The Kinks
 

If anyone has got any opinions about them, I would be thankful if he/she shared them.

I have always thought that while The Kinks are very well appreciated by other musicians, they have never quite get that attention they would deserve

They were highly influential, if you think about it. On the other hand, their early hits like 'You Got Me' pioneered both hard rock and punk. Really, even nowadays 'You Really Got Me' kicks ass.
And think about that riff. I wonder how many time it has been used after that. Also I believe that without that song we wouldn't have the Ramones not to mention many other punk bands... Or maybe not. Somebody had to invent something like that back then.

Anyway, their place in the rock n roll history would have been deserved even if 'You Really Got Me' was their only recording but fortunately it was not.
I deeply believe that Ray Davies invented the whole Britpop genre by himself. Taking influences from British music hall and mixing then with rock was something he did first. And how influential The Kinks really were?
Bands like Blur and Jam are, in some degree, completely Kinks rip-offs. Also I believe many indie pop bands are influenced by them.

Albums from Face To Face to Arthur were pretty revolutionary back then. Music was good but also Ray's lyrics were always very great. Just like little novels, always funny, critical, yet not very poetic and let's face it: very naive.

But we can't rate music if we talk about it's influence. Being that does not exactly mean being good.
Anyway, since this text sucks and is probably very boring, I hope we'll get some kind of discussion about them.

Oh, also one thing. Ray also wrote the greatest song ever about transvestite and how cool is that? I wonder if anyone really knew what those lyrics meant. I mean, I think those lyrics are sympathizing, not accusing or anything, so while Ray seems to be old fashioned, he really is one of the most liberal musicians in his generation.

Im a huge fan of Arthur and Something Else. For some reason their other albums that ive heard, while good enough, havent really hit me as hard as those two.

Probably my fav song by them:



or Harry Rag. Thats also a gooder

For a beginner I would recommend maybe Face To Face since it also have more rocking songs on it or Arthur. Maybe Arthur would be a good starting point. At least I started with it.
If you are not familiar with them, do not choose Something Else or Muswell Hillbillies for your first listen. Both are great albums but Hillbillies is very untypical Kinks album and while something else is very good album, for a beginner it would be maybe a little bit hard album to get in to cos it's occasionally boring and very calm and quiet.

If you want to know more about them or know what you should listen from them, this page is a good place to start:

The Kinks

Interesting. I love Arthur, Face To Face and Village Green, but I have never really loved Something Else. It's just too slow, too boring and that production is not that good, in my opinion.

My fav from them is maybe 'Some Mother's Son or Dandy (it's so funny).

And of course Waterloo Sunset. It must be one of the most beautifuls ballads ever recorder

Also it's interesting how the story goes. I mean, it song sounds so dreamy and relaxed but when you listen to those lyrics, you see that it's actually very sad song. The protagonist has no his own life so he have to spend his life to watching other ones life.

Probably my favourite The Kinks song:



Are they really not that appreciated? I thought they were and have seen a number of documentaries devoted to them.

Well, I know that. They are very appreciated and all, but it depends where you are living. I guess they are very popular in Britain, but are they very popular, for example, in U.S.A?

And here in Finland they are very unknown. Usually everybody knows that name but when they should name a song by them, they usually don't know any song.

Ahh, I see. I don't know how popular they are elsewhere but, as you say, they're very well known and much loved here in Britain and deservedly so. Great songs and a great sound.

Also I can see why they are so loved in Britain- after all, they were one of the most English bands ever, if you see what I mean.

Also back in sixties one of the biggest reasons they never made it in America was that they were banned from touring in the U.S.
And yes, Kinks probably were too British for American people...

You can't say that. The Yanks here will have their knives out for you. ;)

Something Else got my vote for nostalgic purposes if nothing else. Love me some Davies.

I guess they have already done that anyway.

Love the Kinks. Here's one of my favorites:

Could you please tell me what song it is cos that video does not work on my phone and I have absolutely no idea what those videos may include so I can not talk or comment about your favorite songs at all.

Song is Sunny Afternoon.

Oh thank you :)

Sunny Afternoon is a great one. It has classic melody and that bass line is amazing. Also it's wonderful how funny those lyrics are.
Actually Sunny,Afternoon is that song that got me into the Kinks at all. Don't ask me why but somehow it once got played in Ice Hockey match (it keeps on confusing me, it's not actually this kind of song that is usually played in,sport events) was watching and when I got home I wanted to know what song it was and rest is history. That happened even before I was really even interested in music

Yeah, funny tune to play at an ice hockey game. Too cheery a song for that competitive atmosphere.

Yep. Usually they played something arena rock or stupendous generic hard rock and all that stuff.
I don't know what they play nowadays since I'm not interested in ice hockey any more,but I guess they are playing basically same songs over and over again,

If You liked it, you should also try Something Else. Arthur and Face To Face are more rocking albums, so they are a little bit different

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..............

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". ;)

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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. :(

Am I the only one who considers Something Else as a bit of letdown after Face To Face? I mean, it's good, but even Lola is nearly as good as an album. Something Else has some classics, for sure, like Harry Rag or Waterloo Sunset, but No Return/Funny Face/Two Sisters are a bit too weak. Too fillerish. And melodically poor.

The Kinks were a great band without a doubt, one of my favourite, very talented.
I really like Lola, Waterloo sunsets, Days, You really got me, Tired of waiting, but most of their songs are great, very varied musically.

Love the Kinks! Unfortunately, so does everyone else, so the record stores are always picked clean of their albums before I can find any...

I have been a huge Kinks fan since grade school (I'm 71) - and probably liked them more than The Beatles and Rolling Stones. Here lately I've been going back over all the albums in order, and creating a detailed survey - I'm in the process of reading several books on the Kinks and their music.

I am surprised how well the music has held up. I've always enjoyed Something Else the most (my vote) mainly because of the song "Waterloo Sunset", which I consider one of the greatest songs ever written. But Face to Face and Muswell Hillbillies were also early favorites.

With my current re-listening I have come to greater appreciation of Village Green Preservation Society, Everybody's in Showbiz also Arthur and Lola which were albums I owned but for some reason never listened to them closely.