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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The 'Lost ' Years rediscovered!, 19 Jun 2007
When I started collecting music in earnest the Kinks RCA years were a bit of a mystery to me as the albums were unavailable for many years. I'd remembered and liked the odd 70's single such as Supersonic Rocket Ship, Sitting In The Midday Sun, Mirror Of Love and Holiday Romance. Although only the first of these was a hit and then only a minor one. I can also vaguely remember music paper reviewers slaughtering the concept album years. I then managed to pick up in the days of vinyl the Celluloid Heroes compilation which became one of my most played albums. It was therefore frustrating that I couldn't get any more Kinks 70's material. So when Velvel first released these albums in the late 90's I was, probably because of the years of waiting, more anxious to get my hands on them than any other music release ever. The Kinks were great in the 60's so surely they couldn't have declined that much in the 70's?
Now they are all available in one (2 if you count the Arista years) handy package. The albums all come with the excellent original Velvel sleeve notes and bonus tracks, something the complete Pye box set of their 60's albums apparently does not; so if you want the extensive, and indeed essential, bonus tracks and excellent liner notes for those albums then you're better sticking with the individual albums.
The Village Green Preservation album from the Pye era is always said to be the Kinks greatest (and indeed only) classic album. I think that there are at least three other Kinks albums as good if not better than Village Green. Two are earlier ones from the Pye era: Face To Face and Something Else, but the third is the first album here, Muswell Hillbillies. The more I listen to this the more I think it's a truly great album with hardly a duff track on it. It does have a jazzy feel on tracks like Alcohol, Holiday and Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues (great title!). This is maybe because of the horn section which was later derided, but works well here. There is also a country and western feel on songs like Uncle Son and the excellent title track. It opens with one of the Kinks greatest rockers in 20th Century Man, there's marvellous be bop in Skin and Bone, whilst Holloway Jail is another great song. Why this album didn't sell when it was originally released heaven knows.
The rest of the box set is not as strong. The next release Everybody's In Showbiz is part live, containing live versions of five songs from the previous album, but they are sufficiently different versions to make them worth hearing and all are great songs anyway. Of the new songs on Showbiz Celluloid Heroes is of course one of Ray Davies greatest ever songs and there's also the excellent aformentioned Supersonic Rocket Ship and Sitting In My Hotel, another classic.
We then get into concept territory with a vengeance with Preservation Acts 1 & 2, and from here on in all the Kinks albums for the rest of their career would be a mixture of great and awful songs. The great songs are still so great though that they make every album worth hearing. Preservation Act 1 has a brilliant single in Sitting In the Midday Sun, which was a Sunny Afternoon for the seventies, despite this, it was like all Kink's singles for the rest of the 70's, a huge flop. Preservation Act 2, originally a double album, is perhaps one of the ropiest albums in the bands entire catalogue, with its awful announcements to move the plot along. Despite this there are still perhaps half a dozen excellent tunes hidden away amongst the dreck, including the jazzy single Mirror Of Love, Oh Where Is The Love, Nothing Lasts Forever, Scrapheap City and Slum Kids. The final two RCA albums are also split about 50-50 between the great and the awful. From A Soap Opera Ordinary People, Underneath The Neon Sign, Holiday Romance, You Make It All Worthwhile and the idiosyncratic Ducks On The Wall are all good songs; the rest is fairly forgettable. Similarly Schooldays, Jack The Idiot Dunce, The First Time We Fall In Love, Headmaster, The Last Assembly and No More Looking Back are the strong tunes on Schoolboys in Disgrace.
Even though there is a lot of rubbish in this box set it is ultimately outweighed by the good stuff. I think what sets Ray Davies apart as perhaps Britain's greatest pop song writer/perfomer is his willingness to embrace a wider variety of styles than virtually anyone else, including even Lennon and McCartney! It doesn't always work but when it does it's great!
These albums are now in SACD format which doesn't mean anything to me, but they do sound pretty good. One of the problems with Kinks music especially around the end of the 60's/start of the 70's is that it didn't sound particularly clear, especially compared to the brilliantly produced Beatles' records. Whether this was because Ray deliberately mixed down his voice so the rude word on Apeman couldn't be properly deciphered I don't know!
But all in all this is a great welcome back for some long lost pop classics!
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