As I sit here in the archive, playing an American copy of The Kinks’ 1967 album Something Else on the Reprise label, I’m in awe at how prolific Ray Davies was as a writer – but on this album it wasn’t just Ray. Although The Kinks first album, released in 1964, had been made up […]
Undeniably one of the great songs of the sixties, The Kinks’ Waterloo Sunset stalled at No.2 on the UK chart, unable to dislodge The Tremeloes Silence Is Golden from the No.1 spot. In America it didn’t chart at all, blame laid on the quintessentially English lyric – so explain Our House by Madness No.7 in the […]
Although this non-album single reached No.3 on the UK charts and is a classic Ray Davies melody and lyric, it remains low on the list of ‘famous’ Kinks singles. The slice of British life typified in this poetic vignette might have ‘spoken to me’ as a kid in the North of England in 1967 or […]
The Kinks released Days as a single in 1968 and it reached Number 12 on the UK charts. It initially appeared on the Village Green Preservation Society album but only the early European and the New Zealand releases. In this clip from Top Of The Pops from 1969, John Dalton has replaced Peter Quaife on bass. […]
Whilst reading a piece on The Kinks history, one of the most influential quintessentially English and important bands that had come out of the sixties, I became aware that after 1968, none of their albums (bar compilations) managed to reach the UK charts. How is that possible? It all went wrong after the 1967 album, […]