Recommendations of the Editorial team
On my iPod I have pretty much every grade that the kinks have ever recorded, at least until 1980. As far as I know, the kinks were the only large 60s band that did not jump on the psychedelic train that was not involved in the strange murks, which was temporarily fashionable. While his contemporaries set song cycles about eastern mysticism, Ray Davies wrote about social housing in an English suburb. He dealt with things that were close to his heart. He invented his little world and filled her with life. And in this world you didn’t wear Nehru jackets, did not smoke pot and did not make all-day jam sessions.
When I heard “Village Green Preservation Society” for the first time in 1971, I imagined the typical life in a British small town: parks, beer from the barrel … When we came to England in 1985, I made a trip through Muswell Hills – and it was anything but romantic. I had painted a postcard idyll, but in fact it was pretty down. And then it became clear to me that all these songs of Ray’s imagination spranged that he wanted to immortalize England that had long since been dissolved. No wonder that a lot of sadness swings in these songs.
I am amazed at how well Kinks plates still sound-even if you find out more about the fact that little actually happens in detail. “Village Green” is the best example: Unlike most records from this time, the recording is not overloaded with all conceivable instruments. And yet the songs are wonderfully arranged. “You Really Got Me” wrote Ray on the piano and then gave the song to his brother Dave, who made it a desert of guitar orgy.
“You didn’t call it heavy metal when I invented it”
I once read an interview in which Dave was asked whether the kinks in the eighties had become a heavy metal band. He said, “You didn’t call it heavy metal when I invented it.”
The kinks took the back entrance to rock history. All of these wonderful albums that we talk about today – “Face to Face”, “Something Else by the Kinks”, “Village Green” – were in the sixties shopkeepers. But those among us who love these records have love them for decades.