Welcome to Music Banter Forum! Make sure to register - it's free and very quick! You have to register before you can post and participate in our discussions with over 70,000 other registered members. After you create your free account, you will be able to customize many options, you will have the full access to over 1,100,000 posts.
So i checked my PM's and it turns out i have 2 noms for the same band, slipped me radar so i'll just put both of them up. From The Monkey and Waspstar consecutively...
The Kinks
1967 was a dramatic year in music. Jimi Hendrix, through the Monterey Pop Festival, became the biggest superstar in America since Elvis, thus putting a definite end to the first British Invasion. Mick Jagger was forced to sing “Let’s Spend Some Time Together” on Ed Sullivan. The Who countered their wild stage behaviour with increasingly complex studio albums, and released The Who Sell Out. The Beatles released their most acclaimed album to date, Sgt. Peppers. A Scott McKenzie became the anthem for the Summer of Love, the biggest event in the hippie movement second only to Woodstock.
The world was had never seemed so bright, and the youth were more optimistic and idealistic than ever before. Through music, art and a big amount of pot, they would change the world by bringing forward uncomplicated messages of peace and love. The old had to go, a new era had arrived.
That year, the last steam-powered trains in England was about to be replaced by electric locomotives. This, quite naturally, went ignored by nearly everyone on the music scene. Who, after all, cared about some olds trains when a world revolution of love was taking place? One band did: The Kinks. They recorded a song about it the following year.
The Kinks’ genius and driving force lay with singer-songwriter Ray Davies, who wrote the vast majority of the band’s songs. His brother Dave was guitarist and wrote a few songs for the band. Drummer Mick Avory and bassist Pete Quaife completed the early line-up.
The Kinks formed in 1963 and soon reached success with a series of singles, notably “You Really Got Me”, “All Day And All Of The Night” and “Tired of Waiting for You”, the first hit songs ever to be build around power chords. The band continued to release songs in the same protopunk vein for the next couple of years, although they were constantly in the shadow of contemporary British bands such as the Beatles, the Stones or the Who.
In 1965 something of great importance to the bands musical directions occurred: they were banned from performing in the Unites States for reasons to this day undisclosed. This had two major effects. One, their commercial success in the US over the next years was obviously dampened. Two, the musical direction of the band changed dramatically as a result of being cut off from influences from the American R&B and soul. Ray’s songwriting here attained a uniquely English, often nostalgic, flavour, drawing heavy influences from English music hall traditions. The band’s stylistic change was first evident with the singles “A Well Respected Man” and “Dedicated Follower of Fashion”. The character study and social commentary theme in these singles would continue throughout the band’s career.
The following four years, the band was at their artistic peak. The albums “Face to Face”, “Something Else by The Kinks”, “The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society” and “Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)” all showcase the very best of Ray’s writing, with Something Else being my personal favourite. The four most famous singles from this time are probably “Sunny Afternoon”, “Dead End Street”, “Waterloo Sunset” and “Days”. Their last big hit came in 1970 with the single “Lola”.
At a time when focus of the music scene was on Hindu traditions, Marxist writings and world revolutions, The Kinks was writing about the poverty and misery found in England’s lower classes. In many cases the living standard hadn’t improved much since WWII, a fact often forgotten when looking back at the 60’s. But Ray Davies did not forget those people in his songs, and The Kinks’ music is in my opinion the very best examples how brilliant and meaningful lyrics can be combined with beautiful and touching melodies.
The song that to me best symbolizes what The Kinks is all about is probably Dead End Street from 1966:
Apart from releasing some of the great albums of the 1960's (Village Green & Something Else), they were a killer singles band (You Really Got Me, Set Me Free, Dedicated Follower Of Fashion, Dead End Street). They weren't limited to one basic style as most of their contemporaries were and managed to create some of the most abrasive, raw, rocking songs ever recorded as well as some of the most beautiful.
A yes, but a close yes because I don't listen to them much anymore. I still don't have Village Green whatever, even though it's supposed to be an essential album.
Easily. An inner circle member of the Hall of Fame, to me. On the candidate list for greatest band of the 1960s.
__________________ "Blow your tuneless trumpet, the choice is yours / We don't want the glamour, the pomp and the drums / The Dublin messiah scattering crumbs"
The Kinks are probably the most charismatic and just plain silly bands of the British Invasion. Their music is extremely charming, and their albums are really fluent stories that are easy to get rapped up in. Not to mention Ray Davis is a genius songwriter and probably one of the best of his time.
This always made me smile:
Some legendary on-stage fights erupted during this time as well. In the most notorious incident at The Capitol Theatre, Cardiff, Wales in 1965, the normally placid drummer Avory hit Dave Davies with his hi-hat pedal and assaulted him on stage. Avory later claimed that it was part of a new act in which the band members would hurl their instruments at each other.
__________________
one font under god
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lucem Ferre
I could be cute if I wanted to be, I just choose not to because you wouldn't be able to handle yourself.
I dont have any Kinks albums but there musical influence is more than enough to deserve a YES.
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by swim
America does folk, hardcore and mathrock better and that's 90% of what I give 2 shits on.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chartsengrafs
sweet nothing openly flaunts the fact that he is merely the empty shell of an even more unadmirable member. his loneliness and need for attention bleeds through every letter he types. edit: i would just like to add that i'm ashamed that he's from texas. surely you didn't grow up in texas, did you sweet nothing?
Linear Mode
