Kinks Weeks – Autumn Almanac … number1sblog.com

I’ve been visiting Stewart at Number1sblog for a few years. His blog never lets me down. Learning about #1 songs in the UK and how different the American charts can be from them. He is currently in the year 1998 but travel back to see the previous years also. He always gives you a quality take on every #1 song. 

The Kinks, ‘Autumn Almanac’

Thanks, Max, for giving us the space to write about our favourite songs from Britain’s third-best band of the 1960s. And yes, the Kinks were the sixties ‘third’ British band. Forget the Who, or the Hollies. Don’t dare mention Manfred Mann or Herman’s Hermits! In bronze position, behind the Beatles and the Stones, stand Muswell Hill’s finest.

The Kinks scored twelve top ten hits, and three number ones, between 1964 and 1967, with their last big chart hit of the sixties being ‘Autumn Almanac’. And if you needed an example of why many non-Brits might not choose the Kinks as the ‘60s third-best band, then this is the perfect record.

Not many pop songs talk of sweeping leaves, of crawly caterpillars, buttered currant buns, or of rheumatic backs. Nothing very rock ‘n’ roll there. Nor is there in the middle-eight: I like my football on a Saturday, Roast beef on Sundays, All right… It’s quintessential Kinks: tongue-in-cheek vignettes of British life. Not as famous as Terry and Judy from ‘Waterloo Sunset’, the unnamed aristocrat in ‘Sunny Afternoon’, or the legendary ‘Lola’, but every bit as vital. No wonder Blur’s Damon Albarn named ‘Autumn Almanac’ as his favourite Kinks’ record, given that he spent much of the nineties trying to recreate it…

But before it all gets too cozy and twee, Ray Davies turns his attention to British ideas of respectability, and the class system. This is my street, And I’m never gonna leave it… If I live to be ninety-nine… The singer is trapped in his lower-middle class environment. Everyone he meets, seems to come from his street, and he can’t get away… No social climbing allowed.

For this to be the Kinks final Top 10 record of the decade is fitting. It’s the culmination of their move away from the garage rock of ‘You Really Got Me’, through to more traditional, folksy pop. ‘Autumn Almanac’ is at one moment crunchy guitars, the next a trombone-led, music hall singalong.

But while it’s easy to claim that the Kinks were too ‘British’ for American audiences, leading to less chart success as the sixties went on; that’s not quite the full picture. The fact that they had been banned from touring the States since 1965 thanks to their habit of attacking one another on stage was probably a much more pressing reason.

Still, maybe it was a blessing in disguise, for the touring ban coincided with a change in their sound. Their hard-rocking early hits are great, but for me the classic Kinks period starts with the hilariously catty ‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion’, through ‘Dead End Street’, and the timeless ‘Waterloo Sunset’, to this. My answer might change depending on which time of year it is, but ‘Autumn Almanac’ will always be close to the top of my ‘Best Kinks Songs’ list.

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

47 thoughts on “Kinks Weeks – Autumn Almanac … number1sblog.com”

    1. I saw them in the early 80s…they were great and probably the only one of the huge classic bands I saw in their late 30s…unlike The Who, Stones, and McCartney who were all much older.

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  6. Well said! I did not know this song but it’s great and, as you noted, very British. I love the mix of sweet nostalgia and sarcasm.

    As for “this is my street and I’m never going to leave it”, we met a new neighbor moving in Sunday. She asked how long we’d lived here. I told her 30 years. The other neighbor said 32. I pointed to the house next to hers and said, “he was born here” – around the end of WW II. (When we moved in, his mom told me she was still “the new kid on the block” to her friends.)

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  7. I’m so glad you chose this one, Stewart. It was on my shortlist to write about before ‘Apeman’ just edged it.

    And I’m pleased to see you mention Blur in your post. You see, I’ve been learning a lot about The Kinks this week. While I’ve always enjoyed what I heard, I never really made an effort to search out many of their songs. Then it dawned on me, just this weekend gone, that I feel very much the same with regard to Blur. (I was watching some retro music on TV and one of their songs struck me as being very Kinks-esque. Because I was an Oasis fan, I never bothered with Blur; the same goes for The Rolling Stones and The Kinks..

    I think the lyrical message and the bouncy, chirpy tunes place The Kinks and Blur in the same circle. I must do a bit more check and compare. 🙂

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    1. Yes, the Blur’s trilogy of albums from Modern Life is Rubbish to the Great Escape have some very Kinksy moments. ‘Sunday Sunday’ is probably the most like ‘Autumn Almanac’, but not to the same exalted standard (not a dig a Damon and Graham, just very few can get to the heart of it like Ray).

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  8. Great song that I first heard on the two record compilation The Kink Kronikles. I bought this after a couple of basic hits collections and before I had any studio albums. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to go beyond the well-known hits. I learned a lot about the Kinks just from reading the extensive liner notes.

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    1. I had that one! It was a black album cover if I remember right. I got it at a second hand shop in the early eighties…I also got The Who’s Hooligans that was a double album as well of the Who’s greatest hits.

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      1. I went through a couple of Hooligans cassettes because they were double-length, they were always warping or breaking quickly. Quadrophenia too.

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      3. That has been amazing…this has been more popular than the Beatles last year and other things I have ran…the numbers have gone up through out. Most people don’t know the songs…the UK people with the 70s and 80s and North Americans with 60s.

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      4. Yes, I was suprised by how many 70s and 80s hits were picked. I guess that nobody wants to pick too big a hit, but it really shows how they faded from view in the UK but kept ticking along elsewhere.

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  10. Stewart, I appreciate your insightful “insiders” view of The Kinks and of this song in particular. As I read your write-up, I couldn’t help but think of the first so many chapters of Bono’s book (that I’m reading very slowly, to savor.) He covers the details of his childhood, neighborhood, and that “never leaving” confining aspect of Dublin in them. I’m also with you in that The Kinks are in The Top 3. I’m guessing you like “Wonder Boy” as much as I do.

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    1. Thanks! I do love ‘Wonderboy’. In fact there are very few Kinks singles that I dislike. I’m not sure I’m much of an insider, as I was born twenty years after this came out, a world away from north London. Like all satire, its exaggerated, but it lays British class and society bare in just a few simple lines. Oh, and autumn is my favourite season, so the lines about dew and leaves are also perfect…

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  12. I’m old enough to remember that brief period when every new Kinks single was An Event, alongside all the new Beatles and Stones 45s. So many classics…it’s always a mystery why record buyers suddenly fell out of love with them straight after this record, and ‘Wonderboy’ (noted as being a song John Lennon particularly adored) only just touched the Top 40. At least the immaculate ‘Days’ gave them one of their temporary comebacks after that. Yes, ‘Autumn Almanac’ is one of those songs that just exudes the British way of life in almost every life. Looking five years after that, you know ‘Celluloid Heroes’? One of the most sublime way to spend six minutes of your life.

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    1. Any idea why their chart forturnes suddenly collapsed…? Especially so soon after an all time classic like ‘Waterloo Sunset’. It does seem very strange that for three years they struggled for sizeable hits, even though they released some of their best remembered tracks like ‘Wonderboy’ and ‘Days’.

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      1. A mystery. It didn’t happen to The Who, the one act who were probably level pegging with them in the second division just behind the Beatles and Stones. The next few singles were just as distinctive and inventive as the ones that came before. Indifferent promotion? Lack of airplay? (Although ‘Plastic Man’ in 1969 was suddenly removed from the playlist once they realised Ray Davies was singing about a ‘plastic bum’ which was a no-no on the airwaves in 1969, incredible as it may seem). Also I suspect that they and RCA Records may have been trying to push them more as an albums band when they joined the label in 1971, and only had one hit single after that (‘Supersonic Rocket Ship’, 1972, until the long gap when they were with Arista and ‘Come Dancing’ gave them a brief comeback in 1983). Each of the concept albums had at least one ace single on them, but I don’t remember hearing them much on the radio.

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  13. Ray mixes it up again with one of his “current bun” songs (What the hell does that mean?). He writes about his experiences, environment and whatever else is on his mind and it all works for me. Again the clip is very cool. They look like such a happy bunch. What’s with Quaifes bass Max?

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    1. You got me stumped on this one…I don’t know if his jacket is hanging over it since they are not playing live? The headstock looks like a Fender Precision Bass but the body…looks huge!

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    2. (A current bun is a sweet sticky bun with raisins in it. I don’t know if the US has something the same? They usually- at least here- don’t have a topping of icing/frosting, so they’re a kind of cheap treat.)

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  14. None but Ray could make a hit song with lyrics like those. Not to mention the music bouncing around from nostalgia to near satire. Close to genius. And the B side is ‘David Watts?’ That record is a double A side if I ever heard one.

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      1. Yeah, the Jam version is great. They put a snarl in the song. For what it’s worth another very nice restrained version is one by American Wrestlers off a Mojo magazine free CD. Mellower and more melodic, nicely different.

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  16. I love how this song ends and occasionally, when I’m listening to some old song, not necessarily one by the kinks, I’ll suddenly go into Ray Davies mode as the song fades out, and say, “Yes … Yes” For some reason it makes me laugh.

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  17. Pingback: Kinks Weeks – Autumn Almanac … number1sblog.com – MobsterTiger

  18. The first song I ever sang along to with a copy of the lyrics (printed in Weekend magazine I think) in late 1967. So it’s a nostalgic treat for me! Oddly this track really got forgotten about, rarely got oldies radio play and is mostly unknown these days. I’d rather hear it over the more-famous Days though, its contemporary smaller hit rival.

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    1. This song I found in the past few years…on the blogs. It’s funny that Americans are more fuzzy on their 60s hits but we seem to know their 70s on hits much more.

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