaphor here, for a better, simpler Britain.) The Society is committed to preserving that way of life. Kinda like how right wing Americans want their lives to be like Leave it to Beaver with guns, only... y'know... not insane.

Read the Wikipedia article on the band. It's pretty well done and addresses the band's constant use of English culture, society, history and politics as an inspiration for their work.

Kind of like the rock n' roll Monty Python, if that makes any sense at all.

Arthur and Tommy are only alike in the sense that they're concept albums. Aside from that, I don't think the two records share much. They have a totally different sound, feel, story... Just my opinion.

well, it's not like you were explaining derrida & deconstruction, so nobody missed anything i think, but i think you missed what i was driving at, and that's my fault for not being more clear-- that rock isn't folk music, and that lyrics help but are not essential to get that feeling of running naked in the woods with a hatchet in your hand-- the thing that makes you scream the chorus outloud even if you're mangling the words. of course good lyrics help/don't hurt. but not everyone in the planet is american/british/australian/etc, and yet the music still works all over the planet.

but anyway.


of course it makes sense--i'm just not very interested in that though (ha ha, sorry, not trying to be a dick, just don't know how to say this in an oblique way that will make the point across). i like monty python but i'm really not much of an anglophile in general. but thanks for the shared knowledge-- i might some day look into it-- honest. maybe it will be fun.

FILPPER - GENERIC (1982) - i don't understand a single word of this but it's... fucking... great!!!

Yes it is. I'm putting it on now.

Ever live a life thats real
Full of zest but no appeal
Ever had to really cry
Cry so much you want to die
Ever feel like you've been had
Had so much that you turn mad
Ever been so depressed
That those you turn to, you bring distress
Ever sit in tormenting silence that turns so loud you start to scream
Ever take control of a dream, and play all the parts, and set all the scenes
Ever do nothing and gain nothing from it
Ever feel stupid and then know you really are
Ever think your smart? And find out that you aren't
Ever play the fool and find out that you're worse
Ever look at a flower and hate it
Ever see a couple kissing and get sickened by it
Ever wish the human race didn't exist
Then realize you're one too
Well… have you? Ever?
I have
So what

those are some decent and not unintelligent lyrics actually but i think they kind of ruin it for me ha ha ha.

ignorance = bliss

I disagree. Seems you haven´t listened Tommy enough. Of course they´re stories not complitely same, but anyway both tells the story of one person. Times of both stories are after war. Both are kind of growing stories, the main characters try to go to something better. Even Arthur could have happened more in the reality than Tommy, there is also imaginational elements in Arthur (Shangri-la).

But the most similarities are musical. Even both bands have already had experimental elements in their music, I think in these albums both really break the limits of ordinary pop songs structures. They both go towards musicals, even classic music structures. Also both use very great way horns. You could have put this song in the middle of Tommy, if it had sung By Daltrey or Townshend, I think no-one has noticed anything:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kt0IXkIVvo4

Even both albums have interesting instrumental outro in the middle of album (the Kinks the end of Australia, The Who Underture). Also, I find the sound little bit same even the Who had clearer (I think those little bit muddy sounds of Kinks are also great). If you compare the sound of Who Sell Out & Tommy and Village Green & Arthur, there has happend lot of progression in both bands sounds and into same direction (lot clearer sounds).

I don´t know had Davies heard Tommy at all when making Arthur, but he was accused to plagiarism then. Even I read Pretty Things was accused to plagiarism from Tommy althought S.F Sorrow was released earlier than Tommy. Anyway I think there are no plagiarism, all those three albums have similarities but they´re just great in their own. If you haven´t heard S.F. Sorrow, I think it´s really time to listen it.

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/i...K9i3DH6Pgn2LfD

Really great!

I don't spin this enough. Such a great album, in the old rock and roll way. The Flamin Groovies made some good albums.

interpol - turn on the bright lights (2002). not unlistenable, but a bit boring. part imitation joy division, part explosions in the sky, all the song sounds the same, with that monotone klin-klin-klin-klin-klin-klin-klin-klin guitar everywhere. very narrow dynamic range too-- everything mixed at the same volume. like a thin wafer. why do men even sing? okay i'm tired of this now.

Okay. I just wasted an hour listening to Tommy, which is worse than I remembered, although the riff to "I'm Free" is better than I remembered. So boring, so few good tunes, and such a stupid, stupid story.

This was a hit and Arthur bombed? I wonder if Ray considered suicide.


What? By whom?

the first side of this is amazing. the B side? notsomuch.

klin-klin-klin-klin-klin-klin-klin-klin...

don't know what goes on what side but it's true it changed midway.

the most boring ass concert I ever ever saw was Interpol after the Antics record. It looked like 4 young men who absolutely detested being on stage together, who hated the tepid and overly lugubrious music they were trying to promote, and who had absolutely no clue how to "fake" it for the audience.

people forget that performance is play-acting, even in punk bands, or bands known for their hit-or-miss nature when performing live (sebadoh, Dylan, etc.). The audience came to see a fucking SHOW

faek it til you make it. no band will ever be "ON" every single night. audiences are never the same, illness can strike, fatigue can strike, etc. that is why I love the way KISS and Van Halen used to do shows. every song is treated like it's the last one, and every concert is important, whether in NYC or in Baytown TX.

Yeah, I have always been almost embarrassed by Tommy. Like, culturally embarrassed. That "supple wrist" line is one of the most painful rock lyrics ever. It's sounds alarmingly covetous to me... but nobody else seems to find it unsettling, so maybe I'm just a prude about grown men writing weirdly erotic stories about young boys with intellectual and physical disabilities.

Arthur all the way.
And for all we know, Tommy's success might have been exactly what drove Ray Davies to madness and near suicidal behavior.

^

Dancing In Your Head (1977)