"I go to BlackPOLL for my holidays,"-- ILM Artist Poll #17 -- The Kinks RESULTS THREAD

never really listened to God's Children until yesterday and was really struck by how the appeal of the "don't tell me what to do!" sentiment is immediately undercut by a very unappealing conservatism

http://www.recordsale.de/cdpix/t/the_kinks-face_to_face.jpg

41. "Rosie Won't You Please Come Home"
Face To Face, 1966
124 Points (7 Votes)

The Track: http://youtu.be/JwLwfodh9T0

First one from my ballot to place. One of my faves from FtF.

http://www.esquire.com/cm/esquire/images/hynde-davies-WI-2009-lg-79157272.jpg

40. "Stop Your Sobbing"
The Kinks, 1964
126 Points (7 Votes)

The Track: http://youtu.be/GZQUKN5G9xk
The Pretenders' cover: http://youtu.be/5zzlROBMTlo

And that's it for now. MUST...EAT

Let me guess...you'll have some clam chowder, followed by beef steak on rye, pumpkin pie, whipped cream and coffee?

Stop Your Sobbing and I Go to Sleep both done far better by Pretenders than by The Kinks.

I dunno the latter but def agree about the former

The Pretenders have never made anything better.

I Go to Sleep (Kinks): http://youtu.be/n6gMS7aiMLk
I Go to Sleep (Pretenders): http://youtu.be/6yoR7fg2pE0

The Pretenders have never made anything better.

They made those Kinks tracks better. As for their cover of "Thin Line Between Love and Hate", er, I'd agree with you.

I have a visceral loathing of Chrissie Hynde. Her voice is one of those nails on a chalkboard things for me.

god's children is not a great sentiment but boy what a song.

I've got to catch up some..."Where Have All the Good Times Gone" was my #1. I once tried to talk a grade 8 teacher into using it as the grad slide-show music for our school, but they stuck with the corny "Forever Young."

God's Children does kind of make me sick because I don't really believe in He/Him or God, but it was my #1 because the song itself, and the melody, are just TOO MUCH for my brain to handle. It makes me feel a love for all of humanity, even the part I can't seem to reach, and that makes me happy. Magic.

So hooray for that.

Also Chrissie Hynde is my hometown sister, back off homies!

Kinks didn't even do a version of "I Go to Sleep," right? Just a Ray demo? That's quite a song.

Yeah, it's really just an early demo of Ray's. But it's been appended to some Kinks reissues.

never heard that pretenders version, pretty nice. love the kinks/ray version though, i voted for it!

wow 6 out of 11 so far are on my ballot.

Seek out the Peggy Lee cover of "I go to sleep", I reckon it 'informed' the Pretenders' version

You all know that the Davies' sister died at a local dance when Ray was 13, right?

I had no idea! this does sorta change the tone of the song

― iatee, Wednesday, 18 April 2012 13:41 (Yesterday) Permalink

I knew about this, and it does add a certain weight to the song, but even with that in mind it still remains one of my least favourites.

EZ otm about Apeman/calypso voice. The Lola LP is such a mixed bag.

― rob, Wednesday, April 18, 2012 7:25 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ray's 'calypso voice' is definitely one of my least favourites of his vocal styles, but I couldn't agree about 'Lola Vs Powerman...' being a mixed bag at all. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that if there's one Kinks albums I'd take to the 'desert island' with me, that one would be it!

*album, even.

So far, only one of my tracks has polled; 'Rosie Won't You Please Come Home', which was my #11. Like 'Come Dancing', this is yet another song inspired by Ray's family, specifically his sister who moved out to Australia. Definitely one of my favourites from the Face To Face album; it's a beautiful song, so full of feeling. I can also relate to it, because I also have a sister who moved out of England to live in Australia!

The best version of "I Go to Sleep" -- and (I think) the first one released: youtu.be/bHIwBObW21M

never really listened to God's Children until yesterday and was really struck by how the appeal of the "don't tell me what to do!" sentiment is immediately undercut by a very unappealing conservatism

― Jilly Boel and the Eltones (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, April 18, 2012 8:51 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hence Ray Davies's career in miniature.

damn, God's Children is disgusting. I knew Davies is insane but he's usually more subtle.

like on Two Sisters, which is disturbing but beautiful

I haven't seen Percy in years but isn't the song meant to be in character? Pretty sure it stems from the movie rather than RD's own beliefs.

Then again, I can quite believe that Ray Davies was only looking for a "Quiet Life"..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eevhpfOjyKg

xp but he is a conservative, no?

Yeah, God's Children is a character song and not -- it's a moving target, which is part of why i love it. If I'd gotten my ballot in, there'd be two number one votes for it.

He's socially conservative (in the UK rather than US sense) but I've never considered him especially religious. This is very different from his 70s lyrics, which tend to resemble letters to the Daily Telegraph set to music. The boxset that came out a few years ago was increasingly dispiriting listening.

yes, it's certainly a character song but I find Davies's irony and misanthropy a lot harder to take than Newman's or Fagen's. I always feel like he REALLY is a prick (not to say that Newman and Fagen are not but it's a different kind)

maybe I'm just talking shit

A special moment of praise is in order for Bruce Springsteen stemming the tide of zillionaire groupie-groped rock stars complaining about their taxes.

Speaking of the Boss, check out this awkward interview with Bruce and Ray for the Kinks tribute album a couple years back. I don't think the Boss realizes that it was Ray's estranged brother who came up with the riff.

xp but he is a conservative, no?

from a 2008 Rolling Stone article:

Another reason I wanted to move to New Orleans was to escape Tony Blair. I'm a socialist, and Labor is not socialist anymore. The working man is still downtrodden and unheard. And now they're vanishing. Blair came in and it became uncool to be working class. ...when you forget your origins -- that's bad. That's why I don't fit into this culture anymore. I take the side of the underdog.

That's interesting. No way was he a socialist in the 60s and 70s, grumbling about taxes and trade unions and low-cost housing schemes. I alwyas thought that part of Davies's "I'm not like anybody else" deal was the refusal to sign up to any political platform. I interviewed him once and asked about his politics and he said they were ever-changing and impossible to define so to see him baldly define himself as a socialist is unexpected.

Judging by "Preservation" especially, RD Davies' political thinking was a bit confused in the 70s... or, better still, RD Davies' political thinking was a bit confused in the 70s

But, yeah, obviously a small 'c' conservative - not that unusual for someone from his background

Lots of people were confused in the 70s! That's part of what made it such a marvelous time.

The character Ray obv. most identifies with in "Preservation" is the Tramp, which is a bit of a cop out really

Crossposted from one of the Sandinista! threads --

Last week while I was thinking about my Kinks ballot, I started hearing "Washington Bullets" in my head set to the music of "Come Dancing." Can't get it out...need a new earworm.

Ray Davies has a classic case of the Morrisseys: is it possible to mourn the passing of a certain England without sounding a bit racist? Answer: no.

being American, all Kinks songs sound like they're sung in a funny accent to me lol

I pretty much agree with this. I guess I can hear a bit of calypso in the "Apeman" voice if I listen hard, but it doesn't bother me and anyway Ray's voice is always pretty unmistakably his own - he's not exactly Meryl Streep with the accents. If I didn't like British people putting on silly accents that would eliminate a lot of good music, from Exile on Main Street to Lily Allen.

holy shit @ that socialism quote. who'd have thought?

Kinks were ruined for me in 93 at Glastonbury; still by some distance the worst concert by a major act i've ever seen in my life. makes me queasy just to think of it.
hopefully this thread can bring me back round cause i really did love the hits as a kid.

props for that Quiet Life clip Mark G; best bit of the film.

Ray Davies has a classic case of the Morrisseys

I have to admit that I am not attuned to that pov at all. I get it, but from a very remote and unemotional place. A lot of my exposure to this band has been radio - library - store where i worked - walking to work my first year in Chicago and the songs just have personal reminders to me in them, but not like LOADED WITH XXXTRA RACISM or aaaaanything like that.

Honestly, I have always just heard The Kinks music and that's it. I have liked them since I was a kid even when I couldn't figure out how all of these weird songs were all by the same band.

I didn't think too hard about it either until ploughing through the 70s material on the boxset and discovering the (understandably excluded) Black Messiah. It's not a massive issue, but it does slightly change the tone of Village Green and Arthur when you know where this nostalgia was leading. Doesn't he also do a Shylock voice on the Lola album? There's definitely a weird line about Jews on When I Turn Off the Living Room Light as well, which he defends on his 2005 Livejournal (http://ray-davies.livejournal.com/):

Okay, a few of my managers and business associates in the 60s were overbearing cockney Jews. Believe me, growing up in Muswell Hill - I knew the type. I come from the Bagel Belt after all. Because a few people who screwed me over in life were Jewish and I like to make fun of them, does not make me a Nazi.

None of which means I don't love the Kinks, just that I'm fascinated by the weirdness of his politics and his tin ear for causing offence (cf the Apeman voice).

xp It blows my mind that the Kinks didn't split until 1996. The artist Jeremy Deller says that one of their 90s gigs is the only show he wishes he could wipe from his memory because it was so upsettingly bad.

By 1996, it was just Dave and Ray anyway, wasn't it? I mean they had some hired hands who may have been around for a little or a long time, but The Kinks ceased to be "The Kinks" a long long long time before 1996.

Ray's first wife Raisa was Jewish iirc. I referred to that line in "When I Turn Off the Living Room Light" on the nominations thread cuz I've had arguments with another Jew about whether or not it's antisemitic (I am firmly in the NOT camp)