Tag Archives: the kinks

#1291: The Kinks – Strangers

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And it looks like this will be the last track you’ll be seeing from this album too. A shame, really, ’cause I quite like The Kinks’ Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One. My personal second favourite by the group. If things had been different, you would have at least seen a post for ‘Apeman’ and ‘Denmark Street’ on here. My old laptop contains the original date that I downloaded the record, but the monitor doesn’t turn on and I have to plug an HDMI cable from it to the TV in order to see what I’m doing. I have a good feeling it was sometime in 2015, ’cause I have a good memory of listening to ‘Powerman’ while walking to the place I was working at the time. I’ll get back to you on this matter. It doesn’t seem right to leave things vague like this.*

Among the songs discussing an infatuation to a cross-dresser, moving to the jungle to get out of the smoggy city centre, and generally being screwed over in the music business – all of which are written by main songwriter Ray Davies – are two other numbers written and sung by his little brother and lead guitarist, Dave. ‘Rats’ is a raucous number, I think about a general distrust in people. But it’s ‘Strangers’, the second song on Lola…, that we’re all here for. After the punchy, optimistic opener of ‘The Contenders’, ‘Strangers’ slows things down a peg or two. Adding layers of elements to the proceedings as time goes on – Davies plays acoustic alongside John Gosling’s piano initially which are then followed by drums on the second verse, and bass guitar and organ on the third – the song gains a hymn-like quality towards its end. Very appropriate with the whole unity theme that the song is going for.

It’s no secret that Ray and Dave Davies don’t get along all that well. And it’s been an long-standing, ongoing interpretation that ‘Strangers’ was about the relationship between the two. They might not get along, but at the end of the day, they are brothers. ‘Strangers’ was the sign that Dave at least cared. But really, the songs’s about a close friend of Dave’s who died of an overdose, and something of a list of the things Dave wished he could have done with them, had they not passed away so suddenly. It might not be the interpretation people want, but the sentiment is still oh-so sincere. Davies’s vocal performance here is a powerful one. When he blurts out a line like “All the things I own, I will share with you,” the way he does, just tugs at your heart strings a little. The organ and bass guitar introduced for the final verse add an emphatic sense of warmth to the production. And I like how the recording levels are raised for the pounding tom-tom pattern that closes the track out. It’s beautiful stuff. Seems right it’s the last Lola… song I cover on here.

*The folder containing the album says it was created on 8th July 2015, 15:55. So, there you go.

#1280: The Kinks – Starstruck

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On this blog, you’ll find that the majority of songs by The Kinks that I’ve written about are from the Village Green Preservation Society album, released back in 1968. I’m quite fond of Village Green, think it goes without saying. The first number from the record I covered was ‘Do You Remember Walter?’ in 2014. I didn’t give much of a backstory on there as to how I came across the album. It would have been an ideal situation to, that’s for sure. I’m fairly certain I found it through besteveralbums.com, sometime in 2013, and after going through it a couple more times, melodies and rhythmic moments would spontaneously arrive in my head and the songs that would become my favourites made themselves known.

‘Starstruck’ was one of the songs on there that I came to treasure. When exactly, I don’t know, but I seem to remember at one point listening to the part where the band go into that wordless “ba-ba-da-ba-ba” vocal break during the middle eight, thinking “Oh, hell yeah” and wanting to clap along with them. Reminded me of being at the pub with old mates or something. The track was released as the album’s lead single. ‘Days’ had been released as one earlier in the year, but didn’t make it onto the full LP. The band even made a video for ‘Starstruck’ and everything, which you can see above. Apparently might be the last footage of the band in their original four-piece line-up before bassist Pete Quaife departed not too long after. But for whatever reason, ‘Starstruck’ only charted in the Netherlands and didn’t get the commercial success it was probably warranted. Very much like the album as a whole. A shame, but that’s how things had to be, I guess.

In the track, Ray Davies sings about a lady within his/the band’s circle who’s sounds like she’s having a good time being caught up in the celebrity lifestyle a member of a rock group would experience in the ’60s. Davies, however, takes a point of view that she might be having a little too much fun and that while the glitz and glamour may seem all appealing and everything, she’ll eventually be chewed up and spat out by all the vices that come along with it. Some fair advice, though could come across as a little condescending. Man telling a woman what to do and all that. “Starstruck on me.” Bit presumptuous. But man, if the melody on here doesn’t supersede all of that. Davies was in his melody bag during the making of this particular record, must have been something in the air. He sort of takes on this high, soft register, maybe to adopt a parental, motherly kind of character perhaps, which contrasts with the drier “Starstruck, baby, you know that you’re starstruck” backing vocals during the chorus. It’s all nice stuff. And you’ve got to appreciate a good use of a Mellotron too. It provides those strings you hear throughout. The Mellotron should come back in these times.

#1057: The Kinks – Powerman

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The Kinks’ 1970 album Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One is one that I grew very fond of right from the initial listen. Don’t know what it was about the band from 1968 – 70. Some may argue that the run started some years prior/ended some years after. But the three albums (Village Green, Arthur, and Lola) released one after the other in three consecutive years is where, in my view, Ray Davies and company properly peaked. The first of those is my personal favourite. May have mentioned in other posts concerning songs from it. But while Arthur is usually regarded to be the other top, top classic of the band’s, it’s Lola that has always trumped it for me. The songs are fantastic, and Ray Davies is singing in his normal voice in comparison to that American-soulful inflection thing he has going on throughout Arthur. I’ve never been able to accustom myself to that choice.

Lola Versus Powerman is a bit of a concept album, almost, sort of. It was meant to be the first part of a story that ran for two records, hence the ‘Part One’ of the title, but was ultimately scrapped. A theme running throughout is the disillusionment and a shaking of fists to the music industry and those who sit at the top counting the money while the artists/bands do all the work. This is no better made clearer than in the album’s penultimate track, and I guess the third title track on there, in which Ray and Dave Davies on co-lead vocals sing about ‘Powerman’. Though this Powerman is set up as one character, I think it’s fair to say that it’s also an amalgamation of all the similar types of fat cat/cigar smoking boss-manager type people who were common to find in the record label office back in those days. Davies takes on the point of view of a person who works under ‘Powerman’, telling the listener how, after starting from nothing, the titular character obtained hunger for that sweet, sweet power, climbed that ladder and now laughs at everyone below him as he makes his way to the bank. People can make fun of him, but they’re irrelevant as far as he’s concerned. The narrator has his music and his girlfriend to keep him fulfilled and sane through the whole ordeal, but will always have the looming presence of Powerman behind their shoulder.

This is a great guitar song. The acoustic one that opens it up has this great presence about it, the electric guitar that joins it with that clonking introduction adds another spark. But it’s when then track builds up its pace not soon after and the rhythm section joins in that consistent head-bopping occurs for the rest of the entire track. Sometimes I’m not even singing along to the Davies brothers’ vocals and will just hum/”ner-ner-ner” my way along to the riffs that the guitars are doing through the verses and the choruses. Also, I think the bass guitar and those electric guitars are playing the same notes throughout almost the whole song. Hearing those elements in unison, I don’t know, they just make everything occurring seem so locked together and in-sync. Gives the track a bit of an overbearing presence, almost like a wall of some kind. And if you’re not trying to hear those guitars, then it’s always a plus to hear the Davies brothers harmonising as well as they do here. They might not have got along all that well, but when it came to the music they were always able to make up some magic.

#1034: The Kinks – Phenomenal Cat

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You know, for all the talk that the Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society album gets about it being threaded by a theme of looking back on the past, thinking of the good times and trying to maintain those good old-fashioned values in the present day – the second half of the album deviates from all of this quite drastically, containing songs about the local prostitute, Ray Davies’s account of an embarrassing period of his life and a spooky witch-like character. ‘Phenomenal Cat’ also arrives in this half of the album and is about what it says in its title.

From observing a lot of artist/band interviews from the 1960s, I’ve come to gather that the word ‘cat’ was generally used to refer to another person. “I saw that cat walking down the street the other day…”, “He’s a cool cat, man.” Etcetera, etcetera. Well, in this song’s case, Ray Davies has written the track as a story about a literal cat who has travelled the world and spends its days in a tree. Sort of in the spirit of the Beatles’ ‘Yellow Submarine’, I think it’s meant to be a bit of a children’s song. In the land of idiot boys, the cat lived in a tree and ate a lot, but wasn’t shy in telling the people who were willing to listen all the places that he had been to in its life. To anyone who can’t decipher the lyrics, the locations are: Cowes, Sardinia, Kathmandu, the Scilly Isles and the Sahara.

Gotta love those Mellotron flutes that are a mainstay throughout the entire track. Those flutes at the beginning that are sort of unrelated to the rest of the song that follows are a bunch of preset samples on a Mellotron that could be activated just by pressing the right keys. You too can play the song’s intro if you own one yourself. But a big nod has to go to the band’s performance too. Everything about the track is so softly and tastefully delivered, from those flutes to Davies’ vocal delivery, capped off with pitched-up wordless vocals courtesy of Dave Davies who provides the voice of the cat during the choruses. All the components provide a hazy, psychedelic fairytale feel. If only we could all be as content with life as this fat cat.

#1026: The Kinks – People Take Pictures of Each Other

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Was this song in a car advert once? You’d think that with the Internet existing and everything, you’d be able to find evidence of this in a split second. But I can’t find it anywhere. I have this vague memory of hearing this song in the advert. And then watching a video of that advert on YouTube somewhere. This was all years ago. But before listening to the Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society, that was how I came across ‘People Take Pictures…’ for the first time. It sounded so familiar when Ray Davies started singing those opening lines. Maybe I dreamed that advert up. If someone else remembers it, send answers on a postcard, please.

‘People Take Pictures…’ is the second song on that album concerning pictures being taken of memories gone by. The first to appear on there, ‘Picture Book’, focuses on the good aspects of looking at these photos and having those good ole moments of nostalgia. In ‘People Take Pictures…’, Ray Davies takes the more cynical approach, expressing a feeling that everyone’s just taking pictures of things just for the sake of it, to show their friends were missing out on or to show that they were there when something was happening just to gloat about it. On an album that’s focused on preserving the things of things that were sacred and pure, it’s here that Davies doesn’t want to see anymore pictures from the past after he’s shown an old picture of himself when he was three years old, sitting with his mother by an old oak tree. He wishes to see no more photos, and with those last words the whole record ends on a fadeout of perky ‘la-la-la’ vocals.

The sort of listener who like huge climactic finishes to their albums may be sort of let down when it reaches this point. A short and snappy number, this song is just over two minutes in length and it ends on a fade out rather than a true ending where everything comes to a concrete stop. Kinks fans will know that it was during this period that the band had also recorded ‘Days’, and if ever there would be an ideal album closer, then that track was right there. I personally like ‘People Take Pictures of Each Other’ in the place that it’s in. I think it works in concluding a summary to the album’s theme, through a funny 180-turn from all the ‘god-saving’ in the opening title track, you know? Looking at the past can be fine, but only in its amounts. Too much of that could probably get you down.