― fact checking cuz, Tuesday, 25 November 2003 16:14 (twenty years ago) link
― Huckleberry Mann (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 16:15 (twenty years ago) link
― Tico Tico (Tico Tico), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 16:17 (twenty years ago) link
― Eisbär (llamasfur), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 16:19 (twenty years ago) link
― Eisbär (llamasfur), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 16:25 (twenty years ago) link
― Huckleberry Mann (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 16:29 (twenty years ago) link
otm -- it's a beautiful song but i'm sure i'd tire of it quickly if it were on the radio all the time. (not that i listen to radio anymore, but, you know.)
― bad jode (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 16:30 (twenty years ago) link
― bad jode (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 16:32 (twenty years ago) link
― gygax! (gygax!), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 16:35 (twenty years ago) link
― Huckleberry Mann (Horace Mann), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 16:35 (twenty years ago) link
― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 17:08 (twenty years ago) link
Isn't the couple supposed to be the actors Terrance Stamp and Julie Christie? I heard that and it made me like the song alot more because Stamp is a pretty damn cool actor.
― Matt Helgeson (Matt Helgeson), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 17:22 (twenty years ago) link
That said, I think it's a fantastic song, if not necessarily one of the "greatest recorded in English".
― Nom De Plume (Nom De Plume), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 17:39 (twenty years ago) link
― Matt Helgeson (Matt Helgeson), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 17:40 (twenty years ago) link
― dlp9001, Tuesday, 25 November 2003 17:53 (twenty years ago) link
― fact checking cuz, Tuesday, 25 November 2003 18:05 (twenty years ago) link
just sayin', is all...
is it Friday yet?
― ian johno (ian johno), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 18:16 (twenty years ago) link
― Matt Helgeson (Matt Helgeson), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 18:17 (twenty years ago) link
― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 18:30 (twenty years ago) link
― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 18:31 (twenty years ago) link
― fact checking cuz, Tuesday, 25 November 2003 18:33 (twenty years ago) link
― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 18:45 (twenty years ago) link
― fact checking cuz, Tuesday, 25 November 2003 18:52 (twenty years ago) link
― Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 19:10 (twenty years ago) link
― Alistair Sim (Methuselah), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 19:38 (twenty years ago) link
― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 19:39 (twenty years ago) link
― fact checking cuz, Tuesday, 25 November 2003 19:43 (twenty years ago) link
― Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 21:13 (twenty years ago) link
― Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 21:18 (twenty years ago) link
― Keith Watson (kmw), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 21:27 (twenty years ago) link
― Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 21:53 (twenty years ago) link
― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 22:07 (twenty years ago) link
― gallantseagull, Tuesday, 25 November 2003 22:32 (twenty years ago) link
It may not be the best Kinks song or even the best song off the album, but it has a certain quality that is beautiful and poignant.
It's both sad and uplifting at the same time.
I want it played at my funeral (hopefully a long time from now).
― Debito (Debito), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 23:35 (twenty years ago) link
― Maxwell von Bismarck (maxwell von bismarck), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 01:24 (twenty years ago) link
"shangri-la," on the other hand, has pretty trite words (suburban middle-aged male angst ho hum), but the execution is obscenely beautiful. their greatest moment, i think.
― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 01:36 (twenty years ago) link
― MerkinMuffley (MerkinMuffley), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 02:30 (twenty years ago) link
― gallantseagull, Wednesday, 26 November 2003 03:32 (twenty years ago) link
― Colin Beckett (Colin Beckett), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 03:34 (twenty years ago) link
I was in a grocery store the other week and they played "Who'll Be the Next in Line" in their rotation of barely audible background music! I was so excited I started singing along, probably making me sound like some sort of freak to the shoppers around me. But I guess that was from '65, so it doesn't really count. Dunno. Isn't "Days" from that time period? For some reason, I feel like "Days" and "A Well Respected Man" are trite and overplayed, but I don't know how often I've actually heard them on oldies radio here in the US. It's weird.
I once visited a friend who was working at a "classic rock" station. Hanging out in the studio, I convinced him to put on the Kinks when he had to do a "three in a row" thing... Got him to play "You Really Got Me" and "Waterloo Sunset", but then he balked at my third choice (whatever old sixties Kinks hit it was, it wasn't too weird) and played "All Day and All of the Night" instead, which sounds incredibly stupid when played shortly after "You Really Got Me". He said "nobody knows any Kinks songs, aside from 'You Really Got Me', 'All Day', and 'Lola'"!
Anyway, I think "Waterloo Sunset" is a mite overrated, but I wasn't around when it originally came out, so I can't really judge.
― Chris F. (servoret), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 07:12 (twenty years ago) link
I agree. It's nowhere near the Kinks' tritest track lyrically, though.
― Chris F. (servoret), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 07:20 (twenty years ago) link
― Dock Miles (Dock Miles), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 07:54 (twenty years ago) link
**but that mix of ordinary-bloke singing, isn't-London-great, celebrate-the-everyday etc etc seems pretty toxic now.**
Agreed. But WS is a million miles away from this. Far more subtle and totally different. Britpop never *got* The Kinks - the likes of Albarn et al bigging up the music hall 'stroike a loight guv' simply disguised their inability to even imagine writing something with as much *longing* as WS. (To be fair Yuko and Hiro is good) Likewise See My Friends, Where Have All The Good Times Gone, I Go To Sleep....and on and on.
― Dr. C (Dr. C), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 08:25 (twenty years ago) link
― Debito (Debito), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 08:42 (twenty years ago) link
Yeah, if I were actually from the UK or had at least lived in London for a while, I might be able to better appreciate that point of view. As it is, I still think it's a great song, but I have to take it on faith that it's the greatest British song ever. I don't think that it's my favorite Kinks song, but then I wouldn't be able to name one particular song as my top Kinks favorite anyway.
― Chris F. (servoret), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 11:30 (twenty years ago) link
1) My Dad had "Golden Hour of the Kinks" when I was about 2, and taped it when he got rid of the album a few years later. "Waterloo Sunset" was track 2 on side one, if I remember correctly (I bought a copy of the album a few years ago, it's the only place you can get "Wonderboy" in stereo, y'know). And the record stuck during the intro, and this is where I'm going to sound like a prat. You know the proper intro where Dave's playing the vocal melody on the guitar? Imagine the first three notes of it played repeatedly for 20 seconds. That's how I heard "Waterloo Sunset" until I was 13. So I always have the 'stuck' version in my head and I was quite disappointed to find it didn't do that in reality.
2) Ray Davies and Damon Albarn singing "WS" on "The White Room", circa 1995. Yuck.
And "Love me 'til the sun shines" rocks.
― Rob M (Rob M), Wednesday, 26 November 2003 11:35 (twenty years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLia0ejUfLk
― L.H.O.O.Q. Jones (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 18 July 2022 19:42 (one year ago) link
I'm partial to "Strangers," myself. Written, of course, by the lesser Davies brother.
― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Monday, 18 July 2022 20:23 (one year ago) link
This is in no way overrated.
― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Monday, 18 July 2022 22:02 (one year ago) link
It’s properly rated.
― L.H.O.O.Q. Jones (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 18 July 2022 22:08 (one year ago) link
Overrated by Christgau, who calls it the "most beautiful song in the English language".
― o. nate, Friday, 22 July 2022 16:38 (one year ago) link
You meant it isn't?
― Meme for an Imaginary Western (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 22 July 2022 16:44 (one year ago) link
I'm sure I'm in the minority but I would say it wasn't even the best song on that single (I prefer the b-side "Act Nice And Gentle").
― o. nate, Friday, 22 July 2022 17:30 (one year ago) link
That's a singular opinion! It never even got put on an album until 1984. In its favour, it's possibly the most polite 12-bar blues recorded by a British Invasion group.
― Halfway there but for you, Friday, 22 July 2022 19:43 (one year ago) link
Black Keys also do a nice cover of it.
― o. nate, Friday, 22 July 2022 19:44 (one year ago) link
But to get back to the topic at hand, I think one tell that "Waterloo Sunset" isn't really the most beautiful song in the English language is the fact that it hasn't been covered very often or very successfully. Now if you wanted to argue that Otis Redding's "Dock of the Bay" (another song from 1967 with a similar theme to "Waterloo" of looking out on water and feeling at peace, and with a gentle country/blues lilt similar to "Act Nice And Gentle") was that song, maybe you'd have a case. At least its been recorded by just about everybody, which is a good indicator.
― o. nate, Friday, 22 July 2022 20:05 (one year ago) link
I thought everyone who tried to cover "Dock of the Bay" got pilloried, or was that just Michael Bolton? Bryan Ferry said he wouldn't dare to."Waterloo Sunset" is probably about my tenth- or fifteenth-favourite Kinks song, but I'm not especially eager to hear it sung by anyone other than Ray Davies.
― Halfway there but for you, Friday, 22 July 2022 20:13 (one year ago) link
I don’t take Xgau’s assertion literally.
― Meme for an Imaginary Western (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 22 July 2022 20:15 (one year ago) link
Lots of covers of it here: https://secondhandsongs.com/performance/2966
I sampled a few, it's kind of hard to record a bad version of "Dock of the Bay".
― o. nate, Friday, 22 July 2022 20:15 (one year ago) link
I take the English language part as being about a certain idea of England at a certain time and the beautiful part as about the physical beauty of Terence Stamp and Julie Christie, even if maybe it isn’t actually about them.
― Meme for an Imaginary Western (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 22 July 2022 20:17 (one year ago) link
Beautiful part also about Rasa’s high harmonies.
― Meme for an Imaginary Western (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 22 July 2022 20:19 (one year ago) link
It’s part of the same England-inflected melancholy that runs from Poor Cow to The Limey.
― Meme for an Imaginary Western (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 22 July 2022 20:21 (one year ago) link
This is the same debate as “Ringo wasn’t even the best drummer in The Beatles!”
― Meme for an Imaginary Western (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 22 July 2022 20:22 (one year ago) link
Sha-la-la, man.
― Meme for an Imaginary Western (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 22 July 2022 20:23 (one year ago) link
I dunno, Xgau tends to be fairly literal in his opinions. For myself, I couldn't tell you specifically which song it is, but I'm about 99% sure the most beautiful song in the English language was written before the dawn of the recorded music industry.
― o. nate, Friday, 22 July 2022 20:24 (one year ago) link
Right. Some Buddy Bolden thing, no doubt, except that might not have had words.
― Meme for an Imaginary Western (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 22 July 2022 20:25 (one year ago) link
Or some old hymn or spiritual maybe.
― o. nate, Friday, 22 July 2022 20:27 (one year ago) link
How Grebt Thou Art?
― Meme for an Imaginary Western (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 22 July 2022 20:32 (one year ago) link
Or maybe an old folk song or some ragtime, vaudeville or Tin Pan Alley number. There's just so many great old songs.
― o. nate, Friday, 22 July 2022 20:41 (one year ago) link
Michigan J. Frog to thread!
― Meme for an Imaginary Western (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 22 July 2022 20:49 (one year ago) link
But I think perhaps one reason Xgau selected that song is because its a lovely and striking harmony that is fitted well to an ingenious lyric, that could be interpreted as an analogy to the experience of listening to music, both alone and socially (including the social practice of music criticism). The lyric starts out about a solitary person who doesn't need any friends because they find pleasure in a private aesthetic experience (think of listening to a record alone at home) but then in the last verse it switches to a couple sharing the same experience together (think of Christgau and his wife bonding over their shared love of listening to and arguing about music).
― o. nate, Friday, 22 July 2022 20:53 (one year ago) link
I think this song is just too idiosyncratic to have generated many cover versions.
― Tom D: panel beater, bouncer and tree surgeon (Tom D.), Friday, 22 July 2022 21:02 (one year ago) link
that could be interpreted as an analogy to the experience of listening to music
This is why I often think of "Roadrunner" as the suburban/American "Waterloo Sunset," though it lacks the element of third-person storytelling with the other characters sharing the same experience.
― Lily Dale, Friday, 22 July 2022 22:53 (one year ago) link
Have you read that recent book about “Roadrunner”?
― Meme for an Imaginary Western (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 22 July 2022 23:31 (one year ago) link
Not yet, have you?
― Lily Dale, Saturday, 23 July 2022 04:08 (one year ago) link
Yup
― Meme for an Imaginary Western (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 23 July 2022 09:33 (one year ago) link
Is there a non-album Kinks tracks poll / thread somewhere? I seem to remember there being one around the time of the Kinks poll, maybe as a side poll, but am having trouble tracking it down.
Occasioned by a Saturday late morning spent listening to the 3xCD VILLAGE GREEN deluxe ed. with what is, without exaggeration, basically an album's worth of equally good songs. And it sounds especially good to me because most of this stuff I've basically only heard once or twice and quite a long time ago at this point.
https://www.discogs.com/release/586438-The-Kinks-The-Kinks-Are-The-Village-Green-Preservation-Society
― budo jeru, Saturday, 3 September 2022 17:34 (one year ago) link
sorry, i meant to post that in the village green thread, but i spose this will do, too
― budo jeru, Saturday, 3 September 2022 17:35 (one year ago) link
maybe i was thinking of this:Kinks Deep Cuts: B-sides, rarities, etc.
― budo jeru, Saturday, 3 September 2022 17:39 (one year ago) link
realizing that i've had multiple versions of this epiphany over the years, one of them on ILX even, lol. sometimes we post before we think. there's evidently lots of good discussion of non-album stuff (and varying conceptions of "the great lost kinks album")
― budo jeru, Saturday, 3 September 2022 17:51 (one year ago) link
That 3 CD package is really the only one of its kind that I own. It's thorough, though I guess we could have lived without hearing "Spotty Grotty Anna" or "Mick Avory's Underpants".
― Halfway there but for you, Saturday, 3 September 2022 19:03 (one year ago) link
Amazingly, I was playing that same Kinks set last night. The deluxe 50th Anniversary box set may be even greater, but there's also a ton of overlap and it's a lot more $$$ - pretty hard to justify the purchase when you have the 3CD set that's far cheaper.
― birdistheword, Saturday, 3 September 2022 20:14 (one year ago) link
I skipped the 50th anniversary Village Green for the same reason — I already have most of those songs, and the few things unreleased things (or new — wasn’t there a new Ray vocal over a ‘60s track or something?) didn’t seem worth the dough. Similarly, with the upcoming combined Muswell Hillbillies/Everybody’s In Showbiz set: the best outtakes are already on those albums’ 2CD reissues from a few years ago. And as much as I love Muswell, swap “Skin and Bone” for the “Waterloo” rewrite/update “Lavender Lane” and you got a stone classic album there.
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Saturday, 3 September 2022 20:24 (one year ago) link
I'll have to try that. I do have the Legacy edition of Muswell from Sony/RCA - supposedly the best sounding one though I've never been able to compare it to past reissues.
― birdistheword, Sunday, 4 September 2022 18:30 (one year ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFbQQzkZuqU
― Jean Arthur Rank (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 11 September 2022 02:53 (one year ago) link
wow.
― budo jeru, Sunday, 11 September 2022 05:28 (one year ago) link
great performance of an absolute classic, don't believe the "don't believe the hype" people
― corrs unplugged, Sunday, 11 September 2022 14:23 (one year ago) link
What are the supposed flaws in this song again?
― Jean Arthur Rank (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 11 September 2022 14:27 (one year ago) link
fcc otm fifth post in.
― Jean Arthur Rank (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 11 September 2022 14:28 (one year ago) link