neardeathexperience

For me they just did not get the job done as well as bands like the Animals and Dave Clark 5.............. Yes there were shinning moments like Lola and my favorite Sunny Afternoon. They never got the exposure in North America amongst the likes of the Beatles, Stones and Who that over powered them. The Animals and Dave Clark 5 were on the charts much more frequently. The Kinks sounded awesome, but I honestly think their management did not do them justice..............

ribbons

One of their more obscure gems, and one of my favorite songs of all time:



Voted for Village Green Preservation Society in the poll. This is my favorite song on that album (not to be confused with the well known title song). Love the harpsichord on this.



Another one of my favorite Kinks songs. Even though it's lip synched, I love their slightly mischievous performance here, and those clothes, and Pete Quaife's bass labeled, "This Is Not A Piano".

Nephener

I don't know much of The Kinks other than You Really Got Me. It's an amazing song, though. Enough to make me respect them, regardless of anything else. Quite a brilliant musical artwork.

Puffnstuff

My favorite Kinks song is A Rock 'N' Roll Fantasy and I've been listening to them for many years. In markets with aor radio stations they received a fair amount of airtime here in the states.

Screen13

I still have to say that there should be a vote for Something Else/Village Green/Arthur as one as they're all great and a perfect trilogy of albums.

I stood by Something Else mainly for being the one with "Waterloo Sunset", "Death of a Clown" (One of Dave's highlights), "David Watts", and "Situation Vacant" - the perfect gateway to their back to back classics that followed and a bittersweet closing of their strongest commercial years. Sold a little in The US (it peeped for a couple of weeks at #153 despite the touring ban) and graced UK #35, kind of hinting that their true followers were already turning into a Kinks Cult. One can say my choice is mainly through my favorites from that album being among the very first songs that seriously introduced me into their music when I was digging through these bands back as a Teen and getting to these first before Village Green, but "Waterloo Sunset" still remains one of those songs that brought me in, practicing my acoustic guitar with the song.

..plus the additions to the CD (sans "Wonderboy") only make it better! Somehow, I find the "Lost Dave Davies Album"/The Album That Never Was story very interesting - maybe not as great as Ray's concepts and classics, but still has it's great songs. I'm all for the odd little details, I guess!

Gavin B.

One of the big stumbling blocks to the Kink's popularity in United States was the prohibition on their touring in USA by the government. For some unstated reason the Kinks were banned from touring the USA from 1965 until 1970. Even without touring the Kinks still had a pretty good string of top ten hits on American radio but their albums didn't sell well.

From my perspective, nearly all the Kink's albums are hit or miss affairs. A lot of their singles in the UK never appeared on any of their American albums. Village Green is their most consistent album but their biggest accomplishment is the 25 or so singles written by Ray Davies that were released between 1964 and 1971. The songs are as memorable and timeless as any songs by the Beatles or the Rolling Stones during that same time frame.

__________________
There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

Taxman

Kinks's problem was that they were not that much popular. Also they started to suck on the seventies and eighties badly.
And their music was too British to be popular in America cos Americans always think that only America can produce good things.

Gavin B.

I agree. The Kinks really sucked by the mid-Seventies. Part of it was the lifelong feud between the Davies brothers was taking it's toll and part of it was the band was drunk most of the time.

Their first nine albums on Pye/Reprise label are their best. In 1971 they resigned with RCA and produced an additional four respectable studio albums.The Kinks' studio albums began to decline when they signed with Arista in 1976 and tried to reinvent themselves as a hard rock band.

__________________
There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

Taxman

Yep. Their main strength was not hard rock and they really weren't good at it.

But for me the first worthy Kinks album is Face to Face. The earlier albums are too hit-and-miss affairs. Before 1966 they were just a great single band.
All their albums from Face To Face to Hillbillies, on the other hand, are classics.

Also Ray ran out of original ideas and those later albums include too much self-plagiarism and stuff like that. Also his once so great lyrics got worse. In sixties his lyrics were sarcastic and funny, but then they became too straightforward and serious. And every song was about the same topic, how capitalism and technology is ruining mankind etc, I mean songs like 'Give People What They Want' etc

Jarlaxle

My favorite Kinks some is Ray Davies' ode to his late sister...Come Dancing.

She gave him his first guitar on his 13th birthday. That night, she died of a heart attack at age 31.