HOT FIVE: The Kinks

05: The Kinks Kontroversy [1965]

Featuring..."Milk Cow Blues", "Gotta Get That First Plane Home", "Till The End Of The Day", "Where Have All The Good Times Gone?", "Dedicated Follower Of Fashion"

In their early years The Kinks were more of an American Roots Rock and R'n'B-fueled band than the versatile Britpop band into which they would soon evolve, and I felt it was only right to include one of their early albums that reflects this rawer style. In this respect, The Kinks Kontroversy is certainly the strongest longplayer of the kind, with the more primitive songs like "Milk Cow Blues" and "Til The End Of The Day" mixing smoothly with the more sophisticated songcraft that would become Ray Davies trademark on songs like "I'm On An Island" and "Dedicated Follower Of Fashion". In the end however, it's the heavier Rock and Blues stylings that rule this album, a solid and satisfying representation of the classic Kinks sound, before they became absolutely legendary...

04: Something Else By The Kinks [1967]

Featuring..."David Watts", "Death Of A Clown", "Harry Rag", "Love Me Till The Sun Shines", "Waterloo Sunset"

Something Else By The Kinks was the last Kinks album produced by Shel Talmy, which seems like a good enough reason to include it on this list, rather than the equally good album, Face To Face...

The album sits at an pivotal crossroads for the band...They had quit touring, if for no other reason than they had been denied permits to tour America by the American Federation Of Musicians because of constant onstage fighting between band members...Off the road, sitting in England, Ray Davies had begun formulating ideas for the story which would eventually become Village Green...Meanwhile, he got the band in the studio to keep their skills sharp, and give Davies himself a chance to learn some producing and engineering skills from Talmy.

The Kinks had been a pretty prolific singles band, as alot of popular groups were back then in the UK, and Davies had viewed the songs recorded during this period of '66/'67 to be nothing more than singles and B-Sides, but wouldn't you know it, Davies had already been turning his lyrical eye more and more towards English life in all it's various glories and failures, and when some of these songs were collected to form Something Else By The Kinks, dammit if they didn't end up with a loosely conceptual album with a really solid form and personality...

And musically, this was also the period when Davies songwriting skills really started to develop, when his palette really expanded far beyond simple, straight-ahead Rock and R'n'B...

And it all ends, with the lovely and hopeful "Waterloo Sunset", which many Kinks fans, especially among the British, consider Ray Davies single best composition. I'd say "Big Sky" maybe, but no, I won't argue.

03: Arthur (Or The Decline & Fall Of The British Empire) [1969]

Featuring..."Victoria", "Yes Sir, No Sir", "Brainwashed", "Australia", "Shangri-La", "Mr. Churchill Says", "Arthur"

Another reason why The Kinks are perhaps my favorite band is that when they entered their most creative period in the late 1960's, starting with The Village Green Preservation Society, Ray Davies had fully embraced the "concept album", which is a term I kinda hate because I believe any and all albums should have some sort of conceptual threads running through 'em, however subtle they may be...A bunch of songs collected together on a single piece of media just because they were recorded during the same studio sessions is NOT an album in my world...That's artistically lazy.

Arthur (Or The Decline & Fall Of The British Empire) was the second concept album The Kinks delivered, a suite of songs about the life of a poor carpet-layer (Arthur) in post-war England, and the lack of opportunities for the working class...Arthur fondly remembers a brighter England before the wars, and contemplates the promises offered in Australia, where plenty of British people were emigrating after the wars...Once upon a time the sun never set on the British empire, but that simply wasn't true anymore...

Musically, there are some great songs here, including the hard-rocking "Victoria" and "Brainwashed", which hearken back to the band's early years, when they invented Heavy Metal. But mostly the songs are undeniably melodic, stylistically varied, and impeccably performed...Not quite as brilliant as it's predecessor, Village Green, but still an ambitious and incredible album in every sense of those words...

02: Lola Versus Powerman & The Moneygoround, Part One [1970]

Featuring..."Lola", "Top Of The Pops", "This Time Tomorrow", "Rats", "Apeman", "Powerman"

Arthur might very well be a "better" album than this one, Lola Versus Powerman & The Moneygoround, but this one's got "Lola"...

Plus, this might just be the heaviest album in The Kinks' entire catalog..."Rats" and "Powerman" in particular, are live wires, thin and hot and dangerous...

And yes, this is another concept album, this time a poisonous and funny expose of the music industry, wherein Ray Davies leaves no stone unturned, attacking managers, agents, record label accountants, vacuous television and radio personalities, publishing houses, unions unions and more unions, groupies, sycophants, and life on the oftentimes boring road for the fragile egotistical rockstars...Contenders and pretenders...

Great fucking stuff, and another suite of sophisticated rock music...Some of my absolute favorite Kinks tunes are here - the aforementioned "Rats" and "Powerman", plus the sweeping "This Time Tomorrow", the catchy island rhythms and singalong chorus of "Apeman", and the Country Rock closer "Got To Be Free"...The Kinks might have invented Country Rock.

Plus, this one's got "Lola".

01: The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society [1968]

Featuring..."The Village Green Preservation Society", "Do You Remember Walter?", "Picture Book", "Johnny Thunder", "Last Of The Steam-Powered Trains", "Big Sky", "Animal Farm"

One of the five greatest rock albums ever made, wherein Ray Davies invents Britpop over the course of 15 brilliant songs that flow effortlessly from one to the next, slowly painting a vision of an older kind of British life that was being plowed over and under by the kids of that 60's generation, his own generation...A distinct loss of innocence, in the same way Vietnam and the explosion of psychedelics had fundamentally altered the American landscape...

Speaking of America, I always wonder how huge The Kinks might have gotten here in the States if they hadn't been denied those permits during the most artistically fertile 4 years of their career (1966-1970), of which this album is the stunning peak...It was still a pretty big world in 1968, and The Kinks might have been larger than life in the UK, but here they just couldn't find the big time...No stateside touring, no American TV appearances...No chance to show this great big land of ours just how fucking great they had become...It was nearly impossible to stake their claim to the British Invasion throne from the other side of the Atlantic...

But this is about The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, and what an essential album it is for any respectable record collection, nevermind how damned good it is - how irresistible each and every song is, how rich and colorful Ray Davies' lyrics are, how versatile and tight the band had become in a few short years...This is one of those albums that hooks you upon first listen, and before long, you find yourself humming melodies from this album in the bathroom at work, cuz a song like "Animal Farm" deserves that kind of acoustics...

A MUST!

Hotcha! Hank