Kinks – Page 3 – PowerPop… An Eclectic Collection of Pop Culture

Kinks – Where Have All The Good Times Gone

I haven’t had a Kinks post in quite a while so I thought I would have one today. It’s always a good day to have a Kinks song. I’ve said this before but one of my favorite concerts was The Kinks in 1983 at the Grand Ole Opry House.

Ray Davies and nostalgia go together. He often writes about his past, the past, or preserving the past as in The Village Green Preservation Society. That is one of the many reasons I always liked his writing. I think of him…or should I say I think of Bruce Springsteen as the British Ray Davies. They write about the every day way of life in their respective countries.

The band was going through a rough time in 1965. Guitarist Dave Davies and drummer Mick Avory had an on-stage fight which resulted in Avory nearly decapitating Davies with a cymbal, Dave was left unconscious in a pool of blood. Avory ran away, terrified that he had killed him.

This was thought to have led to them getting banned from touring America. The other theory was The American Federation of Musicians delisted the Kinks not because of any rowdy behavior… It was simply because the band wanted to use non-union help during a concert tour. I tend to believe the latter.

This song was the B side to Till The End of the Day. The single peaked at #8 in the UK, #36 in Canada, and #50 on the Billboard 100 in 1965. The song was also released in 1973 with the flip side of Lola. The single didn’t chart. It was originally on the album The Kink Kontroversy.

Van Halen covered this song on their 1982 album Diver Down. David Bowie also covered it on his album Pin Ups.

Ray Davies: “We’d been rehearsing ‘Where Have All the Good Times Gone’ and our tour manager at the time, who was a lot older than us, said, ‘That’s a song a 40-year-old would write. I don’t know where you get that from.’ But I was taking inspiration from older people around me. I’d been watching them in the pubs, talking about taxes and job opportunities.”

Ray Davies: “I wanted to write a song my dad or relatives could sing, they always talked about how great it was before or during the war – I think every generation thinks that way.” “It’s got that hard edge The Kinks had, but at the same time, it’s got a reflective, poignant lyric.”

Where Have All The Good Times Gone

Well, lived my life and never stopped to worry ’bout a thing
Opened up and shouted out and never tried to sing
Wondering if I’d done wrong
Will this depression last for long?

Won’t you tell me
Where have all the good times gone?
Where have all the good times gone?
Well, once we had an easy ride and always felt the same

Time was on our side and I had everything to gain
Let it be like yesterday
Please let me have happy days
Won’t you tell me

Where have all the good times gone?
Where have all the good times gone?
Ma and Pa look back at all the things they used to do
Didn’t have no money and they always told the truth

Daddy didn’t have no toys
And mummy didn’t need no boys
Won’t you tell me
Where have all the good times gone?

Where have all the good times gone?
Well, yesterday was such an easy game for you to play
But let’s face it things are so much easier today
Guess you need some bringing down

And get your feet back on the ground
Won’t you tell me
Where have all the good times gone?
Where have all the good times gone?
Where have all the good times gone?

…

Jayhawks – Save It For A Rainy Day

This band is another “Big Star” but just in a later decade. I wrote this on my last Jayhawks post. I love this band…it seems I have a fondness for bands that released good to great music but never could get over that hump to mass audiences. Maybe if they would have cleared that obstacle their music would have changed…but who knows… maybe it’s a part of their appeal. Who knows what would have happened if they would have made it..but I wish they would have had the chance.

The Jayhawks are an American alternative country and country rock band that emerged from the Minneapolis–Saint Paul music scene in the mid 80s. Minneapolis had a strong scene for bands in the 80s. The Replacements, Husker Du, Soul Asylum, and of course the big one…Prince. They have a little of The Flying Burrito Brothers and Big Star in them.

I first found out about this group in 2000 with the song I’m Gonna Make You Love Me. On our local alt channel it was played over and over but wasn’t a hit on the Billboard 100 charts. When I heard it I knew I had to find out more about this band. The Jayhawks formed in Minneapolis–Saint Paul in 1985 and played alternative country-rock. They have released 10 studio albums and are worth checking out.

As if I needed another reason to like them. They have a Kinks tie… They recently backed Ray Davies on his albums Americana and Our Country – Americana Act II. Their 2016 album Paging Mr. Proust was produced by Peter Buck of REM.

Save It For A Rainy Day peaked at #10 on the Alternative Charts in 2003. The song was on the album Rainy Day Music that peaked at #51 on the Billboard Album Charts and #70 in the UK.

Save It For A Rainy Day

Pretty little hairdo
Don’t do what it used to
Can’t disguise the livin’
All the miles that you’ve been through

Lookin’ like a train wreck
Wearin’ too much makeup
Burden that you carry
More than one soul could ever bear

(So sad) Don’t look so sad, Marina
(There’s another part) There’s another part to play
(So sad) Don’t look so sad, Marina
(Ooh) Save it for a rainy day
Save it for a rainy day
Save it for a rainy day

You never make your mind up
Like drivin’ with your eyes shut
Rough around the edges
Won’t someone come and take you home

Waitin’ for a breakthrough
What will you set your mind to?
We stood outside the Chinese restaurant
In the rain

Max Picks …songs from 1982

1982

Kinks – Come Dancing – I saw the Kinks on this tour. It remains one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to…if not the best. They were in their early forties at this point and all over the stage. This song got heavy play on MTV at a time when I watched it. The Kinks are one of the four walls that make up modern rock including The Beatles, Who, and Stones.

Dexys Midnight Runners – Come On Eileen – It was very different than what was on the radio at the time. It was a refreshing song to hear in the early eighties.

I really thought this band would score another hit but they ended up a one-hit wonder in America…one thing that didn’t help was when they were opening up for David Bowie in France, Kevin Rowland called Bowie a bad copy of Bryan Ferry and later he told the British press: “We only agreed to the show because France is an important market for us – not because I have any respect for Bowie”… Not a smart thing to do.

Billy Joel – Allentown – A great single by Billy Joel with a song off of the Nylon Curtain album.

Allentown is a town in Northeast Pennsylvania about 45 minutes away from the Pocono mountains. An industrial town, many of the once-thriving factories and mills had fallen on hard times when Joel wrote the song, and unemployment in the area was at an all-time high of 12%.

Also mentioned in the song is nearby Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, whose main employer, Bethlehem Steel, had been closing operations. Joel sings about the unemployed workers in the line, “Out in Bethlehem they’re killing time, filling out forms, standing in line.”

Judas Priest – Living After Midnight -I liked this one the first time I heard it. I never really cared what a band was…as long as they sounded good…and this does.

John Lennon has a distant connection to this song. Judas Priest was renting Tittenhurst Park (John Lennon’s former home) in 1980 to record their album British Steel. As they were watching television…guitarist Glenn Tipton said they saw John Lennon’s Imagine video and were in the very same room where it was filmed… he said they could imagine the piano and the white walls…and how surreal it was…

Rob Halford actually got the inspiration for the lyrics for Living After Midnight as his bandmates kept him awake by blasting out riffs and drum beats in the studio below.

He came downstairs to complain and said, Hey, guys, come on. It’s gone midnight…and they wrote the song.

Madness – Our House – At the start of MTV the small town I lived in had yet to get cable…but it wouldn’t take too long. At that time I had to travel to relatives in Nashville before I got a chance to see it. I would spend the weekend and we would watch MTV for hours at a time. Binge-watching before binge-watching was a saying. We would wake up bleary-eyed the next day and turn on more MTV.

I did find some music I never heard before. This band and song caught my attention. The song was on the The Rise & Fall album. They were different…they have been described as a British ska and pop band.

This was Madness only top-10 hit in the US. Much of the song’s success in America was helped out by the clever music video that was in heavy rotation in the early days of MTV.

Kinks – Father Christmas

We will kick off a Christmas week after today. I will still have my Max Picks but the rest will be Christmas shows, songs, and movies.

This song always brings a smile to my face. Any Kinks Christmas song would have to be different…and this one is. It’s great for cynical people on Christmas and can be enjoyed by Christmas lovers too.

I’ve always liked this raw and rough Christmas song. A writer at the NME wrote, “Successful Xmas songs are more about mood than specifics, but as this is an anti-Christmas song, it’s fine.” This is the kind of song you would expect from Ray Davies. Anti-Christmas or not…it has become a popular classic Christmas song that gets airplay every year.

The single was released during the height of punk rock and certainly exudes a punk attitude. Dave Davies told ABC Radio that he “always thought The Ramones would do a great version of it. I don’t know why they didn’t do it.”… thinking about it…Dave was right…it would have fit them perfectly.

The song was released in 1977 with the B-side Prince Of The Punks. The track was included on the Arista compilation Come Dancing with The Kinks and is also available as a bonus track on the CD reissue of the Kinks’ 1978 album Misfits.

In England, Father Christmas is the personification of Christmas, in the same way as Santa Claus is in the United States. Although the characters are now synonymous, Father Christmas and Santa Claus historically have separate entities, stemming from unrelated traditions.

Ray Davies on performing the song as an opening act in the 70s:

“When the record came out we were on tour with a very successful band at the time supporting them,” he recalled during an interview with Southern California radio station KSWD. “I went on dressed as Santa at the end of the show to do ‘Father Christmas.’ And the other band found it hard to follow us. The following night with the same band I went to run on but there was a bunch of heavies preventing me from running on stage. And I was protesting. But the people said, ‘The Kinks didn’t do an encore but Santa Claus was there and they were stopping him from going on stage.'”

From Songfacts: First written about in Tudor England and pre-dating the first recording of Santa Claus, Father Christmas was a jolly, well-nourished man who typified the spirit of good cheer at Christmas, bringing peace, joy, good food and wine and revelry. In time, the tradition merged with America’s Santa Claus with both riding in a reindeer-pulled sleigh carrying a sackful of toys that lands on the roofs of houses that contain good children. The mythical, white bearded Santa/Father Christmas then enters the properties through their chimneys clutching gifts for the well-behaved little ones inside.

Father Christmas

When I was small I believed in Santa Claus
Though I knew it was my dad
And I would hang up my stocking at Christmas
Open my presents and I’d be glad

But the last time I played Father Christmas
I stood outside a department store
A gang of kids came over and mugged me
And knocked my reindeer to the floor

They said
Father Christmas, give us some money
Don’t mess around with those silly toys
We’ll beat you up if you don’t hand it over
We want your bread so don’t make us annoyed
Give all the toys to the little rich boys

Don’t give my brother a Steve Austin outfit
Don’t give my sister a cuddly toy
We don’t want a jigsaw or monopoly money
We only want the real mccoy

Father Christmas, give us some money
We’ll beat you up if you make us annoyed
Father Christmas, give us some money
Don’t mess around with those silly toys

But give my daddy a job ’cause he needs one
He’s got lots of mouths to feed
But if you’ve got one I’ll have a machine gun
So I can scare all the kids on the street

Father Christmas, give us some money
We got no time for your silly toys
We’ll beat you up if you don’t hand it over
Give all the toys to the little rich boys

Have yourself a merry merry Christmas
Have yourself a good time
But remember the kids who got nothin’
While you’re drinkin’ down your wine

Father Christmas, give us some money
We got no time for your silly toys
Father Christmas, please hand it over
We’ll beat you up so don’t make us annoyed

Father Christmas, give us some money
We got no time for your silly toys
We’ll beat you up if you don’t hand it over
We want your bread so don’t make us annoyed
Give all the toys to the little rich boys

Kinks – All Day and All of the Night

Happy Monday everyone…if that is possible. I hope you all had a good weekend.

This simple riff is raw and cutting like Louie, Louie, and Wild Thing…and became a staple of garage bands forever.

The sound of the guitar was revolutionary. Dave Davies got the dirty guitar sound by slashing the speaker cone on his amplifier with a razor blade. The vibration of the fabric produced an effect known as “fuzz,” which became common as various electronic devices were invented to distort the sound. At the time, none of these devices were available to Dave, so Davies would mistreat his amp to get the desired sound, often kicking it.

The song peaked at #7 on the Billboard 100, #4 in Canada, #5 in New Zealand, and #2 in the UK in 1964. It’s punk…raw rock and roll to the core. The guitar was really distorted and hard for the time.

The record executives in their wisdom didn’t like this song when they heard it. They said the guitar sounded like a barking dog. Later on, the Doors would borrow this melody for Hello I Love You.

One of my favorite things about these early Kinks singles is Dave Davies’s solos. They were always driving and exciting…and yes Dave played on this song, not studio musician Jimmy Page.

The Kinks would revisit this melody with the song “Destroyer” off of the “Give The People What They Want” album.

James Hetfield from Metallica: “schooled on early riff-rock by this man [Ray Davies] and his band – The Kinks”.

Ray Davies:“I cranked up my guitar more than on ‘You Really Got Me’, when we went into the studio, everybody knew what they were doing. I think we did it in three takes… the first time the band heard it was when I ran through it with them at the soundcheck, afterwards we drove back down to London, got up in the morning, and finished the song by midday”.

Ray Davies getting the truth out…this is what he said about the rumor of Jimmy Page playing on this record: “I remember Page coming to one of our sessions when we were recording ‘All Day And All Of The Night.’ We had to record that song at 10 o’clock in the morning because we had a gig that night. It was done in three hours. Page was doing a session in the other studio, and he came in to hear Dave’s solo, and he laughed and he snickered. And now he says that he played it! So I think he’s an asshole, and he can put all the curses he wants on me because I know I’m right and he’s wrong.”

Ray Davies: ” I was a rebellious, angry kid anyway, but that had a profound effect on me. I was full of rage.” That anger was coupled with the frustration that The Kinks song ‘You Really Got Me’ just wasn’t translating in a studio setting. “I could easily have slashed my wrists,” but I had a little green amplifier, an Elpico, that was sounding crap. I thought, ‘I’ll teach it’ – and slashed the speaker cone. It changed the sound of my guitar. Then, when I wired that amp up to another, a Vox AC30, it made it a lot, lot louder”.

Dave Davies: “A little later, I was very depressed and fooling around with a razor blade. I could easily have slashed my wrists, but I had a little green amplifier, an Elpico, that was sounding crap. I thought, “I’ll teach it” – and slashed the speaker cone. It changed the sound of my guitar. Then, when I wired that amp up to another, a Vox AC30, it made it a lot, lot louder.“

All Day and All of the Night

I’m not content to be with you in the daytime
Girl I want to be with you all of the time
The only time I feel alright is by your side
Girl I want to be with you all of the time
All day and all of the night
All day and all of the night
All day and all of the night

I believe that you and me last forever
Oh yeah, all day and nighttime yours, leave me never
The only time I feel alright is by your side
Girl I want to be with you all of the time
All day and all of the night
All day and all of the night
Oh, come on

Max Picks …songs from 1967

1967

This year contained the Summer of Love and psychedelia was everywhere. This year alone had many of my favorite songs I still listen to. I want to start with a song that I think is one of the best of the sixties. The Kinks Waterloo Sunset.

People ask me my favorite Beatles song all of the time. Usually, I say A Day In The Lif e but this one comes really close. The Beatles released Sgt Peppers this year but also released one of…if not the best single ever with Strawberry Fields/Penny Lane. Strawberry Fields was credited to Lennon/McCartney but Lennon is said to have written most of it.

Speaking of favorites…this is one of my top songs from the 60s and ever. Procol Harum with a Whiter Shade Of Pale. Gary Brooker and Keith Reid were credited with writing the song but Matthew Fisher the former keyboard player in the band sued for partial writing credit and won on July 24, 2008. Now the song’s writing credit is Reid-Brooker-Fisher. Gary Brooker and Fisher wrote the music and Reid wrote the lyrics. This was the first song Procol Harum recorded.

Another landmark song…The Doors in Light My Fire. The organ intro to this song by Ray Manzarek is one of the most iconic intros in rock. I first heard this song as a kid and automatically loved it. It is the song that the Doors are most known for. I like the album version that is longer and has more of a solo.

The four band members were credited for writing this song Jim Morrison, Robby Krieger, John Densmore, and Ray Manzarek.

This one is a no-brainer…the one and only Aretha Franklin with Respect…and I have plenty of it for her. It was written by the great Otis Redding.

…

Beatles – Good Day Sunshine

It’s hard to be unhappy when you hear this song. McCartney said the song was influenced by The Lovin’s Spoonful’s song Daydream. I can hear that but I can’t help but think the song was also influenced a little by The Kinks. I could hear Ray Davies singing this song.

Original handwritten lyrics to Good Day Sunshine

McCartney did admit to hearing not only Lovin Spoonful but the Kink’s Sunny Afternoon. Most of these British bands would play off each other and the fans were the benefactors to this. John Sebastian would not know about this until 1984 (quote down below) Paul mentioned it in an interview.

Ray Davies did in fact rave about this song in Disc and Music Echo magazine…a very popular British popular music magazine in the 60s and early 70s. The song has a bounce to it and also an older sound…even in 1966 when it was released.

The song was on the album Revolver. That album I think personally is their artistic best…not my number 1 favorite but one of the greatest albums ever made. When they hit America in 1964 all of their albums progressed ahead and weren’t the same. They never remade an album…they were always looking to improve and change. You could see the progression of this from Help! to Rubber Soul to Revolver. After Revolver came their most famous album Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. With Revolver, listeners heard more sophisticated sounds and techniques adopted by the Beatles. This song was not released as a single…but it could have been.

The album peaked at #1 on the Billboard 100, Canada, The UK, and probably Mars as well.

An interesting piece of info on this song. Now all of you non-musicians may not care about this part but George Harrison played bass on this song…so please indulge me. George was right-handed so he could not play Paul’s left-handed basses. He ended up renting one out to play at the session.

I thought I knew most of the instruments they played but this I didn’t know. He played a 1965 Burns Nu-Sonic bass guitar. There is a reason I never heard of this bass guitar. The Nu-Sonics were one of the first instruments discontinued by Baldwin after they bought the Burns company in September 1965. They disappeared from the catalog by the fall of ’66 so the total production run for all versions was only about two years.

Here is a picture of George playing the Nu-Sonic Bass Guitar.

Paul McCartney: “Once again, I was out at John’s house in Weybridge. I’d driven myself there from my home in London in my beautiful sierra-blue Aston Martin, ejector seat and all. I love to drive, and an hour’s drive is a good time to think of things; if you’ve got half an idea, you can flesh it out on the way. I would often arrive at John’s place with a fully formed idea. Sometimes I would have to wait, if John was late getting up; he was a lazy bastard, whereas I was a very enthusiastic young man. Mind you, if I did have to wait there was a little swimming pool I could sit beside.”

“Around that time there was quite a spate of summer songs. ‘Daydream’ and ‘Summer In The City’ by The Lovin’ Spoonful, The Kinks’ ‘Sunny Afternoon’…We wanted to write something sunny. Both John and I had grown up while the music hall tradition was still very vibrant, so it was always in the back of our minds. There are lots of songs about the sun, and they make you happy: ‘The Sun Has Got His Hat On’ or ‘On The Sunny Side Of The Street.’ It was now time for us to do ours. So we’ve got love and sun, what more do we want?”

Paul McCartney: “Wrote that out at John’s one day…the sun was shining, influenced by The Lovin’ Spoonful. It was really very much a nod to The Lovin’ Spoonful’s ‘Daydream,’ the same traditional, almost trad-jazz feel. That was our favorite record of theirs. ‘Good Day Sunshine’ was me trying to write something similar to ‘Daydream.’ John and I wrote it together at Kenwood, but it was basically mine, and he helped me with it.”

John Sebastian: “One of the wonderful things The Beatles had going for them is that they were so original that when they did cop an idea from somebody else it never occurred to you, I thought there were one or two of their songs which were Spoonfuloid but it wasn’t until Paul mentioned it in a Playboy interview (in 1984) that I specifically realized we’d inspired ‘Good Day Sunshine.’”

Good Day Sunshine

Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine

I need to laugh, and when the sun is out
I’ve got something I can laugh about
I feel good, in a special way
I’m in love and it’s a sunny day

Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine

We take a walk, the sun is shining down
Burns my feet as they touch the ground

Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine

And then we lie, beneath a shady tree
I love her and she’s loving me
She feels good, she knows she’s looking fine
I’m so proud to know that she is mine

Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine
Good day sunshine

Favorite Rock Lyrics 4

Hope you all are having a good week…happy Wednesday!

And he dug up her grave and built a cage with her bonesExcitable boy, they all said well, he’s just an excitable boy …. Warren Zevon

I’ll be in my basement room with a needle and a spoonAnd another girl can take my pain away…Rolling Stones

We were the first band to vomit at the bar and find the distance to the stage too far meanwhile it’s getting late at ten o’clock rock is dead they say Long Live Rock…The Who

Cause when life looks like Easy Street there is danger at your door… The Grateful Dead

Then here come a man with a paper and a pen tellin’ us our hard times are about to end… The Band

I could walk like Brando right into the sun then dance just like a Casanova… Bruce Springsteen

Elementary penguin singing Hare Krishna man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allen Poe …The Beatles

Mother, you had me but I never had you I, I wanted youYou didn’t want me so, I just got to tell you goodbye … John Lennon

Exchanging “good luck”s face to face checkin’ his stash by the trash at St. Mark’s place …The Replacements

We come from the land of the ice and snow from the midnight sun where the hot springs flow… Led Zeppelin

Every day, I look at the world from my window but chilly, chilly is the evening timeWaterloo sunset’s fine… The Kinks

I don’t wanna be a candidate for Vietnam or Watergate… Queen

If I ventured in the slipstream between the viaducts of your dream… Van Morrison

I am just a dreamer but you are just a dream and you could have been anyone to me… Neil Young

So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner piesand walked off to look for America…Simon and Garfunkel

Kinks – Autumn Almanac

This is a very sophisticated complex pop song…the melody and the way everything connects just fit so perfectly. This was released as a non-album single in between 1967’s Something Else by the Kinks and 1968’s The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society.

I love hearing this song around Autumn. Out of all the seasons, Fall is my favorite season of all. Like spring…it doesn’t last long enough. With Fall comes the relief of 95+ temps and 90 percent humidity here.

Ray has said the words were influenced by his Dad’s old drinking buddy named Charlie. Remember me saying that it was a complex song? It has around 19 different chords in it…songs written around this time had around oh… 3 to 5 chords. Comparing it to another Kinks song Dedicated Follower of Fashion… which had around 5 chords.

The best way I’ve heard this song described is by Andy Partridge (I have the entire long quote at the bottom) of XTC…he said it was like a miniature movie, basically, that unravels itself as you are listening to it...that is a perfect way of describing it.

The song was released in 1967 and it peaked at #3 in the UK, #13 in Canada, and #17 in New Zealand. At that time The Kinks were Ray Davies, Dave Davies, Pete Quaife, and Mick Avory on drums. On this recording, the in-demand session man Nicky Hopkins played the Mellotron.

Ray Davies: “The words were inspired by Charlie, my dad’s old drinking mate, who cleaned up my garden for me, sweeping up the leaves. I wrote it in early autumn, yeah, as the leaves were turning color.”

Andy Partridge of XTC on the song: It’s a miniature movie, basically, that unravels itself as you are listening to it, and it has all these little movements or scenes. And they all seem to take place in the kind of mythical cozy London that the Ealing studios always had in their films, like The Lavender Hill Mob. The song just keeps turning and changing; you see a new facet every few seconds. But there’s nothing unsettling about the fact that there are so many parts. Normally that would just be the death of a song, it would just scramble peoples brains.

The lyrics are very everyday. There’s no “calling occupants of interplanetary craft” in it. All the language in it is what you’d say over a cup of tea. It’s like a roller-coaster, but it’s not a high-speed chromium-plated space-age roller-coaster – it’s this slow creaking wooden baroque kind of roller-coaster. There are some lovely moments in it, like that sections that starts “Friday evening…..” It starts off in this mournful minor thing, and you think, “Oh dear, Friday evening, the end of something,” and then suddenly: “People get together” – it clicks into major, and becomes very optimistic. It just lifts your heart up another rung. And there’s something very plain and uplifting about [from the chorus] “yes, yes, yes,” this repetition of the affirmative.

The woodiness of “Autumn Almanac” is really appealing. Everything sounds like sticks and branches and planks. The whole song is wallpapered in dead leaves, as far as I’m concerned. The [the Kinks] touched on this same sort of thing later on, in “Shangri-La” and “Lavender Hill,” but it was more mannered, a bit more ponderous.

Damn, I wish I’d written this song. I’ll probably spend my life trying to. It’s such a huge ghost; my entire songwriting career has been trying to exorcise it.

Dave Davies: “I was playing through ‘Autumn Almanac’ [recently] and it’s a phenomenal recording. You can understand why it has lasted so long.”

Autumn Almanac

From the dew-soaked hedge creeps a crawly caterpillar
When the dawn begins to crack
It’s all part of my autumn almanac
Breeze blows leaves of a musty-colored yellow
So I sweep them in my sack
Yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac

Friday evenings, people get together
Hiding from the weather
Tea and toasted, buttered currant buns
Can’t compensate for lack of sun
Because the summer’s all gone

La-la-la-la, la-la-la-la
Oh, my poor rheumatic back
Yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac
La-la-la-la, la-la-la-la
Oh, my autumn almanac
Yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac

I like my football on a Saturday
Roast beef on Sundays, all right
I go to Blackpool for my holidays
Sit in the open sunlight

This is my street, and I’m never gonna leave it
And I’m always gonna to stay here
If I live to be ninety-nine
‘Cause all the people I meet
Seem to come from my street
And I can’t get away
Because it’s calling me (come on home)
Hear it calling me (come on home)

La-la-la-la, la-la-la-la
Oh, my autumn Armagnac
Yes, yes, yes, it’s my autumn almanac
La-la-la-la, la-la-la-la
Oh, my autumn almanac
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes

Bop-bop-boom-bop-bop-boom-bop-bop-boom-bop-bop-boom (whoa!)

Yes, yes

Kinks – See My Friends

This is a song that should have been a bigger hit. Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney were fans of this song. Dave Davies remembered Paul jokingly telling him “You bastards! How dare you! I should have made that record!”

This song is about the loss of Ray’s sister, who lived for a time in Ontario, Canada. Upon her return to England she developed a sickness and died while dancing at a night club. Just before she died she gave Ray his first guitar for his 13th birthday.

He wrote the song while traveling in India years later when he heard about the significance of the Ganges river in the Indian death ritual. Two years later he again used the metaphor of crossing a river in his beautiful song Waterloo Sunset.

The song peaked at #10 on the UK Charts in 1965.

Ray Davies: “A bit more care should have been taken with it. I think (producer) Shel Talmy went too far in trying to keep in the rough edges. Some of the double tracking on that is appalling. It had better songs on it than the first album, but it wasn’t executed in the right way. It was just far too rushed.”

Ray Davies: “It’s more about you’ve lost the female love of your life, therefore you only have your friends left. That little interchange – ‘She is gone’ – is the sound of someone who is completely distraught. It’s more about camaraderie than homosexuality. But then it borders on that. You go out for a pint with the blokes and then it gets to that moment… (whispery laughter) and they’re singing to one another pissed, and they hug one another.”

See My Friends

See my friends,
See my friends,
Layin’ ‘cross the river,

She is gone,
She is gone and now there’s no one left
‘cept my friends,
Layin’ ‘cross the river,

She just went,
She just went,
Went across the river.

Now she’s gone,
Now she’s gone,
Wish that I’d gone with her.

She is gone,
She is gone and now there’s no one left
‘cept my friends,
Layin’ ‘cross the river,

She is gone and now there’s no one else to take her place
She is gone and now there’s no one else to love
‘cept my friends,
Layin’ ‘cross the river,

See my friends,
See my friends,
Layin’ ‘cross the river,

…

Kinks – Father Christmas

We have a few more weeks til Christmas. I’m looking forward to it. I hope all of you are doing well.

Father Christmas, give us some money
We’ll beat you up if you make us annoyed
Father Christmas, give us some money
Don’t mess around with those silly toys

This song always brings a smile to my face. Any Kinks Christmas song would have to be different…and this one is.

The song was released in 1977 with the B side Prince Of The Punks. The track was included on the Arista compilation Come Dancing with The Kinks and is also available as a bonus track on the CD reissue of the Kinks’ 1978 album Misfits.

In England, Father Christmas is the personification of Christmas, in the same way as Santa Claus is in the United States. Although the characters are now synonymous, historically Father Christmas and Santa Claus have separate entities, stemming from unrelated traditions.

Ray Davies: “When the record came out we were on tour with a very successful band at the time supporting them,” he recalled during an interview with Southern California radio station KSWD. “I went on dressed as Santa at the end of the show to do ‘Father Christmas.’ And the other band found it hard to follow us. The following night with the same band I went to run on but there was a bunch of heavies preventing me from running on stage. And I was protesting. But the people said, ‘The Kinks didn’t do an encore but Santa Claus was there and they were stopping him from going on stage.'”