The Kinks post -1970. Classic or Dud + Search and Destroy

So bad it's good!

So bad I turned it off.

And started listening to Everybody's in Show-Biz instead?

Ennio Morricone's soundtrack to "Orca" actually.

Cool!

Forgot he did that one

Of course I could probably say that about thousands of soundtracks and it would mean "I never knew he composed that one too!"

Percy On Blu-Ray!

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film10/blu-ray_review_142/percy_blu-ray.htm

I don't understand the ambivalence towards "Destroyer;" in fact, the only mention of it is it being 'Destroyed' by an ILXer and I don't think that was being cheeky.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WJ6FbcWYRU

I get it that oldsters won't see it as holding a candle to the British Invasion staples, but as someone who was 12 and gravitating towards loud guitars (they did shit all over "Bette Davis Eyes," you know) this was an early earworm for me, one that I still appreciated when it occurred to me the band was being influenced by the same punk/new wave bands that they, themselves, had helped spawn to a degree. There's something cool about that, but especially when it's done this well.

never listened to Sleepwalker before, I'm digging it

never listened to Sleepwalker before, I'm not digging it

Probably if the first track ("Life on the Road") hadn't been so good I wouldn't have been so disappointed with the rest of the album but... I'm struggling to find any trace of the Kinks on some of these songs.

It’s like half good. The songs I love i love wholeheartedly but some of them are just bitter and boring.

Agree with LL.

"Full Moon" is up there with their mid-'60s peak for me. With the possible exceptions of maybe "Scattered" or "Come Dancing," it's their last truly great track (even if it self-plagiarizes "Johnny Thunder," but that's nothing new for them).

The songwriting is miles better than something like "Schoolboys in Disgrace" but it's just sounds too anonymous and American for me.

Yeah, the flumpfy LA sound is kind of off-putting. I sometimes confuse "Life Goes On" for Fleetwood Mac's "Over My Head" (or vice-versa) hearing them on the radio. But it's in line with pretty much all Kinks productions: "What do records sound like today? OK, we'll do that."

Since this is the active Kinks thread ATM

🎶 We are the Village Green Preservation Society 🎶 https://t.co/ppWETk8Z2w

— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) December 3, 2021

Sleepwalker was the first time in 10 years he'd had to come up with songs outside of an overriding concept, on the orders of Clive Davis. In fact the concept was "keep the Kinks viable as a major label act in the late 70s", which also meant dispensing with the sometimes-charming sloppiness of the RCA-era band. I believe that Dave was also calling for a return to "rock" as a condition to stay in the band.

Misfits.

After going all rawwwwk on the last album this is curiously limp and soft centred. Once again, the opening song is really good but the tail off is even more vertiginous. There's a 'comic' song about having hay fever - no, seriously. Ray appears to sing sensitively and compassionately about misfits on the title track and then gets some cheap laughs out of one on "Out of the Wardrobe". On one song he advises those alienated by the 'extreme left and extreme right" to keep their heads down and just live their lives and a couple of songs later he's exhorting those alienated by the 'extreme left and extreme right" to stand up and fight - though he doesn't say how, maybe by voting for Jeremy Thorpe."Rock and Roll Fantasy" is a good song.

... and then there's "Black Messiah", wtf is Ray trying to tell us in that song?

Dunno but your Misfits review is spot-on so far. Although you haven’t touched on “Live Life” yet.

That's the one where he advises people to be apolitical in the face of the extremes of left and right? It's utter crap.

It's the big ROCK track on the album and, in a similar vein, is followed by a dire hairy chested screechathon from Dave.

Tbh I like the rocking on that track, at least the guitar, the lyrics not so much.

I have a soft spot for "In a Foreign Land" and "Permanent Waves" from that album. Giddy singalongs that hearkened back to Arthur.

... and then there's "Black Messiah", wtf is Ray trying to tell us in that song?

― When Smeato Met Moaty (Tom D.), Monday, December 6, 2021 5:58 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's a blatantly racist piece of shit. Adding insult to injury, they released it as a single in the UK at a time when the neo-nazi National Front was on the ascendance.

Is it a character study of a racist though? Whatever it is it's stupid.

In one of the Kinks biographies, one of the bass players on Misfits complains about doing dozens of takes of "Hay Fever" in different keys, different tempos, etc. Ray was probably becoming more neurotic about getting everything "right" for the arena-size audience.

Well that's something to look forward to when the 50-year reissue drops!

So it seems there's a radio dramatization of the Lola vs. Powerman album being broadcast on Radio 4 this Saturday.

Lola vs Powerman, the radio play, will broadcast on BBC Radio 4 this Saturday at 14:45 GMT! The play documents the life of a character in the music business facing the challenging circumstances in which he found himself at the end of the 1960s.
Written by Sir Ray and Paul Sirett pic.twitter.com/kl5qa36CcY

— The Kinks (@TheKinks) December 7, 2021

Apparently they made a radio play of Arthur earlier?

So I see. I missed that, damn it!

Preservation and Soap Opera don't convince me that Ray has a great ear for spoken dialogue.

Let's just hope he's not speaking it too.

Wonder who's gonna deliver the "it means you can earn some real money!" line.

Low Budget.

Can you believe this piece of crap is the highest charting Kinks album of all time in the US? It got to #11, wtf?

I don't really like anything from this record, but when I saw Ray in 2006, the title track was the only song he played later than Muswell Hillbillies except for his new songs, and it was actually fun.

"Moving Pictures" is kind of fun.

The title track is amusing because Ray Davies is famously the biggest tightwad on planet Earth, the song is still shit though. The "Superman" song is admittedly catchy.

As is "In a Space" and "National Health." A full one third of the album is a toe-tapper.

I beg to differ.

One of the kinks' ogwt sessions was shown on bbc4 recently, and now I can't shake off "Have a cuppa tea" for months on end. All it takes is to see the words "Muswell Hillbillies" and here we go again.

I should have said hallelujah there

In one of the Kinks biographies, one of the bass players on Misfits complains about doing dozens of takes of "Hay Fever" in different keys, different tempos, etc. Ray was probably becoming more neurotic about getting everything "right" for the arena-size audience.

More neurotic? Is that even possible? Yes, right now I am reading that same biography.

Can you believe this piece of crap is the highest charting Kinks album of all time in the US? It got to #11, wtf?

Actually, their 1966 Greatest Hits! is the highest (#9 in the US). But it makes sense that Low Budget charted as high as it did: they’d been on a slow and steady climb back into larger halls and getting more radio play, and Low Budget was the perfect summit (not artistically speaking, that is). But it’s interesting that their biggest US chart success after 1966 was the decidedly un-arena-rock “Come Dancing.”

"Come Dancing" was more Pop than they'd been since "Lola" the song, and the video was huge.

True, though I wonder why that didn't translate into a higher chart peak for State of Confusion?

Dunno, probably just new fans buying the single and perhaps concert tickets instead of the LP.

Low Budget peaking so high is possibly explained by it coming out at peak FM radio, when an album could sell as an album on name recognition and AOR radio play without necessarily having crossover appeal.

"State of Confusion" was the second most successful non-compliation Kinks album in the US in their history, so it did pretty well.

The career of the Kinks is a head-scratcher almost from beginning to end though.