Tracks: 1) Look For Me Baby; 2) Got My Feet On The Ground; 3) Nothin’ In The World Can Stop Me Worryin’ ’Bout That Girl; 4) Naggin’ Woman; 5) Wonder Where My Baby Is Tonight; 6) Tired Of Waiting For You; 7) Dancing In The Street; 8) Don’t Ever Change; 9) Come On Now; 10) So Long; 11) You Shouldn’t Be Sad; 12) Something Better Beginning; 13*) Everybody’s Gonna Be Happy; 14*) Who’ll Be The Next In Line; 15*) Set Me Free; 16*) I Need You; 17*) See My Friends; 18*) Never Met A Girl Like You Before; 19*) Wait Till Summer Comes Along; 20*) Such A Shame; 21*) A Well Respected Man; 22*) Don’t You Fret; 23*) I Go To Sleep (demo).
Excellent review of this album, George. For whatever reason, I've never listened to this one so much (I just don't find the covers or the Dave vocals on the LP proper to be compelling), but looking back, you can see Ray's talents evolve rapidly by just reading through the track list. I know they weren't all on the same album, but to move from Naggin' Woman to See My Friends to Well Respected Man... it's an incredible leap.
I also appreciate that you laud Ray's vocals here. Personally, I was hooked in on the Kinks by Ray's "smile singing" that he developed a couple years later, but even at this stage, that falsetto was masterfully used. I will say in chest voice, I think he is still a little stuffy and pinched nosed during this period, but that will change soon enough.
A couple fun facts for you; apparently "Tired of Waiting for You" was the first song Ray ever wrote (back in 1957, I believe he's claimed); who knows what it actually looked like in its gestational form, but it somehow doesn't surprise me that the wistfulness plus urgency of that song was there from the start. The other fun fact; apparently "I Go to Sleep" was written for Peggy Lee to sing. Her version is alright, but the starkness of Ray's demo is... I don't know, jarring? Like, that jerky melody over the discordant piano is more like waking up from a weird dream than sleeping (compare and contrast with Brian Wilson's ode to going to sleep several years later!) It's an incredible effect, and that track stuck with me immediately.
Anyway, those fun facts come to mind because I recently watched the Julien Temple's "Imaginary Man" on youtube -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e1_6ILM2gY. I found it an engaging watch.
“A Well Respected Man” is probably one of my favorite songs of all time, and certainly a major highlight for the early phase of the Kinks’ career. Ray Davies had a downright uncanny gift for taking material that, by all rights, should be mere folky or vaudevillian novelty and imbuing it with genuine melancholy and pathos. The vocal delivery on AWRM shifts from tender to amused to venomous practically on a dime, and it gives the number more dramatic punch than one would anticipate from a glance at the “light satirical” lyrics. This is definitely a talent that Ray would continue to bring to his best social satire numbers, but I’m not convinced he ever really topped his first effort. Hmmmmm, maybe he did with “Mr. Pleasant.”
"commits the travesty of outright stealing the riff to the Beatles’ ‘I Feel Fine’ for its primary groove."
Similar yes - even very. The same - (as implied by "stealing") no. The riffs are clearly different when listened to back to back. Also the argument to Deep Purple's Black Night applies: what The Kinks do with it is very different.
"From a pure melodic standpoint, Ray’s compositions for now are still arguably weaker than contemporary Beatles stuff."
Granted. However the best songs of the Kinks from the beginning had qualities that the Beatles always lacked. Not that the latter aspired those qualities. The most important is imo, perhaps surprising, that nobody understood as well as the Davies' brothers how to use riffs to maximal effect - and in ways that remain unique until today. So the twofold punch of You Really Got Me and All Day and All Of the Night was no coincidence indeed.
It's exactly because of all this that A Well Respected Man is so important: it's the first great song by the band that doesn't need any riff. So we could say that it's with this one that they for the first time challenged The Beatles on their own ground. They wouldn't succeed yet (and certainly not in terms of entire albums) but it was already a good attempt. And just in time - less than two months later The Who already would show the world with My Generation what direction ass kicking rock would take.
I was thinking the other day that the bonus tracks in this CD edition are indeed a WHOLE OTHER album that is in fact way superior to the original one (and a marvel if you add "Nothing ...") . But well, singles are singles! Pete Townshend used to say that in the (early) 60s they were the only thing that really mattered. Amen.
There are surely few pop/rock groups one can forgive more easily for their early hit/miss ratio than the Kinks. You could even make the case they were merely warming up, getting the (dare I say) kinks out of their Art School system and slowly formulating their idisyncratic brand of ironic Power Pop.
Your review makes this abundantly clear, George, and you back up your claims with brilliant insights, notably with respect to Tired of Waiting: "The universe is expanding and we're all going to die!" This alone was worth the long wait.
"Avoiding the formulaic", you pinpoint their uniqueness perfectly. Just too bad (haha) that you had to draw the Klan into the mix.
I leave you with a nagging question. if, as even Peter Townsend freely admits, the Kinks were arguably the better group during these and later year, why were the Kinks forever overshadowed by the Who?
Excellent review of this album, George. For whatever reason, I've never listened to this one so much (I just don't find the covers or the Dave vocals on the LP proper to be compelling), but looking back, you can see Ray's talents evolve rapidly by just reading through the track list. I know they weren't all on the same album, but to move from Naggin' Woman to See My Friends to Well Respected Man... it's an incredible leap.
I also appreciate that you laud Ray's vocals here. Personally, I was hooked in on the Kinks by Ray's "smile singing" that he developed a couple years later, but even at this stage, that falsetto was masterfully used. I will say in chest voice, I think he is still a little stuffy and pinched nosed during this period, but that will change soon enough.
A couple fun facts for you; apparently "Tired of Waiting for You" was the first song Ray ever wrote (back in 1957, I believe he's claimed); who knows what it actually looked like in its gestational form, but it somehow doesn't surprise me that the wistfulness plus urgency of that song was there from the start. The other fun fact; apparently "I Go to Sleep" was written for Peggy Lee to sing. Her version is alright, but the starkness of Ray's demo is... I don't know, jarring? Like, that jerky melody over the discordant piano is more like waking up from a weird dream than sleeping (compare and contrast with Brian Wilson's ode to going to sleep several years later!) It's an incredible effect, and that track stuck with me immediately.
Anyway, those fun facts come to mind because I recently watched the Julien Temple's "Imaginary Man" on youtube -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4e1_6ILM2gY. I found it an engaging watch.
“A Well Respected Man” is probably one of my favorite songs of all time, and certainly a major highlight for the early phase of the Kinks’ career. Ray Davies had a downright uncanny gift for taking material that, by all rights, should be mere folky or vaudevillian novelty and imbuing it with genuine melancholy and pathos. The vocal delivery on AWRM shifts from tender to amused to venomous practically on a dime, and it gives the number more dramatic punch than one would anticipate from a glance at the “light satirical” lyrics. This is definitely a talent that Ray would continue to bring to his best social satire numbers, but I’m not convinced he ever really topped his first effort. Hmmmmm, maybe he did with “Mr. Pleasant.”
"commits the travesty of outright stealing the riff to the Beatles’ ‘I Feel Fine’ for its primary groove."
Similar yes - even very. The same - (as implied by "stealing") no. The riffs are clearly different when listened to back to back. Also the argument to Deep Purple's Black Night applies: what The Kinks do with it is very different.
"From a pure melodic standpoint, Ray’s compositions for now are still arguably weaker than contemporary Beatles stuff."
Granted. However the best songs of the Kinks from the beginning had qualities that the Beatles always lacked. Not that the latter aspired those qualities. The most important is imo, perhaps surprising, that nobody understood as well as the Davies' brothers how to use riffs to maximal effect - and in ways that remain unique until today. So the twofold punch of You Really Got Me and All Day and All Of the Night was no coincidence indeed.
It's exactly because of all this that A Well Respected Man is so important: it's the first great song by the band that doesn't need any riff. So we could say that it's with this one that they for the first time challenged The Beatles on their own ground. They wouldn't succeed yet (and certainly not in terms of entire albums) but it was already a good attempt. And just in time - less than two months later The Who already would show the world with My Generation what direction ass kicking rock would take.
I was thinking the other day that the bonus tracks in this CD edition are indeed a WHOLE OTHER album that is in fact way superior to the original one (and a marvel if you add "Nothing ...") . But well, singles are singles! Pete Townshend used to say that in the (early) 60s they were the only thing that really mattered. Amen.
There are surely few pop/rock groups one can forgive more easily for their early hit/miss ratio than the Kinks. You could even make the case they were merely warming up, getting the (dare I say) kinks out of their Art School system and slowly formulating their idisyncratic brand of ironic Power Pop.
Your review makes this abundantly clear, George, and you back up your claims with brilliant insights, notably with respect to Tired of Waiting: "The universe is expanding and we're all going to die!" This alone was worth the long wait.
"Avoiding the formulaic", you pinpoint their uniqueness perfectly. Just too bad (haha) that you had to draw the Klan into the mix.
I leave you with a nagging question. if, as even Peter Townsend freely admits, the Kinks were arguably the better group during these and later year, why were the Kinks forever overshadowed by the Who?