Rocks In The Attic #1169: The Kinks – ‘Face To Face’ (1966)

Four studio albums in and finally the Kinks get to a full album’s worth of Ray Davies compositions. After the patch of uneven albums leading up to this point – 1964’s KINKS, and 1965’s KINDA KINKS and THE KINK KONTROVERSY – there’s an air of consistency here that starts to give the band their own unique sound – social observation and commentary – that sets them apart from their beat music contemporaries. 

Buoyed by their third UK #1 single, Sunny Afternoon, the album has an autobiographical air that is missing from its predecessors – perhaps influenced by Ray Davies’ recent nervous breakdown. Sunny Afternoon itself is a forerunner to the Beatles’ Taxman, coming a couple of months before the release of REVOLVER. 

I don’t buy the suggestion that FACE TO FACE is an early example of a concept album though; that seems hard to swallow especially as you could say similar things about pop albums filled with love songs. Save it for THE VILLAGE GREEN PRESERVATION SOCIETY. 

Hit: Sunny Afternoon

Hidden Gem: Party Line

Rocks In The Attic #1033: The Kinks – ‘The Kink Kontroversy’ (1965)

1965 and three albums in, THE KINK KONTROVERSY comes one step closer to being a fully self-written release. Whereas 1964’s KINKS was full of covers, and 1964’s KINDA KINKS only had two, THE KINK KONTROVERSY finds the band playing all Ray Davies compositions aside from a cover of Milk Cow Blues, in which they’re credited with the arrangement (seemingly the same arrangement played by Aerosmith on their cover that closes DRAW THE LINE), and a song penned by brother Dave.

The following year’s FACE TO FACE would find the band gelling with a tracklist composed entirely by Ray Davies, but you can hear the band getting into that stride here. Both feet are still firmly in R&B, but you can almost hear them coming to the end of their possibilities in that genre. FACE TO FACE would give the world Sunny Afternoon, signalling a unique songwriting voice in English pop music, but there’s nothing quite as outlandish here. Just clues to their future greatness, like on The World Keeps Going Round, which finds Davies starting to question what’s going on around him.

The album still cooks though. Advance single Till The End Of The Day finds them revisiting the glory of early hits You Really Got Me and All Day And All Of The Night, and the album’s other key song Where Have All The Good Times Gone – later to be covered by Van Halen and David Bowie – had already appeared as the B-side to Till The End Of The Day.

A huge single, a World Cup win and the Carnaby Street fashions of Swinging London were just around the corner…

Hit: Till The End Of The Day

Hidden Gem: Milk Cow Blues

Rocks In The Attic #651: David Bowie – ‘1966’ (2016)

It’s interesting that Bowie emerged from such run-of-the-mill ‘60s beat-pop into something so relevant and unique. For me, aside from standout singles Space Oddity and The Man Who Sold The World, he doesn’t really become interesting until Hunky Dory – and then all of a sudden he’s very interesting.

This LP – a collection of his 1966 singles recorded for the Pye label – could have been recorded by any number of London-based mod singers from the mid-‘60s. It’s not a million miles from the likes of the Kinks, except that it’s a million miles from them at the same time. You can hear that it’s Bowie – that strange, almost pained delivery of vocals is hard to miss – but the material is second-rate. Where Ray Davies made ordinary sound interesting, here Bowie makes ordinary sound, well, ordinary.

Still, it’s a nice little time-capsule of where he started, and at least it’s not as bad as The Laughing Gnome.

Hit: I’m Not Losing Sleep

Hidden Gem: Do Anything You Say

Rocks In The Attic #561: The Kinks – ‘Kinda Kinks’ (1965)

If there’s one ‘60s group whose album output doesn’t quite match up to their singles output, it’s probably the Kinks. The A-sides that Ray Davies wrote during that decade are up there with the best anybody else had to offer. He’s the only songwriter that comes anywhere close to the strength of Lennon and McCartney’s singles, yet the first batch of Kinks albums in the mid-‘60s don’t really deliver on that promise.

Their debut record is built around You Really Got Me, this follow-up is buoyed by Tired Of Waiting For You, the third album has ‘Til The End Of The Day and Where Have All The Good Times Gone, and album number four has Sunny Afternoon on it. Most of – but definitely not all of – the rest of these records have a load of generic R&B-inflected filler material making up the numbers. It actually makes sense in this case to own at least one good Kinks compilation. There’s nothing patchy about a collection of their singles.

My favourite track on Kinda Kinks is Nothin’ In The World Can Stop Me Worryin’ ‘Bout That Girl, notable for its appearance in Kinks-fan Wes Anderson’s Rushmore soundtrack. This really is a beautiful, tender song and hints at the more mature songwriting we would hear from Ray Davies much further towards the end of the decade. So Long is another song in this folk vein, where you can hear more of what the Kinks became, rather than the American R&B they’re aping on the rest of the record.

Hit: Tired Of Waiting For You

Hidden Gem: Nothin’ In The World Can Stop Me Worryin’ ‘Bout That Girl

Rocks In The Attic #467: The Kinks – ‘Kinks’ (1964)

A couple of months ago, I got so sick of having no Kinks records in my collection I resolved to do something about it. But there was a problem – after nearly twenty years of collecting, I had never seen any Kinks records in the wild. They do exist, don’t they? I haven’t just made them up in my head?

So, what do you do when you can‘t find an animal in the wild? You employ the services of a poacher. Onto Discogs I went, and I found some very nice recent reissues of the first three albums – Kinks (1964), Kinda Kinks (1965) and The Kink Kontroversy (1965) – all on lovely red vinyl. I paid my money and very soon, just like the dentist-cum-hunter who shot and killed Cecil the lion, I had my prize. By the way, Cecil The Lion sounds so English, it could almost be the title of a Kinks song.

Of all the beat explosion bands that emerged in the wake of the Beatles, the Kinks might just be my favourite. Their run of ‘60s singles – from You Really Got Me in 1964, though to Lola in 1970 – is bloody strong, and of such a high quality they really should be seen as equals to the Beatles, the Stones and the Who. They’re quite often not though. They tend to be considered as poor cousins, one rung down on the ladder with the likes of the Hollies, Manfred Mann and the Animals.

In Ray Davies, the Kinks had something that those premier bands could only dream of – a one-man Lennon & McCartney and  a remarkably consistent songwriting machine. Only Pete Townshend comes close in being the singular visionary for one of those top ‘60s band – and as far as I’m concerned, the strength of Davies’ songwriting blows him out of the water.

As a debut album, this record is very similar in tone and content to its contemporaries, being comprised mainly of R&B and rock n’ roll covers, together with a previous few examples of original material. The two standout songs on the album – You Really Got Me and Stop Your Sobbing – are exactly that though – standout songs. They’re absolutely fantastic. Stop Your Sobbing might be more famous for its cover by the Pretenders (it was never released as a single by the Kinks), but it’s still a great song.

The record is also notable for the non-Kink personnel who played on the sessions – namely Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin on guitar, and Jon Lord from Deep Purple on piano. Crikey!

Hit: You Really Got Me

Hidden Gem: Beautiful Delilah

Rocks In The Attic #128: The Kinks – ‘Golden Hour Of The Kinks’ (1971)

Another compilation that exists solely in my record collection because it was handy to have in my record bag when DJing.

You have to love The Kinks though – they’re unfairly put to the side when ‘60s beat groups are mentioned. Usually, there’s The Beatles and The Stones, and nothing else. For me, The Kinks fit nicely in the middle between those two bands – they match the songwriting peaks of The Beatles (not as consistently as Lennon & McCartney, but certain songs are the arguably the equal of The Beatles’ singles), but they retain the rough edge (and murky production values) of The Stones.

This particular compilation is pretty poor, however. Their cover of Louie Louie is listed on the sleeve as ‘Lovie Lovie’, which makes you wonder what sort of moron put the sleeve together, when they can misspell one of rock and roll’s universal staples. Secondly, Lola is missing from the collection – even though this was put together a year after that single’s release. It is a budget release though, so Pye Records presumably only allowed the release of their older ‘60s output.

I think more than any other ‘60s band – The Beatles and The Stones included – the template for riff-driven guitar-based rock can be traced back to The Kinks. Dave Davies is a fantastic guitarist in this respect – coming up with short guitar hooks for his brother to write songs around.

During the formation of Led Zeppelin in 1968, Jimmy Page was undecided whether he should form a full-on heavy rock band, or a lighter folk rock band akin to Pentangle. Page played as a session musician on The Kinks’ debut album, and I don’t see it as a coincidence that he then went on to be the flag-bearer throughout the ‘70s for Dave Davies’ brand of riff-based heavy rock.

Hit: You Really Got Me

Hidden Gem: Victoria