Kinks Box Vol II (This is Where I Belong)

Kinks Box Vol III (Top of the Pops)

I'm pretty sure the tracks aren't named right, but hey they're there.

Bowing down to elco!

Also, the disc two link had some extra characters that I've taken out in the link above.

Seriously, you may be worthy of sainthood at this point...

Where and when is this from? Is it truly unofficial; if so, who compiled it? Has it been released on a label, or is it a bootleg?

I compiled it

Kinks Box Vol IV (Juke Box Music)

Impressive.

Kinks Box Vol V (Better Things) Part 1 tracks 1-10

I put this in the Youtube thread but it got buried quickly:

Kinks live from 1973



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Hey El C, are you familiar with a song called "Time Will Tell?" I just heard Holly Golightly's version, and it's just Klassic Kinks. You should check it out if y'aven't already.




















k

maybe you could make it easy for me, ya know, by putting a copy here or something. anyway, I don't think I'm familiar with the song. I might have it somewhere, but I'm not sure I can place it. It was an outtake from Kinks Kontroversy.

Here's the final installement of my Kinks Box (although I did do a supplement at some point) I'm not sure I recall what was on it though.

Kinks Box Vol V (Better Things) Part 2

Both versions: http://tinyurl.com/yjn7p5

Enjoy,




















k

thanks kessler.

Sure, no problem. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the tracks.Very nice, btw.




















k

Pretty solid track by the Kinks, and not a bad cover either. I think I prefer the original but I like both versions. More proof of just how many great songs Ray was writing back then. Kinda reminds me of "Set Me Free", but I think it's a little better overall. I think the Kinks version might have a bit more edge to it, actually. And it's a great pained Ray vocal, too. I think he'd have redone it if they were going to release it.

The cover is pretty damn straight ahead, but that's cool when the original track is so obscure.

VH1 Classic presents one of the U.K.'s longest-running rock success stories, The Kinks on Thursday, December 7 at 10:00 PM during "The Kinks Christmas Concert." Caught live at the Rainbow Theater in London on Christmas Eve 1977, The Kinks tear through many of their classic songs including "Lola," "Sleepwalker," "Life On The Road," "Well Respected Man," "Death Of A Clown," "Sunny Afternoon," "Waterloo Sunset," "All Day And All Of The Night," "Slum Kids," "Celluloid Heroes" and "Get Back In The Line." The group also gives a rousing rendition on their holiday classic "Father Christmas" with Paul Davies' donned as Santa Claus.

anybody with vh1 classic want to tape this ^^^^^^^ for me. I'd love to see it.

NEW CD "Fractured Minds" by Dave Davies



Free Me
All About Me
Come To The River
Giving
Remember Who You Are
The Waiting Hours
Rock Siva
The Blessing
Fractured Mind

COMING SOON!!! January 2007 - EXCLUSIVE TO DAVE DAVIES WEBSITE!!!

Isn't Dave supposedly in pretty poor health these days?

Here's a fairly short little doc on the history of the Kinks (under 10 minutes)

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Ray Davies Returns With New Solo LP!
12 Sep 2007
Ray Davies Returns With New Solo LP
‘Working Mans Café’ released October 29th

Eighteen months after releasing his first ever solo album, Ray Davies is back with what promises to be one of the best albums of his incredible career. While last year’s ‘Other People’s Lives’ was a lifetime in the making, this new album happened relatively quickly.

Recorded in Nashville, Tennessee and mixed in North London at Konk earlier this year, ‘Working Mans Café’ features 12 stellar songs written by Ray Davies and co- produced with Ray Kennedy. They assembled a crackerjack band of top musicians who breathe life into a wonderful collection of songs.

The 12 new songs are vintage Ray Davies and bears all the hallmark classic musical and lyrical insights we have come to expect from him. The album is infused with a transatlantic sound befitting Ray’s close ties to the American south coupled with his well respected Englishness. From the first upbeat notes of the lead track ‘Vietnam Cowboys’, it is clear Ray has never sung better.

‘Working Mans Café’ is a wistful, humorous and poignant look at today, just what we have come to expect from one of Britain’s greatest songwriters. Highlights are many and include the Preservation Jazz Hall sway of ‘Morphine Song’, the painful longing of ‘Imaginary Man’ and the haunting emotion of ‘One More Time’.

‘You’re Asking Me’ and ‘In A Moment’ offer incredibly affecting pop while ‘Working Man’s Café’ revisits familiar Davies territory – that yearning for an era gone by. Brimming with variety, ‘Voodoo Walk’ is a steamy stroll on the rock side.

‘Where is the real world?’ he asks on the album’s final track after giving ample evidence throughout this impressive 12-song cycle that it lives within these grooves.

http://gb.v2music.com/site/news.asp?id=3763

I still haven't picked up the new Ray solo record (it's only available as an import so far). Has anybody heard it? seems to be getting positive reviews.

WORKING MAN'S CAFE

By DARRYL STERDAN -- Sun Media









--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ray Davies
Working Man's Cafe
(V2)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some Ray Davies songs grab you right away. Others take their time and sneak up on you.

If you're partial to the latter, we highly recommend his last album -- the 2006 sleeper Other People's Lives, the Kinks leader's first studio disc after about a decade of relative inactivity.

For those who prefer Davies a little livelier, however, the 63-year- old Britrock icon's latest solo album is more like it.

On Working Man's Cafe, the legendary singer-songwriter and well- respected misfit gives the people what they want -- a dozen wistful pop masterworks that wonder where all the good times have gone.

Thanks to the Nashville production of longtime Steve Earle collaborator Ray Kennedy, it's more vibrant and immediate than its predecessor, with crunchier guitars and a few cuts that lovingly recall to his '60s glory days.


Is it another Village Green Preservation Society? No. But it might be his strongest and most accessible album in nearly a generation.

Vietnam Cowboys 4:13

East meets West -- Ray rails against the culture-clash of corporate globalization to a bouncy country two-step. The shuffling groove and noirish guitar twang are reminiscent of Dire Straits.

You're Asking Me 3:22

Over an aggressively jangly folk-rock backdrop -- think The Byrds on steroids -- Davies pointedly offers some sound advice for folks who look to him for guidance: "Get a life!"

Working Man's Cafe 3:41

The title cut serves up one of Ray's classic kitchen-sink rock ballads -- a nostalgic lament for the vanishing British labour class.

Morphine Song 4:18

A weary-sounding Ray stars in this beautifully bittersweet piano- driven tale of a hospitalized addict -- who hallucinates a marching band in the charity ward.

In a Moment 4:29

Brash brass and a funky groove add a dash of Memphis soul to this poignant number about the fleeting happiness of love.

Peace in Our Time 4:39

Neither an anti-war song nor a Costello cover, this lazy, electrified folk-rocker concerns itself with battle lines on the home front.

No One Listen 3:13

Choppy guitars, swirly organ and a punchy Mod-flavoured groove make this upbeat retro-rocker one of the disc's standout tracks. The searing guitar licks don't hurt either.

Imaginary Man 4:10

Davies pushes his vocals into a higher register for the chorus of this slow-burning rock ballad -- and proves he's still got a fine set of pipes.

One More Time 4:29

Waxing nostalgic again, Ray sings it "for the old country" and blasts corporate greed over a gently insistent groove decorated with strummy guitars and lush backup vocals.

The Voodoo Walk 4:25

Davies makes like CCR -- or at least Tony Joe White -- on this swampy little dance number built from thumpy tom-toms, ghostly harmonica and Halloween guitars.

Hymn for a New Age 3:43

After lambasting politics and business, Ray completes the topical trifecta by skewering religion in this chunky midtempo rocker.

The Real World 5:05

With its grand pianos, wheezing harmonica, big chiming guitars and lyrics about lost souls roaming America, this closing ballad almost has a Springsteenish tone to it.

I didn't love Other People's Lives... I don't know, maybe it was just me. What did other folks think?

mixed reactions. I enjoyed it a bit. Haven't played it in a long time, some decent stuff. There's a bit more detail of my reaction and a few others if you go back to the beginning of this thread.

I only enjoy Other People's Lives when I imagine the songs the way the Kinks would have done them. The actual production is way too polished.

check out this thread for more:

http://soundopinions.org/forum/index.php?s...davies&st=0

heard it sounds like Revolver

as Ray correctly noted (and djdee later realized as well), Revolver's no Rubber Soul, but I digress.

Since reading that article, the thought has occurred to me that Rubber Soul is about as close to The Kinks as The Beatles ever got.

Kinks Reunion To Happen When Pigs Fly
by Paul Cashmere - December 30 2007
photo by Ros O'Gorman


It appears Kinks founder Ray Davies may have got a little carried away when he talked about a 2008 reunion of the classic 60s Brit band. Co-founder (and Ray's brother) Dave doesn't share the same enthusiasm.


"To sit in a room or studio with him and have my brain and heart slowly sucked out ... no friggin thank you," Ray said recently in a posting at his website.

Ray was responding to a question from a fan named Neil in his forum. "Dave, is there any possibility that you and Ray could get something together?" asked Neil.

Dave responded with "I wrote a song called Where pigs fly ' Ray wrote 10 songs out of it....one of them was Hatred, one was LOLA and the other eight were You Really Got Me. ??Ray has been doing Karaoke Kinks shows since 1996."

Dave says a reunion would be a disaster. "It would be like a poor remake of 'Night of the Livin Dead'..... There is nothing wrong with the old songs or new songs that we have both been writing on our own; but not more torture Please. no more Hannabal lectur.aah!?the swan song Ray and Dave tour should be called the Kinks are 'The Fractured Mindz preservation Society'. ?'Preserve in Peace.'"

If anything were to happen, Dave says it would be for the fans, not for Ray. "I wouldn't mind or rather consider doing some shows with Ray purely in respect for the Great body of work we have both been fortunate to have been involved in over the years. And for the fans of course," he said.

Ray Davies this week suggested the original Kinks would reunite for a tour and album in 2008. The original line-up of the Kinks included the Davies brothers, Mick Avory on drums and Pete Quaife on bass. Avory appeared on stage with Davies in May at the Royal Albert Hall. That original Kinks finished with the hits 'Lola' and 'Apeman' in 1970. Quaife, however, has been seriously ill for most of 2007 and unlikely to be well enough to perform.

Dave Davies likewise is slowly recovering from the stroke he had in 2004. He has not totally regained his speech.

Ray has been busy recording in recent years. Of his four solo albums since 1985, two were released in the last 2 years. Last year, Ray released 'Other People's Lives'. This year, he put out 'Working Man's Café'.

I'm sure this is another thread somewhere, but elco,what did you think of Ray's "autobio" X Ray?

Man I wish I had a brother.

X-Ray was fun to read, but ultimately a tad unsatisfying. It was so "Ray" of him to put the whole thing into a fictional context so that you could never tell when it was truly real and when it was made up.

Oh good. I thought it was just me.

I love the Kinks, I was 'em during State of Confusion tour, saw Ray twice during the acoustic Storyteller tour, and saw him once solo w/ full band.

That said, I couldn't even finish the book. I skimmed it a bit and then quit. Nothing stuck.......

Ray Davies Gets Deluxe Treatment on New Album
Fred Mills
January 17, 2008
Ray Davies’ new albumWorking Man’s Café, due Feb. 19, is getting an elaborate sendoff from New West Records. In addition to the single disc version, there will be a Deluxe CD/DVD edition, a digital download edition and also high quality 180g Vinyl.

The single disc, digital download and vinyl editions will all have the following 3 bonus tracks:

1. Angola (Wrong Side of the Law)
2. Vietnam Cowboys (Demo)
3. The Voodoo Walk (Demo)

The Deluxe CD/DVD Edition will have 4 bonus tracks as well:

1. Angola (Wrong Side of the Law)
2. I, Victim (Rough Mix From the Upcoming project called “Ripper”)
3. Vietnam Cowboys (demo)
4. The Voodoo Walk (demo)

And the DVD will include a 20-minute short film titled “Americana: A Work In Progress,” which was filmed and directed by Davies. It features footage from the fall 2001 Storyteller Tour. Ray narrates over the post-9/11 landscape of airports, freeways, hotels, soundchecks and performances, with songs from Working Man’s Café as the soundtrack. It all culminates in New Orleans, the city that inspired many of the songs on the new album.

You can view a video preview of the film at this New West link.

See the brand new January issue of HARP (Mars Volta on the cover) for a full review of the Davies album. Uttered we, in part:

“It isn’t quite the old Ray Davies that turns up on what is technically his second solo album—following the first by only a year—but it’s a more familiar one. Where Other People’s Lives was polished and cautious, Working Man’s Café is sharper and more direct, reaching back to Davies’ most biting social commentary and the pointed wit of prime Kinks days.”

The album rocks like a motherfucker, too.

***

Meanwhile, all you folks out there dreaming about a Kinks reunion—rumors have recently floated around the Internet about Ray and brother Dave Davies planning to get the band back together—should probably consider waking up now. Last week Davies issued the following statement that appears to be the final word, at least for now.

"Ray and I haven't even spoken in over six months. So not only hasn't a tour been planned, it hasn't even been discussed. I am focused on my solo career right now and that's all I'm concerned with at the moment."

There's a pretty good article about Davies and The Kinks in the latest Rolling Stone.

44 Years of 3-Minute Poems
The kamp konservatism of the Kinks

Jesse Walker | March 22, 2008

Ray Davies: Not Like Everybody Else, by Thomas M. Kitts, New York: Routledge, 302 pages, $19.95

When the Kinks recorded The Village Green Preservation Society in 1968, the north London quartet was not trying to create a commercial failure. Quite the opposite. But surely they must have realized that the year of the street riot was not a propitious time to greet the rock world with couplets like "We are the Office Block Persecution Affinity/God save little shops, china cups, and virginity." They sang those lines with genuine enthusiasm, even if it's a sure bet that no one in the band was a virgin at the time.

The song—the sprightly, catchy title track of a nearly perfect album—had been composed by Ray Davies, one of rock's greatest lyricists. It was not a tribute to virginity so much as a tribute to the idea of virginity and of everything else praised in this romantic English anthem: village greens, the George Cross, strawberry jam, draught beer, "the old ways." The record recalls a more rooted existence, but its list of artifacts worth saving draws on pop culture as much as pastoral life: "We are the Sherlock Holmes English Speaking Vernacular/Help save Fu Manchu, Moriarty, and Dracula." There is even a shout-out to Donald Duck, who's about as English as Donald Trump.

The album sold less than 500,000 copies. Four years earlier, the Kinks had been one of the most popular bands in the West, climbing the American and British charts with two brash, loud rock songs, "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night." Indeed, as Thomas M. Kitts points out in this intelligent study, The Kinks "were ranked with the Rolling Stones, both only second to the Beatles." There was an enormous stylistic gap between the quiet nostalgia of Village Green and the Kinks' earlier, noisier explosions of adolescent lust and frustration—and that contrast only begins to hint at the band's range. In their first decade as a recording unit, the Kinks experimented with trad jazz, musical theater, Indian raga, and New Orleans funk. Above all, they delved into the English music-hall tradition, with its vaudevillian showmanship, singalong melodies, working-class sympathies, and epicene moments of burlesque.

The constant thread was a willful refusal to follow pop fashions. The Kinks were happy to set trends: The early singles paved the way for punk rock, heavy metal, and grunge, while the band's later, quieter character studies ("Rosie Won't You Please Come Home," "Two Sisters," "Autumn Almanac") and satires of modern British life ("A Well Respected Man," "Dedicated Follower of Fashion," "Sunny Afternoon") would have a strong impact on other English artists. Yet even when no one was imitating them, the Kinks kept doing their own thing, recording well-crafted but poor-selling LPs like Village Green and, in 1971, Muswell Hillbillies, a jazz and country-flavored concept album about the injustice of urban renewal programs. By the mid-'70s, the band had evolved into a touring troupe that staged Brechtian rock musicals. There were plenty of rock operas in that era, but there was a big gulf between the bombast of Tommy or Jesus Christ, Superstar and Kinksian efforts like Preservation, a witty if tangled three-disc story about a socialist revolution that becomes a puritanical, totalitarian nightmare.

The group took another turn in 1976, when they signed with a new label, Arista, and tried to work within the genres that happened to be popular at the moment, from new wave to metallic hard rock. Davies even dabbled in disco. He was still drawn to the theater, but he generally expressed this interest outside the Kinks (co-writing the musicals Chorus Girls and 80 Days) or channeled it into directing music videos. The band became enormously popular in America again, though not in the UK. For the most part, the Kinks' new records succeeded artistically as well as commercially, at least until they left Arista for MCA in the mid-'80s. In the '90s they finally disbanded. Ray and his brother Dave—the group's lead guitarist and an important architect of its sound—have since enjoyed low-profile but impressive solo careers.

Muswell Hillbillies is my favorite Kinks record, but The Village Green Preservation Society stands out for being so tenaciously removed from its time. Inspired by Dylan Thomas's play Under Milk Wood, the album describes the colorful inhabitants of an unnamed English town. The title track, that toe-tapping ode to Donald Duck and virgins, presents itself as a love letter to the past, but the singer knew very well that the place he was romanticizing wasn't lost so much as imaginary. Kitts quotes Davies' description of the village as "a fantasy world that I can retreat to. ... It was my own Wizard of Oz land."

Davies' other retreat was a very real place: Muswell Hill, the London suburb where he was raised. The heart of the young Davies' world was the front room of his family home. "After the pubs closed at 11:00 pm," Kitts writes, Davies' father "would invite his drinking cronies to join his extended family and children's friends for an after-hours party in what would be the family's overcrowded front room, which, in those largely pre-television days, held the family's old upright piano, the most important piece of furniture in the Davies's home, and a 78 r.p.m. wind-up gramophone." The parties featured rowdy performances of pop hits and music-hall standards, with Davies's father doing a drunken impersonation of Cab Calloway. As Kitts notes, "The influence of these parties on the Kinks, particularly the campy Kinks of the early to mid-1970s, is remarkable. Whether consciously or not, it seemed as if Ray was trying to recreate the Saturday night parties of his family's home—complete with chaos, beer, and singalongs."

In theory, there is a wide gap between the camp aesthetic, with its love of artifice and role-playing, and the traditionalist outlook, with its focus on the permanent things. Yet the Kinks at their campiest were the Kinks at their most rooted. Susan Sontag famously wrote that the camp worldview "sees everything in quotation marks." Davies does too: "Everybody's a dreamer, and everybody's a star/And everybody's in showbiz, it doesn't matter who you are," he sang in "Celluloid Heroes." But usually he's yelling for someone to tear those quotation marks down, even as he suspects that life as a quotation might have its own numb pleasures ("I wish my life was a nonstop Hollywood movie show/A fantasy world of celluloid villains and heroes/Because celluloid heroes never feel any pain/And celluloid heroes never really die").

Davies—one of the few pop figures with a strong cult following among both gays and conservatives—does not simply combine camp with traditionalism. He is at once the alienated individualist and the communitarian populist, a man who praises both the misfit and the ordinary rituals that everybody enjoys ("I like my football on a Saturday/Roast beef on Sundays, all right/I go to Blackpool for my holidays/Sit in the open sunlight"). Village Green, like Under Milk Wood, wove those strands together by populating Davies's village with eccentrics; by celebrating their individuality, he celebrated their small community as well. Muswell Hillbillies is a darker album, but it takes the same approach, mixing songs about the bizarre characters on Muswell Hill with angry jeremiads at the authorities that bulldoze homes and neighborhoods.

Politically, this outlook translates into an intense distrust both for large corporations and for the state. Like many rock stars, Davies has written songs attacking venal Big Business. Unlike most rock stars, he has written songs attacking domestic government bureaucracies ("I was born in a welfare state/Ruled by bureaucracy/Controlled by civil servants/And people dressed in gray"). And he may, depending on how you interpret Neil Young's "Union Man," be the only rocker ever to devote a song to attacking unions. Davies doesn't dislike organized labor per se, but he had a bad experience with a printers' union in his teens, and in the mid-'60s his band was barred from touring America for several years because the musicians' union refused to issue the required work permits. He retaliated with 1970's "Get Back in Line": "But that union man's got such a hold on me/He's the man who decides if I live or I die, if I starve or I eat/Then he walks up to me and the sun begins to shine/And he walks right back and I know that I've got to get back in the line."

There are several books about the Kinks already, but these are mostly written by rock journalists. Kitts, by contrast, is a professor of literature at St. John's University in New York. He gives Davies's lyrics serious scrutiny without neglecting to consider the ways they are amplified, undercut, or elaborated by the music. He also looks beyond Davies's recorded output to consider the singer's experiments in film, fiction, and theater. I have my occasional disagreements with his conclusions, but that is inevitable. The depth and breadth of the study are worlds away from the typical pop-star biography and more in line with the other academic work Routledge publishes.

That said, one strength of Davies' best work is that it is pop, even when it's resolutely ignoring the rest of the pop universe. "The Village Green Preservation Society" may be the most un-1968 song of 1968. It is also one of the most infectious recordings of the last 40 years. Davies could have been a full-time filmmaker, poet, or novelist; we should be grateful that he chose to do most of his work within the confines of the three-minute pop song instead.

Hey Elc, 15 points if you can give me a cliff's notes explanation of why/how the kinks were banned from the US back in the day.

it's always been a bit of a mystery, seems to be some combination of a dispute with the union, refusal to join/ rowdy behavior onstage/ unreliability (bands like the stones and the who may have been as rowdy, but they showed up and did proper gigs when they were supposed to).

I think that between the fact that they didn't win many friends while here and the fact that Ray was so fragile at the time, along with poor management, they didn't have the ability to fight when they got involved in controversies and while other artists likely would have quickly and successfully gotten themselves back in the good graces, the kinks just seemed to take their lumps and stay overseas for about 4 years while the U.S. market went a totally different direction.

got it. thank you sir.

i always wonder how much of their perpetual underratedness (that a word?) can be blamed on the ban.

That's kind of pathetic that all Def Leppard can do these days is an album of cover songs. That is a sure sign of a career that is gasping for air. (Actually, I did not even realize they were still together and breathing at all.)

QUOTE

America, the land of the free, the home of the brave
That's what I thought before I toured there
You see, I've got myself being seduced by the sheer Americana of it all
And I'd seen their images on television
Of Lee Harvey Oswald, John F. Kennedy's assassination
And I thought "America is a violent place"
And America is keen to trap you
Like you had giant tentacles that wrapped themselves around you
Until you couldn't move and you were trapped
The land of the free, the home of the brave, guns and the Wild West

Hey big fat cowboy, wearing your big Stetson
Hey big fat cowboy, flashing your big six gun
Hey big fat cowboy, singing country & western
Hey big fat cowboy, is this the way that the West was won? Yeah

I found myself in the back of a big Ford Thunderbird
With a slick-looking dude
He looked like a punk from a B-movie,
The sort of punk that would piss everybody off
Until Lee Marvin put a bullet through his brain
The punk looked over at me
"Kinks? What kind of a motherfuckin' name is that?"
Then he reached over and picked up the car telephone
"Hey kid, I've got Elvis Presley's phone number.
I've got Ann-Margret's phone number. I've fucked Ann-Margret!"
I knew Mick Avory would be impressed with this, but I was not
And then the punk looked over at me
"I'll dial Elvis Presley" He dialed a number
"Hey, is that you Elvis? I wanna speak to the Colonel.
Jump to it, you mother!"
And then he looked over at me in a menacing way,
Reached into the glove-compartment and took out a revolver
He waved the six gun around, menacingly
"You see kid, when I deal with people, they have to treat me right,
Otherwise they contend with this! A gun!
Have you ever seen a gun before?"
I hadn't
Then he waved it around, put it back in the glove-compartment
"Welcome to Peoria, Illinois, home of Middle America,
Ice-cream and apple pie, guns and the Wild West"

All American wise guy, why achieve that gleam in the sun
Hamburger and a milkshake, all American dude
Popcorn and a t-bone, hot dog with a big smile
And a bad attitude, yeah yeah yeah

Flying across America on a TWA, flying to California
To appear on television, performing our new record Set me free
The Kinks were met by a union man with a contract to sign
And The Kinks didn't like signing contracts
"Hey, are you The Kinks? Sign this piece of paper guys!
I want you to sign this union-document so you can appear on television"
"No thanks mate, we don't wanna sign a contract"
"You have to sign, otherwise you cannot appear"
"We don't want to sign a piece of paper, alright!"
"Listen kid, you sign the piece of paper.
You with your red hunting jackets and your yellow frilly shirts.
Sign the piece of paper!"
"Do you wanna sign it?" He looked over at Dave
"Watcha gonna do kid?" "Fuck off!"
Which is a fairly reasonable thing to say in the circumstances,
But not very wise, you see, the man was a union executive
"Alright. Once I file my report on you guys
You're never gonna work in America again.
You're gonna find out just how powerful it is in America!"
The land of ice-cream and apple pie, guns and the Wild West

Great American union rules with the fist, a smile and a gun
Great American napalm lights up the sky like the sun
Great American eagle swoops down from the sky up above

And I remember the images of Lee Harvey Oswald
Appearing on TV saying he was a patsy
A union man is a-framin' The Kinks
While I thought "This is the land of opportunity"
But the Cosa Nostra are everywhere
Land of ice-cream and apple pie

Hey big fat cowboy, wearing that big six gun
Hey big fat cowboy, singing country & western
Hey big fat cowboy, moving that big six gun
Hey big fat cowboy, is this the way that the West was won?
Yeah yeah yeah

And 6 weeks later Robert and Grenville and Larry
Were sitting in their office in Carnaby Street
And the letter came from the American government
It was from the American Federation of Musicians Union
"A band known as The Kinks,
The English beat group known as The Kinks,
Are banned from America.
Their license to perform has been revoked indefinitely"
Yeah, all the same fuck off
In the land of the ice-cream and apple pie, guns and the Wild West

Has anybody picked up Ray's new album yet, by the way?

Good lord is Jack Johnson a douchebag.




k

Edit: read the article talked about above: it's good.

Don't want to highjack the thread but don't see how you come to that conclusion. The guy makes the same music he always has and his huge popularity now is as stunning to him as anyone. Guy loves to surf and enjoy nature. Makes people happy with his simple, positive songs. Way off base here.

rob, have you ever read kessler's posts before? you must not know him too well. I have no opinion of Jack Johnson myself, but I would certainly respect the Rob Gordon opinion. That said, I would prefer more Kinks discussion here.

Ray was a guest dj on npr yesterday - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.p...toryId=89149374

Guest DJ Ray Davies
Listen Now

[39 min 50 sec] add to playlist


All Songs Considered, March 27, 2008 - Ray Davies, former frontman for The Kinks, shares some of the songs that have inspired him over the years with All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen. Hear music from Ray Charles, Dizzy Gillespie, Chuck Berry and more, as well as selections from Ray Davies' latest solo album, Working Man's Cafe.


Guest DJ Ray Davies
Jesse Fuller
Album: San Francisco Bay Blues
Song: San Francisco Bay Blues
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CD:
San Francisco Bay Blues
Artist : Jesse Fuller
Label: Ace
Released: 1963

Ray Charles
Album: The Very Best of Ray Charles [Rhino]
Song: What'd I Say, Pts. 1 & 2
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CD:
The Very Best of Ray Charles [Rhino]
Artist : Ray Charles
Label: Rhino
Released: 2008

Dizzy Gillespie
Album: Champ [Bonus Tracks]
Song: The Champ
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CD:
Champ [Bonus Tracks]
Artist : Dizzy Gillespie
Label: Savoy Jazz
Released: 1951

Ray Davies
Album: Working Man's Cafe
Song: Working Man's Cafe
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CD:
Working Man's Cafe
Artist : Ray Davies
Label: New West
Released: 2007

Bill Doggett
Album: All His Hits
Song: Honky Tonk
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CD:
All His Hits
Artist : Bill Doggett
Label: King
Released: 1995

The Kinks
Album: Everybody's in Show-Biz [Original Master Recording]
Song: Celluloid Heroes
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CD:
Everybody's in Show-Biz [Original Master Recording]
Artist : The Kinks
Label: Mobile Fidelity Koch
Released: 2008

Ray Davies
Album: Working Man's Cafe
Song: Peace in Our Time
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CD:
Working Man's Cafe
Artist : Ray Davies
Label: New West
Released: 2007

Chuck Berry
Album: His Best, Vol. 1
Song: Sweet Little Sixteen
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CD:
His Best, Vol. 1
Artist : Chuck Berry
Label: Chess
Released: 2008

Are they supposed to play a lot of their own material or is Ray a bit of an egomaniac?

Either's fine by me. Just glad that he picked my favorite Kinks song.